MEMRI confirms my suspicion: ISIS is a garden variety Islamist group trying to establish a state - western terror isn't in their play book right now

One of the problems with the west and particularly the US is everything's always about us.  Two foolish adventurers get murdered om in private and it's no big deal. But get their heads sawed off on Youtube and we go freakout.  MEMRI has analyzed what ISIS is actually saying and it turns out that they're a very typical Islamist group seeking to establish a Caliphate on core Muslim/Arab land.

Unlike Al-Qaeda, IS Prioritizes State-Building
Although the IS and global jihad organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda share similar beliefs about the necessity to wage jihad for the sake of Allah and establish a caliphate where Islamic shari'a law will be instated, a major distinction exists between them in terms of the order of priorities for implementing these major goals. Whereas in Al-Qaeda, emphasis is on worldwide jihad prior to the declaration of the yearned-for Islamic caliphate (see Osama bin Laden's February 23, 1998 declaration of jihad against the Crusaders and the Jews), IS doctrine is characterized by prioritizing the establishment and consolidation of the caliphate state as the immediate and overriding objective.[2] This objective is presented by the IS leaders as a matter of survival[3] that warrants making compromises dictated by reality, the major compromise being deferral of the struggle with the West to a distant future. In other words, the IS' doctrine under Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi explicitly puts off the clash with the West to different times, and concentrates in the immediate term on the region where the Islamic caliphate is being established.[4] The IS's English-language magazine Dabiq says that the Islamic State "is a marvel of history that has only come about to pave the way for al-Malhamah al-Kubra [the grand battle against the Crusaders at the End of Days]."[5]
It's the Mohammed playbook straight from the Koran.  Al Quaeda never had the possibility of establishing a core Arab Islamic state so they went straight to terror to get noticed.  ISIS thinks that controlling the empty quarters of Syria and Iraq constitutes a 'Caliphate' that they can run and then expand.  They were mistaken before they embarked on video head hackage and genocide and now that they've poked every lion in the jungle wide awake they really won't succeed.

Ironically being defeated in their bid to establish a Caliphate will make them more dangerous to us in the west because all of the violent fighters who would have gone there to be killed efficiently will remain in the west and constitute a terror threat.  There are worse things than long term intra Islamic war in the interior of the Levant - it soaks up the excess crazies and weakens all Arab regimes, none of which are truly on our side.  So long as it doesn't slop out into the oil fields too much we should nurture these fires for the long run.  Nobody should win.  All should lose.