Terror in Ottawa

As we went to press Wednesday the world could only speculate about what prompted Wednesday’s attacks on Canada’s Parliament and other sites in Ottawa that killed a soldier.

Could it have been the honorary citizenship that was to be bestowed in Toronto on Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan? Or the parliamentary vote this month for Canada to join the military campaign against the Islamic State? Or was it not connected to Middle Eastern politics at all? Nobody should discount the last possibility, especially in light of Anders Breivik’s 2011 rampage in Norway.

But U.S. officials identified the gunman who was killed in Ottawa as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who they said was born Michael Joseph Hall but changed his name as part of a conversion to Islam. It’s also worth noting several events that predate the current war with ISIS. In 2006 Canadian security officials arrested 18 Canadian jihadists who had been plotting a terrorist spectacular against multiple targets, including the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Ottawa Parliament and Prime Minister Stephen Harper . One of the plotters, Ali Mohamed Dirie, was released from prison in 2011 and died last year fighting in Syria.

In April 2013, not long after the Boston Marathon bombings, Canadian police charged two men with a plot to derail a passenger train. The pair had alleged connections to an al Qaeda cell based in Iran. (Yes, Iran harbors al Qaeda operatives.)

In July, two converts to Islam were arrested plotting to bomb the British Columbia provincial legislature in Victoria using pressure-cooker bombs. This Monday, another convert, Martin Rouleau, struck and murdered a soldier with his car at a Montreal mall and then died after a car chase and shootout.

Then on Tuesday, only hours before the Ottawa shootout, the Canadian government raised its internal threat level due to an increase in “general chatter from radical Islamist organizations.” That followed an Oct. 8 report in Canada’s National Post that Canadian security officials were “investigating 63 national security cases linked to terrorism and involving 90 suspects.” This follows this month’s arrest of five young Muslim men in London on charges they were plotting “to shoot, to kill, police officers or soldiers on the streets of London.”

All of which is a reminder that what was once called the Global War on Terror remains very much global. The war now being half-heartedly waged against ISIS and other jihadist groups is not some faraway struggle, but part of a war also being waged on Western streets.

That’s an argument for a more concerted effort to obliterate the Islamic State quickly and decisively, lest it become a rallying point for, and an incubator of, jihadists the world over. Muslims living in Western nations in particular have an interest in advocating a muscular military policy; their civil liberties would be most at risk from any populist political backlash in the event of major terror attacks in Europe and North America.

Meanwhile, maybe the Secret Service can draw some lessons about what the attacks in Ottawa suggest about the vulnerability of U.S. government buildings, starting with the White House. The terror in Canada is a reminder of the threat the free world still faces, whichever way the tide of war is supposed to be going, and the shared responsibility of facing it down.