Islamic terrorists have found powerful allies among leftist activists in the United States and Europe. These groups, which first appeared in the 1930s, providing support for the Soviet Union, evolved into progressive, and pro-Soviet organizations (like the National Lawyers Guild) during the Cold War. They found that lawfare was a highly effective ideological weapon in a country like the United States. When the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union disappeared, these organizations, and people like lawyers Michael Ratner and Ramsey Clark, maintained good relations with the remaining communist dictatorships, especially Cuba, and continued their war on America. The basic drill of these groups is right out of the old Soviet playbook. That is, using support for worthy causes like civil rights, clean government and environmentalism as camouflage, plus an exaggerated sense of righteousness, to pursue a program that seeks to make their own  foreign policy, counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence policy, and enact laws in the United States via the courts, rather than the legislature. Often, the only goal is to simply oppose whatever the government position is. The Soviet Union may be dead, but many of its biggest fans are not. Oppose them and you are called a racist, fascist and worse. 

Islamic terrorists have seen lawfare put restrictions on interrogations at Guantanamo, and make government officials reluctant to take chances in fighting, or stopping, Islamic terrorism. Despite record low civilian casualties, Islamic terrorists have plenty of allies willing to pursue false claims of deliberate attacks on civilians, and even journalists. Playing the legal system, as well as the media, leftist activists have provided Islamic terrorism valuable allies in America, the very country Islamic radicals are trying to destroy. Al Qaeda openly acknowledges this aid, and encourages its members to make false claims of torture and abuse, to make it easer for anti-American activists to build a case. The terrorists know that the media will jump all over anything that even appears as scandalous, and that the appearance of misbehavior is more important than the reality of it.