Ninety miles from the South Eastern tip of the United States, Liberty has no stead. In order for Liberty to exist and thrive, Tyranny must be identified, recognized, confronted and extinguished.
The Syrian agreement recently concluded by Secretary of State John Kerry has spurred guarded optimism for a solution to the five-year-old conflict. In exchange for a ceasefire between the Assad regime and U.S.-backed rebels, the United States and Russia have agreed to coordinate airstrikes against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the local Al Qaeda affiliate.
While the likelihood is slim that the ceasefire will hold, the fundamental problem isn’t the deal’s implementation. Rather, the reality that in a shattered Syria, neither airstrikes nor rebels will achieve America’s chief goal of dislodging ISIS.
From the beginning, our policy in Syria has suffered from an inherent contradiction. The United States insists on Assad’s ouster as a condition of peace, but the groups that have proven most effective against his forces are hardline Islamic militias, which are themselves anti-American.
For years, the United States has ignored this fact and continues to arm and train “moderate” rebel groups. This has fed costly failures, such as a $500 million Pentagon project which trained only five fighters.
In other cases, U.S.-sponsored groups saw many members either defecting to Nusra or transferring U.S.-supplied weapons to them. By continuing to arm and support the opposition, despite clear signs of the regime’s resilience, the United States ultimately helped transform the initial uprising into a bloody stalemate that destroyed the country and produced millions of refugees.
Despite carrying out nearly five thousand airstrikes and killing thousands of ISIS fighters in Syria since 2014, the United States has neither defeated ISIS nor prevented it from carrying out devastating attacks abroad. Similarly, when Russia entered the conflict with an extensive bombing campaign against opposition forces in 2015, the possibility of a victory against Assad largely disappeared.
The Kremlin’s forceful intervention in Syria has presented the United States with a set of stark choices. One option would be...
A video has surfaced online purportedly showing eight Syrian rebels accidentally triggering a bomb while taking a selfie.
The men, reportedly members of the Free Syrian Army, are seen gathered around a camera with rifles visible, recording what’s thought to be a propaganda video.
One of the men to the left holds a cellphone in the air to take a selfie.
As the camera clicks, however, it seems the phone is apparently rigged to an improvised explosive device in the room causing an explosion, according to Funker530, the website which originally uploaded the video.
According to the latest Monmouth University poll, Donald Trump has erased Hillary Clinton’s lead from July in Nevada, and is now leading 44% to 42%.
The poll also found Libertarian Gary Johnson at 8%, with “undecided” and “none of the above” pulling 3% each, according to CNN. Jill Stein of the Green Party will not appear on Nevada ballots.
“The race in Nevada is still tight, but the momentum has swung toward Trump,” said Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray.
The poll internals follow patterns familiar from other states: Clinton leads with non-white voters (63%-28%) and women (50%-40%), while Trump leads with white voters (51%-33%) and men (48%-34%).
The two crucial factors in the Monmouth poll are that Trump has consolidated Republican support in Nevada to nearly...
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is now leading Hillary Clinton in the two critical states of Florida and Ohio, according to a new CNN poll.
Trump is up five points in Ohio (46-41) and three points in Florida (47-44), according to the poll released on Wednesday afternoon.
He leads Hillary Clinton by 10 points among independents in Florida and by 8 points in Ohio.
The Republican nominee has effectively erased Clinton’s lead in the two essential swing states, without major advertising buys or a massive staffer influx in either state.
According to the Associated Press, Trump has only 30 employees in Florida while Hillary Clinton has 500 employees in over 50 campaign offices working to...
