While elements of the Iraqi Army have gradually been able to evict ISIS from Iraq's smaller towns and cities, the challenge of liberating Mosul was of a whole different order of magnitude, it’s a vast metropolis that had millions of inhabitants, enormous sectarian and ethnic complexity, and was the historical bastion of Sunni [ Muslim ] revanchism in Iraq. The fight was always going to be toughest in Mosul, which is why it was left for last.

John Hannah

Categorized in : World

The President is the clear cause of the delay, the President doesn't want to pull the trigger on sanctions and torpedoing Turkey's purchase of the F-35 fighter jets. In the first place, The President's got an unfortunate affinity for Erdogan.

John Hannah

politics

Instead of reading Erdogan the riot act in a last-ditch effort to warn him off the S-400 deal, The President accepted hook, line and sinker Erdogan's ridiculous claim that it was all President Obama's fault, and that Turkey was somehow justified in alienating NATO and cozying up to( Russian President Vladimir) Putin.

John Hannah

politics

It should not happen a third time without Kim Jong understanding that -- while diplomacy might continue -- there will be consequences in terms of a ratcheting up of the maximum pressure campaign, and certainly no prospect of another summit with President Donald Trump.

John Hannah

top-news

To ensure that it is not just being' played' by North Korea, the administration will be under increasing pressure to demonstrate that real progress has been achieved on denuclearization and that Kim Jong Un has in fact made the strategic decision to rid himself of nukes and missiles in exchange for security and economic benefits.

John Hannah

top-news

If possible, he'll want to do serious damage to Assad's ability to carry out these kinds of heinous attacks, but beyond simply destroying hardware, he'll want to get deep inside the head of Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers.

John Hannah

politics

It all makes for a difficult diplomatic problem for Tillerson to figure out how to manage, how do we destroy ISIS, while maintaining a relationship with a critical NATO ally?

John Hannah

politics

The longer you allow Raqqa to exist as the operational heart of the Caliphate, the more likely they're going to be able to launch the kinds of attacks we saw last year, it's a genuine and very serious, political, military and diplomatic dilemma that the US is going to have to manage, assuming that the YPG is going to be the tip of the spear in Raqqa.

John Hannah

politics

They see it as an existential threat and don't really draw any distinctions.

John Hannah

politics

The delay in liberating Mosul was almost entirely a function of the Obama Doctrine administration’s ‘ light footprint ’ approach to the conflict.

John Hannah

world

Unbelievable burdens [ relief ] have been cut off from any of their budget from Baghdad, and really they have no access to international debt markets or to the international donor community since they are not a sovereign state.

John Hannah

world

At every turn, the American people can see with their own eyes how tragically wrong the President has been, instead of being the JV team, they turn out to be the most powerful terrorist group in history.

John Hannah

top-news

In the minds of a lot of people, U.S. national security and foreign policy has been reduced to either 'do nothing' or 'we go in alone with 200,000 troops,' and I just think that's not the history of American foreign policy, there are almost always more options available to secure our interests than simply that binary choice of doing nothing or doing everything.

John Hannah

politics

Higher education must lead the march back to the fundamentals of human relationships, to the old discovery that is ever new, that man does not live by bread alone.

John Hannah

live alone man education

The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and influence their actions. A chip on the shoulder is too heavy a piece of baggage to carry through life.

John Hannah

ability influence business life

The Biden administration entered with all the enthusiasm that Saudi Arabia were the bad guys in the war in Yemen, the whole mood music has changed as the Houthis and the Iranians have proceeded to escalate the conflict.

John Hannah

Too many times, too many administrations, every president eventually gets mugged by reality on this and comes to the conclusion that as hard as it is to live with Saudi Arabia as close partners, given the huge gap in values that exists between the two societies, it's even much harder to have to deal with them as potential adversaries or as an unfriendly country, they just remain too important.

John Hannah

Maintenance has long been an Achilles heel for the Iraqi security services, and they have been almost entirely dependent on the United States to keep their planes flying, the F-16s have been based at the Balad airfield, which has been regularly targeted with rockets and mortars by pro-Iranian militias. My view is that the F-16 program could be in serious trouble if the Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to fulfill its most basic international obligation to protect U.S. diplomats, troops, and contractors that theyve invited into their country.

John Hannah