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Last night, Barack Obama promised America that he would take the fight to ISIS/ISIL, using a four-pronged strategy that he laid out in his much-anticipated war speech. In each phase of this strategy, Obama insisted, we would be “joined by a broad coalition of partners,” emphases mine: Obama ISIS Speech [FULL] 9/10/14: Outlining a Battle Plan | The New York Times First, we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists. Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions, so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces...

Last night, Barack Obama promised America that he would take the fight to ISIS/ISIL, using a four-pronged strategy that he laid out in his much-anticipated war speech. In each phase of this strategy, Obama insisted, we would be “joined by a broad coalition of partners,” emphases mine: First, we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists. Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions, so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on offense. Moreover, I have made it clear that we will hunt...

Russia has warned that US air strikes against militants in Syria would be a "gross violation" of international law. A Russian foreign ministry spokesman said any such action, without the backing of the UN, would be "an act of aggression". It comes as US Secretary of State John Kerry meets Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia to try to build a coalition against Islamic State (IS) militants. President Obama has threatened action against IS in Syria as well as Iraq. IS controls large parts of Syria and Iraq after a rapid military advance. In a speech outlining his strategy, Mr Obama...

President Obama just announced that he is bringing a counter-terrorism strategy to an insurgency fight. He was at pains to repeat the phrase “counter-terror” four times in a short speech. Noting that ISIL is not a state (partly because the international community thankfully does not recognize it), he declared, “ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.” Neither of those sentences, unfortunately, is true. ISIL is an insurgent group that controls enormous territory in Iraq and Syria that it governs. It maneuvers conventional light...

IS Militants banning cigarette in Mosul News / World IS Punishes Cigarette Traders in Mosul 11.09.2014 Mahnaz RamazanBasNews, Erbil  Islamic State militants in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have vowed to punish anyone who sells cigarettes.   The Sunni militant group had already set out a number of laws in their wathiqat al-madina (charter of the city) that they presented to the people of Mosul back in early June.   Those who steal are punished by having their hands chopped off. The five daily prayers of Islam are mandatory for everyone. Drugs, alcohol and cigarettes are forbidden, as...

My take on the president's remarks addressing the ISIS threat, a primetime do-over of his "no strategy" gaffe: (1) President Obama is right to identify ISIS as a brutal and dangerous terrorist fighting force that threatens the region, the West, and the United States.  He is right to ramp up our efforts to "degrade and ultimately destroy" this group.  They are evil, fanatical butchers who only understand force, and must be stopped.  Obama asserted that ISIS is neither Islamic nor a state -- but they absolutely act in the name of Islam (as do many terrorist groups), and their goal is to establish and expand an...

When it comes to foreign policy, a presidential speech is measured by two things: strategic tone and strategic substance. On the first count, President Obama’s ISIS address was largely successful. Centering in passionate emotion, the president outlined the moral abhorrence that defines ISIS. He listed the group’s atrocities, in contrast with American humanitarianism. The president was also wise to draw America’s attention to the gratitude of the Yazidi civilians who were saved by U.S. naval aviators. Understandably, many Americans are irritated by what they regard as the thanklessness of many military operations abroad. But the speech was weakened by its...

"Boast not thyself of tomorrow; For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." Proverbs 27:1. President Obama is a great leader. Really. Just ask him. Seemingly ignored in the coverage of the president's ISIS speech last night was the moment when President Obama claimed that the ISIS threat was being met with "strength and resolve," then boasted that his strategy—and by extension he himself—represented "American leadership at its best." Can anyone imagine truly great American leaders--from Washington to Lincoln to Reagan--feeling the need to brag about "strength and resolve" and claim that their plans represented "American leadership at...

The hundreds of Germans who have traveled to Syria to join jihadi groups are largely young, male and failed at school and in their careers, according to a report from the security services. The report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which has been seen by the Berliner Morgenpost, showed that of the 378 German Islamists who have headed to Syria since mid-2012 just one in four finished high school. Six percent finished post-school training and two percent went into further education. Almost 90 percent of those who have traveled to Syria are men. The youngest...

Germany is not ruling out military action against Islamic extremists Isis in Syria, following US President Barack Obama’s announcement that airstrikes against the terror group will be expanded into the Middle Eastern country. “I won't rule out [German participation] in these airstrikes,” Philipp Mißfelder, foreign affairs spokesman in the Bundestag for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian-Democratic (CDU) party, said on Thursday morning. […] Germany might also send units to take part in aerial surveillance and allow flights over its territory to and from the conflict zone, Mißfelder said, but added that deployment of ground troops “from the West as a whole”...

