The real reason behind ISIS, Part 4

⸺A coffee shop sign on the Israeli-Al Qaeda border, circa 2014


[In Part 3, the reader may find links to Parts 1 and 2]

A recent headline at Jihad Watch:

Pompeo: “We’ve taken down 99 percent” of the Islamic State caliphate

Followed by these editorial remarks by Robert Spencer:

This is a momentous statement. When Barack Obama left office, the Islamic State caliphate looked as if it was here to stay, and was following the precedent of the Palestine Liberation Organization in moving from being considered a jihad terror group to being respectable. But now it is almost all gone, although the Islamic State still commands the allegiance of many Muslims worldwide, and has called for lone wolf jihad attacks in Western countries.

Here's yet another example of many where Spencer is thinking more or less like the mainstream about the problem of Islam and Islamic terrorism.  The years-long battle against ISIS (like the decades-long battle against Al Qaeda) has been one grand episode of Whack-a-Mo, where the Mo or Moes in question are touted as Big Fish whose defeat is supposed to mean that we are “winning the war on terrorism”.

As I wrote on my now defunct blog, The Hesperado, in October of 2017:

A recent headline on Jihad Watch, building on a Breitbart report:
 
“With collapse of the Islamic State, Europe and U.S. flooded with thousands of jihadis”
 
Has anyone in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream (never mind the broader Western Mainstream, blind as a bat to the problem of Islam) considered that this was the strategy of ISIS all along?

The reader should consult that old Hesperado posting of mine (which I link again for the readers too lazy to lift their little finger to scroll up a few lines), as it fleshed out in considerable detail the argument I've been presenting in these 4 parts.