Consider two theories:
(1) Our "angry rhetoric, intimidation and surveillance" of Muslims in western countries benefits ISIS by giving them more recruits.
(2) Our soft response to terrorism compared to, say, how Saudi Arabia deals with terrorists who threaten it, benefits ISIS by signaling that the West is weak and by not providing sufficient disincentives to potential terrorists.
How do you determine which is right?
Would you consider it to hard on Muslims or soft on Muslims if France would head the call of it's Muslim community to require Imam's to have a license to preach?
Trigger warning: politics is hard mode.
"How to you make America safer from terrorists" is the title of my op-ed published in Sun Sentinel, a very prominent newspaper in Florida, one of the most swingiest of the swing states in the US for the presidential election, and the one with the most votes. The maximum length of the op-ed was 450 words, and it was significantly edited by the editor, so it doesn't convey the full message I wanted with all the nuances, but such is life. My primary goal with the piece was to convey methods of thinking more rationally about politics, such as to use probabilistic thinking, evaluating the full consequences of our actions, and avoiding attention bias. I used the example of the proposal to police heavily Muslim neighborhoods as a case study. Hope this helps Floridians think more rationally and raises the sanity waterline regarding politics!
EDIT: To be totally clear, I used guesstimates for the numbers I suggested. Following Yvain/Scott Alexander's advice, I prefer to use guesstimates rather than vague statements.