I think winning WWII and occupying had a lot to do with it.

Obama doesn't want to fight. Period. He said so before he was elected. He doesn't think radical islam is an existential threat to us and he sees the west as a group of ex-colonial countries that must be punished.

March 25, 2016 - Haji Imam -- aka Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Mustafa al-Qaduli HufPost: ISIS' Second-In-Command Killed In Syria Raid

May 13, 2015 - Abu Alaa al-Afari, aka Abdul Rahman Mustafa Mohammed
Mirror: ISIS second in command killed in coalition air strike on Iraq mosque

Jun 17, 2015 - Nasir al-Wahishi
USA Today: Al-Qaeda second-in-command killed in U.S. airstrike

Aug 21, 2015 - Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali
ABC News: ISIS Second in Command Killed by US Airstrike, White House Says

Would have been nice to leave those 10k troops behind n Iraq,

This ISIS mess never would have happened

http://tinyurl.com/qyyqekq

In August of 2002, as George W. Bush and his allies were building the case for regime change in Iraq, Scowcroft warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that an attack on Iraq "would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken." Though Scowcroft was confident that the U.S. could succeed in destroying Saddam's regime, he was also confident that military action would be expensive and bloody, and that it "very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation." As we all know, Scowcroft's warning went unheeded by the Bush White House.

Scowcroft offered another warning in America and the World, a widely ignored book published in 2008 that collected a series of exchanges between Scowcroft and his fellow foreign policy wise man Zbigniew Brzezinski. Recognizing that Iraq remained riven by communal conflict, Scowcroft argued that the country would continue to need a U.S. military presence for at least a few more years.

A

s Scowcroft explained to Voice of America News in January of 2012, just weeks after withdrawal was complete, Iraq's political leadership still needed to learn to make compromises among various ethnic, sectarian, and ideological factions. And in his view, "those compromises are probably easier to make in the embrace of a U.S. presence." The end of the U.S. presence meant that these compromises were less likely, and that a war of all against all was much more likely.

It is important to emphasize that Scowcroft was not calling for a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq. Rather, he believed that the post-Saddam Iraqi state needed time to get on its feet, and its new elected rulers needed time and breathing room to repair trust among communities that had spent so long at each other's throats.

Because of the nature of this particular enemy, and those who are similar in the type of asymmetric combat they employ, simply killing soldiers, and destroying equipment, will not bring about the results we want.

Everybody that matters knows what must be dome. Cutting off their funds & income is the way to, "neutralize their ability to function."

As long as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and all the other sympathetic countries & donors are allowed to keep the money spigot going full blast, the death of a single American serviceman should be considered a National disgrace.

In mid-February, a CIA-armed militia called Fursan al Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, was run out of the town of Marea, about 20 miles north of Aleppo, by Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces moving in from Kurdish-controlled areas to the east.

"Any faction that attacks us, regardless from where it gets its support, we will fight it," Maj. Fares Bayoush, a leader of Fursan al Haq, said in an interview.