On Thursday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, columnist Charles Krauthammer argued that the only way to counter ISIS is to “go after them where they live, and drive them out.”
Krauthammer said that the plans of both major party candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to combat ISIS aren’t credible, and that it’s “remarkable” “that we seem to completely ignore the one example — historical example, from history, which would show us what works. Al Qaeda had four major attacks against US interests. The attack on the embassies, the failed attack, the first one, on the World Trade Center, the attack on the Cole, and then 9/11, and it thrived, crescendo is 9/11. After which we decided to go after them. They were then driven out of their sanctuary, physically. We have not had a major attack on that scale from al Qaeda since.”
He added, “In the end, can you do everything you want. you can put — you can have the most wonderful social media experts to counter the message of ISIL. You can do anything you want. In the end, what gets recruits, what inspires, what inspires? A winner, a strong horse, somebody who’s succeeding, who holds out the idea that we have a caliphate and we are now going to expand into the world. If they are in retreat, if they are driven out of their headquarters in Raqqa, that’s the beginning of the end of that movement. In the end, you can harden all the soft targets you want in America, turn this into an armed camp. You can keep all the Muslim immigrants you want away from our shores, it will make no difference. In the end, the only thing that will work, as it worked, to a large extent, with al Qaeda, is you have to go after them where they live, and drive them out.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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