Ännu ett amerikanskt krig

En av den amerikanska högerns minst nyanserade tidskrifter är National Review. Dess linje brukar vara att det inte finns någon anledning någonsin att undvika amerikanska krigsinsatser utomlands. Det paradoxala är att mycket fokus numera ägnas en fråga som i allt väsentligt är regional och som rimligen kommer att hanteras på ett eller annat sätt av regionens mäktiga aktörer (Saudiarabien och Iran). Men att ISIS på ett så PR-mässigt effektivt sätt väckt amerikanska machokänslor har lett till att en amerikansk opinion nu tycker att USA efter misslyckandena i Irak och Afghanistan åter ska kasta sig in i ett krig i regionen.

Här ett smakprov från National Reviews nätutgåva:

Here’s the National-Security Threat That Keeps Lindsey Graham Up at Night

In the green room at Fox News last night, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina did an effective job of freaking the rest of us out. The short version: we’re likely to get hit by Islamist terrorists in the U.S. homeland again; it’s probably going to come from ISIS members operating out of Syria; the national-security community is intensely concerned, and the system designed to identify, track, monitor and interdict against these aspiring terrorists is getting overloaded.

Now, you can say, “Eh, we hear this kind of talk all the time.” But we also have seen jihadists striking at Western targets with somewhat metronomic regularity.

Before the Garland shooting, ISIS claimed responsibility for — or at least praised — attacks in Sydney, Tunisia and Libya. The Texas attack appears to be “ISIS-inspired rather than ISIS-directed,” Garnstien-Ross said. “These guys didn’t receive any training from ISIS.”

ISIS typically claims responsibility when attackers have posted messages, usually on Twitter, pledging allegiance to the group or its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Elton Simpson, one of the suspected gunmen in the Garland shooting, appeared to have communicated with at least one known ISIS member on the social networking site, the experts interviewed by NBC News said.

“The only reason that Islamic State has claimed responsibility is because of the tweet from what we believe to be Simpson’s Twitter account,” said Charlie Winter, an NBC News counterterrorism consultant and a researcher at the London-based Quilliam Foundation think tank.

Winter noted that there was no similar claim from ISIS after the Charlie Hebdo attack in January, which was later linked to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

What do the perpetrators of the Paris attack and the Garland, Texas attack have in common? They were both on watch lists.