As Americans marked the 14th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the country is losing its battle against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL),
writes Bruce Hoffman director of Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies and a senior fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center at Politico.
ISIS is a splinter group of al-Qaida, the group responsible for the attacks, but has taken over large areas of Iraq and Syria since early last year when President Barack Obama compared them to a 'J.V. squad."
"ISIL’s international cadre has also far exceeded the number that gravitated to Afghanistan during and the 1980s and 1990s," Hoffman, lead author of the
9/11 Review Commission report wrote. "That growth creates the same conditions — but on a far vaster magnitude — that led to al Qaeda’s rise and the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., on 9/11."
Among the measures Hoffman pointed to in noting that ISIS is winning:
- It has committed more than double the number of terror incidents that kill more than 100 people than were committed by all groups in the entire 20th century – when there were only 14.
- Its ability to hide its online activities by going on the "Dark Web" where encryption has kept law enforcement at bay.
"Confronted by an increasingly geographically diffuse and demographically diverse threat, it is clear that our current strategy is a failure," Hoffman writes.
A poll taken of attendees of the Senior Conference at the U.S. Military Academy last spring showed 97 percent agreed the United States was losing the war with ISIS.
"[W]e downsize our military, while the flow of recruits into their ranks continues unabated; our intelligence collection capabilities are diminished, but they more effectively exploit digital and social media to ensure new sources of support and recruits," Hoffman wrote.