Beheading of American journalist James Foley recalls past horrors

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The brutal killing of James Foley recalls the murders of Daniel Pearl and others
• Pearl's death in Pakistan in 2002 was later followed by other beheadings in Iraq
• ISIS links Foley's killing to U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and threatens another American captive
• "I don't the White House is going to pull back on this," a CNN security analyst says

(CNN) -- The beheading of American journalist James Foley by ISIS militants has stirred grim memories, bringing into focus once again the risks faced by reporters in modern conflicts.

His death recalls the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal correspondent who was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002.

Both journalists were decapitated. Videos of their killings were then posted online by extremist groups.

In Pearl's case, it was al Qaeda. In Foley's, it was ISIS, a splinter group disowned by al Qaeda earlier this year.

American beheaded by terror group ISIS

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'I wish I had more time'

In the video posted Tuesday on YouTube, Foley is seen kneeling next to a man dressed in black. Foley reads a message, presumably scripted by his captors, that his "real killer'' is America.

"I wish I had more time. I wish I could have the hope for freedom to see my family once again," he can be heard saying in the video, which CNN is not airing.

He is then shown being beheaded.

U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that intelligence agencies are "working as quickly as possible" to determine the video's authenticity.

"If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends," she said.

Shock waves from Pearl murder

Twelve years earlier, the 2002 murder of Pearl, only months after the September 11 attacks, provoked shock and revulsion around the world because of its brutality and the profession of its victim.

"What it demonstrates is that the business of reporting on war has changed fundamentally," the veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson wrote in the New York Times Magazine following Pearl's killing.

"The powers that be in a conflict zone no longer regard the media as a neutral observer but rather as a strategic component -- something to be manipulated or co-opted or simply got rid of," Anderson wrote.

But Pearl's murder, and the worldwide attention it received, also "catalyzed the resurgence" of the beheading of captives by Islamic militants, Timothy Furnish, a historian, wrote in a 2005 article for the Middle East Quarterly.

During the Iraq War, militants decapitated three Americans -- the businessman Nicholas Berg and construction company employees Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley -- as well as numerous other foreigners and countless Iraqis.

In Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda terrorists beheaded an American businessman, Paul Johnson Jr., in 2004.

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ISIS's brutality

Now, the focus is on ISIS, which has become notorious for its savage practices in Syria and Iraq, including putting victims' severed heads on poles.

The extremist group, which calls itself the Islamic State, has taken control of large areas of Syria and Iraq, bringing with it ruthless slaughter of civilians and persecution of minorities.

It has carried out executions, including beheadings, as part of its effort to establish an Islamic caliphate that stretches from Syria into Iraq. In many cases, the group has videotaped the executions and posted them online.

The ISIS threat in northern Iraq grew severe enough for the United States to step in with airstrikes to help Kurdish and Iraqi forces.

That decision apparently prompted ISIS to retaliate with the brutal killing of Foley, who disappeared in northwest Syria in November 2012.

"Our hearts go out to the family of journalist James Foley. We know the horror they are going through," said Pearl's mother, Ruth, according to a Twitter post Tuesday by the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

Message to Obama

ISIS has also threatened to kill another U.S. journalist, who appears in the video showing Foley's death. The life of the other American -- believed to be Steven Sotloff, who was kidnapped at the Syria-Iraq border last year -- depends on what U.S. President Barack Obama does next, the militant in the video suggests.

But CNN U.S. Security Analyst Bob Baer said he didn't expect the video would make the Obama administration change tack.

"I don't the White House is going to pull back on this, even though there probably will be more executions, as promised by ISIS," said Baer, a former CIA operative. "I think this was all foreseen when we started hitting targets in Iraq."

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it estimates that approximately 20 journalists, both local and international, are missing in Syria. Many of them are believed to be held by ISIS, it said.

James Foley

Daniel Pearl

Among the missing is Austin Tice, an American freelance journalist who was contributing articles to The Washington Post. Tice disappeared in Syria in August 2012. There has been no word of from him since his abduction.

Some foreign journalists held captive in Syria have eventually been released.

