The terror factory

More grim news from Syria: Radical Islamists there are developing new explosives that can evade airport security, in the hopes of providing them to the American and other Western passport holders waging jihad in the battle zone. ABC News reports that members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have joined forces with the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusrah Front in Syria. AQAP has been the tip of the terror spear in developing bombs — the ones who brought us underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab and the plot to blow up cargo planes flying over the states with explosives hidden inside printer cartridges.

Speaking with the Daily News last week about the 3,000 to 4,000 Western fighters, including about 100 Americans, who have made their way to Syria for jihad, NYPD counterterror chief John Miller warned: “They’re getting trained. They’re getting radicalized. They’re getting hardened. They’re getting experienced. They’re learning weapons. They’re learning explosives.”

Saying “there’s a factory over there,” he added, “the thing that keeps me up at night right now is all these people, when they come out of Syria, where are they going to end up? How many are going to end up here and what is their mindset and intention going to be?”

The threat of Western suicide bombers striking at home led the U.S. in 2011 to hunt down and kill AQAP master propagandist and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who inspired atrocities including a drive-by shooting at a Little Rock, Ark., military recruiting office, the Fort Hood massacre and the failed plot to car-bomb Times Square.

The U.S. this week released its legal justification for the drone strike in Yemen that killed him. A well-reasoned document of indisputable merit, it states: “The U.S. citizen in question has gone overseas and become part of the forces of an enemy with which the United States is engaged in an armed conflict; that person is engaged in continual planning and direction of attacks upon U.S. persons from one of the enemy’s overseas bases of operations; the U.S. government does not know precisely when such attacks will occur; and a capture operation would be infeasible.”

The same fatal logic must be brought to bear on those who follow in Awlaki’s footsteps.