Krauthammer's Take: Only Way to Stem ISIS Recruitment Is ‘Defeating the Jihadists'

Charles Krauthammer says stopping jihadist recruitment will require defeating ISIS or showing it in retreat: 

Look, I think there’s one thing here … that the president refuses to understand, and I think it’s because it’s a failure of his policy. The way to defeat and to prevent these things is not gun control, and it is not the FBI investigating. Yes, to some extent that will mitigate it – but in a country of this size, with so many people as potential targets of investigation, unless you want to create a police state, there is no way you can prevent.

There’s only one way to go after this, and that is the Osama bin Laden theory – and he knew about jihadism – of the strong horse and the weak horse.

I think Brit Hume had it right – ultimately, the only way to decrease recruitment is not with logic, not with argument, not with really clever programmers who know how to do Twitter. It is by defeating the jihadists or showing them retreat.

These movements only grow when they have a sense of inevitability and growth. Once they’re in retreat, people stop recruiting. They’re not going to die in a suicide attack for a movement that is not advancing. And that means attacking ISIS where it is.