ISIS militants with US passports?
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There is something particularly concerning about the "masked, sociopathic murderers" who fight for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS),writes former state department official Andrew G Doran for the National Review.
Some of them, he says, are Western citizens who have travelled to Syria to fight President Bashar Assad's government - and have passports or other immigration paperwork that would allow them to return to their home countries whenever they want.
In fact, he says, citing the Daily Beast's Greg Sargent, perhaps a dozen are already in the US.
He continues:
These veterans of al-Qaeda and its affiliates constitute a fundamentally different threat than that which America faced in 2001: they are Western (at least in nationality); they are seasoned combat veterans; they are known, but perhaps too numerous to track.
Mr Doran writes that the Syrian revolution, in which the US has sided with those seeking to topple Mr Assad, has taken the focus away from the real enemy: al-Qaeda.
"If these Islamist veterans of the Syrian conflict succeed in pulling off a terrorist attack against the United States, the problem with America's policy in Syria will come into focus immediately," he says.
He says US idealism is to blame for our current Syrian policy.
"Unable or unwilling to distinguish between mere Machiavellian evil (Assad) and globally ambitious sociopaths (ISIS), America may have left itself vulnerable," he writes.
If the US government officials are smart, he concludes, they're currently scrambling to track down all the ISIS-affiliated individuals who may be returning to the US from the Middle East. "Let us hope those efforts are successful," he writes.
A number of US politicians echoed Mr Doran's concerns on Sunday's political talk shows.
"The seeds of 9/11s are being planted all over Iraq and Syria," Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham said on Face the Nation. "They want an Islamic caliphate that runs through Syria and Iraq ... and they plan to drive us out of the Mideast by attacking us here at home."
On Fox New Sunday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said: "This is a problem that we will have to face, and we're either going to face it in New York City or we're going to face it here."
The political rhetoric in the US over the ISIS is growing. The question, however, is whether it will translate into US public support for increased intervention in Iraq.
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