When I returned home from Afghanistan in 2007, I was frustrated and I was angry.  Originally, I had joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves in 1994, more out of listlessness than patriotic fervor. And when Bill Clinton cut our branch’s budget, I transferred to the U.S. Army. By the end of the decade I was out of the service altogether and beginning a wasteful period at Boise State University. Then 9/11 happened. I didn’t understand why these people came all the way to this side of the world to do what they did, but what I did know is they murdered 3,000 innocent Americans. And I wanted...

After over fifty-three years of sitting on their throne in Damascus, the Assad family's regime has collapsed in Syria. Bashar al-Assad has fled to Moscow without a word, the rebels are in command of every major city and airport, and prisons have been opened. The victor of the Syrian Civil War is Abu Mohammad al-Julani, commander of Tahrir al-Sham, Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. Julani's resume includes being second in command of Al Qaeda in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and second in command what become ISIS under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. We remain committed to bringing leading AQS figures in...

You turn your head for one moment to focus on turkey and stuffing, and all of the sudden the Syrian Civil War restarts. The conflict which erupted during the 2011 Arab Spring, and which over the course of a decade killed over half a million people, has been static since early 2020.  By then, secular dictator Bashar al-Assad regained control over a majority of the country and its major cities, and had even begun the process of normalizing relations with his neighbors and reintroducing himself into the international community. The remnants of the Islamist opposition were isolated in the...