In aftermath of Nice attack, use increased intelligence, not warfare, to fight terror

In the immediate after- math of yet another horrendous terror attack in France this week, French, American and freedom-loving populations around the world once again are left aghast and with far more questions than answers.

How could a 31-year-old French national from Tunisia so easily and methodically use a rented refrigerator truck filled with explosives and guns to heartlessly mow down hundreds of French Independence Day revelers, killing at least 84 – including at least two Americans – and injuring at least 200 others?

What possibly could have motivated the immigrant from North Africa to act seemingly as a lone wolf to turn the jubilant Bastille Day fireworks party into a grisly mile-long avenue of blood and carnage?

How could the petit criminal serving a sex-month suspended jail sentence for acts of violence have slipped through the radar of increasingly sophisticated French and international counterterrorism and intelligence networks?

Answers to these and other troubling and vexing questions may be weeks, months or even years in the making.

SOLIDARITY WITH FRANCE

For now, however, as France begins a period of national mourning today for the victims of Thursday night’s truck attack down the usually beautiful and welcoming Avenue des Anglais in Nice, we join President Barack Obama in offering our condolences to the victims and our solidarity with the leaders and the citizens of the Fifth French Republic.

“We are reminded of the extraordinary resilience and democratic values that have made France an inspiration to the entire world, and we know that the character of the French Republic will endure long after this devastating and tragic loss of life,” the U.S. president said of America’s oldest Western ally.

He added that the U.S. has offered French officials “any assistance that they may need to investigate this attack and bring those responsible to justice.”

The president’s measured appeal for respect and resilience stands in sharp contrast to the sentiments of some, including presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump, that the attack constitutes an act of international war.

Indeed the New York billionaire said that if he were president that he would immediately declare full-scale combat warfare on the Islamic State group, seek authorization from Congress and and enlist full-scale support from our nation’s NATO allies.

Given such reckless rhetoric coming even before clear responsibility for the attack was known, Americans are indeed fortunate that Trump is not our commander-in-chief today.

Such hyperaggressive actions likely would only inflame organized terror groups and individual lone-wolf sympathizers to plot more pernicious attacks of terror and atrocity on French, American and other freedom-loving soil.

All of which is not to say that France, the U.S. and other members of the 66-nation coalition working to weaken radical Islamic terrorist threats should simply roll over and play dead. Of course, they must not.

One first step in response to Thursday night’s brutal rundown should be a doubling down on international cooperation to weaken the strength of those most often found guilty of such wanton violence. Presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was correct Friday in calling for “an intelligence surge.

“We still do not have enough intelligence cooperation between our agencies and those in other countries, including in Europe, and we need to have a focal point in NATO,” she said on a cable-television news program.

Then, of course, authorities must act on that intelligence. Retired FBI Assistant Deputy Director Danny Coulson is calling for heightened surveillance, for example, of neighborhoods of disenfranchised immigrants, the source of the Nice attack and two others – Charlie Hebdo and the club Bataclan massacres in Paris – in France over the past 18 months.

Failing to do so may only invite the worst. As Coulson put it, “You will see a truck driving through the streets of the United States.”