Former CIA head, retired General Michael Hayden, has expressed in front of the cameras of CNN’s Jim Sciutto, for « Fareed Zakaria GPS », his fear that ISIS would « sooner rather than later » attack targets in Europe and the USA, going so far as to suggest it would organise attacks of an intensity similar to 9/11. But it seems that such fears are really exaggerated, as the Islamic State is likely to focus on the consolidation of its own structures for the next few years, and not into the organisation of terrorist attacks outside of the Middle East.
Michael Hayden’s argument is that the Islamic State will need to make a political coup to impress other militant organisations in the Middle East, in his word to express its « street credentials ». Hayden thinks that Islamic State jihadists have « global ambitions […] and the tools » to commit such an operation. Lastly he argues that ISIS has « expressed the intent » of committing such acts of terrorism. This is why he actually suggests a preventive attack against the Islamic State in order to avoid that jihadists commit kamikaze attacks like it happened in the past.
CNN says that « there is no clear consensus inside the intelligence community as to whether ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, is currently capable of striking the West ». Daniel Benjamin, Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings, said that « hawks exaggerate Islamic State Threat to the United States » (http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/08/17-hawks-exaggerate-islamic-state-threat-benjamin). He assessed that « it’s important to understand that even if marauding operatives in Land Cruisers may be humiliating Iraq’s hollowed-out military, that doesn’t mean they have genuine terrorist skills ». Jim Walsh of the MIT Security Studies Program also explained that ISIS is too busy fighting the Syrians, the Kurds, the US, the Iraqis and the Iranians, and that « maybe, if they win, years from now, they’ll go after the US ».
Exaggerating the imminence of an Islamist attack is directly in the interest of Mr. Michael Hayden. As pointed out by Gleen Greenwald for The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/12/michael-hayden-nsa-media-reverence), Michael Hayden works for « The Chertoff Group » of Michael Chertoff, a private firm which has a direct interest in cultivating fear in the minds of American citizens, because it wins money by offering consulting services to companies on best practices for security and combating terrorism. Chertoff is the founder and chairman and Hayden the principal.
More generally, there is a US military-industrial complex and it draws profits from the citizens’ anticipation of terrorist attacks, which feed into the government’s decision to buy or not to buy weapons and security services. It has every interest in spreading the Apocalypse in the media to support its turnover. See also our article :http://www.eiilir.eu/politics-strategies/topics/terrorism-security/143-wouldn-t-the-world-be-safer-without-american-interventionism-in-the-middle-east.
