A new map illustrating the growing power of ISIS shows the militant group has made inroads beyond Iraq and Syria into Jordan and even Iran. On radio this morning, Glenn referred to ISIS as the “greatest evil” the world has seen since the 1930s and questioned whether the Obama Administration sufficiently understands the threat of a caliphate.
While the world has witnessed various humanitarian atrocities and genocides in the last century, Glenn believes the tactics of ISIS make them a unique kind of evil.
“This is the greatest evil I think we have seen since the 1930s. I don't know of a greater evil than this that is so clear,” Glenn said. “When China was evil and just shooting people in the head, when you see what's happening over in North Korea, you have to get the drawings out of that. The only reason we know about the camps is because survivors escape and then they draw. There's no pictures.”
“[In this case], not only are we seeing pictures, they are taking the pictures,” he continued. “It's not like we went over with a hidden camera. They are the ones taking them and putting them up on Twitter [and] Facebook and saying, ‘Look at us!’”
When you look at the map of ISIS presence and control, it paints an even more frightening picture:
“They're all over – with control in parts of Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran,” Glenn said. “That's not some little thing. That is the beginning of the caliphate… And there's more of this coming.
Glenn found himself particularly frustrated by what feels like a lack of urgency or even understanding from the Obama Administration.
As Media Matters has pointed out time and time again, Glenn began talking about the threat of a caliphate several years ago. In 2011, the George Soros-funded group criticized Glenn for talking about the topic. All the while, on June 29, 2011, now-CIA director John Brennan had this to say about the caliphate:
“Our strategy is … shaped by a deeper understanding of al Qaeda’s goals, strategy, and tactics. I’m not talking about al Qaeda’s grandiose vision of global domination through a violent Islamic caliphate. That vision is absurd, and we are not going to organize our counterterrorism policies against a feckless delusion that is never going to happen. We are not going to elevate these thugs and their murderous aspirations into something larger than they are.”
“Nobody in Congress is saying, ‘Hey, John Brennan said this. He was so wrong… and our intelligence community was this wrong,’” Glenn concluded. “And I got news for you: There's no way our intelligence community didn't know this. I know people who were former intelligence… They are not dummies… You could see these things coming on the horizon for a million miles. [So] why did we purposefully choose to close our eyes to a caliphate?”
Front page image courtesy of the AP