For much of the last few years, Americans seemed to be shedding their post 9/11 concerns about security and terrorism. The Patriot Act became a piñata for those disillusioned and wearied by the long war against Islamist terror as well as for those concerned about possible civil liberties violations. This mindset brought Senator Rand Paul to the forefront of the 2016 presidential conversation as well as leading to the ending of surveillance programs operated by cities like New York seeking to head off homegrown Islamist terror. That isolationist moment seemed to pass last year, as the threat from ISIS was made clear to Americans horrified by their beheadings of Western hostages. The realization that President Obama’s re-election campaign boasts about having ended the war on terror and decimating al-Qaeda weren’t true also changed minds. But the news that there appears to be an ISIS connection to the failed terror attack on a free speech conference in Garland, Texas Sunday night should further disabuse those who think the U.S. can afford some complacence about the Islamist threat. What nearly happened in Garland should remind us that this is no time for America to stop playing hardball on anti-terror intelligence efforts.

The reported links between ISIS and the slain terrorists in Garland are deeply troubling. The ISIS claim of responsibility for the attempt might be dismissed. But the fact that some of their social media accounts alerted followers to the crime as it was happening shows that the shooter’s claims of a connection to the Islamist terror group may well have been accurate.

The alleged link between ISIS and this incident may mean that this was the first documented instance of the group’s involvement in an American terror attack. That is frightening and not just because of what might have happened if police hadn’t foiled the would-be killers of “infidels.” What is truly upsetting is the prospect that there are more than a couple of potential jihadist murderers lurking on the margins of American society waiting for their opportunity to prove their worth to their foreign role models.

In the days after 9/11, most Americans took it for granted that another major attack loomed ahead of us. That it never occurred had much to do with luck but also the willingness of the Bush administration to take the fight to the enemy and its willingness to do what was necessary to get good intelligence about possible jihadist connections.

Though we have seen lone wolf Islamist terrorists carry out both failed attacks and successful ones (such as the one at the Boston Marathon), America has been spared the catastrophe that most of us thought was inevitable. But the notion that we can simply assume that ISIS will continue to fail as al-Qaeda did while simultaneously standing down tough intelligence procedures is wishful thinking

So far the debate about intelligence has centered more on what are entirely legitimate concerns about overreach on the part of the government that has been fueled by the Edward Snowden leaks. But the jokes about the CIA reading everyone’s emails and text messages — which are gross exaggerations of even the most far reaching measures that might be considered — wouldn’t sound as funny in the wake of a successful mass terror attack or even a small-scale one should it subsequently be revealed that the killers were already on the radar of the intelligence community.

Nor should we be diverted — as some would have it — by the attempt to change the subject about Garland from Islamist terror to a debate about whether those at the conference had it coming to them because they were deliberately provoking Muslim extremists. The contest to draw the Prophet Muhammad might have been the excuse for this attempt but the Islamist ideology that drove the terrorists and those who hoped they would succeed don’t need a logical rationale to kill Americans. Their goal is not merely to intimidate those who “blaspheme” against their faith into silence. It is to kill regardless of any other consideration.

What happened in Garland should be a spur to greater support for a concerted intelligence effort aimed at potential terrorists that is undeterred by groundless worries about American tyranny or government overreach. A return to a 9/10 mindset that would have the police and the FBI fearing to use surveillance on Islamist mosques or those with other connections to supporters of terror is a luxury that America can’t afford if it wants to stay safe as well as free.