Fighting Islamic State: The long haul
WHEN Barack Obama spoke to the American public on September 10th, his words had a bearing on more than just Islamic State (IS). His scheme to deal with the “cancer” of IS, the gravest terrorist threat since al-Qaeda, will work only if the Middle East can begin to overcome the chaos that has engulfed it. […]WHEN Barack Obama spoke to the American public on September 10th, his words had a bearing on more than just Islamic State (IS). His scheme to deal with the “cancer” of IS, the gravest terrorist threat since al-Qaeda, will work only if the Middle East can begin to overcome the chaos that has engulfed it. Equally, America can act as the leader of an enduring coalition against IS only if it can recover some of the status it has lost during years of retrenchment in foreign policy. What the president called “American leadership at its best” is thus both a fight against terrorism and a riposte to those who doubt American power.
