“We’re going into battle. We will be pitiless.”
— French President Francois Hollande
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Twenty-six days after terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, this country and its allies retaliated with the invasion of Afghanistan. There was no question of if. Just when and how this country would respond to that terror attack. The American-led invasion quickly toppled the Taliban and scattered al-Qaida. But that war still awaits its final battle. U.S. forces remain in Afghanistan to keep the pressure on the Taliban and terrorists who seek to reprise a caliphate of cruelty in that country.
Now a new threat rises. Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has made it clear in the past few weeks that it is not content to carve out its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Islamic State is fighting a global war:
Islamic State terrorists claimed credit for the recent bombing of a Russia-bound jetliner in Egypt, killing all 224 people aboard.
On Thursday, Islamic State suicide bombers killed at least 43 people in a busy, predominantly Shiite commercial neighborhood in Beirut.
And now, the horrendous slaughter of scores of innocents in Paris. French authorities said Saturday that three teams of terrorists carried out a series of merciless, coordinated attacks at a soccer stadium, on crowded streets, and at the Bataclan concert hall. “They were just standing in the back of the concert room and shooting at us as if we were birds,” one Bataclan eyewitness said, conjuring an image as crisp as it is chilling.
We will learn many details about these attacks and the perpetrators in days to come. Many questions to answer. But there is only one overarching question today: How will the world respond in its defense?
France says it is at war. But what kind of war will this be? Will France, the U.S. and their allies be content with the current war on the margins — pushing Islamic State fighters out of one town only to find them regrouping and conquering another? We’ll see.
So far, this has been a limited war of carefully curated U.S. airstrikes. America’s Arab allies, who sent warplanes a year ago, have largely abandoned the mission, The New York Times reports.
It is a war being fought largely by Iranian and Kurdish militias that have scored victories — the recent Kurdish conquest of Sinjar in Iraq, for instance — but not crushed Islamic State forces.
Will these Islamic State attacks do what no other power could — unite the U.S. and its allies with adversaries in Tehran and Moscow to decapitate a common foe?
A stepped-up war against ISIS will be immensely more complicated than the Afghanistan campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin has dispatched troops and warplanes, ostensibly to battle Islamic State but mostly to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad. Iran’s militias back Iraqi forces against Islamic State. Turkey has joined the fight but also targets Kurdish forces fighting against Islamic State. Rebel forces in Syria are battling an array of enemies, including Islamic State and Assad and each other.
All exploit President Barack Obama’s reluctance to be drawn deeply into the Syrian war. Remember how Obama dismissed Islamic State last year as the “JV team”? Words that haunt today.
Yes, it will be complicated to get all these disparate players with conflicting agendas pulling in the same direction. But these Islamic State attacks have to focus minds in the world’s capitals. Islamic State is fighting a global war that isn’t confined by regional borders. It reaches out from Syria and Iraq to stab at its enemies in the heart of Paris, in a bustling Beirut suburb, in the popular Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. In country after country.
Nov. 13, 2015, could mark the day that the world turned against Islamic State in full fury. Or it could become another entry in a painful timeline of terror attacks that went unanswered, inviting even more.
