What Daesh Wants: West's Reply to Atrocities Plays Into Terrorists’ Hands

The relatively sensationalist reaction to terrorist attacks in the West, compared to the response to the terrorism that occurs every day in the Middle East, encourages Daesh to send terrorists to the US and Europe, Patrick J. Buchanan wrote in the American Conservative on Friday.

The terrorist group Daesh is seeking a war of civilizations and pushing the US and Europe to the right, paleo-conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan wrote in the magazine American Conservative on Friday.

The terrorists are seeking to supplant al-Qaeda and other Islamic movements in order to spearhead the war against the West, and by giving greater attention to attacks like the one in Orlando relative to those in Syria, the West is playing into the hands of terrorists.

"By the frequency and ferocity of its attacks, it seeks to displace al-Qaeda and other Islamic resistance movements in the eyes of the 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, and to be seen by the young as the great liberator of the Islamic world and future conqueror of the West."

Omar Mateen's recent terrorist attack at a gay club in Orlando, when he killed 49 people, "Polarized the nation, brought the presidential candidates to savaging one another, and held a national TV audience spellbound for a week."

"Compare the returns from this act of Islamist terror in Orlando, to those from similar attacks in Kabul, Baghdad or Damascus," Buchanan wrote.

Since 19 hijackers carried out the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and transformed US foreign policy, prompting wars across the Middle East, only 95 Americans have died at the hands of Islamic terrorists at home in the US, he pointed out.  

"Any wonder ISIS (Daesh) would implore its followers to strike where they are, inside the US, inside Europe, and not come to Syria to die anonymously?"