EDITORIAL: Entering a phase of terrorism we should have expected

The world stands in horror after Friday's indiscriminate killings in Paris. Islamic extremist carried out a coordinated attack that left 129 dead and more than 300 seriously wounded. ISIS has claimed credit for the carnage. They have also claimed to have downed a Russian passenger jet in Egypt killing 234, and just a day before the Paris attack, a suicide bomber killed 43 Shiite Muslims in Beirut, Lebanon. The group, also identified as ISIL and Daesh, has killed people in Yemen, Bangladesh and Turkey outside of the war zones in Syria and Iraq.

We should not be surprised that unemployed men raised in the squalor of the Middle East have been radicalized and trained to be cold-blooded murderers. Nor should it be a surprise that the world is being attacked by Boko Haram, Hamas, al-Qaida, ISIS and a host of other radical Muslim organizations.

Our ally, Saudi Arabia, has been exporting its virulent strain of Islam, Wahhabism, for more than 40 years and the world has mostly looked the other way as the House of Saud funded schools all over the world. Its brand of Sunni Islam is unaccepting of any deviance and that includes other forms of Islam. It's easy to forget that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis. Why did we look the other way? Black gold, that's why. Those generations of children educated in anti-Western rhetoric are now of age to become suicide messengers in the name of their perverted version of Allah.

Now Paris has been struck and American governors are climbing all over themselves to declare their states' resistance to taking any Syrian refugees. While that may make some political hay, it is an empty act that does little of nothing. What about other refugees from that area of the world? What about anyone on a travel or student visa? Do we kick them out, too, or not allow them to come here? If the answer is yes, which countries do we ban?

What about the military option? Do we really want to inject thousands of our men and women back into that cauldron? How did that work out for us last time?

Or do we redouble our efforts to connect the dots and monitor the people we suspect, something we didn't do well before 9/11 and something the Belgian and French authorities seem to have had the opportunity to do and did not before this tragedy?

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during his first inaugural address said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Roosevelt was talking about the Great Depression. It's ironic that eight years later in 1942 that he would sign Executive Order 9066. That order allowed for 110,000 to 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry to be rounded up and incarcerated during World War II.

In hindsight, that period of our history is not our proudest, but it gives us a lesson for today. Unfortunately, time after time, fear trumps fact. Facts can be complex. Fear is simple and visceral. Which will win this time?

This story was originally published November 17, 2015 at 9:39 PM with the headline "EDITORIAL: Entering a phase of terrorism we should have expected ."