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" Islam is, to be sure, a big tent, and the one and a half billion Muslims in the world run the gamut from mystical, moderate, pacific Sufis to Salafists. "

Peter L. Bergen

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" The centerpiece of the Bush administration's case for going to war in Iraq was Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003, six weeks before the invasion. "

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" The Nazis and the Khmer Rouge went to great lengths to hide their crimes against humanity. Instead, ISIS posts its many crimes on social media for global distribution with seemingly no thoughts for the consequences. "

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" Think of ISIS as a pathogen that preys on weak hosts in the Muslim world. In fact, there is something of a political law: The weaker a Muslim state, the stronger will be the presence of ISIS or like-minded groups. "

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" The civil war across the Middle East between the Shia and the Sunni empowers groups like ISIS and al Qaeda who claim to be the defenders of Sunni rights against Shia attack. "

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" The United States didn't ban Italian immigration in the 1920s because a small minority of Italians became members of the Mafia, and the country is a richer place for it. "

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" Trump's pronounced anti-immigrant stance is reminiscent of both Le Pen in France and Orban in Hungary, although he is far from alone in taking such positions in much of today's Republican Party. "

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" Trump, of course, has been very wrong in the past about important issues such as President Barack Obama's place of birth and Mexican immigrants, but the Republican frontrunner is correct in saying that former Republican President George W. Bush did not keep the country safe during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "

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" The diagnosis that poverty, lack of education, or lack of opportunities have much to do with terrorism requires a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature. This diagnosis leads to the prognosis that all we need to do to solve the terrorism problem is to create societies that are less poor, better educated and have more opportunities. "

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" There is no hint that Trump wishes to engage in or to foment violence against the enemies, such as immigrants, he has identified as undermining the American way of life. "

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" I am very suspicious of the notion that somehow bin Laden was a media creation... Bin Laden's actions made him into a big deal. Not the media. "

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" The rise of ISIS starts with a Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who founded ISIS' parent organization, al Qaeda, in Iraq. What gave Zarqawi the opportunity to create al Qaeda in Iraq? It was, of course, George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. "

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" Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, another hinge event in American history, 9/11 was a great tactical victory for America's enemies. But in both these cases, the tactical success of the attacks was not matched by strategic victories. Quite the reverse. "

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" Trump displays many of the traits of a proto-fascist, and he is also part of a wave of right-wing nationalist movements that is sweeping the West. He can also be positioned in the long, American right-wing tradition of fearing 'the Other,' whether they are Catholics or Jews or, now, Muslims. "

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" Pakistan's key leaders have succumbed to the assassin's bullet or bomb or the hangman's noose, and the country has seen four military coups since its birth in 1947. Yet the Pakistani polity has limped on. "

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" What made al-Awlaki so influential is that, unlike a number of leaders of al Qaeda such as Osama bin Laden, he was a cleric, so he could present himself as a leading religious figure. Second, because al-Awlaki had spent much of his adult life in the States, he communicated with his followers in colloquial, accessible American English. "

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" The image we have of bin Laden in his final years in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself; just another suburban dad flipping though the channels with his remote. "

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" The deep problems that afflict the Middle East are not easy to fix, but they must be dealt with if we are not to see a son of ISIS, or even a grandson of ISIS, developing in the years to come. "

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" Without U.S. forces in the country, there is a strong possibility Afghanistan could host a reinvigorated Taliban allied to a reinvigorated al Qaeda. "

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" The Japanese scored an important victory at Pearl Harbor, but the attack pulled the United States into World War II, and four years later, Japan was in ruins, utterly defeated. "

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" President Obama and a small team of senior national security officials were in the unusual position of acting as al-Awlaki's jury, judges, and de facto executioners. "

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" So Pakistan is a country that I'm very fond of and have spent a lot of time, but it is a country where conspiracy theories have a life of their own. "

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" The inattention of the Bush administration to the threat from al Qaeda had results. Shortly before 9/11, Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, turned down FBI requests for some 400 additional counterterrorism personnel. "

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" We climbed the stairs to the third floor, where Osama bin Laden died early in the morning of May 2, 2011. "

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" For Islamist terrorist groups such as ISIS, the holy month of Ramadan - a time of fasting and prayer for the vast majority of Muslims - is seen as a particularly auspicious time to launch terrorist attacks. "

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" While the story about the hunt for bin Laden has been exhaustively reported and the key sources and witnesses are in agreement about the main points of the narrative, of course, it's still possible that we could learn new details about the story that would add to the narrative. "

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" ISIS' key social media-encrypted platform is Telegram, which is engineered by a Berlin-based tech company that can simply ignore the rulings of American federal judges as well as legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. "

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" Some might say that that while al Qaeda the organization may be basically dead, its ideology continues to thrive and to inspire 'lone wolves' to attack the United States. "

Peter L. Bergen