It’s hard even to imagine more heinous or brutal misbehavior than that committed recently by a Nigerian extremist group.

Their full name is the Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad. they’re more commonly known as Boko Haram. A month ago, the terrorist network abducted more than 300 teenage schoolgirls in northeastern Nigeria and have kept the girls in hiding.

Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, is threatening to give some of his captives as wives to his men and to sell the rest into slavery. Shekau says he is carrying out God’s will.

Let’s be clear on two things: first; no legitimate religion promotes the captivation or subjugation of any individual, group or gender; and second, no legitimate leader — secular or religious — has the right or authority to exploit people in the name of his god or any religion.

Boko Haram has committed a crime against humanity and is contemplating deeper crimes by selling girls into slavery.

Someone needs to confront these extremists.

Confrontation of this sort on an international scale traditionally has been the role of elite American military forces like the Navy SEALs — the specialists who took out the Somali pirates that hijacked the U.S.-flagged MV Maersk Alabama in 2009, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in 200 years. The best of the SEALs dispatched al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden from this world on May 2, 2011.

Extremists who claim a divine right to kidnapping virgins deserve a punishment no less severe than was given to bin Laden and the Somali pirates. Their defiance and audacity deserve a confrontation with the world’s most accomplished warriors.

It is true that atrocities are committed nearly every day in one or more parts of the world, many in the name of religious superiority or racial supremacy. That is unfortunate, and it must be acknowledged the likes of the Navy SEALs can’t respond to more than a fraction of the ones that directly affect United States interests.

Nonetheless, it can be argued that this case does directly affect U.S. interests, particularly since the nation remains engaged in a war against global terror and specifically terror inflicted by Islamic extremists.

Inaction threatens to expand a growing notion that the United States no longer is willing to confront international terrorism, and that other extremist groups might inflict mayhem with impunity. That’s a dangerous message to convey, regardless of whether or not it’s true.

The bold defense of the Maersk and the helicopter assault on bin Laden sent an unmistakable message to the entire world that criminal acts of an international nature shouldn’t be tolerated.

Freedom-loving people on six continents are waiting to hear that message again.