If you happened to read this
thread from Feb (wow, time flies and I think most Western leaders believed
ISIS would be finished by now), G Woods felt that
ISIS
was not that concerned with attacking the West vs. solidifying their
caliphate in the Mideast and carrying out their apocalyptic vision.
However, recent events may have motivated
ISIS to change their tune, or Woods was wrong from the start.
One factor could be
ISIS'
"competition" with Al-Qaeda for recruiting and waging violence against
"the enemies of Islam". While many have come to Iraq/Syria for the
allure of joining
ISIS ranks and fighting enemies on Muslim lands, maybe it is a sexier recruiting tool if
ISIS
brazenly attacks the homelands of its enemies or other soft targets -
to a lot of media coverage (they are recently implicated in the Russia
plane
bombing and suicide attacks in
Lebanon).
While their focus is still fighting enemies in Iraq and Syria, it seems
plausible that they would allocate some attn/resources towards overseas
plots.
Which leads to the second point - maybe
ISIS
has found that "victory" in Iraq-Syria is not within its grasp, and
it's getting harder and harder to hold onto land and withstand constant
coalition air attacks (especially with Russia now directly supporting
Assad, although it has not targeted
ISIS much if at all until the Egypt bombing). But now that
ISIS
has supposedly maddened the bear, they might be in for a tough slog
with NATO and Russian air forces gunning for them. They are believed to
desire a face-to-face showdown with Crusaders on their home turf (like
the Mujahadeen/Taliban in Afghanistan), but it's possible that they bit
off more than they can chew. Though as we already know from several past
wars, bombing alone won't defeat a foreign army (but it might bring
them to the bargaining table, as in the case of Serbia), and I doubt
that we will see boots on the ground even after the Paris attack. Even
if we do successfully invade a-la-9/11, it may not "defeat"
ISIS.
Their key members will melt into the populace, just like the Ba'athists
and AQI leaders did last decade. We will eventually leave, the gov't we
put in place will be a mess, and an
ISIS-type movement will rise up again in the chaos. "Defeating
ISIS" is just a GOP campaign slogan at this point, though of course I hope I am wrong.
The
most tragic part of this is that one of the Paris attackers seems to
have had a Syrian passport that was stamped in Greece as part of refugee
asylum. Yes, there were concerns earlier that terrorists were
infiltrating the West as refugees. But one known example out of millions
of deserving refugees does not make the security junkies right. The
majority of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis, but we didn't do anything to
that country. We made immigration/visas tougher, and maybe that is a
valid thing to do with Syrians now, but we didn't close our doors to
them 100%. I hope we remember it is possible to be humane and give help
to refugees, while also maintaining tight security re: who we grant
asylum and how they are monitored once accepted.
Sure,
conservative leaders on both sides of the pond are predictably "blaming"
the EU's open door policy (it is hardly that), or the refugees
themselves, for the Paris attacks, but they're missing the bigger point.
ISIS wants Europe to close its doors, so that the masses have nowhere to flee to. It makes
ISIS
stronger and scarier - is that what we want to enable? I'm not saying
we should accept our current policies and feel that everything is fine
(e.g. better internal monitoring of at least fighting age male refugees
is needed), but we shouldn't play into
ISIS' hand either. Remember that 99.99% of the refugees hate
ISIS and are fleeing from them. Do we want to cut them off, and force them into potentially serving or supporting
ISIS
against their will at home? Do we want to risk their families getting
radicalized and recruited because they were unable to flee?
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