On a sunny Tuesday morning in September of 2001, al Qaeda entered the history books as the deadliest terrorist group in modern history. In under a few hours it murdered more people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania than other terrorist groups like the IRA or the Baader-Meinhof Gang had killed over a period of decades.
Since that dreadful day, the original Al Qaeda, what the administration refers to now as ‘Core AQ’, has executed or inspired other attacks to include those of Richard Reid the infamous Shoebomber, Major Nidal Hassan the Fort Hood killer, and Faisal Shazad, the Times Square bomber. At the same time it has recruited foreign fighters to wage guerrilla war inside Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, as well as for other jihadi theaters.
Additionally, it has waged a propaganda campaign to spread its message of holy war against the infidel with publications such as the periodical Inspire, the e-magazine that included a recipe for pressure-cooker IEDs, a recipe that would be used by the Boston bombers.
Despite all of the above, the threat posed by Al Qaeda pales by comparison to the achievements of its off-shoot the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham which recently declared the establishment of a new Caliphate, or empire of Islam, and has, as a result, changed its name to The Islamic State.
How do we know that ISIS / The Islamic State is a greater threat today than Al Qaeda?
Here are just 4 reasons:
- Al Qaeda was predominantly successful in bringing Arab Muslims from the Middle East to fight in wars in their own region or in South Asia. But unclassified reports, and ISIS’ own videos, confirm that it is having an unprecedented success in attracting Muslim men from the West to go fight Jihad. Young men who – if they survive the current fight – will likely return back home to America, the UK, or elsewhere in the West, as hardened jihadis skilled in infantry tactics and in employing improvised explosive devices. (The problem is so severe that Attorney General Eric Holder just yesterday had to publicly request his European counterparts do something to stem the flow of fighters.)
- Although Al Qaeda was sheltered by the fundamentalist Taleban
government in Afghanistan – with bin Laden strategically ensuring that his commanders’ daughter married into Taleban families – as an organization Al Qaeda never controlled a whole country. With the Blitzkrieg assault of ISIS fighters capturing city after city in Iraq in recent weeks and then declaring a new Caliphate, ISIS is on the cusp of functioning as a de facto country, a Jihadi Nation. Al Qadea most often acted like a terrorist group and less often as an insurgency capable of overtaking a whole country. ISIS is a fully fledged insurgency that has captured city after city in a matter of just weeks and is on the brink of functioning as a quasi state. - Bin Laden, and the current leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, always understood the importance of propaganda and information warfare, especially after the American jihadi Anwar al Awlak
i took over editorship of Inspire magazine. But they never came close to the sophistication and media savvy of ISIS with is whirlwind establishment of a Social Media presence. Not only is ISIS filming and distributing the standard jihadi footage of its vicious attacks but also video of the mass murders of its prisoners. More importantly it is also disseminating more subtle and softer narratives via Twitter and other channels in ways that Al Qaeda never did. -
ISIS has capabilities that exceed even the wildest dreams of the original founders of Al Qaeda. After capturing the city of Mosul and the raiding the local government coffers, it now has over $400 million
at its disposal. The 9/11 attacks only cost AlQaeda $500,000.
ISIS has funds now adequate to at least 800 9/11 attacks. Add to that all the latest US military hardware it has capturedand the older Syrian Scud missile it also paraded openly for all the world to see last week, and it is clear ISIS and Al Qaeda are in totally different leagues.
For all these reasons, and many more, ISIS poses a significantly bigger threat than Al Qaeda ever did. A threat not only to Shia-controlled states like Iraq or Syria. ISIS has made its plan clear
that
Then of course there are the infidels, starting with Israel, which is today in a shooting war with Hamas, another ideological alley of ISIS, and in fact a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Then they will target the “Far Enemy”, the United States and her allies. The idea that a Jihadi State can be established in the Middle East and that its fighters will then lay down their arms is, of course, utterly absurd. That is the greatest mistake made by the isolationist voices in America (or as they like to be called “interventionists.”) Jihad is not a regional hobby of localized radicals.
absolute as anything Hitler or Stalin came up with, albeit with a holy sanction and promise of salvation. We are in their crosshairs as much as Assad, Maliki, or Sisi. Either everyone must live under Islamic law in a Caliphate, or they must die. Whether they live in a Christian enclave in Norther Iraq
, or Washington, New York, or Houston.
So before victorious American-born jihadis return home to the US to kill infidels here, we need a plan to destroy the Caliphate now. The response should leverage America’s unique position as a leader and the investments we have made over the years in government and military institutions in allied Muslim countries.
Since the 1970s, and far more intensively after 9/11, the US has built very strong ties with the militaries of Jordan, and Egypt, amongst others. At the same time, there is a force in Iraq already, the Kurdish Peshmurga, that are highly disciplined fighters who hold no affection for Sunni jihadists. Together, these Arab or Muslim forces should be brought together with American guidance to rout the forces of ISIS.
At the same time we must totally reorient America’s national security focus. We must stop focusing on one organization, on Al Qaeda. It is not about one group, or another. The threat emanates from the ideology of Global Jihad. Whoever supports or acts upon that ideology is a threat to America and her values. Be it ISIS in Iraq in Syria, Hamas in Gaza, or a US Army Major in Fort Hood. Any group whose religious beliefs countermand the Constitution of the United States is an Enemy. Period.
The stakes are the highest possible. The conflict is between one vision of a world free from religious extremism in which the unbeliever is enslaved or murdered, versus a world in which the values of 1776 are protected and can flourish.
Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D. is the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University and the national security and foreign affairs editor of the Breitbart News Network.
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