President Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday offered a half-good, half-bad commentary on the Islamic State.
On the negative side of things, Trump noted that “three years ago, the barbarians of ISIS held over 20,000 square miles of territory in Iraq and Syria. Today, the ISIS territorial caliphate has been 100% destroyed.”
Yes, Trump is right that his leadership has greatly diminished the threat of ISIS. But he is simply wrong to assert that ISIS is defeated. Because ISIS, ultimately, is more than its territory. It exists in the hearts and minds of warped individuals who find ordained purpose dominating individual lives under totalitarian Salafi jihadism. Even then, as Trump’s own special representative to Syria noted just last week, the caliphate is re-forming “with some 14- to 18,000 terrorists between Syria and Iraq.”
To ignore that threat, as Trump seems determined to do, with his focus on a premature withdrawal from Syria, is to repeat President Barack Obama’s 2011 mistake in withdrawing from Iraq.
Trump’s next comment was much better.
The president outlined how Congress was joined that “evening by Carl and Marsha Mueller.” Those are the parents of Kayla Mueller, a young American who was kidnapped in Syria and held as a sex slave by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
Trump observed how “after more than 500 horrifying days of captivity, al Baghdadi murdered young Kayla. She was just 26 years old.”
He then continued: “On the night that United States Special Forces Operators ended al Baghdadi’s miserable life, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, received a call in the Situation Room. He was told that the brave men of the elite Special Forces team, that so perfectly carried out the operation, had given their mission a name — ‘Task Force 8-14.’ It was a reference to a special day: August 14th — Kayla’s birthday. Carl and Marsha, America’s warriors never forgot Kayla, and neither will we.”
There is great American moral justice here: Kayla’s parents in the citadel of American democracy, seeing shared national celebration of their daughter’s life and of her killer’s delivery unto justice. Trump deserves great credit for authorizing the dangerous Delta Force operation that brought Baghdadi to justice.
Still, we must hope that the president retains attention in his intelligence briefings. Because to believe that ISIS is defeated is to delude oneself, and to allow that enemy to re-form its ranks in furtherance of a continued war against America.
