A bracing heads-up about the jihadist threat

We'd do well to heed Representative McCaul's warning:

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, warned that ISIS and its affiliates have expanded to 20 countries and that the terrorist group is connected to 80 percent of the 1,000 terrorist plots being investigated by the FBI.

“Two years into the fight, our Iraqi partners are making some progress in clearing ISIS outposts but I worry they cannot hold the territory they take back and in Syria; we still do not have a coherent ground force. The president’s original strategy — a $500 million program to train and equip local rebels — has been suspended because it failed miserably to train or equip anyone capable of confronting ISIS,” McCaul said during an event at George Washington University titled "The Terrorist Exodus: Resurgent Radicalism & The Threat To The West."

“In the meantime, the Iranian-Russian intervention has strengthened Assad, which our commanders privately admit has benefitted ISIS…even as terrorists lose some ground in Syria and Iraq, globally they are gaining new ground. ISIS and its affiliates are presently in nearly 20 countries, from Algeria to the Philippines and as they expand, so does the danger to our people and our allies,” he added.

McCaul, who recently led a congressional delegation on a trip to the Middle East, stressed that the U.S. is not winning the war against Islamic extremism.

“Violent extremists are not on the run as the president claims. They are on the march and expanding at great cost to the free world,” he said. “Today we worry about more than just terrorist cells — we worry about full-fledged terrorist armies as they capture territory and enlist thousands to join their ranks.”
In Syria and Iraq, McCaul said the world is witnessing “the largest global convergence of Islamist terrorists” in modern history.

“All you have to do is look at the numbers. More than 40,000 aspiring jihadists have entered the conflict zone providing groups like ISIS with a larger fighting force than entire nation-states like Denmark or Norway and in some ways, terrorists have put together a broader coalition than the one trying to defeat them,” he said. 

In all the prognosticating currently taking place in this election year in post-America, we'd do well to remember that the future does not unfold in a linear fashion. While some trends are clear, and will clearly impact developments that have yet to occur, we ought to count on being blindsided by some events that come from left field.

And actually, the argument could be made that jihad harm done to us will fall under that first category: the clear trends that yield fairly foreseeable occurrences. If, when it hits us, it seems more like something belonging to the latter category, it will be because we reacted to the likes of what Representative McCall is saying with a shrug.