President Barack Obama tried Tuesday to sell a military intervention he never wanted to an American public that opposes it, telling the nation that he needed authorization to attack Syria as leverage in a newly emerged diplomatic opening from Russia. Calling the United States "the anchor of global security," Obama offered moral, political and strategic arguments for being ready to launch limited military strikes while trying to negotiate a diplomatic solution to what he called Syria's violation of a global ban on chemical weapons. "Our ideals and principles, as well as our national security, are at stake in Syria, along...

Wednesday in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, former Vice President Dick Cheney said our Israeli and Arabs allies in the Middle East no longer trust the United States and "deeply believe" the "Untied States has been supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood" because of the way "the United States has conducted itself over the last few years."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Struggling Syrian rebels that President Barack Obama once derided as "former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth" now form a key pillar of the U.S. leader's strategy to beat back the militant insurgency known as Islamic State. For over three years, Obama has kept the so-called moderate rebels at arm's length. While giving verbal and limited material support, he and his spokesmen often said publicly that adding more weaponry to the civil war would only make things worse. Now Obama is taking a different tack as he sets out his strategy to defeat the Syrian-based Islamic State,...

Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists... [] American officials have been trying to understand why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition... Those problems were central concerns for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, when he traveled secretly to Turkey last month, officials said. [] One Middle Eastern diplomat who has dealt extensively with the C.I.A. on the issue said that Mr. Petraeus’s goal...

Fox News is reporting that President Obama, according to a White House aide, intends to arm the, eh, “moderate” Syrian rebels so as to use them as ground troops should the U.S. conduct airstrikes within Syria: One year to the day since addressing the American people about possible strikes against the Assad regime in Syria over its chemical weapons attack, President Obama is coming back to the American people with a drastically different — and strategically complex — plan to combat a drastically different enemy. The president, when he speaks from the White House Wednesday night, is expected to...

It appears that, in a rush to get his strategy out the door, President Obama overlooked his key "do nothing stupid" foreign policy plan. OBAMA SAID TO SEEK CONGRESS AUTHORITY TO ARM SYRIAN REBELS So - to be clear - the strategy to defeat ISIS is to arm more of the same "rebels" that ultimately split off and became, well, ISIS? Perhaps it's better if Obama sticks to his original "no strategy" plan after all... if only for the people, not so much the military-industrial complex of course.*  *  *Remember Those ‘Moderate’ Syrian Rebels That The U.S. Armed? ISIS...

President Obama told congressional leaders in a meeting Tuesday that he has the authority to launch broader attacks against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, downplaying the prospect of a Capitol Hill vote on his military plan ahead of his prime-time address to the nation Wednesday night. Obama “told the leaders that he has the authority he needs to take action against [the Islamic State] in accordance with the mission he will lay out in his address tomorrow,” the White House said in a readout of the meeting that included Obama, Vice President Joe Biden; House Speaker John Boehner,...

US President Barack Obama says he has the “legal authority” to order US airstrikes on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) forces in Syria, according to sources present at a dinner with foreign policy experts at the White House on Monday. Obama “thinks he has the legal authority he needs” to expand action in Iraq and Syria under the War Powers Act, according to Jane Harman, the president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who told the Washington Post about the dinner. Another attendee of the dinner, former undersecretary of defense for policy Michèle Flournoy, told the paper Obama...

"Do you have a strategy now, Mr. President?" asked the cover of the Daily News next to a photo of the second American journalist to be beheaded by the terrorist group ISIS. The impulse to "do something" to counter such evil is strong. But why do we assume that government doing something is always an improvement over government doing nothing? In domestic policy, encouraging government to act leads to nonsense like the "stimulus spending" that created boondoggles such as Cash for Clunkers. Our foreign policy record isn't much better, despite big successes such as stopping Hitler. Consider the unintended consequences...

Free Syrian Army commanders around Arsal vehemently deny any involvement in recent clashes with the Lebanese security forces, but admit to cooperating with Islamist groups in military operations along the Syrian-Lebanese border. Often at odds on the Syrian battlefields, the FSA, Nusra Front and ISIS have entered a tenuous allegiance of convenience to fight Assad-aligned forces in the badlands surrounding Arsal. “We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in ... Qalamoun,” said Bassel Idriss, the commander of an FSA-aligned rebel brigade. “We have reached a point where we have to...