Syria
Syria’s civil war began in 2012. After several years and hundreds of thousands of lives lost, it still hasn’t ended and actually may have gotten more complex.
“The Islamic State is facing perhaps its most serious symbolic and meaningful threat since it declared itself a caliphate almost one year ago.”
“What separates us from ISIS? Because that’s what they do, they go around and tear down history in those nations that they’ve conquered.”
Are today’s three-continent attacks the beginning of a new era in terrorism?
Obama’s defense secretary suggested the country might have to be split apart into smaller countries.
Foreign policy is one area where Sanders hasn’t taken quite as independent of a course.
Billionaire real estate tycoon and TV personality Donald Trump has announced his presidential candidacy. Here’s where the mogul stands on the issues, from economics to the environment.
Seriously.
The footage is unbelievable — literally.
This isn’t combat troops. But it’s still a big deal.
The quotation about the US posture toward ISIS is making its way around the web: “We don’t yet have a complete strategy.” It may be true, but that’s not really what President Obama said.
This is why al-Qaeda and ISIS fight — and why they’re such a threat to today’s Middle East.
The presidential candidate’s bizarre Iraq quote, explained.
Republican presidential candidates are telling you the world is super-scary. Don’t believe them.
Perennial wannabe presidential candidate Donald Trump has been roundly mocked for claiming he has a “foolproof” secret plan to defeat ISIS. Here’s a satirical imagining of how he would respond to his critics.
Bush didn’t cause the Arab Spring, or the civil wars that came in its wake. But his policies made that chaos much worse — and left the US without much in the way of good options for dealing with them.
No, Ash Carter, ISIS’s victory in Ramadi wasn’t about Iraqis lacking “the will to fight.”
“I wish the filming worked when I killed him.”
Is the administration really committed to implementing its own plan?
Neo-cons are back, pushing for a more aggressive US response to ISIS. That’s putting leading presidential candidates in a bind.
Bin Laden’s newly released private documents reveal a ton about al-Qaeda (and ISIS) that you probably don’t know.
Bin Laden’s approach to the Arab Spring got something important wrong — and ISIS benefited from his mistake.
ISIS has a lot of money, much of which it’s spending smartly. But it has a real problem: it’s terrible at actually governing the territory it controls.
The people are all gone.
Ramadi is the provincial capital of Anbar, a western Iraqi province — and ISIS just took control of it. Here’s what that victory tells us about the rest of the war.
Jeb Bush’s stumbles on Iraq reveal some much deeper flaws in his candidacy.
An administration official called it the first “direct action” ground raid in Syria.
Basil Ramadan’s heartbreaking story shows just how terrible life under ISIS gets.
Obviously, demonstrably, totally false.
Russian leaders are convinced the US and Iran are headed for rapprochement.
Hint: it’s not what you think.
This approach that didn’t work out so well for Bush when he tried in Iraq.
How Saddam-era secular Iraqi officials designed the blueprint for the jihadist group that became the Islamic State.
ISIS is still a ruthless group, but it no longer has the territorial advantage it has enjoyed for the past 9 months.
How Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp became “the deepest circle of hell.”
Clinton’s approach to foreign policy is much more aggressive than that of many in her party. But it’s the Democrats, not Clinton, who will change if she wins the nomination.
Brookings scholar Will McCants explains ISIS’s disturbing preoccupation with the end times — and how it affects the way they fight.
But let’s not break out the champagne just yet.
Why the Obama administration kept insisting that Yemen was a model counterterrorism operation, even after the country had collapsed into a civil war that could benefit al Qaeda.