April 01--Europeans stroll every day through a landscape transformed by two World Wars. Cherished cities bombed to rubble and then rebuilt. Massive monuments erected to the sacrifice of millions of lives. Today, the shadow of a new war spreads across Europe, from Madrid to London, to Paris and now Brussels.
But many Europeans (and some of their American cousins) continue to describe themselves with a common phrase: "war weary." They shy away from fully girding against an enemy without a country, an enemy whose soldiers wear no uniforms, whose tactics target innocent civilians.
But war weariness doesn't translate into fewer enemy attacks. Just the opposite: A lowered guard, a disengagement, a denial, invites opportunists' attacks.
Day by day we learn more astonishing details of how Belgian authorities snoozed, even after the Paris massacre. How terrorists and their enablers moved freely from Europe to Syria and back. One phrase -- "under their noses" -- crops up time and again in the evolving tale of how terrorists exploited Europe's disjointed, dysfunctional security system.
Egregious case in point: Belgian authorities arrested Salah Abdeslam, the logistics mastermind of the Paris attacks in November, four days before the Brussels bombings. But then authorities reportedly questioned him for a paltry two hours after his capture, and not again until after the Brussels attack. Even though they knew his terror cell mates were on the loose.
"We cannot exclude that, if everybody had been perfect, this could have gone differently," Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens told his Parliament.
No, everybody didn't have to be perfect. But everybody did have to have a sense of urgency, a sense that Belgium, that Europe, was at war with a relentless enemy that doesn't knock off for the weekend.
The war-unweary Vladimir Putin knows this. Recall how the Russian president sent warplanes to bolster Syrian President Bashar Assad. Putin's payoff is an ally still in power and growing stronger. Last weekend, Assad's forces recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra, driving out Islamic State forces with the help of Russian air power. Assad is on the march again; squabbling bands of U.S.-backed rebels kill each other with U.S.-supplied arms; and Europe suffers the brunt of the repercussions: a rising tide of refugees ... hiding an untold number of terrorists ... coming to plot and kill.
European reluctance to spend on security is notorious and long-standing. As of 2015, only five of 28 NATO countries -- the U.S., Great Britain, Greece, Estonia and Poland -- met the alliance's military spending target, 2 percent of gross domestic product. The U.S. spends 3.6 percent.
There is, though, improvement. Several NATO nations, France and Germany notably, are spending more on defense and intelligence, The New York Times reports. When Europe truly grasps that it's at war, the number of countries that spend 2 percent of GDP on defense will be closer to 28.
That's also when Europe will break down turf jealousies and intelligence "stovepipes" that isolate intel agencies so perilously that they can't even agree on how to spell terrorists' names, let alone how to detect and apprehend them as they move easily across borders. In the aftermath of 9/11, American intelligence agencies pointed fingers and tried to deflect blame over their egregious failure to cooperate and communicate. A new intelligence czar, the Director of National Intelligence, began to connect the dots.
Many dots need connecting in Europe, too. Yet, "Many Europeans seem to think that good intelligence is created by immaculate conception, rather than through the hard and sometimes intrusive work of surveillance," writes David Ignatius in The Washington Post. "The authorities often don't mind if the United States does the counterterrorist snooping, so long as they don't have to admit it to their publics. Europeans don't like to talk about intelligence, and they often pretend their countries don't spy."
European leaders should learn from America's experience. They have to level with their citizens about what it will take to root out and disrupt terrorists. It can't be done without a serious shift in European attitude about this war.
Nor can Europe prevail via intelligence, military tactics and spending alone. Leaders have to address how to better assimilate Muslim immigrants and refugees into their societies, into the broader European fabric. Otherwise bad actors will thrive with help from friends and families alienated from European society.
The drill after every attack is for government leaders to pledge renewed vigor, for citizenry to demand action in these realms. And then, for most people, life resumes its normal rhythms.
That is a luxury that Europeans can no longer afford. There is no "holiday from history," no lull that lingers forever.
If Europeans decide they're content to absorb and accept occasional terror slaughters rather than combat Islamist extremism, so be it. If, though, citizens want to push back, they'll have to overcome their oft-cited weariness with war. Europeans and the increasingly stifling security restrictions they endure cannot return to so-called normal until this determined enemy is effectively neutralized or defeated.
The same is true on this side of the Atlantic. Americans, too, profess to be weary of war. But many also hold close their war memories of ruined skyscrapers and planes tumbling from the sky.
