WASHINGTON -- U.S.-led airstrikes may have slowed
ISIS's advance in the Middle East, but the brutal terrorist movement
continues to attract followers around the world.
ISIS has made no secret of its desire to attack
America and it's putting foot soldiers in place to make that dark vision
a reality.
After two ISIS supporters attempted to storm a Mohammed cartoon drawing contest and murder everyone inside earlier
this month in Garland, Texas, the Islamic State was quick to claim responsibility for what's been called the first ISIS attack on American soil.
The attackers, both American citizens, were killed
by a police officer before they had a chance to carry out their plan.
But the incident in Texas may have been a sign of things to come.
ISIS in Every State
From Pennyslvania to Illinois to Ohio to Minnesota
to Kansas, federal authorities have arrested close to a dozen ISIS
supporters in recent weeks.
"We're very definitely in a new environment because
of ISIL's effective use of social media, the Internet, which has the
ability to reach into the homeland and possibly inspire others…"
Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said.
In the wake of the Texas attack, FBI Director James
Comey said that there are potentially "thousands" of American citizens
that now follow ISIS online.
Comey has also said that the FBI is now conducting investigations into ISIS-related activity in all 50 U.S. states.
In addition, U.S. authorities say some 180 U.S.
citizens have traveled overseas to join ISIS—and at least 40 of them
have already returned.
"What they say is that their first obligation is to go to the caliphate," explained Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for
The Clarion Project.
"But what they say is that, if they're unable to do that, if they feel
they'll be arrested at the airport, that's when they carry out an attack
here in the United States."
Orders to Attack
Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud was one who made it to
Syria. The Columbus, Ohio, resident trained with an Islamic terror group
and then returned to the United States with orders to attack the
homeland.
He was arrested before he had the chance.
Mohamud had been on U.S. authorities' radar before
he left for Syria. That's why terrorism expert Patrick Poole said
Mohamud should have never made it that far.
"They allow him to apply for a passport; they allow
him to travel to Turkey," Poole told CBN News. "From there he goes into
Syria, trains, comes back, and he's wandering the streets of Columbus
for eight months."
Like a growing number of American ISIS recruits, Mohamud was of Somali descent.
Most hail from the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul—an area with the largest Somali-Muslim population in North America.
"We've got to revisit these humanitarian visas," former Pentagon spokesman J.D. Gordon, executive director of
Protect America Today,
said. "We've got so many people here from places like Somalia with
major Islamic terror problems and we keep letting them into the country.
Why are we doing that?"
America's Dangerous Future
Mauro told CBN News that's one way the United States is heading down a dangerous path.
"You
have Sharia patrols in places like the U.K.," Mauro said. "And that's
not what we're facing here in the United States, so it's hard for us to
believe that that's where we're headed. But if you want to look at the
future of the United States, you have to look at Europe."
The
goal of ISIS and its growing network of followers in the West is to turn
American and European cities into guerilla war zones—with regular
attacks similar to those seen recently in Ottawa, Paris, Sydney and
Texas.
Gordon told CBN News that to defeat this threat, the Obama administration must first acknowledge that it exists.
"The
White House can't even name radical Islam as the enemy," Gordon said.
"Radical Islam is trying to wipe us out, and the White House—Barack
Obama—won't even mention it."
Ignoring the threat won't make it
go away. ISIS recently boasted that it has "71 trained soldiers in 15
different U.S. states"—and promised that the attack in Texas was only
the beginning.
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