Globe Trot: Obama declared ISIS 'contained' hours before Paris attacks

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama’s national security team defended the president’s Friday statement before the Paris attacks that the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) had been “contained.” Ben Rhodes said Obama was referring “very specifically to the question of ISIL’s geographic expansion in Iraq and Syria.” But that’s just the problem: Allowing ISIS safe haven in Iraq and Syria is “the biggest force multiplier that a group can have,” notes one security analyst, giving it a bunker for accumulating resources to plan outside operations like the Paris attacks.

This op-ed by two former Obama administration security officials is insightful. The authors make the fair point that the United States is not Europe, but they also display a striking willingness to trust Canada and Mexico to protect U.S. land borders and a stubborn desire to blame threats in the United States on “lone wolves.”

FRANCE: Officials believe 20 plotters were behind Friday’s ISIS attacks on Paris—the same number that carried out the 9/11 attacks in New York. Six of eight assailants died during the Paris attack, French police killed one, and one suspect remains on the loose. Brussels appears to have been the hub of operations planning the attack.

BELGIUM: Police have arrested suspects in Molenbeek this morning, a district of Brussels once again proving to be a hotbed for jihadi terrorism. Recall after January’s Charlie Hebdo attacks a raid in Brussels’ Muslim districts, including Molenbeek, where authorities declared, “a second potential Paris has been averted.”

FRANCE: As the first bomb detonated outside the Stade de France, President François Hollande, attending the soccer match inside, made a snap decision not to evacuate the stadium.

"That meant French midfielders Lassana Diarra and Antoine Griezmann would continue maneuvering on the pitch while, on the other side of town, the players’ own family members became caught in the line of fire."

Diarra’s cousin died, but the president’s decision may have saved lives at the stadium. California university student Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, was the first American confirmed dead in the Paris attacks. At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris yesterday, heavy security presided over a packed mourning mass punctuated by the sound of sirens outside.

LEBANON: Twin bombings in Beirut left 43 dead, and went nearly unnoticed in the wake of the Paris attacks.

“When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag,” Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor, wrote on his blog. “When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”

IRAQ: In Baghdad, two car bomb explosions Thursday and Friday killed 80 people, I’m told by sources in Baghdad. (U.S. media is reporting far lower casualty figures.)

GAINS AGAINST ISIS: The French launched attacks against ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria, over the weekend, just after the Kurds—with U.S. airstrike support—declared they had retaken the city of Sinjar in northern Iraq. The Syrian army is battling ISIS in Homs, Latakia, and Aleppo, where it also has retaken an airbase from the militants.

IRAQ: The Kurds have discovered so far two mass graves in the Sinjar area, including one containing the remains of 78 women.The Obama administration is moving toward designating the ISIS attacks on Yazidis a genocide but likely will exclude Iraq’s Christians from the designation.

SYRIA: ISIS militants are battling to take the town of Sadad, one of the last remaining centers of indigenous Christian presence.

WHAT YOU’RE READING … is fascinating. Please keep the lists coming. One Globe Trot reader took down from her shelf the massive 17th century The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock. A quote:

“As a God of truth, He will make good His promise; as a God of peace, He will perfect the design his wisdom hath laid, and begun to act. In the subduing of Satan, He will be the conqueror of His instruments. … We are to confide in the promise of God, but leave the season of its accomplishment to His wisdom.”