MESOP : NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT !? – ANALYSIS OF THE RESULT

“Simply stated, ISIS has committed the grave error of strategic overreach, and it is in the interest the world’s great powers, including the United States and Russia, to punish this error by inflicting massive attrition upon it,” writes CFR’s Colonel S. Clinton Hinote for Cicero Magazine.

“The U.S. can help save the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad but cannot force it to make the sort of concessions that would satisfy Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. This means that U.S. involvement will reinforce the anti-American ideology that drives al-Qaida, the Islamic State and other violent Salafi groups,” writes Steven Metz for World Politics Review.

“As he seeks to rally Americans behind a new military campaign in the Middle East, Mr. Obama finds his own past statements coming back to haunt him. Time and again, he has expressed assessments of the world that in the harsh glare of hindsight look out of kilter with the changed reality he now confronts,” writes Peter Baker for the New York Times.