A Christmas market in Berlin was attacked Monday when a truck plowed into a crowd, leaving 12 dead and 48 injured. This was similar to a truck attack that left 80 dead in occurred in Nice, France in July. Also on Monday, Russia's ambassador to Turkey was shot by a madman at an art gallery, who made sure to shout out "Do not forget Aleppo!"
I could go on and on listing events like these, but you get the point.
Listen, I completely understand the concept of blowback - the idea that when a government harms people in other countries it will produce people wanting to retaliate - but these kinds of terrorist attacks are just completely beyond the pale.
Not to mention the fact that Germany has been especially accommodating with taking in refugees and certainly never invited any kind of response like this.
Unfortunately, we live in a world now where even talking about this makes you an "Islamaphobe" to some people.
We are not allowed to simply point out that these crimes were committed in part due to blowback but also in the name of one specific religion.
Our current president, Barack Obama, refuses to even say the words "Islamic Extremism."
Look, I know that just saying those words isn't going to magically cure the world of all of these terror attacks.
However, it does allow us to clearly define our enemy and it likewise provides the opportunity to differentiate between those who use the religion as justification for murderous acts and the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful, wonderful people.
Nobody believes all Muslims are terrorists and separating the "extremists" from the rest of the religion merely reinforces that fact.
Thankfully, our President-elect, Donald Trump understands this and is going to ensure that we call these madmen out for what they truly are.
He realizes that the battle is with these extremists and not with the entire religion. He also recognizes that we must destroy terror groups like ISIS and their cells but we can do this by cooperating with other nations and without involving our country in more pointless nation-building exercises that led to quagmires like Iraq and Libya.
This is why, for all the hand-wringing Democrats are doing about our President-elect supposedly being too friendly with Russia and Vladimir Putin, I can't see why this is a bad thing.
For starters, I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly eager to antagonize a country with nuclear weapons. In addition, Putin is invested in wiping out our enemies in Syria and seems intent on doing exactly that.
So why not let him?
This doesn't mean Putin is a good guy or that we are his best pal. It simply means that on most occasions, cooperation is better than conflict.
And that is the best strategy for eradicating the terrorists who wish to do us harm: cooperation. If we needlessly bomb and nation-build, we create more enemies. If we work with others to systematically target the actual perpetrators rather than innocent bystanders, we accomplish the dual goal of keeping our own country safe while ridding the world of these truly evil monsters who wish so badly to destroy us.
It's important we get our priorities in order and employ all the right strategies in the war on terror.
Thankfully, in a matter of mere weeks, we will have a president who does exactly that.