Last Sunday's attack at a "Draw the Prophet" Muhammad art show contest in Garland, Texas, failed but that didn't keep the Islamic State terrorists known as ISIS, which took responsibility, from claiming a victory.

Their strategy is to use social media to recruit and spread fear by showing beheadings and posting intimidating messages.The terrorists have pronounced a death sentence (fatwa) on Pamela Geller, one of the organizers of the cartoon contest in Garland, and anyone who shields her.An ISIS statement identified the Texas attackers as "two soldiers of the caliphate." One posting martyred Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, the Phoenix roommates who reportedly drove 1,100 miles to carry out the attack, which was thwarted when a traffic cop helping to provide security at the event shot both attackers dead.Rep. Ted Poe, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, says he wasn't surprised since the two men came to Texas to kill in the name of their radical belief of Islam.ISIS preaches that everybody should be tolerant of their belief in Islam, but they're never tolerant of someone who disagrees with them, evidenced by the violent beheadings being posted.Poe also warned that since the Texas-Mexico border is wide open, we know nothing about those illegals coming through.The fact that the two gunmen were home grown is chilling.Elton Simpson, 31, was an American Muslim convert who appears to have become radicalized over the past decade while Nadir Soofi, 34, a Pakistani-American, grew up in a Muslim family in Texas.ISIS also boasted this week of having 71 fighters in 15 different states and that 23 have signed up already for missions like the failed attack in Garland.Earlier this year an ISIS spokesman said the group plans to raise "the flag of Allah" in the White House.This kind of intimidation is right out of the ISIS playbook.Earlier this year, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said that while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature of what we confronted during World War II or during the Cold War. She added that we cannot afford to be buffeted by alarmism.Former CIA agent Bob Baer, however, said people in U.S. intelligence don't know what ISIS is planning and that's very alarming.Until America and the rest of the free world stop playing defense by letting the ISIS butchers dictate strategy, we can expect more beheadings and attacks like the one in Texas.The world needs a tough statesman like Winston Churchill or a hard-charging military leader like Gen. George Patton to step forward and eliminate this cancer which continues to spread across the world thanks to social media.By JIM ZBICKtneditor@tnonline.com