By David Ignatius, RealClearPolitics: “The Islamic State's headquarters in this city at the western gateway to Raqqah has been crushed like a sand castle by American bombs. At a dam complex on the Euphrates River where ISIS was torturing prisoners and hurling alleged homosexuals from a giant concrete tower, all that's left of the extremists are militant slogans scrawled on the wall and a pile of trash.”
U.S. Special Operations in the Philippines and the Rise of the Islamic State
By Cole Livieratos, War on the Rocks: “The rise of the Islamic State in the Philippines represents a major failure for Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which failed to contain the spread of the Islamic State and violent extremism around the globe, one of its primary missions.”