Dear ISIS:
Congratulations. In a period of about three days you’ve completely screwed yourself in every strategic and ideological way imaginable. You’ve motivated frenemies like Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin to huddle together with no pretense and figure out how to end you. You’ve forced Belgium to admit it has a problem. You’ve motivated the Iraqis to start driving you out of its borders. You’ve even made everyone start liking France again. And your historically bad week is just getting started.
The United States is now taking out your oil tankers without regard for collateral damage; there goes your only revenue. France is using its air force to blow up your stronghold as the world cheers it on; no one even knew France had an air force. Putin has given up the identity of your funding sources, and he’s now willing to give up his longstanding protection of Assad in the process. But more than merely motivating the militaries of the world to take out every last trace of you, you’ve done something far worse to yourself: you’ve lost your identity.
World leaders are no longer referring to you as “ISIS” or the “Islamic State” because they’re not willing to let you pretend that your terrorist agenda is in any way connected to Islam. You don’t even get to keep your acronym anymore. Now you’re being referred to as Daesh, a name you hate. We even let the French pick out the name, because they’ve more than earned it this week. Muslim leaders and Muslim rank-and-file around the world despise you, and you’re completely out of allies.
You seem to want World War III. The trouble is, you don’t have the muscle. You don’t even fully control a single nation, and the world has taken out half your assets in a matter of a few days. It’ll take far longer than that to gradually wipe every trace of your existence from the earth, but that’s now inevitable. So thanks, ISIS or Daesh or whatever name we might choose to call you against your will. In these divisive times you’ve somehow managed to unite the entire world. Congratulations on that.
