War on terror

Obama's ISIL Strategy: Success or a Giant Failure?

Around this time last year, President Obama addressed the U.S. public to outline his administration’s policy towards the Islamic State.  It was a speech that Obama was no doubt reluctant to make given his general preference that foreign-policy issues be kept off the domestic agenda. But ISIL’s dramatic territorial gains in Iraq and Syria meant that some sort of response was inevitable.  Twelve months on, how is the president’s strategy holding up?

 In his speech, Obama stressed that ISIL should be understood as a terrorist organization that could be dealt with using more-or-less conventional counter-terrorism tools.