OPINION_ OPINION: 13 years after 9/11, terror threat unbroken

OPINION: 13 years after 9/11, terror threat unbroken

James S. Robbins 12:09 a.m. EDT August 10, 2014
Daily Record


Last January, President Obama dismissed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a mere junior varsity terrorist outfit compared to al-Qaeda. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate,” he told the New Yorker, “is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”

Flash forward to this summer. Islamist radicals control vast swaths of land across Iraq and Syria, and this week crossed the border into Lebanon.

Their victims’ heads festoon telephone wires in Raqqa, Syria, and they have posted videos online showing mass executions of prostrate Iraqis.

Other terror groups are rallying to their black banner. ISIS has been so successful that at the end of June it shortened its name to simply the Islamic State (IS), with its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi assuming the title of caliph. President Obama may think they are JV, but they clearly see themselves as big league.

The Islamic State is metastasizing much the same way al-Qaeda did, but on an accelerated timeline.

Osama bin Laden’s network grew in the 1990s by recruiting foreign fighters who had battled the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Islamic State has developed its own deep bench of transnational terror talent, recruiting from countries throughout the Middle East, Europe, and even the United States.

Franchises are reportedly opening in Libya and Tunisia. The North African terror conglomerate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has aligned with IS.

Nigerian Boko Haram leader Abu Bakar Shekau has sworn allegiance to Abu Bakr, as has Abu Sayaaf leader Isnilon Hapilon in the Philippines.

The Islamic State currently controls more fighters, more territory, and has a vaster alliance system than al-Qaeda ever did.

Like bin Laden, Abu Bakr is exploiting the breakdown in state sovereignty and seizing control of ungoverned spaces. The problem of governance is even worse today than it was in the 1990s, though the White House seems unaware.

In June, Obama declared that “the world is less violent than it has ever been,” and in July, White House press secretary Josh Earnest boasted of the administration’s role in increasing the “tranquility of the global community.”

Mr. Obama’s perspective is that America is winning the war on terrorism because Osama bin Laden is dead and U.S. drones continue to decimate “core al-Qaeda.”

However, this perspective is dangerously outdated.

The war on terrorism has always been less a battle against a specific terror organization than a struggle against a violent, transnational extremist ideology.

Al-Qaeda is no longer the leading force in global Islamist terrorism; the torch has passed to the Islamic State, which we ignore at our peril.

In his first public statement as caliph, Abu Bakr proclaimed that the world is divided into two camps, the “camp of Islam and faith” and the “camp of the Jews, the crusaders, (and) their allies,” led by the United States.

And like bin Laden, he has a vision.

When leaving prison in Iraq in 2009, he told his American captors, “I’ll see you guys in New York.”

We may not be at war with the Islamic State, but it is at war with us.

James S. Robbins, author of “The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero,” is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

***


Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc . 
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị . 



conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
10082014
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC