“ISIS represents a serious threat to Iraq and its region—which is reason enough for the Obama Administration to rally Sunni nations and others to combat it. But it is above all an insurgency, and the tools it knows are those of irregular combat, not al-Qaeda-style terrorism. It appears never to have plotted—and certainly never carried out—a long-distance, covert terrorist operation. As Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in a little-noted speech, ‘We have no credible information that ISIL is planning to attack the U.S,’” writes Benjamin, the Norman E. McCullough Jr. Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.
Benjamin is the former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large and coordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department.
Read the full opinion piece, published 9/24/14 by TIME.