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Iraq
The West's Gaza
2014-08-14
h/t Instapundit
The hawks (including me) were wrong about a lot, but some got one thing right. It's going to be a long war.

...When new threats emerged, the White House dismissed them with the whitewash that "core al-Qaeda" was "on the run." All pretenders to al-Qaeda's mantle were little more than a "jayvee" squad, as Obama put it. It's okay to slumber again was the message.

One jayvee squad -- the self-styled Islamic State formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS -- now controls the territorial equivalent of Britain and is one of the best-equipped and ideologically committed military forces in the Middle East. Everyday jihadis -- many with Western passports -- enlist in the struggle to create a global caliphate while the "Muslim street" from Turkey to Saudi Arabia follows the Islamic State like a sports team.

...No one in the West wants a generational struggle with jihadism any more than Israel wants perpetual war with Hamas in Gaza. The problem is the enemy always gets a vote. It just may be that the Middle East will become the West's Gaza. And, so far, nobody has a good answer for what to do about it.
Posted by:g(r)omgoru

#1  The Junior Varsity will win if the other side doesn't show up.
Posted by: Bunyip   2014-08-14 05:14  

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