In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist bombing in Brussels (and all the others that have taken place over the past year), all of us would be wise to go back and re-watch the fifth season of Homeland.  This is the one in which our heroine, Carrie Mathison, has left the CIA and decamped to Berlin to work as a security consultant for a wealthy philanthropist, Otto During.  The season, which began airing in September 2015, pretty much presages everything that has happened in the last year, even though it was written and filmed well before that.  In short, the fact that the terrorists have steadily gained in strength and territory was easily predictable.

Granted, the writers and producers of the series have an Israeli connection; Gordon Raff is Israeli-born and no doubt has a more realistic understanding of Islamic terrorism than most Americans.  One only has to check in at The Religion of Peace to see a catalog of terrorist attacks that have occurred around the world of late.  It is an ugly, frightening picture of the chaos engendered by "leadership from behind."

There is a scene in the first episode of season five that for a while went viral.  It is when Peter Quinn, the CIA man in Syria, has returned to be debriefed by the bigs in the CIA.  They ask how their strategy is working.  Quinn says, "What strategy?  We have no strategy."  He then advises them to "bomb Raqqa into a parking lot."

The powers that be, of course, chuckle at this outrageous suggestion.  If only the real world had taken his advice, thousands of people since dead would perhaps be alive today.  And so it goes.  America does next to nothing under Obama, and the terrorists keep winning, expanding their reach, their destruction, and the level of their barbarity.  Then last week comes the real-life attack in Brussels, linked to the attack in Paris, perpetrated by one expansive cell operating throughout Europe with impunity.

Back to the series, Quinn, then, when the opportunity presents itself, infiltrates a terrorist cell, its members released from prison because a self-righteous American, one of those warriors of the left who so permeate the global media, exposes the fact of U.S. surveillance of German terrorists in violation of German law.  So of course the imprisoned terrorists must all be released because of the violation of their civil rights.  As here in the U.S., it often seems that it is the criminals who have all the rights.  Abu Nidal of Fort Hood infamy certainly retained more rights than his victims.  Law-abiding citizens only have the right to be victims.

Free to live and plot among the citizens of Berlin, the TV terrorists of the series move forward with plans to mount an attack on the train station at rush hour.  These scenes are eerily like the ones from Brussels – caught on CCTV, men pushing or pulling roller suitcases with bombs inside, hoping to incinerate hundreds if not thousands of innocents and perhaps themselves.  They are so proud, so righteous, so committed to their cause: obliterating the West or at least bringing it to its knees is their goal.  They operate seemingly unmolested amid the innocents they intend to kill. 

Thanks to our debilitating cultural disease of rigid, mandatory political correctness and the left's determination to see anything but Islamic radicalization as the cause of terrorism, we are at the mercy of our betters, those intellectual superiors who daily warn against a "backlash" toward Muslims.  Obama runs out to apologize for America and for the backlash that never comes.  What comes is just more national insecurity, more terrorism, more refugees of uncertain intent welcomed into the fold.