But ISIS's decision to behead Foley and publicize it online is an ominous development.

'Shock value'

"The purpose of terrorism is to strike fear into the hearts of opponents in order to win political concession," Furnish wrote in his 2005 article on beheadings by Islamic militants. "As the shock value wears off and the Western world becomes immunized to any particular tactic, terrorists develop new ones in order to maximize shock and the press reaction upon which they thrive."

Analysts have suggested that terrorists have used beheading previously because of its horrifying effect on the public.

Their acts have fueled debate about the significance of beheading in Islamic history and theology.

A Slate article on the subject in 2009 said that two apparent references to decapitation in the Quran "are traditionally understood as inspirations to ferocity and not literal calls for beheading."

The article also points out that decapitation has Western roots, too.

It was used for capital punishment in France, Britain and other European countries. It was also allowed in Utah in the 19th century. But it no longer exists as a punishment in the West.

In the Middle East, beheading as an execution option remains part of the criminal legal codes in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran and Qatar. But only Saudi Arabia continues the practice.

But Foley's savage killing at the hands of ISIS didn't come after a trial by law.

"James was an innocent civilian who was bravely performing his job as a journalist," said Kelly Ayotte, the Republican senator of New Hampshire, the state where Foley grew up. "This barbaric and heinous act shocks the conscience and highlights the truly evil nature of the terrorists we confront."

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A fighter with Kurdish forces known as the Peshmerga is on the front lines battling ISIS militants near Mosul on Monday, August 18. ISIS has taken over large swaths of northern and western Iraq as it seeks to create an Islamic caliphate that stretches from Syria to Iraq.

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Iraq under siege

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• U.S. officials now see ISIS as a credible threat, on a par with al Qaeda
• Peter Bergen: Some lawmakers have exaggerated the current threat to U.S. from ISIS
• He says the problem is a potential issue, but few have been charged so far
• Bergen: Clearly ISIS is a potent force that must be countered in Middle East

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at the New America Foundation and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad." David Sterman is a research associate at the New America Foundation.

(CNN) -- U.S. officials are claiming that the terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is "now a credible alternative to al Qaeda."

But what does that really mean in terms of ISIS' potential threat to the United States? After all, al Qaeda hasn't pulled off a successful attack in the States since 9/11, or indeed anywhere in the West since the London transportation bombings in 2005.

This month, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, criticized the airstrikes in Iraq ordered by President Barack Obama directed at ISIS as too limited, telling CNN's Candy Crowley, "That is simply a very narrow and focused approach to a problem which is metastasizing as we speak. Candy, there was a guy a month ago that was in Syria, went back to the United States, came back and blew himself up. We're tracking 100 Americans who are over there now fighting for ISIS. ISIS is attracting extreme elements from all over the world, much less the Arab world. And what have we done?"

Peter Bergen

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The case McCain alluded to was that of Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, who grew up in Vero Beach, Florida, and who conducted a suicide bombing in Syria in May on behalf of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. According to The New York Times, Abu-Salha had returned to the United States after being trained by Nusra and then went back to Syria to conduct the suicide operation in which he died.

McCain asserted on CNN that 100 Americans were fighting with ISIS. In fact, according to U.S. officials, 100 is the total number of Americans believed to have fought or attempted to have fought with any of the many Syrian insurgent groups, some of which are more militant than others, and some of which are even aligned with the United States.

According to a count by the New America Foundation, eight people from the United States have been indicted with crimes related to trying to join ISIS or the Nusra Front. (By contrast, some 240 U.S. citizens and residents have been indicted or charged with some kind of jihadist terrorist crime since 9/11.)

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Some of the Nusra Front cases are far from threatening. On April 19, 2013, Abdella Tounisi, an 18-year-old American citizen from Aurora, Illinois, was arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to Nusra. However, he was caught in a sting operation anddescribed his fighting skills thusly: "Concerning my fighting skills, to be honest, I do not have any." Tounisi pleaded not guilty and awaits trial.

