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Last week the State Department's top lawyer, Brian Egan, gave an important but underreported speech that marked the final stage of the Obama administration’s normalization of once-controversial Bush-era doctrines about the conduct of war. Before a gathering of geeky international law-loving lawyers in Washington, D.C., Egan announced the Obama administration's official embrace of the same preemption doctrine that justified the invasion of Iraq. Though the contexts for the Obama and Bush preemption principles differ, the principle is the same. But it is the Obama team's articulation of the principle that will be influential. Future presidents who want to use force...

More U.S. military personnel have been sent to Iraq and Syria. Trainers, Special Forces, and airstrikes haven't been enough. The administration continues its slow progression to renewed ground combat. President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize grows more tarnished by the day. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter informed Congress last month that a "specialized expeditionary targeting force" would be sent to Iraq on top of the 3500 personnel already there, with the authority to operate in Syria too. The president's promise not to commit "boots on the ground" already was trampled underfoot in October, when a Delta Force soldier was killed while...

Most Iraqis, be they civilians, military personnel, or government officials, do not trust Americans. At a base level, that makes all kinds of sense. After all, the US did launch what amounted to a unilateral invasion of the country just a little over a decade ago, and when it was all said and done, a dictator was deposed but it's not entirely clear that Iraqis are better off for it. ISIS controls key cities including the Mosul, the country's second largest, and security is a daily concern for the populace. The Americans are still seen - rightly - as occupiers,...

But the sheik’s fortunes began to decline after the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011. Many of the Anbari fighters, known as the Sons of Iraq, were never paid by the Iraqi government, then led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. What’s more, Sheik Ahmad told me in 2012 that his contacts with the U.S. government stopped after the last troops pulled out. The sheik still publicly aligned himself with Maliki and the central government, even thought that government was failing to provide basic security in western Iraq. These failures by the Baghdad government created the conditions for the...

The White House is moving to arm Iraq’s tribal and religious militias. But these forces hate the Baghdad government almost as much as they hate ISIS. President Obama’s decision to send an additional 450 troops to Iraq is the latest example of a strategy mired in double paradox. The U.S. wants to save a unified Iraq—by strengthening the ethnic and religious militias that could tear the country apart. And to pull it off, Washington is counting on the cooperation of groups divided by a chasm of suspicion. In its announcement Wednesday, the Obama administration said the additional American troops are...

After the pro-Western government of China was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China, bitter recriminations in Washington led to the question: “Who lost China?” China was, of course, never ours to lose, though it might be legitimate to ask if a different American policy toward China could have led to a different outcome. In more recent years, however, Iraq was in fact ours to lose, after U.S. troops vanquished Saddam Hussein’s army and took over the country. Today, we seem to be in the process of losing Iraq, if...

The United States has delivered 2,000 AT-4 anti-tank weapons destined for Iraq, sending 1,000 directly to the government in Baghdad, with the U.S.-led coalition holding the other half in the region for training Iraqis and for future contingencies, a U.S. defence official told Reuters on Monday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the delivery took place over the past several days. The official did not provide further details.

Iraqi forces have seized from Islamic State militants a string of hamlets and villages in the dust-choked desert southeast of Ramadi... But the yellow-and-green flags that line the sides of the newly secured roads and flutter from rooftops leave no doubt as to who is leading the fighting here: Kitaeb Hezbollah, a Shiite militia designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Iraq’s two main allies — Iran and the United States — have vied for influence over Iraq’s battle to retake ground from Islamic State militants in the past year. While Iranian-linked Shiite militias have spearheaded the fight elsewhere,...

In 2008 we elected a President that promised to transform the world. Well he has. And the results are dangerous at best. The Middle East is now a cauldron of flame and death for Christians and Muslims alike. It was Colin Powell who said “if you break it, you fix it.” Obama has broken it, but there is little chance he’ll fix it because he sees nothing wrong. Of course he blames others, Bush most of all. Has anyone ever heard Obama blame Carter, who with Zbigniew Brzezinski let the Iranian Revolution play out with the same indifference to results...

The White House on Thursday, in no uncertain terms, put the onus on the Iraqis to fight and defeat the Islamic State -- even as a new report warned foreign fighters are flocking to the battlefield at a historic and dangerous pace. "The United States is not going to be responsible for securing the security situation inside of Iraq," Press Secretary Josh Earnest told Fox News. Earnest defended the administration's strategy, amid growing concerns about gains made by ISIS fighters in both Iraq and Syria. Earnest said the effort would take a "sustained commitment," but stressed that the U.S. will...

