The Patriot Post® · The Unimpeded Rise of the Islamic State

A new report by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism focusing on the growth and activity of the Islamic State from 2002-2015 lays bare the facts about the terrorist group. Let’s just say (again) that Barack Obama’s initial dismissal of it as the “JV team” and his later assertions that it’s “contained” were way off base.

The Islamic State has grown consistently larger and more deadly in recent years. Some years, like the most recent in the study, saw sharp rises in the geographic reach and severity of attacks.

The study counts the death toll from attacks directly or indirectly related to the Islamic State as 33,000 over 12 years, with an additional 41,000 wounded. When counting only attacks by known Islamic State perpetrators, the group accounts for 13% of all terrorist attacks worldwide, 26% of all terrorist attack deaths, 28% of injuries from attacks, and almost a quarter of all kidnap victims.

The report tracks ISIL as a terrorist group from the time just before the start of the Iraq War, even though the group didn’t come up on the radar of the general public until after Obama became president. That was also around the time that Obama announced plans to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. Coincidence? Nope.

Researcher Erin Miller told the Washington Post that there may be overlap in the counting of attacks in the early years of the study, but there may also be attacks that go unrecognized in the study, particularly in war-torn countries like Iraq and Syria.

People who want to dispute this study, like apologists for Obama’s failed national security policy, might want to latch onto that point to question the validity of the report. No matter.

You can slice the numbers any way you like. ISIL is a deadly organization with reach around the world. And it is far from contained.

The report notes that ISIL became a major player after April 2013. Prior to that date, 95% of all ISIL attacks took place in Iraq. After this point, attacks started taking place across an ever wider geographic area, and they grew in frequency. In the final two years of the study, ISIL carried out 10 attacks in one day on 32 separate occasions.

Other groups have pledged allegiance to ISIL, including Boko Haram in Nigeria, and other groups tearing up Libya, Syria, Iraq and other nations where Obama has bungled America’s presence with deadly consequences. These groups have added to ISIL’s strength, carrying out attacks locally while the Islamic State focuses its efforts on more remote targets like London, Paris, San Bernardino, Madrid, Brussels and so forth.

The report notes that three quarters of all Islamic State attacks are deadly, but plays down the impact of “lone wolves” in the grand totals, tagging such attackers with less than 1% of all attacks between 2002 and 2015. While that last factoid may be a comfort on a global scale, here at home, the so-called lone wolves are a growing security threat.

In the last few days here at home a North Carolina man was arrested and charged with trying to start an ISIL cell, claiming ties to jihadis in Mexico and Texas. In Washington, DC, in what may be a first, a police officer was arrested and charged for attempting to provide material support for the Islamic State.

The DC transit cop was on the FBI watch list for several years, and had been interviewed in the past by federal authorities for possible connection to other terrorists. In both cases, the suspects were picked up in FBI sting operations.

How many others are getting past the FBI, though? It’s impossible to know, but the Islamic State is here.

Meanwhile in Europe, an account from a jihadi now in a German prison states that the Islamic State has sent hundreds of operatives into nations across Europe. Lax immigration and social welfare laws allow some of these killers to hide in plain sight.

The Wall Street Journal reported that five plotters from the recent Paris and Brussels attacks were receiving welfare subsidies from the Belgian government totaling the equivalent of $56,000. It has been said that the money was most likely not used to directly support terrorism, but guess what? If the welfare payments supported the lives of terrorists, then the payments supported terrorism.

ISIL counts on byzantine bureaucracy, porous borders, and the overly apologetic Western liberal mind to help it spread its murderous ideology in America and Europe. So far, the strategy is working.

The U.S. was gaining ground over the forces of Islamist terror near the close of the last decade. But Obama and his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, executed numerous reckless, myopic and sometimes downright stupid decisions that got Americans killed abroad and at home. Not only have they rolled back most of the gains made with the blood of American soldiers, but they have made us less safe here at home.

U.S. special forces are now operating in Libya in an attempt to hold together the fragile government that followed Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.

This is too little, too late. If Clinton had been doing her job as secretary of state instead of working on her campaign for the White House, Libya wouldn’t have fallen into the state it’s now in, which begs for U.S. military assistance. We have a similar situation in Syria. And Iraq. And … well, you get the idea.

The Islamic State report comes at the right time, and hopefully it will become part of the national security conversation in this election. It demonstrates that the status quo is a deadly failure, and it makes clear the U.S. must start meeting terrorism head on. The alternative will only lead to more bloodshed and heartache.