Struggling to Gauge ISIS Threat, Even as U.S. Prepares to Act
Mark Mazzetti, Eric Schmitt and Mark Landler
New York Times , September 11, 2014
WASHINGTON — The violent ambitions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been condemned across the world: in Europe and the Middle East, by Sunni nations and Shiite ones, and by sworn enemies like Israel and Iran. Pope Francis joined the call for ISIS to be stopped.
But as President Obama prepares to send the United States on what could be a yearslong military campaign against the militant group, American intelligence agencies have concluded that it poses no immediate threat to the United States. Some officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians, and that there has been little substantive public debate about the unintended consequences of expanding American military action in the Middle East.
Daniel Benjamin, who served as the State Department’s top counterterrorism adviser during Mr. Obama’s first term, said the public discussion about the ISIS threat has been a “farce,” with “members of the cabinet and top military officers all over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified.”
“It’s hard to imagine a better indication of the ability of elected officials and TV talking heads to spin the public into a panic, with claims that the nation is honeycombed with sleeper cells, that operatives are streaming across the border into Texas or that the group will soon be spraying Ebola virus on mass transit systems — all on the basis of no corroborated information,” said Mr. Benjamin, who is now a scholar at Dartmouth College.
Mr. Obama has spent years urging caution about the perils of wading into the Syrian civil war, a position that has led critics to argue that his inaction has contributed to the death and chaos there. Now, he faces criticism that he has become caught up in a rush to war with no clear vision for how the fighting will end.
In his speech Wednesday night, the president acknowledged that intelligence agencies have not detected any specific plots aimed at the United States. ISIS is a regional threat, he said, but if the group is left unchecked it could ultimately directly threaten the country.
Some American officials warn of the potential danger of a prolonged military campaign in the Middle East, led by the United States, and say there are risks that escalating airstrikes could do the opposite of what they are intended to do and fan the threat of terrorism on American soil.
In recent days, American counterterrorism and intelligence officials have sought to tamp down the political speech used to describe the threat from ISIS — the wealthy militant army that has seized wide portions of two countries and attracted thousands of foreign fighters who some officials fear could at some point be sent home to carry out attacks — with a more nuanced assessment of its weaknesses.
“As formidable as ISIL is as a group, it is not invincible,” Matthew G. Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said last week, using an alternate name for the group. “ISIL is not Al Qaeda pre-9/11” with cells operating in Europe, Southeast Asia and the United States. Mr. Olsen’s assessment stood in contrast to more pointed descriptions by other American officials like Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has said that ISIS poses an “imminent threat to every interest we have.”
The group has been vulnerable, for instance, to airstrikes coordinated with Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces in northern Iraq in the past month, Mr. Olsen said, noting that as a result, “ISIL is losing arms, it’s losing equipment, and it’s losing territory.”
Despite the attention ISIS has received, when American counterterrorism officials review the threats to the United States each day, the terror group is not a top concern. Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain the most immediate focus. That is because ISIS has no ability to attack inside the United States, American and allied security officials say, and it is not clear to intelligence officials that the group even wants to.
In a speech Wednesday morning, Jeh C. Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary, said, “We know of no credible information that ISIL is planning to attack the homeland at present.”
But a chorus of voices demanding tough action to blunt the advances of ISIS — a chorus that has grown louder with the recent release of videos showing the beheadings of American journalists — appears to have had a substantial impact on public opinion. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted Sept. 3 to 7 reveals that nearly half of the country thinks the United States is more at risk of a major terrorist attack than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
While ISIS may have long-term aspirations for war with America, the group’s immediate focus is forming an Islamic state under a puritanical version of Sunni Islam.
American officials have said publicly that their greatest fear is that ISIS has inspired radicals in the West. The concern is that jihadists with American or European passports will fight alongside ISIS or other terrorist groups in Syria, then return home trained to carry out an attack of their choosing. It is not clear that airstrikes against ISIS will, at least in the short term, diminish that threat.
Even a limited air campaign could play into an ISIS narrative that American infidels were intervening on behalf of apostate governments in Iraq and Syria. Airstrikes are also risky because the new Shiite-led government in Iraq is unsettled, officials say. Under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the government inflamed sectarian tensions, enraging Sunnis who are not natural allies of ISIS. If American airstrikes are seen as supporting the Iraqi government against the Sunnis, bombings could become ISIS recruiting tools.
The officials said any military action would have to be closely coordinated with Iraq and other governments in the region to avoid worsening a Shiite-Sunni rift. One unintended consequence of the United States’ attacking ISIS will be weakening the strongest remaining opponent of the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Analysts are also concerned that ISIS has destabilized the Middle East and is fostering the growth of its violent version of Islam, much like the way the Taliban allowed the growth of Al Qaeda.
“It’s pretty clear that upping our involvement in Iraq and Syria makes it more likely that we will be targeted by the people we are attacking,” said Andrew Liepman, a former deputy director at the National Counterterrorism Center who is now a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation.
“But this is different than many other situations we’ve been involved in because the ISIS narrative is so vicious and so brutal that it has virtually no external allies.”
It was only three months ago, when Mr. Obama first announced plans to send military advisers to Iraq, that much of Washington — from Congress to think tank pundits — seemed deeply skeptical about greater American military engagement in the region.
Kenneth Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst now at the Brookings Institution who rose to prominence in 2002 for advocating the toppling of Saddam Hussein and later expressing regret for that position, said in a July interview that he had deep reservations about sending the American military back to the volatile region for fear of “opening Pandora’s box.”
Now, some of Mr. Pollack’s concerns appear to have taken a back seat to his alarm over ISIS and the destabilizing impact of Syria’s civil war. In the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Pollack wrote, “the rationale for more decisive U.S. intervention is gaining ground.”
