TO ITS CREDIT, NYPD EMULATES FRENCH ANTI-TERRORIST SURVEILLANCE

As I’ve said before, civil libertarians are putting political correctness ahead of anti-terrorism.

JIHAD IN TOULOUSE
A reason the NYPD follows young Muslim students

The Wall Street Journal
March 23, 2012

Mohamed Merah died Thursday morning in a hail of bullets as he leapt from the window of his Toulouse flat, firing on the way down. During the preceding 33-hour standoff, the 23-year-old Frenchman said he wanted to die "gun in hand." Nobody should feel sorry that the authorities obliged him.

Merah began his murder spree 12 days ago when he gunned down French paratrooper Sgt. Imad Ibn Ziaten in Toulouse. Four days later he killed two more uniformed paratroopers, Cpl. Abel Chennouf and Pte. Mohamed Legouad, in nearby Montauban. On Monday Merah attacked Toulouse's Ozar Hatorah Jewish school, killing Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two young sons Gabriel and Arieh, and seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego. What made the killings all the more grotesque was that Merah filmed them, a reminder that terrorism is, in some sense, also a form of pornography.

The reaction of the French has been commendable. Revulsion at the murder of Jewish children gives the lie to the notion that France is fundamentally anti-Semitic. Muslim leaders have lined up to condemn the killings. Security authorities have been criticized for not acting more effectively—Merah was already on a terrorist watch-list—but every free society will always be at an initial disadvantage against individual killers. "We have shown our sang-froid, our cool and our ability to overcome this kind of terrorist threat," President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday. "We must be implacable in defending our values."

Well said. Less useful was initial speculation that the killer must have been a white supremacist since he seemed to target Jews and North Africans equally—a line of thinking that seems to have been inspired by the notion that Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik represented a larger underground movement.

Nor did it help to hear former Justice Minister Rashida Dati warn a radio audience that using the word "jihadist" to describe Merah risked "stigmatizing our [Muslim] French compatriots." Merah trained for jihad on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Someone should tell Ms. Dati that combating prejudice can't be achieved through semantic acrobatics, much less closing one's eyes to reality.

It's premature to suggest that Merah's rampage presages a new terror threat in Europe, but it's also dangerous to treat him as a one-off. France is fortunate to have a muscular internal security apparatus, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), whose methods of surveillance and preventive action are increasingly being emulated by the FBI and the New York Police Department.

The recent criticism of the NYPD's student and Muslim surveillance program looks especially short-sighted in light of the French murders. Merah's rampage is a reminder to civilized societies to redouble their vigilance.