Coming after you and me

Yesterday we learned that ISIS and al-Qaeda leaders met at a Syrian farmhouse and agreed to let bygones be bygones and cooperate in waging jihad.

Now we learn that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was not killed or gravely wounded in an airstrike, but rather is very much in command and, in a new audio recording, exhorting the faithful to "erupt volcanoes of jihad," and make the lives of infidels throughout the world miserable and hellish.  "Dismember their limbs.  Snatch them as groups and individuals.  Embitter their lives," he says.

Tom Rogan at NRO points out that we in the West had kind of taken our eye off the ball regarding how urgent the situation is:

Believing I.S. must be defeated in Iraq first, and then in Syria, the Obama administration ignores the fact that I.S. wages war on both physical and ideological battlefields.

These two battlefields link in a cycle of support of al-Baghdadi’s growing power. With each operational victory on the battlefield — or beheading of a Westerner – Islamic State earns another prize of ideological propaganda. In turn, this propaganda recruits new fighters and supporters around the world. I.S.’s operational capability thus grows as a response.

But given the chasm between what our military and security experts know we need to do and the micromanagement coming from Beltway pointy-heads, it doesn't look likely that we'll rise to the task of defeating this menace before something really nasty happens.