You are on to something there. What jihadists fear most is being humiliated. That is why they try so hard to make themselves look invincible, able to slaughter people at will, but shielded by their faith from even the most powerful enemies. They have devoted a lot of effort to videos that show them triumphant, usually accompanied by powerful, spellbinding music. The basso voices chant to a hypnotic drumbeat as the jihadists behead or immolate their powerless, quivering captives, or their planes make enormous fireballs of the Trade Center Towers, or their warriors blow up a convoy of American vehicles.
But all the puffery looks less impressive when you see a video like the one I saw recently. Several of these great warriors stand in a street looking and sounding very lost, as down at the end of the block, what is left of a vehicle blazes away. It's blazing because a couple minutes earlier, one of the jihadists' bomb experts and a couple of his pals were in that vehicle when a missile came out of the sky, with no warning whatever, and hit them with twenty pounds or so of high explosive.
I think the great warriors would seem much less invincible if, one night, heavy U.S. bombers destroyed every bridge in every city they occupy without even seeming to exert much effort. They would seem even more vulnerable if, several nights later, these aircraft blew up water utilities in all those places. There might be a pause of a couple weeks to let these lessons sink in on the inhabitants who are sheltering these jihadists, and then, one night, all the petroleum refineries, say, put out of commission. One night later still, all the electricity might go down in Raqaa, and Mosul, and Ramadi, and Tikrit, and every other place they claim to control, or the rail lines or airports serving these places made inoperable, or the gas or telephone utilities shut down.
It would soon become clear to everyone watching this steady, relentless crippling that behind their bravado, the supposedly all-powerful jihadists were in fact the "weak horse"--that they could do absolutely nothing to stop it. We should not wring our hands about whether the predominantly Sunni populations in these places would resent the United States for this kind of thing. What is important is that the jihadists in Iraq and Syria should not be allowed to look like they are thumbing their noses at this country, and getting away with it. It is exactly that perception which contributes to the jihadists' prestige and appeal.
I say all this because it's what I think should be done--not because I harbor any illusions that this sorry excuse for a president will ever go much beyond the pinpricks he's confined himself to so far. He doesn't give a damn how many innocent people these rats murder. All he cares about is appearing to do something, while doing nothing that counts much.