#324451
The Gold Star father’s claims that he is unable to travel to Canada because of US persecution likely untrue.
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#324452
The study found that ineffective advertising, including messages “devoid of policy discussions,” likely played a role in Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump.
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#324453
Students from one Iowan high school recently apologized to the administrators of another Iowan high school when people found their choice of red, white and blue attire offensive. Supporters of the
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#324454
"Do you think if this was a conservative host, do you think the left would've called for them to step down or resign?"
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#324455
A man pretended to sexually assault the Fearless Girl statue on Wall Street.
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#324456
A COUPLE have been arrested for having sex before marriage after police found out the woman was pregnant ? with their family saying: ?The only thing they did wrong was fall in love̶…
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#324457
Since the introduction of the GOP House?s Obamacare replacement, the American Health Care Act, I?ve read and listened to dozens (perhaps hundreds) of arguments for and against it by con…
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#324458
Feminist use to be furious at the idea of a male forcing them to wear a veil, now they're advocating it. More Videos: https://www.verydicey.com Twitter: http...
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#324459
Ginger McQueen, a senior editor for the Beltway Times bravely crashed an ACLU meeting and began lecturing about disinformation and media bias. The freedom of...
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#324460

The ISIS Endgame

Submitted 7 years ago by ActRight Community

The Islamic Caliphate announced in 2014 by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, is approaching the end of its short and terrible life. Iraqi forces, supported by Americans, have reclaimed the eastern half of Mosul and are retaking the western one. Kurdish militias in Syria, also backed by the United States, are homing in on the ISIS capital of Raqqa. Word came this week that a contingent of Marines has been deployed in Syria to position heavy artillery for the fight ahead. “We expect that within a few weeks there will be a siege of the city,” a militia spokesman tells Reuters. ISIS doesn’t have a chance. American air and ground forces, working with local proxies, are about to terminate its existence as a state. “Crushed,” to paraphrase President Trump. A just — and popular — cause. But that won’t be the end. Recent events suggest that the military defeat of ISIS is just the beginning of a renewed American involvement in Iraq and Syria. And whether the American public and president are prepared for or willing to accept the probable costs of such involvement is unknown. That is reason for concern. To glimpse the future, look at the city of Manbij in northeast Syria. Humvees and Strykers flying the American flag have appeared there in recent days. The mission? Not to defeat ISIS. Our proxies kicked them out last year. What we are doing in Manbij is something altogether different from a military assault: a “deterrence and reassurance” operation meant to dissuade rival factions from massacring one another. If you can’t remember when President Obama or President Trump called for such an operation, that’s because they never did. And there’s a twist. One of the factions we are trying to intimidate is none other than the army of Turkey, a NATO member and purported ally. Turkey moved in on Manbij not because of ISIS but because of the Kurds. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish autocrat, opposes one of our Kurdish proxies. He says the YPG is the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, which has conducted an insurgency against his government for decades. Yet the YPG is also the most effective indigenous anti-ISIS force on the ground. We need it to take Raqqa. Things get even more complicated. Also in Manbij are the Russians, who are helping units of the Syrian army police a group of villages. The Kurds invited them, too, presumably as a separate hedge against Turkey. To keep score: The Americans, the Russians, the Turks, the Kurds, and the Syrians are all converging on an impoverished city in the middle of nowhere that has no strategic importance to the United States. One needn’t have read The Guns of August to fret about the risks of miscalculation and misinterpretation. Which is why, on Tuesday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford, met with his Russian and Turkish counterparts. “One American official described the situation around Manbij as a potential tinderbox,” reports the New York Times. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. U.S. intervention in Syria is following a pattern that has ended in regret. Having entered the conflict to pursue the narrow aim of destroying ISIS, we are likely to assume much more abstract and open-ended responsibilities once our immediate goal has been achieved. Similar vague and unspecific policies led to Americans being killed in Lebanon in 1983 and in Somalia a decade later. Where peacekeeping has been successful, as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the mission was clear from the beginning, authorized by all parties by treaty, and adequately resourced — tens of thousands of troops, most of them American. None of these conditions apply today. It is one thing to maintain a presence in Iraq, a country whose fate seems to be entangled with our own. It is another to expand our involvement in Syria with little public rationale or debate. At the very least Congress deserves an opportunity to take up the issue. But don’t get your hopes up. The GOP Congress resisted taking ownership of the war in Syria when the president was a Democrat. There is little reason to think it will do so now when the president is a Republican. What happens the day after Raqqa falls? Should American troops remain in Syria once ISIS has been defeated, and if so for what purpose? Will there be clear lines of authority between CENTCOM and SOCOM? Just what is America’s position on the Kurds — are we for an independent Kurdistan, and if so are we prepared to resist Turkish and Iraqi attempts to quash it? Who is making key military and diplomatic decisions: the president, the secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or the combatant commanders? The president is charged with answering such questions. And he must be ready to defend his answers. To do otherwise risks complacency and drift. This is an unstable and murky situation. And it could end, as so often happens, in lost lives, reduced credibility, and an even wider conflict. A contributor to The Weekly Standard likes to tell the following story: Covering the Lebanese civil war in 1983, he visited an outpost of U.S. Marines. They came under sniper fire from one militia. Then another militia started shooting. Then the Syrians joined in. At which point a lance corporal turned to him and said, “Sir, never get involved in a five-sided argument.” — Matthew Continetti is the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, where this column first appeared. © 2017 All rights reserved
