The Chicago Tribune
There is victory, and then there is justice. In America’s long war versus those who commit terror, the pursuit of these two noble aims isn’t synonymous.
Victory against a shape-shifting enemy defined by ideology is elusive. Yet justice is measurable as the United States seeks to root out and punish the murderous leaders of al-Qaida and its offshoots, including Islamic State.
President Donald Trump announced Sunday morning that U.S. Special Operations forces overnight had swooped into a Syrian compound and chased Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to his death. When the raiding Americans arrived by helicopter, al-Baghdadi fled into a “dead-end” tunnel with three of his children and detonated a suicide vest, Trump said.
Add al-Baghdadi to the list of terror group masterminds and field-level commanders who evaded the United States military, and justice, for only so long. In May 2011, the United States tracked Osama bin Laden to Pakistan, where the black-ops specialists of Navy SEAL Team Six cornered and killed him. Many others have been eliminated, yet the terrorist threat remains.
Al-Baghdadi was formidable, arguably the most wanted man on Earth. Evil and shrewdly calculating, he built Islamic State from the remnant of al-Qaida in Iraq into a terrorist army and super-cell that both conquered territory and exported its violent beliefs. Islamic State adherents killed 131 people in Paris in November 2015 in a series of attacks. Two people inspired by Islamic State killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in 2015.
In Syria and Iraq, Islamic State’s sudden rise caught the United States off guard and stunned the poorly trained Iraqi army. President Barack Obama had dismissed Islamic State as the “junior varsity” before belatedly reversing course.
By 2014, al-Baghdadi controlled swaths of territory across Syria and Iraq and declared himself leader of a transnational Islamist caliphate. The group used brutality as a calling card, torturing and executing individuals. Among the many victims: American journalist James Foley.
The United States and an international coalition eventually crushed Islamic State on the battlefield, eliminating the would-be caliphate, though not its full membership or identity. Much of the credit in Syria for Islamic State’s defeat goes to the Syrian Kurdish-led militia, who acted as boots on the ground for the U.S. military.
Those Syrian Kurds are now under attack by Turkey, and it’s notable, and alarming, that as the Syrian Kurds pulled from the border region with Turkey, there were reports of Islamic State militants and family members escaping from Kurdish-held prisons in Syria.
The significance is that in the chaotic Middle East, as in Afghanistan, villainy lurks and may reappear in unwatched corners. Al-Qaida gave rise to Islamic State. What comes next? We said recently that Trump’s pronouncement that the U.S. would abandon the Syrian Kurds was a grave mistake. Vigilance is required. The scourge of terrorism is not going to disappear soon.
As for terrorist leaders? Different story. Their lifespans are quantifiable: as short as possible. Al-Baghdadi operated in the shadows as a survival strategy. It worked until it didn’t.
In its relentless pursuit, the United States has two justifications. First, going after an enemy leader is a force disrupter. Terrorism masterminds can’t function as effectively when they’re on the run. And second: the pursuit of justice. Whether apprehended or killed in action, al-Baghdadi deserved punishment. He was dangerous. He was evil.
He earned his fate.
Send comments to [email protected].
