ISIS: A Threat Of Terrorism

Americans today get all their information from the news along with the Capital together the news from those two are about terrorist activities that go on in everyone’s world today. With groups like Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Boko Haram but, there is one that is different from them all and strikes fear the most. ISIS is different from the rest, what makes this organization more powerful than the rest is they organize along with practicing tactics no other group has done before. ISIS is more than a group; they have structure and order, control and conquer while liberating those that don’t believe in their views of Islam. Even though ISIS does not confront military forces, they engage in ways terrorist groups cannot because they hold
territory along with established militias. ISIS started up in 2003 when U.S.
forces invaded Iraq. They were a small group and consisted of a few fighters attacking U.S. Troops including, civilians that were in their path with goal to start a Civil War with the Shiite. After an attack in 2006 that killed their leader, Zarqawi, they re-structured themselves and began conducting terrorist operatives and establishing networks, out of that became a new leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. A U.S Representative, Frank Wolf of R-Virginia, stated "For far too long the Obama Administration and the Congress have been debating whether or not authority exists for action to address this threat.” Consequently, ISIS would soon become the successor of al-Qaeda, sharing the same goals, including the intentions of its predecessor, ISIS clearly became more on what they as an organization wanted to
do. This organization, unlike other terrorist groups, holds territory they take to where as groups use a “hit-and-run” strategy. This organization removes borders and confronts the forces that are protecting them and hold their ground that they took over. With the strategy of removing borders, ISIS has kept a void in the expansion to the west, but uses a region-specific strategy that exploits poor governance in cretin territories seen in Iraq and Syria. Therefore, they are able to do this by welcoming other organizations in other parts of the world; creating private armies consisting of merged guerrilla groups along with terrorist cells, growing into a larger ground force with member numbers on the rise. ISIS is believed to hold about 31,000+ fighters and is able to gain so countless members through their adoption of social media to reach those around the world. In 2014 after the end of Ramadan a Finnish fighter for ISIS made a worldwide message stating “I’m calling on all the Muslims living in the West, America, Europe, and everywhere else, to come, to make hijra with your families to the land of Khilafah.” The increasing foreign fighter phenomenon has been instrumental to ISIL's growth (Levitt and Youkilis 2015). Moreover, this growth in members has been able to allow them to excel in what they are doing as an organization and keep growing to become a larger militia, ultimately becoming a more powerful organization. In the end various Americans will still label ISIS as a terrorist group due to the news outlets still labeling them as a group.
During a televised speech in 2014, then President Barack Obama stated that “ISIS is a terrorist organization, pure and simple.” ISIS does innumerable things that other terrorist groups do not and continue to become more powerful through their ways of organizing and seize and control tactics with their large group of members. They face their enemies head on and praise their victories through social media sites to continue to gain more members. This is what causes ISIS to be so powerful than the rest and continue to grow and keep growing as well as engaging in ways that others do not. They outsource and band together with other groups to gain members and gain territory and confront the forces they protect the innocent. Nevertheless, ISIS will continue to be the most powerful terrorist organization Americans along with other Country’s will face until a new organization spawns creating something even
larger.