Should We Sacrifice Personal Liberties to Be Safe?

French officials are still investigating Thursday’s Bastille Day terror attack that killed 84 people in Nice. The strategy of using soft targets to carry out terror attacks raises questions about the best way for cities to protect themselves, and at what cost?

“We have to step up our intelligence… We have to sacrifice some personal liberties if we are going to be safe. We’ve got to the point where dramatic and important steps have to be taken domestically so that we understand what’s happening out there and then we have to be able to act on that information… The political correctness that’s been running our strategies has to be dialed back a little bit and we have to recognize that we are fighting for our lives here,” former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said during an interview on Mornings with Maria.

Earlier Thursday, before the attacks, FBI Director James Comey delivered a warning about ISIS during a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee.

“The intelligence community accesses that as the caliphate is crushed the so-called Islamic State will become more desperate to demonstrate its continued vitality and that will likely take the form of more asymmetrical attacks, more efforts at terrorism… It’s necessary to crush the caliphate but we can’t take our eye off what the next move will be by these killers,” Comey said.

On Friday, former member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, Steve Rogers, argued the U.S. must act quickly and step up its offense against ISIS in order to keep the country safe.

“If you look at what we did to Al Qaeda, with our military, we virtually eliminated them from taking any action against this country. This is why myself and other people who are in the military are suggesting a shock and awe attack on their command and control centers, their supply lines, the oil fields, decapitate them right in the Mideast and in effect we’ll also be eliminating their intelligence and operational capabilities,” he said.