ISIS has been beaten. It's been forced out of city after city. Its fighters are dying or have run away. Its resources are exhausted.
It's over.
And yet once again, there's blood on the pavement and screams filling the air of a Western city. And the note in the bloodied truck links the attack to ISIS.
We didn't beat ISIS because it's not just an army or an alliance. It's an idea. The idea is Islam.
By declaring a Caliphate, ISIS made its existence interchangeable with Islam and its manifest destiny. Losing so many battles has weakened that identification, but there are still plenty of Muslims willing to kill for it. And it isn't because ISIS has radicalized them with some brilliant internet memes, but because it promised to fulfill the ideas and beliefs of their religion.
ISIS is popular because it appeared to have come closest to doing what no other Islamic group had been able to do in a century, resurrect the Caliphate. ISIS was popular because it was Islamic. It was popular to the degree that it was Islamic. It was popular because it brought back Islamic institutions from slavery to mutilating thieves without any apologies or concessions.
That is the simple truth that our leaders refuse to deal with.
What causes an Uzbek immigrant, along with Pakistanis, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Tunisians and American converts to Islam, to be willing to kill and die? They aren't killing and dying for ISIS. But the Ummah, the global Islamic tribe that embodies their honor, for the virgins of paradise, and for the cry that accompanied their atrocities. The cry of, "Allahu Akbar."
And until we understand that, we won't beat ISIS. Because ISIS is Islam.