Twitter attacks have little effect on 19th-century-type villains.
Nigeria’s homegrown, al Qaeda-linked militant group, Boko Haram, brags openly that it recently kidnapped about 300 young Nigerian girls. It boasts that it will sell them into sexual slavery.
Those terrorists have a long and unapologetic history of murdering kids who dare to enroll in school, and Christians in general. For years, Western aid groups have pleaded with the State Department to at least put Boko Haram on the official list of terrorist groups. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team was reluctant to come down so harshly, though, in apparent worry that some might interpret such condemnation as potentially offensive to Islamic sensitivities.
Instead, Western elites now flood Facebook and Twitter with angry postings about Boko Haram — either in vain hopes that public outrage might deter the terrorists, or simply to feel better by loudly condemning the perpetrators.
The Obama administration has exhausted the vocabulary of outrage in condemning the aggressions of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. We habitually lecture Mr. Putin that he does not understand it is no longer the 19th century, when blood and arms once settled differences. But Mr. Putin has no apologies for his 19th-century worldview of stronger powers dictating to weaker ones as they please. (Nor does Boko Haram have any apologies for slavery.)
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