ISIS
October 16, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
There are respectable arguments in favor of the pullback of U.S. troops in northeastern Syria. I don’t find them persuasive, but they are serious. Unfortunately, President Trump persists in making ludicrous arguments. One of them, the fact that the Kurds didn’t help us with the Normandy invasion, I discussed here. I hoped that this argument was a throwaway — a one-off. No such luck. Now, Trump is claiming that the
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October 12, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that the Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria has forced the U.S. military and its Kurdish allies to curtail significantly their shared military operations against ISIS. The Kurds, under attack by their deadly enemy, have turned their attention to defending themselves from the Turks. Reportedly, hundreds of Kurdish-led fighters with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have relocated to the front lines of the fight with Turkey, and
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October 12, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Defenders of President Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from a portion of Syria, thereby enabling Turkey to have at the Kurds, make a number of arguments in favor of that move. I don’t find any of them persuasive, but some are better than others. The worst argument I know of comes from Trump himself. He points out that the Kurds didn’t help us at Normandy. He’s right, they didn’t.
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August 20, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The New York Times reports that ISIS is gathering new strength and conducting guerrilla attacks across Iraq and Syria. Observers are confident that ISIS won’t reclaim anything like its former physical territory, a “caliphate” that was the size of Britain and controlled the lives of up to 12 million people. However, if it continues to gain strength, ISIS may soon become a force to be reckoned with and could control
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April 26, 2019 — John Hinderaker
In the U.S., coverage of the Islamic terrorist bombings of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday has been sparse and generally uninformative. It tells you something when Britain’s Sun, which has mostly abandoned the news in favor of soccer and celebrities in bikinis, is a better source than the New York Times or the Washington Post. That is certainly the case with regard to the Sri Lanka
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January 9, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
On Monday, John Bolton declared that the Trump administration’s plan to pull U.S. forces out of Syria is conditioned on protecting the Kurdish warriors who bore the brunt of our fight to defeat ISIS. This condition seemed to preclude a complete withdrawal in the foreseeable future. As I explained: I don’t see how a complete U.S. withdrawal can be accomplished without putting the Kurds in serious jeopardy at the hands
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January 7, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. withdrawal from Syrian might not be as precipitous as it was originally described by President Trump. It also may not be as complete. Yesterday, during a visit to Israel where he met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, John Bolton outlined objectives that must be met before the U.S. withdraws from Syria. “The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement,” he explained. One objective, of course,
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December 22, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Tommy Meyerson, a former Marine who served in Syria, has written an op-ed for Wall Street Journal called “The Cost of Betraying Syria’s Kurds.” He argues that withdrawing from Syria will likely produce catastrophic humanitarian consequences and cause harm to U.S. interests. Meyerson begins by noting the immense contribution the Kurds have made in the war against ISIS: The U.S. and the West have quietly relied on the Syrian Kurds
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December 20, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump says he’ll quickly withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria. As I understand it, we have about 2,000 of them there. Most are in the north helping the Kurds root out the remnants of ISIS. I think Trump’s decision is badly misguided. I agree with Sen. Marco Rubio. He worries that the U.S. withdrawal will turn Syria over to Russia and Iran, and might lead to another conflict between
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July 9, 2018 — Scott Johnson
We live in a terror wonderland in the Twin Cities. It isn’t reported that way, but that’s the way it is. Take, for example, the story of the ISIS wannabe — “Fridley man,” in the applicable journalistic euphemism — who wants to take out a license to carry a firearm. The county sheriff declines to issue the license. The sheriff thinks the Fridley man might use the weapon to follow
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February 20, 2018 — Scott Johnson
We noted the case of “Minnesota man” Mahad Abdiaziz Abdiraham (or Abdirahman) this past November 14 and November 15. Abdiraham was charged with first-degree assault in connection with the stabbings of two customers at the Macy’s Mall of America’s Macy store on Sunday evening, November 12. The second of the two linked posts quotes the charges. The stabbing victims were brothers Alexander Sanchez (19 years old) and John Sanchez (25).
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December 26, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
2017 was a very good year for the U.S. economy and for domestic policy in general. But what about foreign policy? CNN’s Peter Bergen points to three foreign policy wins by President Trump. First on Bergen’s list is the enforcement of the “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria: On April 4, 2017, the Syrian regime used sarin, a nerve gas, against civilian targets in the rebel-held
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December 17, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
ISIS has proved to be doubly inconvenient for the left and its media backers like the New York Times. Its rapid rise after President Obama called it “the jayvee” was enormously embarrassing (not to mention devastating for the Iraq and parts of Syria, and deleterious to the West). Now, its crushing defeat adds to the left’s embarrassment because it comes, in part, at the hands of America under President Trump.
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October 23, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, U.S. backed forces seized control of Syria’s biggest oil field. They beat the Syrian government and its foreign allies to the al-Omar field in Deir al-Zour province, a former ISIS stronghold. The U.S. backed forces are Kurds and Arabs fighting under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). They captured the oil field by charging 60 miles through the desert and launching a surprise attack against ISIS. The
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July 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition struck the terrorist group 37 times on July 4. So reports the Daily Caller, citing a statement by Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR). The majority of the strikes took place in Syria, in support of the Syrian Democratic Force’s (SDF) push on ISIS’s capital of Raqqa. They hit ISIS oil infrastructure, as well as 17 fighting positions in or near Raqqa. Backed by U.S. air strikes the
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June 7, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that gunmen stormed two major sites in Tehran today. They killed at least 12 people and wounded another 42 in gunfire and suicide blasts in parliament and at the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini (the Post calls this a “revered shrine”). ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks. According to the Post, this is the first serious terrorist attack in Iran. Past attacks have been confined to minor
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April 13, 2017 — John Hinderaker
One of the liberal media’s themes these days is that President Trump has changed his position on a variety of issues. I think this is about 25% true and 75% false. What is most notable, I think, is how strongly Trump has moved to fulfill his campaign promises. One of many areas where President Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do is the war against ISIS. On
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