US Vice President Joe Biden on Monday sought to end an embarrassing rift between Washington and Baghdad after Pentagon boss Ashton Carter blamed Iraqi forces for the fall of Ramadi. The White House said Biden called Iraqi's prime minister Haider al-Abadi, just hours after the US Defense Secretary's suggested the Islamic State group won control of the city because "Iraqi forces showed no will to fight," according to AFP. Biden "recognized the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces over the past eighteen months in Ramadi and elsewhere," the White House said. As well as rowing back Carter's comments, Biden...

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” – W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” Things are starting to collapse, abroad and at home. We all sense it, even as we bicker over who caused it and why. ISIS took Ramadi last week. That city once was a Bastogne to the brave Americans who surged to save it in 2007 and 2008. ISIS, once known at the White House as the “Jayvees,” were certainly “on the run” — right into the middle of that strategically important city. On a smaller scale, ISIS is...

From ISIS at Ramadi to riots at home, nothing is going right. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” – W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” Things are starting to collapse, abroad and at home. We all sense it, even as we bicker over who caused it and why. ISIS took Ramadi last week. That city once was a Bastogne to the brave Americans who surged to save it in 2007 and 2008. ISIS, once known at the White House as the “Jayvees,” were certainly “on the run” — right into the...

We all know Bush’s Iraq War, but we don’t know much about Obama’s Iraq War. Republicans fight wars. Democrats engage in police actions, impose No-Fly Zones and provide security for humanitarian missions. They don’t do anything as vulgar as fight wars. That would be warmongering.

Doing her best impression of Baghdad Bob, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf gave the Iraqi army props following the fall of Ramadi. Never mind that Iraqi forces cut and ran, surrendering the city to Islamic State militants. “The Iraqi security forces have held their lines on the outside of the city,” Harf told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Wednesday.

Ramadi falls. The Iraqi army flees. The great 60-nation anti-Islamic State coalition so grandly proclaimed by the Obama administration is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s the defense minister of Iran who flies into Baghdad, an unsubtle demonstration of who’s in charge — while the U.S. air campaign proves futile and America’s alleged strategy for combating the Islamic State is in free fall. It gets worse. The Gulf States’ top leaders, betrayed and bitter, ostentatiously boycott President Obama’s failed Camp David summit. “We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” laments Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief....

Obama on Fall of Ramadi: “Hey, We’re Winning in Shiite Areas”Posted By Daniel Greenfield On May 21, 2015 @ 1:32 pm In The Point | 12 Comments [1]And you know by “we”, he means Iran.There’s a pattern to Obama’s rhetoric after a disaster. His crisis management rhetoric after the fall of Ramadi follows the predictable blueprint. Step 1. Disavow Responsibility“There’s no doubt there was a tactical setback, although Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time, primarily because these are not Iraqi security forces that we have trained or reinforced.” Step 2. Mention All the Parts of Iraq Not Taken Over...

Ramadi falls. The Iraqi army flees. The great 60-nation anti–Islamic State coalition so grandly proclaimed by the Obama administration is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s the defense minister of Iran who flies into Baghdad, an unsubtle demonstration of who’s in charge — while the U.S. air campaign proves futile and America’s alleged strategy for combating the Islamic State is in free fall. It gets worse. The Gulf States’ top leaders, betrayed and bitter, ostentatiously boycott President Obama’s failed Camp David summit. “We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” laments Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief....

Islamic State militants overran one of the last remaining districts held by government forces in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday and besieged a key army base on the edge of the western provincial capital, security sources said. The militants seized most of Ramadi on Friday, planting their black flag on the local government headquarters in the center of the city, but a contingent of Iraqi special forces was holding out in the Malaab neighborhood. Those forces retreated on Sunday to an area east of the city after suffering heavy casualties, security sources said, bringing Ramadi to the brink...

SANLIURFA, Turkey — When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join the Islamic State, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe. Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis who moved in and out of the battlefield in Syria. When Abu Hamza disagreed with fellow commanders at an Islamic State meeting last year, he said, he was placed under arrest on the orders of a masked Iraqi man who had sat silently through...