SecState Kerry’s comments today on a solution to the ISIL in Iraq, were just more of the same wimpishness.  The White House is taking a nuanced approach toward Iraq and Syria when it comes to building a coalition, and is only focused on Iraq for now. Experts both inside and outside the Pentagon who follow this closely see Iraq and Syria as “one theater of operations as it pertains to ISIL (and it could expand as ISIL strives to achieve its grand caliphate across the greater Arabian peninsula and the Levant). But the White House is approaching the two countries as two different places when it comes to building a policy and a coalition. That said, in reality it perhaps is too late to try to build a sizable coalition that can agree in principal on the necessary approach to take. As it looks to garner international support, the White House is selling the idea that Iraq is the place to go after ISIL and its collaborators, even if the Islamic State's origins are across the border in Syria. Limiting the pitch to Iraq may be an easier sell, but it could come back to bite the administration. Finally, the administration still lacks a viable and coherent strategy to counter and defeat radical Islamic terrorism.

Competent national security and military strategists will tell you that drones and air strikes are not a strategy, but rather merely operational tools employed for tactical and operational military effects. Just as armored warfare was only one operational arrow in our overall strategic quiver against Hitler in WWII, the strategy in the clash with radical Islamic terrorism has to be against the ideology that promotes and sustains it. The U.S. and the world needs to take more seriously the growing threat of terrorism and the ideology that breeds it.

Until a competent and coherent national security strategy and policy against the “radical ideology” of Islam -- be it embodied in ISIL, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, or Hizb’allah -- is formulated, we will continue to face the wrath of Islamic terror.  If this state of affairs is allowed to continue, we may well be the ones defeated.