ISIL2 Nov 15^th

I usually watch Chuck Todd’s show on Meet the Press. This morning I thought Todd had slipped a cog, or maybe many cogs. The fact that ISIL has made several separate terrorist attacks on soft targets has everyone on edge. There is much handwringing and people asking, “What can we do about it?” We can hope our intelligence community is alert and monitoring those we believe might be up to no good. That’s about the extent of what we can do to protect people here in this country. As I said yesterday the country is alive with invitingly soft targets.

Todd had a guest, Ben Rhodes, White House National Security Advisor, and Todd was prepared to make him look silly. He began by describing the carnage in France, the bombings in Beirut and elsewhere. Then he played a tape of the President saying that we have ISIL contained and on the run. Todd followed up by saying that these killings didn’t sound like ISIL was on the run at all and what about that. Ben Rhodes didn’t take the bait; he pointed out that the ISIL forces had been driven out of Sinjar and Hol and that the Kurds now control highway 47, the only highway connecting parts of the ground occupied by ISIL. Todd wasn’t happy and reiterated his complaint about containment. Rhodes patiently pointed out that the containment applied to occupied ground and did not preclude ISIL striking at soft targets elsewhere.