Too comfortable. Too numb.

In 2002, seven years ago this past Sunday, a Jewish American journalist named Daniel Pearl was abducted in Pakistan, held captive, and beheaded. Here’s an op-ed in today’s WSJ written by his father.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of “the resistance.” Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

Are we safer today than we were 7 years ago. Without question. Will we be as safe 4 years from now as we are today? Obama’s called an end to Bush’s war on terror. We’re closing Guantanamo (which holds Pearl’s murderer) because Obama thinks our values preclude its existence. 

Soon radical Islam will preclude OUR existence…and we’ll long for the days when this was debatable.

Read the whole thing.