They say we are at war.

What does war look like?

Our enemy is violent Islamic extremism. He is Daesh. He is al-Qaeda. The enemy consists of all groups and adherents of violent Islamic extremism. Our enemy is the “global jihad” movement inspired by the 9/11 attack. They seek to impose an aberrant ideology on the world. For Daesh and their allies, coexistence with their enemies is unimaginable. Compromise is impossible. Daesh has adopted the mindset of an apocalyptic cult group.

The nature and significance of the threat flows from the fact that ISIS is—all at the same time—a terrorist group, a state, and a revolutionary political movement. We have not faced an adversary like it before.

I was an intelligence officer for 33 years. When intelligence officers write or brief, they start with the bottom line. Here it is: ISIS poses a major threat to the US and to US interests abroad and that threat is growing every day.

"The United States should have two goals in Syria. First, bring order to those parts of the country that the Islamic State does not control. Second, strive to build a coalition of forces that can contain the Islamic State and eventually replace it. Russia's 'intrusion' could offer a chance to achieve both. This means setting aside American prejudices and heated political rhetoric. Russia isn't an intruder in Syria; it has been involved there for decades, just as America has been involved throughout the Middle East for more than 60 years. Mr. Assad is Russia's protégé, and Syria is an operations base for the Russian military."

"..[T]he orchestrated U.S. government announcements about the documents, computers and other financial materials that were captured in the raid have got to make a lot of ISIS leaders very nervous. And it is likely to make members of ISIS who have avoided the violence of the battlefield — men like Sayyaf — believe that not even an office job is safe."

ISTANBUL

The squabbling factions that make up the Syrian “moderate opposition” should get their act together. But so should the foreign nations — such as the United States, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan — that have been funding the chaotic melange of fighters inside Syria. These foreign machinations helped open the door for the terrorist Islamic State group to threaten the region.

As the threat posed by the Islamic State (IS) grows greater and ever more sinister, Saudi Arabia stands at the front line of the battle against these extremists. Saudi Arabia is adamant that it has unique knowledge, expertise, and legitimacy to effectively lead the effort to defeat IS. The country’s guardianship of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina underpins Saudi credibility in pushing back against the misguided interpretation of the Islamic faith that IS is now propagating in the heart of the Arab world.

After the United States and a five-member Arab coalition launched the first strikes against ISIL, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen offered four preliminary observations:

1. We should be conservative in assessing impact of the strikes.

2. It will be crucial to keep the Arab coalition directly involved as U.S. proceeds deeper into this campaign.

3. U.S. deployment of technological innovations that have been achieved over a decade of war may be coming together as a whole that is greater than the parts, reminiscent of the novel tactics the U.S. successfully waged to topple the Taliban in the fall of 2001.

4. In order for the re-assertion of U.S. and allied military power in the Middle East to be successful in the long term, U.S. strategy must take into account two problems that must be managed, each with its own distinct characteristics

WASHINGTON — A new fault line has emerged in Middle Eastern politics, one that will have profound implications for America’s foreign policy in the region. This rift is not defined by those who support or oppose the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or by conflict between Sunnis and Shiites and the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is characterized by a fundamental division between Islamists and non-Islamists.

We don’t have a strategy yet.” With those words, President Obama seems to have encapsulated everything that his critics have been alleging for months: that he’s improvising, halting and altogether slow to react to the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, the brutal terrorist group that has seized much of Iraq and Syria and on Tuesday claimed to have beheaded a second American journalist, Steven Sotloff. And certainly, the president’s detractors have pounced on his poorly chosen word