A key Republican senator says recent terrorist attacks in Europe shows the continent is “paying the price for our collective failure” to defeat the Islamic State, and that the U.S. will face similar dangers the longer it takes to defeat the terrorist group.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is set to hold a hearing Tuesday that he’ll use to call for a stepped-up U.S. campaign against the Islamic State, and examine how to keep Americans safe in Europe after two high-profile attacks in Brussels and Paris. Johnson chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
“We need a more robust effort to eliminate the threat posed by ISIS. It has been more than 18 months since President Obama stated our agreed upon goal: the defeat of ISIS,” Johnson is expected to say, according to remarks provided to the Washington Examiner. “We’re still looking to the administration for a strategy and plan to accomplish that goal. The clock is ticking.”
Securing America’s borders and improving the visa screening system are two concrete steps that can prevent America from being the next Western country to be attacked by the Islamic State, according to his remarks.
In addition to a terrorist possibly slipping into the country on a visa, Clinton Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said successful attacks in Europe could inspire others to plot attacks on the U.S. homeland, like last year’s shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.
“Success breeds success. Successful European attacks will spur successful attempted attacks in the United States,” said Watts, who is expected to testify at Tuesday’s hearing. “We can’t just ignore Europe’s terrorism problem,” he told the Examiner.
About a dozen U.S. citizens were injured in last month’s bombings in Brussels, the State Department said. One American was killed and others were injured in the November attacks in Paris.
Watts also said Americans traveling in Europe are “likely to get caught in the crossfire,” and that Americans living abroad will become targets from kidnapping or killing single individuals as pulling off large attacks becomes more difficult.
In his written testimony, Watts said the U.S. should help the European Union create an Islamic State-focused task force and increase intelligence sharing, and should do so “with speed.”
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said part of the problem is layers of bureaucracy that make it difficult for officials to act quickly on intelligence that could prevent an attack. While the U.S. suffers from slow-moving bureaucracy, Gartenstein-Ross told the Examiner that America should help Europe strip away unneeded requirements that make counterterrorism forces less agile.
He also said officials should be working to take terrorists off the streets, even if it’s for lesser crimes, a method he calls the “Al Capone model.”
“He finally went to prison not for being a murderer, or a mobster, but for income tax evasion. The feds looked for whatever mechanism they could use to get him off the streets,” he said, noting that officials could get terrorists on charges of fraud or counterfeiting. “That’s how they should deal with this massive problem.”
