Andrew McCarthy: Need to 'Recognize the Reality' of Jihadist Threat

A former assistant U.S. attorney is defending GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz's call for law enforcement to "patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods," arguing that jihadist cells "arise and thrive in ideological enclaves."

In a column for National Review hours after ISIS terrorists attacked a Brussels subway and airport, killing dozens, Cruz adviser Andrew McCarthy writes that the Texas lawmaker correctly argues "we have to recognize the reality of what the threat is and where it comes from, and we have to stick with prevention-oriented, intelligence-based counterterrorism methods that work."

McCarthy is the former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and now serves as a national security adviser to Cruz.

"Cruz is saying we have to defend ourselves — and that we are worth defending," he writes. "Pro-American Muslims can be a real asset in effective counterterrorism by joining us in helping us ostracize and marginalize radical elements — both the violent jihadists and their ideological sympathizers."

According to McCarthy, the policies of President Barack Obama "have put us on the trajectory to repeat Europe’s self-destruction."

"We know, nearly a quarter century after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, that jihadist cells arise and thrive in ideological enclaves," he writes. "That is where the radicalization, recruitment, fundraising, plotting, and injection and protection of jihadist immigrants occurs."

And what Americans think of as "radical Islam" is "actually a legitimate and rabidly anti-Western interpretation of Islam that is followed by millions of Muslims," he says.

"Those adherents include Muslims who lack the commitment to carry out attacks themselves but nevertheless provide moral (and other) support to those who do, and who populate the Western immigrant enclaves in which the ideology thrives," he writes.

McCarthy charges the "Obama Left and its Islamist allies … have moved us back to a pre-9/11 paradigm which regards terrorism as a law enforcement problem to be managed – meaning, for the most part, that law enforcement engages only after attacks … often too late."

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