President Trump, Al-Baghdadi’s Death Is Not the End of ISIS
“He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is a much safer place.” On October 26, 2019, the White House announced the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. However, President Trump overlooked an important consideration in his speech announcing al-Baghdadi’s death: the way the president gleefully treated the terrorist’s demise has the capacity to complicate counterterrorism efforts—ironically making the world a more dangerous place than it would have been otherwise.
To be sure, killing al-Baghdadi was a necessary and successful demonstration of American counterterrorism efforts. Al-Baghdadi had cultivated the most coherent, powerful, and insidious terrorist organization in memory, usually by way of brutally suppressing his enemies. After a raid in April 2010 that killed his predecessor Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (no familial relation), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi assumed control of what was then known as the Islamic State of Iraq. Under the new leadership, the group's merciless tactics and strategic opportunism allowed it to acquire significant territory in Iraq and Syria from 2012 to 2014, slowly building international recognition and displacing al-Qaeda as the world’s most feared terror group. Among other atrocities, al-Baghdadi masterminded a number of massacres against Iraqi shiites and Syrian Sunni tribesmen, the sexual enslavement of Yezidis and the public beheading campaign of Western and Jordanian journalists.
While al-Baghdadi’s death is indeed a victory for the U.S. military, his killing will not result in the destruction of ISIS, and it will not magically stabilize the region. True, some may argue that al-Baghdadi’s death could result in the weakening of the Islamic State’s command and control network. Compare the current political situation to that in May of 2011, in which Ayman al-Zawahiri was appointed to lead al-Qaeda following Osama bin Laden’s death. The elimination of militant leaders has frequently resulted in fractures within terrorist organizations and the disorderly, scattered pursuit of multiple new conflicting strategies. In fact, for example, the 2006 death of the leader of al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate group, al-Zarqawi, opened the power vacuum that led to the creation of the Islamic State in the first place, slowly displacing al-Qaeda from the region.
Past U.S. military operations against notable terrorist leaders have done little to eradicate international terrorist activities, as such individuals can be replaced quickly. In the case of al-Baghdadi, his organization had already created a plan to sustain itself following the loss of its territory in 2016. ISIS currently retains a strong core in Iraq and Syria: the organization will likely survive al-Baghdadi’s death. ISIS had continued to attract increased numbers of recruits within the region—depending on whether or not that continues, it may be a strong counterexample to al-Qaeda, which struggled to recruit following the demise of its original leadership.
Al-Baghdadi’s death could provide new inspiration to current and future members of ISIS by galvanizing such individuals to avenge the terrorist leader’s death. Furthermore, President Trump’s needlessly inflammatory rhetoric concerning al-Baghdadi’s death could very well further promote violent anti-Western ideology amongst the Islamic State’s ranks. Martyrdom is already a powerful emotional device; when the President of the United States gloats about that martyr’s death, the emotional effect is compounded.
When announcing al-Baghdadi’s death, a genuine triumph in the war against terrorism, President Trump still could not resist inappropriate remarks and distortions of his own record. The President boasted that “he died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way." Such a self-satisfied statement does not befit the White House. More importantly, these gleeful soundbites can fuel terrorists’ recruitment activities.
Additionally, President Trump described the special forces operation in detail, a direct contrast with President Obama’s careful announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death in 2011. Such descriptions only serve to weaken U.S. military operations overseas—by revealing special forces tactics, he has enabled terrorists to plan around them in the future. This is deeply ironic given one of Trump’s trademark campaign remarks in 2016: “I don’t want to have to tell the enemy, in order to get two extra votes, exactly what my plan is, when we’re going in, what we’re going to do.”
The President had a real opportunity to unite the nation over a genuine victory in the War on Terror. Instead, he diminished the moment with inappropriate asides and remarks. Framing al-Baghdadi’s death, or the death of any terrorist leader, as a watershed moment that will cause the world to become “a much safer place” is naïve and irresponsible: it disregards the history of the last decade of international terrorist operations. His immature braggadocio further damages America’s counterterrorism strategy. In short, President Trump’s gloating likely negated part of his own success, and quite possibly made the world more dangerous as a result.