Peter Bergen

Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.

Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy, yet ISIS' ferocious campaign against the Shia, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Muslims who don't precisely share its views has united every ethnic and religious group in Syria and Iraq against them.

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.

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.

If the Arab Spring was a large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda's ideology, the death of bin Laden was an equally large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda the organization.

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.

The Sunni militants that make up ISIS are not the underlying problem in Syria and Iraq, but rather they are a symptom of other deeper problems.

For many terrorists, carrying out an attack allowed them to become the heroes of their own story.

Every lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been carried out by an American citizen or a legal permanent resident, not by recent immigrants or by refugees. So tamping down immigration won't fix the real issue, which is 'homegrown' terrorism.

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.

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.