ISIS
January 21, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that Norway’s prime minister has lost her parliamentary majority because one of the parties in her coalition withdrew in protest over the repatriation of a suspected ISIS member from a Syrian camp. The Prime Minister, Erna Solberg of the Conservative Party, says she will try to govern with a minority coalition. The party in question is the Progress Party which the Post describes as “right wing.”
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October 28, 2019 — John Hinderaker
The London Times is a liberal and virulently anti-Trump newspaper. But its obituary of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stands in sharp contrast to the ridiculous product of the Washington Post, which we and pretty much everyone else have ridiculed. The London Times obituary is a good reminder of how evil al-Baghdadi was. It begins: The catalogue of car bombs, shooting and suicide attacks wreaked over recent years in the name of
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October 27, 2019 — John Hinderaker
As Scott noted a little while ago, the Washington Post has made a fool of itself with its obituary for al-Baghdadi. The Post’s headline for its obituary–its second attempt, apparently–was “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48.” That prompted mockery across the internet: Adolf Hitler, Austrian vegan activist and landscape painter, dies at 56https://t.co/szPOVa5Sae — David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 27, 2019 “John Wayne
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October 27, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The AP reports at the top of its long story: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of the Islamic State group who presided over its global jihad and became arguably the world’s most wanted man, is believed dead after being targeted by a U.S. military raid in Syria. A U.S. official told The Associated Press late Saturday that al-Baghdadi was targeted in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. The official said confirmation
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October 24, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, President Trump spoke about the cease-fire in northeastern Syria. He declared it a major diplomatic victory for the administration. Trump noted that critics had “scorned” him for removing U.S. troops from areas controlled by the U.S. and our Kurdish allies. “Now,” claimed Trump, “people are saying ‘Wow, what a great outcome — congratulations.'” Most of Trump’s critics aren’t saying this, though. They complain that Trump has opened the door
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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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