News Pundits Prepare Us For A New World Of Random Terrorist Attacks


In a segment referred to as ISIS: Existential Fight, The McLaughlin Group talked about the recent terrorist attacks staged in the Middle East around the reports that the terrorist group has lost 45 percent of their territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nxDG1aUqok

Since the U.S.-led coalition forces gained ground previously held by the Islamic State group for over two-years, experts have started talking about the group increasing more terrorist attacks in the region, but also feel they’re increasing outside of it with the recent attacks in Bangladesh, Paris and Istanbul.

The host, John McLaughlin, offered a list of what might be the terrorist group’s new priorities, which many consider to be desperate acts such as the fact that they’ve lost oil revenue, have slashed salaries for their fighters, increased taxing citizens and have been kidnapping for small ransoms.

Tom Rogan of the National Review, when asked if the thought this was the end of ISIS, he said it was not, and he also referred to some observations he’s made from the Baghdad bombings, which are likely a result of gains made by the U.S.’s placement of special forces, and the pressure the terrorist group is feeling from losing territory.

But he also referred to the lone wolf attacks such as the Orlando shooting and that the fact that President Obama is not arming tribes in the Middle East in order to run ISIS out because it would upset Iran, who are also involved in the fight.

During the last years of the Bush Administration’s placement of troops in Iraq, there was reportedly some engagement with tribes there, before the then Prime Minister al-Maliki weakened their influence.

One of the pundits, conservative Pat Buchanan also referred to the same lone wolf attacks where militants were carrying out operations for the terrorist group in the area, mostly because, as they lose territory, they will eventually lose their caliphate and that their influence has metastasized enough to where they can carry out terrorist attacks such as they are in Baghdad, but they will eventually carry them out in the United States.

The Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013 is considered a terrorist attack committed by two brothers. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev survived a shoot out with police and is seen here in a court room sketch on trial in 2015 where he’s sentenced to death. He’s considered a lone wolf as he was not directly affiliated to a terrorist group, considered radicalized. [Image by Jane Flavell Collins/AP Photo]
Eleanor Clift of The Daily Beast, however, suggested that terrorist attacks in the U.S. would and have already taken a different form.

“It doesn’t even have to be their fighters necessarily imported to this country. As you’ve pointed out, it’s the lone wolves and people just trying to wrap themselves in this supposed glory. And as long as they’re willing to kill innocent people in what we call ‘soft targets,’ a democracy is full of soft targets, it’s not hard to do, even what happened in Dallas; a long gun and you go on a rooftop or you hide behind a pillar, unfortunately this country is susceptible to that and in the past, things like this come typically in bursts and maybe they kind of burnout but I think this going to be with us for the foreseeable future.”

From these observations, terrorist attacks manifest themselves depending on what one person or party rhetoric thinks is a terrorist attack.

Social media is often involved in manipulating the conversation for several reasons where it creates a vacuum of unconfirmed reporting that is very accessible to more manipulation in a political filter, which is also very influential.

Russian citizens place flowers and other items at a memorial for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris, in November 2015. Russia is currently in Syria providing airstrike support to President Assad, claiming that they are fighting terrorists, despite reports they’re targeting civilians. [Image by Stolbovsky via Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0]
Incidents such as the recent shootings in Dallas or the mass shooting in Orlando, which Inquisitr filed reports for, create a fine line of being referred to as terrorist attacks or mass shootings. In both cases, the shooters have expressed their loyalty to the terrorist group or another group without any proof that there is a connection. In both incidents, they were described as terrorist attacks.

[Image by Khalid Mohammed/AP Photo]

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