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The cowardly, coordinated terrorist attacks in Brussels on Tuesday cry out for the necessity of stepping up the destruction of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Although the attacks – for which the group claimed responsibility – were nowhere near the Middle East, ending their base of operations in the two countries would sever a lifeline of support to cells across the world and allow coordinated elimination efforts to concentrate on those cells.
“They have really an unprecedented level of financial and military means to them,” Gen. Gratien Maire, the vice chief of defense for France, said of the ability of terrorists to go back and forth to Iraq and Syria for support. Without stopping the group militarily and drying up its finances, there’s no way to counter its threat to Europe, he said.
Although it is too early for investigators to definitively tie the attacks that killed at least 30 at Belgium’s Zaventem Airport and at a busy subway station to the Islamic State, early fingers pointed toward the group after the prime suspect in November’s deadly terrorists attacks in Paris was captured in a dramatic police raid in Brussels on Friday.