WASHINGTON--President Obama called the missed signals and unshared intelligence that may have prevented the attack on flight 253 a “systemic failure.” The president is superficially correct. But the failure goes beyond the nation’s security system and highlights the reason these attacks will continue to occur: our “systemic failure” to properly defend our way of life.

“We face an enemy, Islamic totalitarianism, committed to our deaths,” write Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Center, and Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Center. “Its agents have shown an eagerness to kill indiscriminately in London, Madrid, New York and elsewhere, even at the cost of their own lives.

“In the face of this mounting threat, what is our response?

“Do we proudly proclaim our unconditional right to exist? Do we resolutely affirm to eradicate power base after power base of the Islamic totalitarians, until they drop their arms, and foreign governments and civilian populations no longer have the nerve to support them?

“No.

“It is the West’s moral weakness that feeds terrorism and brings it fresh recruits. It is the prospect of success against the West, fueled by the West’s apologetic response, that allows totalitarian Islam to thrive.

“What we desperately need is a leader who proclaims that the rational ideals of the West, reason, science, individual rights and capitalism, are good--that we have a moral right to exist for our own sake--that we don’t owe the rest of the world anything--and that we should be admired and emulated for our virtues and accomplishments, not denounced.

“This leader would then demonstrate, in word and deed, that if those opposed to these ideals take up arms against us, they will be crushed.”

Yaron Brook is president of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.  http://aynrandcenter.org/

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