Other cases appear more serious. In December, Sinh Vinh Ngo Nguyen, a U.S. citizen from Southern California, pleaded guilty to a charge of attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda. Between December 2012 and April 2013, Nguyen had traveled to Syria, where, he stated, he fought alongside the Nusra Front. On his return, Nguyen discussed with an informant his intent to participate further in jihad.

In August 2013, Gufran Mohammed, a naturalized American citizen living in Saudi Arabia, was charged with attempting to provide material support to the Nusra Front in Syria, by facilitating the recruitment of experienced fighters from al Qaeda's Somali affiliate to Syria.

He pleaded guilty last month.

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Yet so far no U.S. citizen involved in fighting or supporting the Nusra Front or ISIS has been charged with plotting to conduct an attack inside the United States despite the fact the war in Syria is now in its fourth year and the war in Iraq is in its 11th year. Indeed, some Americans who have traveled to Syria have ended up dead apparently because they have no combat experience to speak of; for instance, Nicole Mansfield from Flint, Michigan, was killed in Syria last year by forces loyal to the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Further, ISIS' predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, never tried to conduct an attack on the American homeland, although it did bomb three American hotels in Jordan in 2005.

And it's also worth noting that in none of the successful terrorist attacks in the States since 9/11, such as the Boston Marathon bombings last year or Maj. Nidal Hasan's massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, did any of the convicted or alleged perpetrators receive training overseas.

Returning foreign fighters from the Syrian conflict pose a far greater threat to Europe, which has contributed a much larger number of foreign fighters to the conflict than the United States, including an estimated 700 from France, 450 from the United Kingdom and 270 from Germany.

Unlike in the United States, European countries have reported specific terrorist plots tied to returning Syrian fighters. Mehdi Nemmouche, a suspect in the May 24 shootings at a Jewish museum in Brussels, Belgium, that killed four people, spent about a year with jihadist fighters in Syria, according to the Paris prosecutor in the case. But Nemmouche's case is the only instance of lethal violence by a returning Syrian fighter in the West.

Still, the United States must consider European foreign fighters returning from Syria as more than a European problem because many of those returning are from countries that participate in the U.S. visa waiver program and can enter the States without a visa.

Moreover, experienced al Qaeda operators are present in Syria. As one senior U.S. intelligence official put it to us, these are veteran members "with strong resumes and full Rolodexes." The wars in Syria and Iraq allow such longtime fighters to interact with members of other al Qaeda affiliates. For example, in July, the United States adopted enhanced security measures at airports based on intelligence that bomb-makers from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were sharing their expertise in making bombs capable of evading airport security with members of the Syrian Nusra Front.

Despite these dangers, however, the threat to the United States from foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq remains only a potential threat.

The administration's airstrikes in Iraq are properly focused upon the more imminent threats to U.S. government employees and American citizens in the Kurdish city of Irbil who are threatened by ISIS advances and the humanitarian catastrophe befalling the Yazidi population in areas controlled by the militant forces.

The last time there was a similar exodus of American citizens and residents to an overseas holy war was to Somalia following the U.S.-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian forces in 2006. More than 40 Americans subsequently went to Somalia to fight with Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda-affiliated group.

Just as is the case today in Syria, for a good number of the Americans who went to fight in Somalia it was a one-way ticket because 15 of the 40 or so American volunteers died there either as suicide attackers or on the battlefield.

In 2011, Rep. Peter King, R-New York, then-chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, warned of Americans fighting in Somalia. "With a large group of Muslim-Americans willing to die as 'martyrs' and a strong operational partnership with al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and in Yemen, al-Shabaab now has more capability than ever to strike the U.S. homeland."

As it turned out, those Americans who returned from the Somali jihad did not attempt or carry out any kind of terrorist attack in the States.

Now King is back at it again, telling NBC last week, "ISIS is a direct threat to the United States of America. ... They are more powerful now than al Qaeda was on 9/11."

ISIS is surely a major problem for Iraq, and its tactics and strategy are abhorrent, such as its use of crucifixions and its genocidal attacks on the small Yazidi minority. But that doesn't mean it is a serious threat to the American homeland.