Why Islamic State poses a mortal challenge to Al Qaeda
In the past 13 years, Al-Qaeda has never managed to produce anything close to the spectacular strikes of Sept. 11, 2001 that triggered President George W. Bush's war on terrorism. Years of relentless targeting by the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have relegated it to the sidelines of history and reduced the movement's core to […]Michael Pizzi writes for Al Jazeera:
In the past 13 years, Al-Qaeda has never managed to produce anything close to the spectacular strikes of Sept. 11, 2001 that triggered President George W. Bush's war on terrorism. Years of relentless targeting by the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have relegated it to the sidelines of history and reduced the movement's core to a shadow of its once menacing image. So it came to be that as Barack Obama's administration launched its own war on terrorism in a speech on Wednesday night, its target was not the network created by Osama bin Laden, but the upstart Islamic State movement that now controls huge swaths of Syria and Iraq.
