The growing lone wolf threat from ISIS and other players.

• Author: Nathanson, Michael E.
• Position: The World Today - Islamic State

"We must agree that there is an enemy and, unlike outgoing Pres. Barack Obama, we must name it (radical Islamic terrorism) and pursue it in earnest. This is a war...."

THE WORLD slowly is rising to the challenge of combating radical Islamic terrorist organizations operating in the few clearly defined physical locations. The terrorists, ruthless and scrappy though they are, ultimately cannot stand up to the superior military forces brought to bear by a united and focused free world. Because of this, the method the jihadists will employ to continue to wreak havoc will shift even more to the so-called lone wolf terrorist or cadres of sympathizers living among the infidels.

Make no mistake, they are among us--perhaps living in anonymity on the fringes of society or a citizen or citizens known to the community. They are inspired and recruited by radical Islamic rhetoric served up in slickly packaged Internet and social media presentations. Major cities such as Paris, Brussels, Boston, Orlando, Nice, London, and San Bernardino bear the scars of so-called "lone wolf' terrorist carnage in one form or another. This does not even take into account the regular occurrence of homicide bombings and attacks that take place throughout the Middle East and Africa.

ISIS is the current moniker of the ubiquitous preeminent radical Sunni Muslim terror group that sprouted from the earlier established roots of A1 Qaeda in Iraq. It was enabled to bloom by the gaping power vacuum left when the U.S. abandoned Iraq in 2013. ISIS planted the flag of a new world Islamic caliphate capital in Al-Raqqah, Syria, in 2014, exploiting divisions in Iraq and Syria to become widely entrenched in both countries. It is very active in Europe and it has spread across swaths of Africa as well.

Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared ISIS a sworn enemy of all Western civilization and vowed its destruction. ISIS and A1 Qaeda have become terrorist competitors of a sort, with ISIS having superseded AI Qaeda in terrorist prestige and position, if one can say such a thing. ISIS has boasted that one day it will fly its flag high above our own White House in Washington, D.C.

This radical Sunni Muslim group subscribes to the most-violent elements of Islam practiced in the seventh century: forced conversion through military conquest; destruction; subjugation; extortion; oppression of women; merciless torture and horrific execution of its victims.

Thousands of men, including U.S. citizens, have left their homes to become ISIS fighters in the Middle East. ISIS now is thought to be operational in 18 countries. The slick ISIS recruitment tool, Dabiq, is a professionally produced...