Why should we think twice about what to call a terror group?
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America may have to take a deep breath and fundamentally reconsider the nature of its alliances with the likes of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which both openly proclaimed their intent, in Syria today, to go on aiding the gamut of these Caliphate forces (ISIS, Al Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham). What were the key factors, in those intervening years, that allowed ISIS to grow so strong? And that is the broader Syrian conflict between the Assad state and jihadis, of which the Islamic State is one piece. (Unhelpfully, this gave them the same acronym as Pakistan’s intelligence service, namely Inter-Services Intelligence).
Al Qaeda is global, ephemeral and virtual, whereas ISIS is territorial.
He immediately called it what it was – an act of war perpetrated by terrorists – and he promised the whole world that his government would not let ISIS get away with it. The real estate tycoon said before the Paris attacks that he knows more about ISIS than current military generals, who have largely derided his approach. It would have an impact on the forces of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, so maybe this is something Obama could have done before Russian Federation intervened with air power to support Assad’s regime. Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, which is known as Jabhat an-Nusra, refused to accept the authority of its Iraqi branch and instead pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda central, while the Iraqi branch, never very comfortable with Bin Laden’s less murderous savagery then declared itself independent.
He has advocated for ground troops in Iraq, but not in Syria. Over there, there are several groups fighting the Islamic state.
The Islamic State group is aggressively pursuing development of chemical weapons, setting up a branch dedicated to research and experiments with the help of scientists from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the region, according to Iraqi and US intelligence officials.
They’re not just stopping at Syria, in other words.
Adulterers who engage in a sexual relationship will face harsh punishment of being stoned to death (if married) and 100 whips and exile for 1 year for a single person. New countries were constructed, including Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.
Well, ISIS is no longer just “over there”.
Investigators are also reported to be focusing on a Belgian of Moroccan descent who is described as the possible mastermind of the attacks.
Karen Jacobsen, the director of the Refugee and Forced Migration Program at Tufts University noted that this intensive vetting process as well as U.S law on refugees and asylum seekers “makes it hard to quickly admit large numbers of refugees”.
But even the “Islamic” part of their name is contentious. Or could it be that it has something to do with the fact that France has been more vigorous than the rest of the West in tackling ISIS?
Other than my hometown, New York, Paris is perhaps the city where I’ve felt most at ease.
“First they were anxious about the press being too tough on them during debates”.
“Every few months I go to Walter Reed, and I see a 25-year-old kid who is paralyzed or has lost his limbs, and some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle”, Obama said. Which, of course, we’re not.
Moreover, President Obama’s logic is sound.
The takeaway for voters is that many of their candidates for president aren’t demonstrating readiness for the kinds of decisions that confront Obama now: Should the US devote more military resources or merely sound more menacing but not change strategy? And they struck on a Friday night, when many westerners take psychic refuge from the troubles of the working week.
But if you are a community organizer concerned about attending a summit of a “non-profit” that was the president’s former campaign arm, you’ve now got all the info you need.
But there is a major flaw in this reasoning, as well as in President Obama’s triptych of basic American interests in the Middle East. This flaw has been exposed by the growth and metastasis of IS. Otherwise, taking the fields would require ground forces. This is not Nazi Germany, where a state was co-opted by an extremist fascist movement, and willingly followed along.
“When you start seeing individuals in positions of responsibility suggesting that Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims are in a war-torn land, that feeds the ISIL narrative”, Obama said, adding that it was “counterproductive and it needs to stop”.
In no place have Muslims voted for ISIS.
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“When you say the people are exhausted of war – we all get exhausted of war”, Kasich said at the National Press Club on Tuesday.
