ISIS, Simple Arithmetic and the London Bridge Atrocity

ISIS, which is slowly losing ground militarily in Iraq, is reacting like a mortally wounded beast, lashing out wildly in all directions. There is little point in quibbling about whether or not last night's murderers were ISIS members; the late attackers (not late enough) were clearly acting in accordance with ISIS encouragement and, by all accounts, met with online ISIS approval for their actions.
This is the third major terrorist attack in the UK this year (so far) and there is a chilling sense of normality creeping over us. Last year on this blog, I was often writing about the danger to us all from released homicidal mental patients. This year, I find myself writing about murderous terrorists. I have to pinch myself at times to be able to distinguish between them. The same epithets I used about one (appalling, hideous, atrocious, etc) I use about the other. Another common factor seems to be their demeanour while carrying out their attacks. Holly Jones, a BBC reporter who witnessed the slaughter of pedestrians on London Bridge last night, said of the driver of the van that mounted the pavement:
"He didn't look scared. he looked demented".
The same could be said of any of the mentally deranged killers who have featured on this blog before. As we seem to have accepted murders by such people as part and parcel of the risks of everyday life, we are, perhaps, becoming inured to terrorist atrocities, keeping calm and carrying on. Perhaps.
While I share the revulsion that we all feel about last night's massacre, and salute the security forces for their prompt action in liquidating the perpetrators, I was interested in Theresa May's analysis of the root cause of the problem, which, coincidentally, I discussed in my last blog post. The PM said today:
" ...while the recent attacks are not connected by common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism...It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam."
All well and good, but no clear indication was given how to combat this ideology. As ISIS can be described as "the active arm" of Salafism, Mrs May must surely know that Saudi Arabia finances Salafism in the UK and elsewhere. But then, Saudi Arabia is our ally, and buys huge amounts of weapon systems from our arms manufacturers.
As for the attack, and others, it is understandable that people are baffled yet again at these horrific events. After the terror attack in Tunisia in 2015, a friend of one of the victims said:
"I can't make sense of it, I just can't understand the logic of what they have done."
Similar sentiments were expressed after the Westminster Bridge incident, the slaughter of the innocents in Manchester, and yesterday's massacre.
The trouble is, if we examine what ISIS has done in the past, and their stated reasons for their actions, it is possible to discern an underlying strategic rationale, with several objectives:
1. Revenge upon the nations that fight against it in the Middle East.
2. Such acts maintain the morale of their fighters and activists who perceive these horrors as being victories.
3.These actions, if persistent enough, as in Iraq and Syria, create a climate of fear.
4. Their atrocities keep Daesh in the public eye via media publicity, reminding us that they are still a force to be reckoned with.
5. The attacks, while punishing the citizens of enemy countries (who are all guilty because they do not share the ISIS dogma), tie up huge resources.
Anyway, while we mourn our dead, our politicians make statements and we engage in gestures of defiance and solidarity with the victims, ISIS will be doing some simple arithmetic and analysing last night's events in London with an eye to the planning of further crimes against humanity. Back in June, 2015, I commented that ISIS would be making calculations from the results of the Tunisian murders, carried out by the late and unlamented Seifeddine Rezgui . In exchange for his "martyrdom", 38 innocent tourists died. ISIS bragged that they had 4000 operatives in Europe and I postulated that, if ISIS were doing their sums and if each operative killed as many people as Rezgui, 152 000 European citizens would die.
Last night's crime will give ISIS much food for thought. In the space of eight minutes, their three operatives inflicted 55 casualties, dead and wounded. Rounding up the decimal point, that equals 7 victims a minute. Now, this happened in central London, with a well-trained police firearms squad not far away. If their next atrocity happens in a less well protected location like a country town or a seaside resort, it will take longer to deploy a force to deal with them, and the toll of victims will be higher. A half-hour's rampage at the same rate would inflict 210 casualties. For the strategic planners of ISIS, humanity does not enter the reckoning; it is a matter of simple and brutal arithmetic. As it is with all terrorist movements, they do not count the cost of their actions to their victims; what matters to them is the simple arithmetic of the body count.