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" Syria is attracting a lot more Westerners than the Iraq War ever did because it's the perfect Sunni jihad. "

Peter L. Bergen

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" European countries simply do not have the ideological framework the United States has in the shape of the 'American dream' that has helped to absorb successfully wave after wave of immigration to the States, including Muslim Americans who are well integrated into American society. There is no analogous French dream or German dream. "

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" Virulent anti-Semitism is, of course, a staple of militant Islamist ideology. "

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" In short, the hunt for bin Laden could not have been accomplished without every form of American intelligence-gathering. "

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" Occasionally, Donald Trump says something that is politically incorrect but which also happens to be true. "

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" What did U.S. officials have to lose by saying that bin Laden was being protected by the Pakistanis, if it were true? "

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" Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, another hinge event in American history, 9/11 was a great tactical victory for America's enemies. But in both these cases, the tactical success of the attacks was not matched by strategic victories. Quite the reverse. "

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" The Japanese scored an important victory at Pearl Harbor, but the attack pulled the United States into World War II, and four years later, Japan was in ruins, utterly defeated. "

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" Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein brutally repressed all forms of opposition to his regime, and before the Iraq War, al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq. "

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" Bin Laden was 200 miles away from the area where all of these drone strikes were taking out his key leaders, he was able to indulge in his hobbies... and he was making occasional video tapes and audio tapes to the wider world. "

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" The reason that Islamist militants can assert that jihad is necessary against the perceived enemies of Islam is that there is sufficient ammunition in the Quran to buttress their beliefs. The same could also, of course, be said for the Old Testament, which is full of scenes of violent death visited on the enemies of God. "

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" Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers who carried out the marathon bombing, was a non-practicing Muslim who only became an Islamist militant once his dreams of becoming an Olympic boxer faded. At the time of the attack, he was unemployed. "

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" The E.U. is the latest of a series of multinational organizations set up after World War II to ensure that there would never again be a pan-European war and to create the conditions for a new European prosperity after the destruction wrought by the war against the Nazis. The E.U. has admirably succeeded at both. "

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" I was the only outsider to visit the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden lived before the Pakistani military demolished it. "

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" President Obama and a small team of senior national security officials were in the unusual position of acting as al-Awlaki's jury, judges, and de facto executioners. "

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