John McKay is a Member of Parliament in Canada. Of yesterday’s attack by a recent Muslim convert on the House of Commons, Mr. McKay said “This changes everything.” Just before he entered the Parliament building, the killer had murdered a Canadian Forces soldier at the Ottawa war memorial.
Parliament’s Sergeant-at-Arms, Kevin Vickers, is being hailed as a hero. On a normal day, Vickers’ largely ceremonial role would pass outside the view of Canada and the world. On special occasions, Vickers, a 28-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), could be seen bearing the great mace, a symbol of the authority of the people’s elected representatives in North America’s second oldest democracy.
That war memorial is a tribute to Canada’s outstanding contribution to the Allies’strength in the First World War. Just one hundred years ago—while President Woodrow Wilson urged Americans to remain “neutral in thought as well as deed-- Canadian soldiers rushed into action Over There. They helped to stave off the brutal German invasion of France. Canada had rallied to the Allied cause within just days of Britain’s declaration of war against Kaiser Germany in August 1914.
When at last President Wilson led America into World War I, he said our effort was “to make the world safe for democracy.” One hundred years later, Sergeant-at-Arms Vickers risked his life to make Canada safe for democracy—Canada and the United States.
What these Islamist killers are seeking is nothing less than an end to freedom in the world. They must be resisted—wherever and whenever necessary. The symbolism of a Sergeant-at-Arms actually using his weapon to take down a determined murderer should not be lost in the media buzz. Freedom must be defended not with words alone, but with deadly force.
That a determined killer could get into the halls of Parliament should force Canadians to consider how better to secure the seat of government. Congress was attacked in July, 1998, by a crazed gunman who shot and killed two Capitol policemen. That attack and the subsequent 9/11 terrorist attacks led to the building of a vast Capitol Visitors Center complex to restrict access to Congress.
But we need to remember that security barriers and guards alone cannot make us safe. There is probably no more heavily guarded place in America than the White House, and yet an intruder got inside the Executive Mansion several weeks ago when someone failed to lock the front door!
This administration has had an appalling record on national security. President Obama told the world we have 5,113 nuclear weapons. Many of us with military experience were prepared to lay down our lives to keep hostile powers from getting that kind of sensitive information.
As former Sec. of Defense Robert Gates has written, Mr. Obama only seemed interested in the military when he could use it to advance his agenda of radical social experimentation. Sec. Gates cited our Commander-in-Chief’s “absence of passion” about the armed services except when he pressed the Pentagon to recruit gays and persons seeking sex changes.
That “absence of passion” was surely on display yesterday when President Obama coolly and dispassionately spoke of the attack on Canada’s Parliament. He repeated only his time-worn bromides in a world-weary way. His deadpan expression and monotone remarks suggested he didn’t want to do anything that might dampen the ardor of his pacifist base two weeks before a critical mid-term election.
Let us remember: He won the crucial opening chapter in the race for the Democratic nomination for President by appealing to Iowa’s Peace Caucus delegates. Afterward, in state after state, candidate Obama beat Sen. Hillary Clinton by outbidding her in pledges to weaken the U.S. military and to soften the image of the U.S. in the world.
Once elected, he promised to approach the Mullahs of Iran “with an open hand, not a clenched fist.” These Mullahs—whom our own State Department have labeled the Number One state sponsors of terrorism in the world—spurned President Obama’s outstretched hand.
But that hardly seemed to matter. He already had his Nobel Peace Prize.
Let us hope that John McKay, the Canadian Member of Parliament, was correct: This attack in Ottawa should change everything.
