Deny the Islamic State the overreaction that it wants

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Once again, an Islamic State killing leads to fears that it is winning and calls to do more. Fox Newss Bret Baier captured the mood when he said of the latest video: Horrific and barbaric, as well as calculating and skilled at high-tech propaganda. The general feeling is that the Islamic State is gaining ground with its brutal and diabolical methods.

But is it really? Lets examine the sequence of events that led to this latest gruesome video. The Islamic State took as hostages two Japanese men an odd choice, given that Japan is utterly tangential to the Middle East. The terrorists asked Tokyo for a staggering $200 million ransom. This suggests that the much-vaunted moneymaking machine of the Islamic State might not be working as well as many believe.

Tokyo refused to pay, so the terrorists were left with hostages who had no value. They executed one and then offered to release the other if the Jordanian government would set free a terrorist, Sajida al-Rishawi. This was a double head-scratcher. Japan does not have any great influence over Jordan. And Rishawi was a largely forgotten, would-be suicide bomber from an episode nine years ago before the Islamic State even existed. The proposal suggested a last-minute scramble to manufacture a new demand when the main one was denied. Jordan considered making its captured pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, part of the bargain, and the Islamic State appeared to play along. Yet Jordanian officials now believe the pilot had actually been killed weeks earlier.

The video of the pilot being burned to death may be a fancy cover to mask an operation that had gone awry. Certainly, the Islamic State could not have imagined the response it has triggered in the Middle East, with Jordanians united against it, clerics across the region loudly and unequivocally condemning the immolation and Japan ready to provide more aid and support against the terrorist group.

Meanwhile, news on the battlefield has not been good for the Islamic State. Brookings Institution scholar Kenneth Pollack describes the stunning reversal it has faced in Iraq. This might help explain the brutality of this latest execution and the video. The group well understands the primary purpose of terrorism, which is to induce fear and overreaction.

When modern Middle Eastern terrorism first appeared on the scene in the 1960s and 1970s, the historian David Fromkin wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs that is perhaps the best guide to understanding the phenomenon. He pointed out that from its very beginnings, after the French Revolution, terrorism has been a strategy of the weak, designed to project false strength and, above all, make onlookers miscalculate.

Fromkin provided two examples that offer powerful lessons. He recounted a meeting in 1945 with a leader of the Irgun, a group of about 1,500 Jewish militants in Palestine, which was then part of the British empire. The Irgun knew they could not defeat the mighty British army, so they decided to blow up buildings and create the appearance of chaos. This, he [the Irgun leader] said, would lead the British to overreact by garrisoning the country, drawing forces from across the empire. That would strain British coffers and eventually London would have to leave Palestine. Fromkin noted that the Irgun, seeing that it was too small to defeat Great Britain, decided, as an alternative approach, that Britain was big enough to defeat itself.

The Islamic States strategy surely is some version of this. The targeting of the United States and its allies, the videos and the barbarism are all designed to draw Washington into a ground battle in Syria in the hope that this complicated, bloody and protracted war will sap the superpowers strength.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria/2015/02/05/bd439ca6-ad7d-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html

Edited February 8, 2015 by Hail Ming!

[Sousuke 1,214]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria/2015/02/05/bd439ca6-ad7d-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html

I don't think ISIS is looking so far ahead as trying to weaken the US militarily or economically. I think they would have preferred ( and probably hoped) that most nations would be too tired or weary of war to intervene.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

That has certainly got a lot to do with why noone is rushing in over there, given that we've only just gotten out. But I think it's quite obvious what ISIS is doing - protecting a false image of strength to increase prejudice against Muslims in the West and generate more recruits for their cause. Incidentally, that was pretty much bin ladens original goal.

Given how the usual suspects on here approach the issue, it's a strategy that seems to be working.