The U.S. Is Permanently Occupying Northern Syria, and That’s Trouble

by Reese Erlich When President Barack Obama started bombing Syria in 2014, he enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington, D.C. Americans were appalled by the atrocities of the Islamic State, which had massacred Yazidis, and seized swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq.… Continue Reading

Kurdish Rivalries Create New Challenges for Islamic State Fight

by Robert Olson and Derek Davison The U.S.-led anti-Islamic State (ISIS or IS) coalition is being challenged by a new but fairly predictable problem. Tensions between the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), along with its Syrian affiliate, the Democratic Union… Continue Reading

Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Wrong Wars

by James A. Russell The apparent beheading of American journalist James Foley adds a particularly gruesome and tragic twist to the sports event-like reporting of our attempts to thwart the advances of the Islamic State in Iraq over the last… Continue Reading