So what to call the Islamist** terrorist front that now controls much of Syria and Iraq, and is metastasizing across the region and into North Africa (and Europe)? The Islamic State is the caustic by-product of Obama’s politically motivated retreat from Iraq, and it is seeking to establishing an Islamic caliphate in the larger region known historically as the Levant. The Islamic State has been known by its hybrid English and Arabic name — the Islamic State in al-Sham (ISIS), but media sources uniformly, and incorrectly assert the “IS” in ISIS means “Iraq and Syria.” Al-Sham refers to the Levant, the latter being a region that, historically, included Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus and parts of Mesopotamia (Iraq), Turkey, Egypt and most notably, Israel. It is an area much broader than “Iraq and Syria.”

ISIL has emerged from the Sunni al-Qa'ida terrorists network responsible for the September 11, 2001 attack on our nation. They are now the dominate asymmetric terrorist threat representing Jihadistan, that borderless nation of Islamic extremists that constitutes Muslim terrorist groups around the world.

Our Patriot Post editors use ISIL because it is the designation used by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community in order to more fully identify the scope of the territory (the Levant) over which ISIL asserts its rights to a caliphate. The Arabic form, الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام‎, is also referred to by American analysts as Da'ish (or Daesh), which is an Arabic acronym for ISIL.

No matter what it’s called, make no mistake, the Islamic State is no “JV team” as Barack Obama asserted. ISIL presents a clear and present danger to the U.S. homeland and national security interests worldwide, and demonstrably, a threat to other western nations. And notably, the frequency of Islamist attacks in the U.S. sharply increased beginning with Obama’s first year in office.

**For the record, all Islamist terror attacks in the West have been perpetrated by a global network of Islamofascist groups and individuals under the banner, “Allahu Akbar.” These include the al-Qa'ida network (the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack), and their contemporary manifestations, ISIL and the Islamic State. Point of clarification: “Allahu Akbar” translates “Allah is the Greatest.” The Demo/MSM propaganda machine often reports the translation as something quiet different: “god is great.” As properly translated, Allahu Akbar claims only the god of Islam is great, and has been the violent warring cry of jihadi terrorists for generations, in their centuries-long effort to conquer infidels and establish a worldwide caliphate. Under those words, countless victims of Islamic supremacists – men, women and children – have been slaughtered. As such, it perilously dangerous to erroneously refer to contemporary Islamic terrorists in the West as “lone wolves,” because they are connected to worldwide jihad by way of the Qur'an, the foundational fabric linking all Islamist violence.