ISIS: A threat to America

How ISIS is a threat to the United States of America

         ISIS is a hot topic around the world: they are an organization unlike anything we have seen before; they are not a state yet they are not a terrorist organization like Al Qaeda. They pose a different type of threat, a terrorist threat that stems from a centralized territory that is not a state yet functions like on. They are able to instill fear in the hearts of people around the world as well as within their own territory. They are brutal and organized. For this reason, I chose an article that looks at the four main reasons ISIS is a threat to the American homeland.
       The first major reason is quantity vs. quality. Al Qaeda was forced to rely on loosely organized operatives and training provided by someone in the region. There were no 'training camps' or locations potential operatives could go to receive a 'formal training'. ISIS is different. They have developed a land hold and created camps. They are not looking for a high number of attacks; instead ISIS is looking for well planned, well executed attacks. The next major way threat is an asymmetric advantage. This is when a "weaker party" uses "violence as a political tactic against a more powerful adversary". When ISIS carries out an attack, from Nice, France to Orlando, Florida fear is instilled in many American's hearts. They are not posing a threat like a state would. Instead they are threatening the day to day lives of citizens. These attacks have inspired many across the region the join the movement, which is the third major threat to American security. The "strong horse theory" is when people support or join the strong horse, and not the weak horse. ISIS, a descendent of Al Qaeda in Iraq, is a strong horse in the region now. They have developed a peace of land with the characteristics of a state, and are representing radical ideals. This appeal will draw more and more people in, and is how the threat will continue to grow. The final threat is a result of growth, and is what happens moving forward. People have begun to fear the ideology, not so much the group of the people involved but the set of beliefs themselves. This has effectively changed the way people thinks and posses a massive risk.
      I firmly believe that ISIS is a threat to America because of the reasons above. They need not kill thousands like Al Qaeda to send a message. They have begun to change the way we live our lives, they are altering our beliefs and how we view certain areas of the world and the cultures within. This change is not healthy. These fears are also relevant in our election cycle. Looking at the two candidates, one is labeled for their lack of response and the other is critiqued for using these fears to their advantage. Americans fear being attacked, we fear another shooting in a night club or being forced to stoop to the level of thieves and murderers in order to solve the issue. We fear Muslim immigrants entering the country, and we fear the government watching our every technological move. While these fears are generalized and do not apply to hundreds of millions of Americans, they exist. The existence of these fears is threat enough against the United States.

The Feminist War on Terror

In her book, Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link, Cynthia Enloe argues that warfare and conflict is defined by, and later defines, gender norms in society.1 She argues that United States foreign policy throughout history has been defined by the "masculinized" qualities of physical force, rationality and strength while nearly absent of the "feminized" qualities of compassion, negotiation, and care.2 U.S. foreign policy during the War on Terror is no exception to this argument. From a feminist perspective, one can identify how the Bush administration feminized United Nations investigators who were sent into Iraq in 2002 to investigate the potential possession of weapons of mass destruction by the Iraqi government. The masculinized Bush administration was not willing to be patient while the investigators conducted a slow, cautious and thorough investigation. The Bush Administration’s response when the UN investigation found no WMD in Iraq was “swift and negative.”3 In the media during this time, Bush is constantly seen undermining the work of those "feminized" investigators, and instead convincing the American public that the results were not trustworthy-- physical force was needed. He used his rationality to convince Congress to declare war on Iraq in 2003. Enloe argues, in this case and many others, that gendered norms and almost always impact who is considered credible and influential in society. In this case, the slow and deliberate investigation of the UN investigators was feminized and undervalued, while the Bush administration's use of force was masculinized and valued.
While it is difficult to analyze national security solely from a gendered lens, doing so allows a scholar to analyze implications and societal structures that impact our national security that would otherwise go unnoticed. When it comes down to it, security is merely a relationship between those who protect, or those who are "masculinized,” and those who need protection, or those who are "feminized.”

