In just the past year, even while under near continual bombardment by the American-led coalition, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for more than three dozen attacks, stretching across 16 countries in four continents.
That figure does not include the organization’s home terrain in Syria and Iraq, where it has lost 50,000 fighters in the past two years, according to the Pentagon — nearly as many dead as the United States lost in the Vietnam War. Many of the attacks beyond the Middle East were carried out by assailants who cited their inability to reach the group’s Syria refuge, its self-proclaimed caliphate, as a motive for acting at home…
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At the same time, the Islamic State has cannily lowered the bar for what passes as an attack. The Berlin truck rampage — like the deadly attack in Nice, France in July — is a case in point. Both were as simple as it gets: The attackers commandeered trucks and plowed them into crowds of pedestrians. No weapons were needed (although the Tunisian suspected in the Berlin attack, who was killed in a shootout in Italy on Friday, is believed to have used a weapon to steal his truck)…
“For years, this kind of low-tech stuff was sniffed at,” said William McCants, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. “U.S. counterterrorism officials were long confused as to why this wasn’t happening. But ISIS has succeeded in doing what Al Qaeda never did — it’s an open invitation to wreak havoc.”
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