Baghdadi's speech is yet another reminder that thinking about IS as a singular, incomparable group isn't a productive analytic or policy strategy. (thoughts incoming) theatlantic.com/international/…
Like Al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram, territorial defeats haven't decimated IS—it's just shifted the balance of its strategy in the Middle East away from governance and toward insurgency.
And, as pointed out here, Baghdadi's description of the relative value of attacks in the West vs. in the Middle East echoes the IRA's valuing of attacks in Britain vs. Northern Ireland. Strategies and rhetoric are mobile from context to context.
This isn't to say Baghdadi is deliberately copying IRA rhetoric, but the parallels are striking and, again, demonstrate that we can learn a lot about IS strategy by looking at other campaigns across history.
