The Islamic State group was birthed out of a faction of Al Qaida, and out of this rebirth has spanned into one of most well-known terrorist groups the world over. It now holds tons of innocents captive in their grasp in Syria and Iraq. As America has now made this one of their largest military operations while stationed in Iraq, one has to wonder why we're waiting so long to do anything in the first place as many lives are taken - including those of Westerners, to prove a vile and brutal message. These cold-blooded executions are now commonplace throughout the news and editorials all over the globe, yet America still seems to not grasp the severity of the Islamic State and what it is capable of.
To quote Obama himself, “Let’s be clear about ISIL. They have rampaged across cities and villages, killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. No just god would stand for what they do every single day.”
Even Obama himself has said that this group of terrorists are on a whole other level. One could even say this what bin Laden only dreamed of achieving. After its parting with Al Qaida, the Islamic State group has reached critical success as it has been making its way rather effortlessly through Syria, onward to Iraq and even Baghdad using high elite military expertise and killing so heinously, even other terrorist groups have claimed they are too extreme for their taste. ISIS is made up of primarily Shi’a Muslims, but they have built their forces with Sunni tribes and ex-Ba'athists on the sole, classic Marxist principle of praying on those who are marginalized and weak. They are then using their own backwards ideologies on these particular groups, making these groups join, feeling they will become something bigger and better than what they are now.
Social media has been another way in which the Islamic State group has been recruiting individuals from various regions, even from the United States itself, posting a plethora of sick and twisted videos of Islamic State group's soldiers torturing and outright murdering unarmed prisoners and innocent people. The Islamic State group has even victimized, raped and killed many women and girls in their region for the sole reason being that “their fate” permits them to do so. This kind of behavior has proved fruitful in their endeavors to increase their forces. The size of their forces has become so vast that they have even been able to push through American-trained Iraqi security forces. As many as 1,000 Westerners are believed to have gone with the Islamic State group to fight for their radicalized causes, and the numbers are growing to more staggering record highs every day.
To this day, more than 30,000 fighters are fighting with the Islamic State group, according to the CIA. The point is this. It doesn’t matter from which of these 90 countries these fighters are coming from. America, as well as other nations, should be taking this seriously, as they are not the small terrorist group they once were. Thirty thousand people is still quite a staggering and disturbing number. What makes it worse is that no one can say specifically if this number is accurate, since the numbers continue to grow.
So the question still remains. Is the Islamic State group a threat to the United States? I would say in a number of ways, yes. Al-Baghdadi has made direct threats to our region before. Though it seems that they are more concentrated in their own region and having people come and fight for them, since the U.S-led bombing campaign, many Islamic State group leaders have called to their fighters that silently sleep and hide in our borders to attack us from within our own nation.
The Paris attacks of November 2015 should prove as a frightening example to those who believe otherwise. Still not close enough for you?
What about the Islamic State group fighter who was arrested in Ohio after making direct threats that he was going to destroy the U.S Capitol? This not only proves that they are here and ever present in our very own country, it also says that we can no longer say that we are protected by them being overseas.
So I’ve given you numbers and even some quite disturbing details. America, is this real enough for you now? Stop assuming that just because the problems aren't knocking on your front door that they don't exist. America doesn't live inside of a bubble. This stuff is real and its only going to get worse if we bury our heads in the sand and ignore it.
