On the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik predicts that there will be another major attack on U.S. soil, which will remind Americans of the threat we face.
"The problems we are having today, the beheading of James Foley and his colleague, the mass murders and the executions and assassinations that we've seen conducted by these radical extremist groups, it's all happening overseas, it's happening somewhere else," Kerik told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on
Newsmax TV Thursday.
"The American people — they don't feel it, they don't understand it, they don't get it," he explained. "They didn't get it until the morning of Sept. 11 and . . . [for] two years the American people got it, and they wanted to fight this enemy, and they wanted to take it to the shores of where ever to go after that enemy.
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But now, Kerik believes that the American people have grown complacent again, which only makes us more vulnerable.
"Unfortunately, and this is what it's going to take, there's going to be another attack here, something is going to happen on U.S. soil," he said. "It's going to drive home to the American people that the threat still exists, the threat is extremely dangerous."
The former NYC police commissioner says that if we don't fight the Islamic State (ISIS) "it's only going to get worse."
"If the president stands by his message and if Congress gets on board, we have a much better chance to start winning this battle than we have in the past," Kerik told Newsmax.
However, he explained that no one should be surprised by the continued terrorist threat.
"This is something we're going to have to face today and for probably decades," he said.
"They have enormous patience, they have funding today with ISIS . . . it's something that is extremely dangerous," he said. "It's dangerous abroad, it's dangerous for the Arab region and the Gulf states."
And he contends that "it could be extremely dangerous here if these people get back into this country and that shouldn't surprise anyone."
"They want the demise of America, they want the demise of the Christian religion, any religion that is not Muslim," Kerik said. "They want the demise of Israel."
"We've got to come to the realization that we're in this fight, we're going to have this fight for probably decades to come," he added.
While Kerik says that he feels safer today than he did on Sept. 11, 2001, "the threat is more extreme today than it was then."
"New York City's safe, the country is safe as safe as it can be, but the problem is you can't stop every event and we're going to miss something and when we do it's going to come back to haunt us."
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