Many components of the War on Terror were gendered and sexualized. Most specifically, the events at Abu Ghraib in 2004, where Iraqi prisoners of war were forced by members of the U.S. military to perform sexual acts with each other in order to rob them of their masculinity and further emphasize the strength and masculinity of the U.S. Marines.4 Enloe uses an exchange between President Bush and Saddam Hussein to emphasize cultural ideas of “masculinity.” The leaders were in a brief media “debate” arguing about whose soldiers were “real men.” Hussein masculinizes his soldiers solely with their willingness to kill while president Bush masculinizes his soldiers saying that they are equally as willing to kill, but for the greater good. This idea is quite common in U.S. and Western militarized societies since the times of colonization: white men have to save brown women from brown men. This mentality is precisely  the rationality used by the Bush Administration to convince the U.S. public that the U.S. needs to invade Afghanistan to save Afghan women from the Taliban. The “brown men,” or Afghan men, in this scenario are too barbaric and brutish to even protect their own women-- they need the “savior” of the white man to free the brown women from their oppression. This mentality has been used to justify the declaration of war since pre-colonization and the very beginning of orientalism.

1 Enloe, Cynthia, Globalization and Militarism: Feminists make the link, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.
2 Please note: “Masculinization” and “feminization” do not mean that specific qualities are either more associated with males or females. These terms are used to describe qualities that have been socially constructed to be either associated with those who identify as “men” or those who identify as “women.” All people, regardless of personal gender identification, embody all masculinized and feminized qualities to varying degrees.
3 Thielmann, Greg, “The Cost of Ignoring UN Inspectors: An Unnecessary War with Iraq,” Arms Control NOW: The blog of the American Arms Control Association, March 5, 2013,  https://armscontrolnow.org/2013/03/05/the-cost-of-ignoring-un-inspectors-an-unnecessary-war-with-iraq/.
4 Iraq Prison Abuse Scandal Fast Facts, CNN, last updated March 12, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/world/meast/iraq-prison-abuse-scandal-fast-facts/.

ISIS vs al-Qaeda

ISIS poses an extremely different threat to the United States than al-Qaeda did in 2001; I would go so far to say that ISIS poses a more substantial threat than al-Qaeda ever did. The terrorist attack on September 11^th, 2001 caught the American public off guard. It was not expected and was a terrible tragedy, however it was one attack on a nation’s peoples. We were devastated because as a national we were not ready for the extreme loss of innocent people. Over 3,000 people killed in the terrorist attack. This attack threatened the American civilization and in turn created a sense of nationalism that had never before been seen. ISIS is threatening the United States interests rather than targeting and killing westerns like Al-Qaeda did. ISIS is transnational and is involved geopolitically. This allows ISIS to have a greater threat internationally, state-to-state.

Some argue that al-Qaeda was a greater threat to the United States. This is all due to the 9/11 attack. After the attack, President George Bush called for a “War on Terror.” This heightened the threat of al-Qaeda in the American public. This “War on Terror” was created to justify and gain support for the wars that followed in the Middle East. These wars produced substantially more death than the 9/11 attacks because the United States was fearful of a terrorist organization. The loss of life on September 11^th was extensive, but it was a one-time occurrence. This argument is not to say that al-Qaeda was not a viable threat to the United States, only to say that it cannot cause as much damage to the United States as ISIS can.

ISIS is seizing territory and is building an empire for its people. Along with territory, ISIS has a sort of government in place as well. ISIS wants to be recognized as its own nation and is building its forces to be considered one. ISIS has over 30,000 pledging allegiance and prepared to go to war against any military force.[1] All of these play into the role that ISIS is currently playing in the international, geopolitical sphere, ISIS is part of the conversation. ISIS not only has control over territory, but also has control of US interests such as oil. This control is the reason that ISIS poses such a threat to the US.

            Some people believe that because ISIS is transparent about what they are planning whereas the United States did not know what to expect with al-Qaeda that ISIS is less of a threat. Although al-Qaeda was unpredictable it posed less of a threat to the United States interests. Al-Qaeda attempted to break the American moral but in turn made the nation stronger as well as caused us to increase our military forces in the Middle East to combat the organization. The United States should be more worried about the threat of ISIS because it is an international threat and could affect more than direct deaths within the US. ISIS could cause economic, political and social distress if it continues to grow the way it has been. ISIS is more of a threat to the United States than al-Qaeda in 2001.

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[1] Graeme Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants,” The Atlantic