Terrorism warning lights are ‘blinking red again.’ This group is a big reason.

Remember the Islamic State? The vicious terrorist group took advantage of the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 to stage a major offensive across both countries. By the end of 2014, it controlled roughly 30 percent of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq and was carrying out horrifying massacres and atrocities. The Obama administration committed U.S. air power and advisers to help the Iraqi military and Syrian Democratic Forces (mainly Kurds) battle back. By 2019, ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been killed in a U.S. raid, its last redoubts had fallen and then-President Donald Trump claimed “100 percent” success in the anti-ISIS campaign.

But this evil group is hard to keep down — a task made all the more difficult if the United States winds up removing its remaining troops from Syria and Iraq prematurely.

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