Sri Lanka, and the nice words problem of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn

The terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka on Sunday evidence two truths: Salafi jihad is a despicable ideology that values human life only as a slave to theological absolutism, and Salafi jihadis must be confronted by force.

Yet defeating this scourge will also require outsize political reform to deny jihadi recruiters the pool of anger in which they thrive. But counterterrorism lines of effort cannot exclude military force. Like the attackers who wreaked mayhem in churches and hotels this weekend, al Qaeda would not have lost its Afghan safe haven, nor the Islamic State its physical caliphate, absent American bombs and bullets.