How Can the Terrorists Win?

Play the role of the ISIS leaders, and strategize about how we might win a war in which we are outmanned, out supplied and outgunned. It is obvious that we are a 90-pound weakling in the ring with a gorilla. How can we possibly win any fight on the ground with no tanks or artillery, in the air with no planes and on the seas with no warships or submarines? It’s no contest. To be overmatched is a dramatic understatement. Our opponent is the world’s number one superpower backed by a coalition of strong European nations and a handful of other “democracies.”

Think for a moment about what we might call “winning.” It would be to confront and destroy the way of life centered on the freedoms which are the foundation hostile nations. And what might be our strategy to accomplish that victory? Any good judo fighter knows that you so position yourself that your opponent when attacking you is thrown off balance and falls, having used his own strength against himself. So is there a similar weapon at our disposal, which can accomplish that goal?



We have found one. It is our capacity to instigate such fear in this much more powerful enemy, that it is thrown to the ground via the fulcrum generated by its own might. We accomplish this victory by producing a well-planned terrorist attack somewhere every now and then. We go in, destroy a target, and disappear. We lose a few fighters but we leave behind a legacy of fear which spreads throughout the world—particularly in the nation where the attack has taken place, and in the United States. It is to cause such fear in these populations that they abandoned the foundation on which their democracies rest.

Look at how this has worked. A former terrorist group called al Qaeda is said to have produced a major assault on New York and Washington on 9/11 2001. Among the immediate reactions was the adoption of “The Patriot Act “ which essentially overrode the 4th amendment to the US Constitution, the one which guarantees due process thus protecting the right to privacy? This Act of Congress allowed the government to eavesdrop on telephone calls, confiscate telephone records and e-mails, and wiretap personal conversations without a court order. The Act allowed the CIA to put in prison suspected international citizens and keep them there indefinitely without charges or hearings. The Act also approved torture to get information, and developed a network of secret prisons for this purpose, some in other nations. And that was just the beginning. Fear also generated a series of minor annoyances. For instance, millions of shoes have now been removed in airports because someone we didn’t even know gave himself a hotfoot.

Recently, following our successful action in Paris, we discovered a major partner right in the United States. While nations around the world are receiving thousands of Syrian refugees, one of the major political parties in the U.S. has unwittingly joined us in our campaign to spread fear. The U.S. is now so consumed by this obsession, that that Party has launched a campaign to keep all Syrian refugees from U.S. shores. Obviously every nation has the right to screen anyone seeking asylum. However, a couple of their leading candidates for President proposed that it might be OK to welcome bona fide Christians, but not Muslims, and even to spy on and close mosques. The leading candidate even suggested that all Muslims be required to register—just like Hitler required Jews to register. So another of America’s Constitutional provision would bite the dust.

This candidate now suggests the use of waterboarding and other aggressive forms of interrogation—read torture. Whether this political party actually believes in these things is unclear. But their use of fear looks to be a potent political tool. Regardless of their motives, we are happy to welcome them to our’ “spread the fear” campaign.

All we need to do is generate an occasional attack somewhere in the world destructive enough to result in international panic, sit back and allow the panic to do the rest. The question is not, will this strategy work. It is already working and has been producing results for a long time. We don’t need to win a single battle, drop a single bomb or lob missiles from a single warship. We just need to occasionally hit and run, and let fear take over, while America spends itself into oblivion, thrown down by its own weight.