Arkady
President
If I were a leader of ISIL or of some other international Islamist group, I'd be planning a major attack on the US for shortly before the election (the last week of October would be ideal). Here's my thinking.
From the perspective of someone trying to bring about a caliphate, or at least to chisel out power for extremist Islam, there are a couple priorities. One, is building the organization: you need a steady stream of recruits and money. Two, is driving wedges among your enemies: dealing effectively with international terrorism takes coordinated efforts among the leading nations. A well-timed terrorist attack on the US would serve both those purposes.
Terrorist attacks tend to push the American public in an authoritarian direction, and Trump's appeal is squarely authoritarian. I believe a big enough successful attack in late October, on US soil, would usher Trump to the presidency. That, in turn, would help with both those intermediate steps towards a caliphate.
First, building the organization. Recruiting for organizations like ISIL is tough, because you need to find people willing to face near-certain death, either as part of carrying out a terrorist attack, or at least within a few years as part of fighting against vastly superior military forces. How do you convince someone to give up his life that way? You need him to be very angry, to become suicidally radicalized. Trump will help. Trump has repeatedly called for discrimination against Islam within the US, and he has proven to be a rabble-rouser who is great at bringing out the bigoted worst in his followers. That will win groups like ISIL a steady stream of recruits within the US. Trump has also called for war crimes against Muslims abroad -- tortures worse than water-boarding for suspects, and even targeting the innocent families of suspects. That will produce the kinds of horror stories that get people abroad lining up to fight for ISIL, the same way Bush's conquest of Iraq, and the Bagram and Gitmo torture scandals helped set the stage for the rise of the Islamic State in the first place. Terrorist recruiters will have a never-ending supply of images of the mangled bodies of children, killed by the Americans. Only, if Trump gets his way, it will be actual murder, rather than collateral damage. It'll become much easier to recruit terrorists when the US itself is putting a stamp of approval on terrorism as a legitimate means of fighting.
Second, driving wedges between enemies. As has been well-documented, the Bush era was one when decades of work by the US in building a coalition of allied nations was largely undone. US approval ratings among our leading allies plummeted, and even though they've come part-way back since Obama took office, they're still nowhere near where they were. Bush made cooperation with the US politically toxic among the populations of foreign nations, and thus made foreign leaders much more reluctant to work with us. But that's nothing compared to what Trump is likely to do. His neo-fascist rhetoric horrifies people in countries that have experience with fascism, including Spain, Italy, and Germany. He will drive them away far faster than Bush did. And, facing that increasingly divided front, ISIL will find they have more room to operate.
If I were the leader of ISIL, I'd be far more worried about Hillary Clinton becoming president. Clinton is popular abroad, making cooperation with the US less politically toxic for foreign leaders. In Europe, for example, nearly 60% of poll respondents said they believe Clinton will handle world affairs appropriately -- compared to just 9% for Trump. Clinton's approval ratings are particularly high in Germany, Europe's biggest and most powerful nation (79 percent). From the perspective of ISIL, she'd be very bad news -- making the effort to stop them more coordinated and effective. She'd also make it tougher to recruit in most nations, because potential recruits wouldn't be stewing in a cultural stew of extreme dislike of the US and the West. They also are less likely to be handed piles of new propaganda about the people we're torturing and kids we're murdering.
From the perspective of someone trying to bring about a caliphate, or at least to chisel out power for extremist Islam, there are a couple priorities. One, is building the organization: you need a steady stream of recruits and money. Two, is driving wedges among your enemies: dealing effectively with international terrorism takes coordinated efforts among the leading nations. A well-timed terrorist attack on the US would serve both those purposes.
Terrorist attacks tend to push the American public in an authoritarian direction, and Trump's appeal is squarely authoritarian. I believe a big enough successful attack in late October, on US soil, would usher Trump to the presidency. That, in turn, would help with both those intermediate steps towards a caliphate.
First, building the organization. Recruiting for organizations like ISIL is tough, because you need to find people willing to face near-certain death, either as part of carrying out a terrorist attack, or at least within a few years as part of fighting against vastly superior military forces. How do you convince someone to give up his life that way? You need him to be very angry, to become suicidally radicalized. Trump will help. Trump has repeatedly called for discrimination against Islam within the US, and he has proven to be a rabble-rouser who is great at bringing out the bigoted worst in his followers. That will win groups like ISIL a steady stream of recruits within the US. Trump has also called for war crimes against Muslims abroad -- tortures worse than water-boarding for suspects, and even targeting the innocent families of suspects. That will produce the kinds of horror stories that get people abroad lining up to fight for ISIL, the same way Bush's conquest of Iraq, and the Bagram and Gitmo torture scandals helped set the stage for the rise of the Islamic State in the first place. Terrorist recruiters will have a never-ending supply of images of the mangled bodies of children, killed by the Americans. Only, if Trump gets his way, it will be actual murder, rather than collateral damage. It'll become much easier to recruit terrorists when the US itself is putting a stamp of approval on terrorism as a legitimate means of fighting.
Second, driving wedges between enemies. As has been well-documented, the Bush era was one when decades of work by the US in building a coalition of allied nations was largely undone. US approval ratings among our leading allies plummeted, and even though they've come part-way back since Obama took office, they're still nowhere near where they were. Bush made cooperation with the US politically toxic among the populations of foreign nations, and thus made foreign leaders much more reluctant to work with us. But that's nothing compared to what Trump is likely to do. His neo-fascist rhetoric horrifies people in countries that have experience with fascism, including Spain, Italy, and Germany. He will drive them away far faster than Bush did. And, facing that increasingly divided front, ISIL will find they have more room to operate.
If I were the leader of ISIL, I'd be far more worried about Hillary Clinton becoming president. Clinton is popular abroad, making cooperation with the US less politically toxic for foreign leaders. In Europe, for example, nearly 60% of poll respondents said they believe Clinton will handle world affairs appropriately -- compared to just 9% for Trump. Clinton's approval ratings are particularly high in Germany, Europe's biggest and most powerful nation (79 percent). From the perspective of ISIL, she'd be very bad news -- making the effort to stop them more coordinated and effective. She'd also make it tougher to recruit in most nations, because potential recruits wouldn't be stewing in a cultural stew of extreme dislike of the US and the West. They also are less likely to be handed piles of new propaganda about the people we're torturing and kids we're murdering.