Eli Lake, Columnist

America's Catastrophic Success Against Islamic State

Without a common enemy to unite them, U.S. allies in the Mideast return to fighting one another.

October 27, 2017 at 3:24 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

The town of Sharqat in September, just after Iraqi forces forced out ISIS fighters.
Photographer: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

One might expect President Donald Trump to take a victory lap after last week's liberation of Raqqa from the Islamic State. Thanks to American air power, Maoist Kurds, Syrian patriots and U.S. special operators, this caliphate ended as the shortest-lived in Islamic history.

And yet the president chose not to exploit this win. The White House issued a five-paragraph statement. Much of last week was consumed with the president's feud over his phone call to the mother of one of the soldiers killed in Niger.