The terror attacks in France clearly remind us of the importance of the following...
1) Maintaining a strong, agile and robust military capability with top technology and Special Forces capable of striking terror cells anywhere in the world.
2) Maintaining well-equipped, capable and sufficiently funded local, state and federal law enforcement, first responders and excellent intelligence gathering services.
3) Ensuring reasonably secure national borders and ports of entry where our government has a good sense of knowing and tracking those entering and exiting the country and for what purpose.
4) A fully operational Patriot Act where our democratically elected government, with proper checks and balances, can use the NSA and other intelligence agencies to access, monitor and track overseas communications in all forms to identify foreign and domestic links between known terrorist organizations and individual, radicalized people in the USA who join, aid or abet terror cells operating here or anywhere in the world.
Anything less than these four counter-terror initiatives working and in place, seriously imperils our national security and needlessly jeopardizes the safety and freedoms of the American people.
What happened in France can easily happen here. However, these four initiatives give us a fighting chance to stop such an attack before it becomes operational.
Because no anti-terror initiative is ever 100 percent effective, when an attack does happen, these four initiatives will also give us the capability to identify those responsible and respond swiftly and effectively.
Tim Gobble