Mark Mazzetti, Eric Schmitt and Mark Landler
New York Times , September 11, 2014
WASHINGTON — The violent ambitions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been condemned across the world: in Europe and the Middle East, by Sunni nations and Shiite ones, and by sworn enemies like Israel and Iran. Pope Francis joined the call for ISIS to be stopped.
But as President Obama prepares to send the United States on what could be a yearslong military campaign against the militant group, American intelligence agencies have concluded that it poses no immediate threat to the United States. Some officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians, and that there has been little substantive public debate about the unintended consequences of expanding American military action in the Middle East.
Daniel Benjamin, who served as the State Department’s top counterterrorism adviser during Mr. Obama’s first term, said the public discussion about the ISIS threat has been a “farce,” with “members of the cabinet and top military officers all over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified.”
“It’s hard to imagine a better indication of the ability of elected officials and TV talking heads to spin the public into a panic, with claims that the nation is honeycombed with sleeper cells, that operatives are streaming across the border into Texas or that the group will soon be spraying Ebola virus on mass transit systems — all on the basis of no corroborated information,” said Mr. Benjamin, who is now a scholar at Dartmouth College.
Mr. Obama has spent years urging caution about the perils of wading into the Syrian civil war, a position that has led critics to argue that his inaction has contributed to the death and chaos there. Now, he faces criticism that he has become caught up in a rush to war with no clear vision for how the fighting will end.
In his speech Wednesday night, the president acknowledged that intelligence agencies have not detected any specific plots aimed at the United States. ISIS is a regional threat, he said, but if the group is left unchecked it could ultimately directly threaten the country.
Some American officials warn of the potential danger of a prolonged military campaign in the Middle East, led by the United States, and say there are risks that escalating airstrikes could do the opposite of what they are intended to do and fan the threat of terrorism on American soil.
In recent days, American counterterrorism and intelligence officials have sought to tamp down the political speech used to describe the threat from ISIS — the wealthy militant army that has seized wide portions of two countries and attracted thousands of foreign fighters who some officials fear could at some point be sent home to carry out attacks — with a more nuanced assessment of its weaknesses.
“As formidable as ISIL is as a group, it is not invincible,” Matthew G. Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said last week, using an alternate name for the group. “ISIL is not Al Qaeda pre-9/11” with cells operating in Europe, Southeast Asia and the United States. Mr. Olsen’s assessment stood in contrast to more pointed descriptions by other American officials like Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has said that ISIS poses an “imminent threat to every interest we have.”
The group has been vulnerable, for instance, to airstrikes coordinated with Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces in northern Iraq in the past month, Mr. Olsen said, noting that as a result, “ISIL is losing arms, it’s losing equipment, and it’s losing territory.”
Despite the attention ISIS has received, when American counterterrorism officials review the threats to the United States each day, the terror group is not a top concern. Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain the most immediate focus. That is because ISIS has no ability to attack inside the United States, American and allied security officials say, and it is not clear to intelligence officials that the group even wants to.
In a speech Wednesday morning, Jeh C. Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary, said, “We know of no credible information that ISIL is planning to attack the homeland at present.”
But a chorus of voices demanding tough action to blunt the advances of ISIS — a chorus that has grown louder with the recent release of videos showing the beheadings of American journalists — appears to have had a substantial impact on public opinion. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted Sept. 3 to 7 reveals that nearly half of the country thinks the United States is more at risk of a major terrorist attack than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
While ISIS may have long-term aspirations for war with America, the group’s immediate focus is forming an Islamic state under a puritanical version of Sunni Islam.
American officials have said publicly that their greatest fear is that ISIS has inspired radicals in the West. The concern is that jihadists with American or European passports will fight alongside ISIS or other terrorist groups in Syria, then return home trained to carry out an attack of their choosing. It is not clear that airstrikes against ISIS will, at least in the short term, diminish that threat.
Even a limited air campaign could play into an ISIS narrative that American infidels were intervening on behalf of apostate governments in Iraq and Syria. Airstrikes are also risky because the new Shiite-led government in Iraq is unsettled, officials say. Under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the government inflamed sectarian tensions, enraging Sunnis who are not natural allies of ISIS. If American airstrikes are seen as supporting the Iraqi government against the Sunnis, bombings could become ISIS recruiting tools.
The officials said any military action would have to be closely coordinated with Iraq and other governments in the region to avoid worsening a Shiite-Sunni rift. One unintended consequence of the United States’ attacking ISIS will be weakening the strongest remaining opponent of the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Analysts are also concerned that ISIS has destabilized the Middle East and is fostering the growth of its violent version of Islam, much like the way the Taliban allowed the growth of Al Qaeda.
“It’s pretty clear that upping our involvement in Iraq and Syria makes it more likely that we will be targeted by the people we are attacking,” said Andrew Liepman, a former deputy director at the National Counterterrorism Center who is now a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation.
“But this is different than many other situations we’ve been involved in because the ISIS narrative is so vicious and so brutal that it has virtually no external allies.”
It was only three months ago, when Mr. Obama first announced plans to send military advisers to Iraq, that much of Washington — from Congress to think tank pundits — seemed deeply skeptical about greater American military engagement in the region.
Kenneth Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst now at the Brookings Institution who rose to prominence in 2002 for advocating the toppling of Saddam Hussein and later expressing regret for that position, said in a July interview that he had deep reservations about sending the American military back to the volatile region for fear of “opening Pandora’s box.”
Now, some of Mr. Pollack’s concerns appear to have taken a back seat to his alarm over ISIS and the destabilizing impact of Syria’s civil war. In the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Pollack wrote, “the rationale for more decisive U.S. intervention is gaining ground.”
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