64 Items

Fighters from the Women's Protection Units hold a victory celebration in Paradise Square in Raqqa, Syria on Thursday, October 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Gabriel Chaim)

AP Photo/Gabriel Chaim

Analysis & Opinions - The Atlantic

Ash Carter: Behind the Plan to Defeat ISIS

| Oct. 31, 2017

On December 11, 2016, just before my time as secretary of defense ended, I stepped off a C-130 transport plane onto a cold and dusty patch of northern Iraq that had been on my mind for more than a year: an Iraqi military airfield called Qayyarah West. Q-West was a talisman of progress on one of the defining issues of my service, the fight to defeat ISIS. A year before, General Joe Dunford and I had briefed President Obama on a plan to step up the fight against ISIS.

Media Office of Iraqi Prime Minister

Media Office of Iraqi Prime Minister

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

How to Make the Islamic State’s Defeat Last

| July 12, 2017

"The liberation of Mosul and the inevitable, approaching liberation of Raqqa in Syria will not be the end of the Islamic State and its evil ideology. But they crush the group’s pretense to having an actual “state” based upon it. As its surviving leaders scurry to the corners of the desert, no longer can they claim to head a winning movement. Their defeat diminishes the inspiration for violent extremists, or simply lost souls on social media, to attack Americans and our friends. This is a necessary step forward in combating terrorism. Americans are safer for it."