SIL represents the embodiment of evil in the modern world, and it mustn’t be allowed to establish a foothold from which to plot attacks against the United States or to inspire so-called lone wolf sympathizers to do so. But the U.S.-led effort to “degrade and ultimately defeat” ISIL has shown underwhelming results.
The effort’s seemingly deliberate pace is of little comfort to those being raped, shot and beheaded while the West figures out how to take on a group that has attracted an estimated 20,000 fanatical foreign fighters and defied predictions that it would never get this far.
It’s almost as if Obama doesn’t really want to stop them.