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#324461
Stung by recent election defeats, Democrats are leading the charge to lower the voting age to 17, with a little help from liberal billionaire George Soros.
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#324462
President Trump has told Republican leaders that he's prepared to play hardball with congressional conservatives to pass the GOP healthcare bill, including by supporting the 2018 primary challengers of any Republican who votes against the bill. Sources told the Washington Examiner that Trump made that threat in a White House meeting on Tuesday with House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and other members of the House GOP whip team that helps line up votes. Trump's threat is one that could resonate. Most of the Republicans who oppose the GOP's American Health Care Act represent ruby red districts that strongly support Trump and his agenda. Therefore, they could be the most susceptible to a midterm primary challenge, especially if Trump tells those voters that their member of Congress is blocking him from fulfilling his promise to repeal President Obama's healthcare law.
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#324463
According to sources close to the New York Post: "Gov. Cuomo has hired two Florida fundraisers, a sign he’s building a national network to launch a presidential bid." The two consultants — one is former Hillary Clinton money man Jon Adrabi — will help plan events and build relationships with Democratic donors in the key swing state, sources said.
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#324464
A Jordanian soldier who killed seven Israeli schoolgirls in a 1997 shooting rampage was unrepentant after his release from prison Sunday, lashing out at Israelis with harshly derogatory remarks.
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#324465
White House press secretary Sean Spicer was accosted while shopping at an Apple store in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. How does it feel to work for a fascist? Have you helped with the Russia stuff? Are you a criminal as well? Have you committed treason too, just like the president? a woman filming Spicer asks. Asking @PressSec questions in Apple Store since he doesn't like the press. https://t.co/l493z2gG4x— Shree (@shreec) March 11, 2017
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#324466
Social Justice Warriors have placed their crosshairs on the ever-triggering scale—which makes perfect sense, since scales inform us of objective facts; and we all know how the left feels about those.
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#324467
A wave a bills dealing with campus sexual assault have been introduced or moved forward in 2017, most of them bad.
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#324468
In an interview with 'Face The Nation' host John Dickerson, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, says the House Republicans' healthcare bill will not pass through the Senate. "If we get what we got from Ryan - Obamacare light - he will not get the votes." "I think there is a separation between the two," Paul said about President Trump and Speaker Ryan. "I have talked to the president, I think, three times on Obamacare. And I hear from him that he is willing to negotiate. You know what I hear from Paul Ryan? It is a binary choice, young man. And -- but what does a binary choice mean? His way or the highway. There are two choices, according to him. SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: I think it is basically Obamacare-lite. Keeps the subsidies, keeps the taxes for a year, then keeps the Cadillac tax forever, the tax on good insurance. Keeps the individual mandate, interestingly. You know, Republicans have complained for years, saying we didn't like the government was going to make you pay a penalty. Well, now instead of paying the penalty to the government, you pay the penalty to the insurance industry. There's also bailouts for the insurance industries. The one primary thing that is wrong with Obamacare that is most visible to everybody is that premiums are rising through the roof, soaring in the individual market. That will happen under the Ryan plan as well, because they do nothing to fix the fundamental problem... DICKERSON: You say that Speaker Ryan is pulling the wool over the eyes of the president. Really, pulling the wool? PAUL: I think there is a separation between the two. I have talked to the president, I think, three times on Obamacare. And I hear from him that he is willing to negotiate. You know what I hear from Paul Ryan? It is a binary choice, young man. And -- but what does a binary choice mean? His way or the highway. There are two choices, according to him. DICKERSON: Well, I think his argument would be, the binary choice, you do this now through reconciliation, a Senate process that is kind of a pain, and then you have a second piece of legislation that does the rest. PAUL: Well, what we are hearing is a binary choice is, it is the Ryan plan or the status quo. And what he has rammed through his committee is his, without any amendments. And that's a question. If we get what we have got from Ryan, Obamacare-lite, he will not have the votes. And we have to get to that point before true negotiations begin. Right now, I think there is a charm offensive going on. Everybody is being nice to everybody, because they want us to vote for this. But we are not going to vote for it.
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#324469
Trump Jr. made the comments at a GOP fundraiser in Dallas.
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#324470
Subscribe for more! Thanks for Watching! Like & Share if You Enjoy! Douglas Murray and Gad Saad talk on The Saad Truth, a podcast run by Gad Saad. They discu...
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#324471
People are now freaking out over a new video of Mike Brown that was discovered of him entering the same market he robbed the day later just that morning at 1 AM. They say it proves he didn?t …
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#324472
Illegal migrants crossing Canada’s borders are hopping off planes in New York and busing directly north, says the head of Canada’s border agents union.
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#324473
#324474
Democrats, Psychological Projection and Russia - Susan Stamper Brown: Have you ever been around someone who has a bad .03/12/2017 16:56:56PM EST.
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#324475
Donald Trump got rid of 46 United States Attorneys, and the media is acting as if the world is on fire. They are trying to create a scandal where none exists. If you notice, reporters will not say Trump did anything illegal or unethical. They persist in pretending something is wrong because let’s face it, it’s Donald Trump. Here is a tweet from Glenn Kessler | Read More »
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