Why ISIS is More Dangerous than Al Qaeda and What America Must Do About It

• 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 Awlaki 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 captured
   and 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

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Before I am accused of being just another rabid neocon, it is crucial to note one difference between this campaign and Operation Iraqi Freedom, or what would eventually become of Operation Enduring Freedom. We do not need another large-scale US deployment of troops. That will not work. This is not WWII or Korea. This is irregular warfare and that reality was forgotten after 9/11. These types of messy wars are not won by GIs on the frontlines. We shouldn’t even be contemplating counterinsurgency campaigns under the current conditions. ‘COIN’, as its proponents like to call it is in fact what imperial powers did on their own colonial territory. Whatever Noam Chomsky and his followers may say, America is not a imperial or colonial power. If we were Maliki would not be in power in Iraq and the Afghans would not be freely electing their own leader as we speak. Instead we would have a US ‘viceroy’ in control wherever our troops are still stationed, be it Germany, Korea, or Iraq.

What we need to do it to get back to what really works in foreign lands whose governments we wish to assist and who are threatened by a enemy we share. We should not have Americans fight that fight, but the local forces, with the assistance and guidance of a small number of soldiers trained exactly for such missions. This is in fact the job the Green Berets, Army Special Forces, were created to execute and the mission is technically called Foreign Internal Defense, or FID. It’s what we did in El Salvador and Colombia and it works. Why? Because the actual fighting it done by indigenous forces not “foreigners.”