Congratulations. Or something. You managed to wake up the world. Which was doubtless your aim. Why else put out a video explaining what you did? As if any explanation would be acceptable. But you did indeed wake up the world--the way any outrage does if only it's sufficiently outrageous.

The world isn't easy to wake up sometimes. Okay, most times. Before a number of airliners were hijacked over American skies and sent crashing into our landmarks, who knew what an "al-Qaida" was? A candied treat out of Arabia? The latest mass infection? But we learned. Quick.

Think of this country, and maybe the West in general, as a huge, lumbering prehistoric creature--a dinosaur, maybe--blissfully unaware that jackals are swarming all around it. He doesn't notice them for the longest time. But when the great beast finally realizes he's under attack, he reacts on a dinosaur-sized scale. The wreckage is scattered everywhere.

So congratulations, Boko Haram. You've got our attention. God have mercy on you. Because we shouldn't, not after what you've done.

And what was it that finally, finally got our--and the world's--attention this time? Girls. There's just something about little girls. They bring out the protective instinct. Think of even the most restrained, proper gentleman. His manners may be impeccable, his self-control admirable. But mess with his daughter, and he reaches for the nearest ax handle. Or .45.

They say you took 276 girls from their school. You claim you'll sell them as "wives." And the dispatches keep coming. They say you "men" in--what do you call yourselves again?--Boko Haram haven't finished yet. Sunday's paper said you took three more hostages. No telling what'll be in tomorrow's paper.

Maybe you've been laboring under the misapprehension that you can get away with this sort of thing because for so long that's just what the world has let you do. You seem to have cowed the Nigerian authorities. Rumor has it they knew you were going to the school hours before the mass abduction, but didn't have the firepower--or guts--to stop you. Or even make a pretense of stopping you. Please be assured that more firepower is on the way. Lots more. It'll be delivered by well-trained troops with plenty of ammo. And guts, too.

By now, French, British, Chinese and American forces are in-country. The Brits say their mission isn't just to recover the girls. But to fight, and kill, those who took them. Good. The world now sees you for what you are. Terrorists. And the world is coming together to get you. If it's attention you wanted, it's attention you've got. Good and hard, let's hope.

It's said you're already on the run. And might have divided the girls into several groups, maybe to make it easier to move them about--and for you to escape the tightening net being woven around you. And that you're blowing bridges behind you to make it harder for this international posse to corner you. Happily, a blown bridge never kept drones, or a satellite, from tracking down the bad guys--or a helicopter from landing right next to you. Ask the late and unlamented Osama bin Laden. Here's hoping you'll get the chance to ask him soon enough--in person.

Buried deep in the news articles, along with a little background on Boko Haram, is the information that you're supposed to have killed thousands of people in Nigeria over the years, maybe more than 1,500 this year alone. Something about trying to impose Islamic law on Africa's most populous nation. All that may have been news to most of us out here in the West. It's not any more. You're (in)famous now. Much like al-Qaida.

But now you've got our attention, God have mercy on you. The rest of us aren't likely to.

Terrorists have a way of slipping under the radar for years and years, and then . . . comes the outrage. Now you've finally shocked the world into action. If only it were as outraged, united and determined when it comes to standing up to the kind of terrorists who command whole nations and armies, and set out to annex whole countries or parts thereof. Latest cases in point: Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine . . . .

When a rogue regime is also a great power, the world doesn't seem to react or, if it does, it only utters pieties--rather than reacting effectively.

Then there is the kind of rogue regime that sets out to acquire the most dreaded of weapons--the nuclear kind, for example--and the missiles with which to deliver them. But the world does little more than retreat before the growing threat, ending sanctions and starting negotiations that are little more than a cover for appeasement.

And appeasement won't work. Any more than it did when the aggressor wasn't named V. Putin but A. Hitler. When the world finally did wake up at the tag end of the 1930s, it was almost too late.

It's not just little girls who need defending in this world, but whole, beleagured nations.

Editorial on 05/13/2014