Free Republic

If there is a positive side to the rise of ISIS, it is that the West has had its head jerked from the sand and has been made to witness a bottomless, bloodthirsty evil: crucifixions, beheadings, enslavement of women, live burial of children, mass executions. But as one analyst writes, this violence is not “whimsical, crazed fanaticism, but a very deliberate, considered strategy” – one that seems to derive in part from a book called The Management of Savagery. In the spring of 2004 a strategist who called himself Abu Bakr Naji published online The Management of Savagery: The Most...

Back in 2005, Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein published al-Qaida’s manifesto. In his book, he outlined al-Qaida’s seven-point plan over a 20-year period: “An Islamic Caliphate in Seven Easy Steps.” Ten years later, we can see how al-Qaida and other Islamic jihad groups have followed this plan to the letter – with remarkable success, thanks to the weakness, fecklessness and willful ignorance of Western leaders.