An isis one and painted part of an isis-inspired threat on one wall. why don t you hear about the story? it s obvious. first the bomb didn t go off. that s how news works. we never report on the plane lands safely. and of course the weapon was not a gun but a bomb. anyway we should be grateful no one got hurt but don t be relieved because the only reason why no one got hurt is that they got lucky. that backpack smoked and a kid saw it. i returned to the solutions. hardening soft targets, surveillance cameras should have caught kid painting the wall or placing the flag. metal detectors couldn t do a lot to reduce all threats but right now all we have to rely on our eyeballs and chance. we can do better. this story was on the front page of the usa today. 756 copycat threats since the parkland mass murder. there s been
Fighters fleeing to their home country. i think most administrations get credit for this. something that hasn t happened, they re aware of the threat, the ability of, say, someone from raqqah to go up through turkey, get into europe. but say october 2016, ash carter, the then secretary of defense going to paris. that was a big concern. they thought there would be thousands of fighters comes back to europe. that hasn t happened. what has happened is the ideologies have shifted. when you saw the attack in niger, the initial accounts were this is an isis-linked group. is there communications, transfer of funds taking place between the caliphate and raqqah and outlier groups in niger? probably not when you talk to intelligence officials and the pentagon. but the ideology is so fluid, and for porous borders, ideology can slip through easily. that s the view in the middle east of what donald trump has
Of fighters. the generally accepted numbers begins of the year 35,000 isis fighters. now they suspect they re around 1,000. here s the exception. the trump strategy is basically the obama strategy. buy with and through local partners. use local forces to defeat isis. they also don t have a broad strategic plan for what happens after you defeat isis and how you keep disaffected sunnis in this part of the world, how you keep them inside the political process and don t have them take up arms. the other big difference with the trump approach as opposed to the obama approach is the war seems broader. there have been 21 combat deaths or deaths in combat this year. six different countries from yemen to niger who somalia. that seems a little more aggressive under trump. and trump also expanded authorities in the horn of
Africa. so that s both the horn of africa and yemen. the war there is more aggressive. whoever you give credit to, and probably both presidents deserve some credit, why has this worked recently in the last year or so so effectively breaking up isis? i think the on the ground battle field dynamics have over the course of the last several months have worked in favor of those allies. the kurds have been fighting well in syria and iraq. you also had the presence of iranian forces that worked alongside the iraqi army which tipped the balance inside iraq for that struggle and had the division inside the syrian civil war that allowed for that vacuum to exist where they were ultimately take the fight to isis. i think the point hans made is we may have won the battle inside iraq and syria but now the question is what happens with isis as a mentality and ideology. if you look at what happened in
We have dealt isis one devastating defeat after another. the coalition to defeat isis has now recaptured almost 100% of the land once held by these terrorists in iraq and in syria. great job. we have a great military. we re now chasing them wherever they flee, and we will not let them into the united states. that was president trump a couple of weeks ago. joining us with a look at the war against isis this year, hans nickels. also anyone moaldene. things are objectively true here that the group lost its capital of mosul in iraq. it lost the capital of raqqah in syria. is president trump right that he s broken up and destroyed isis? well, the facts are on his side. isis lost territories and a lot