The Third Crusade

... the first time since the start of the Desert Storm operation in 1991, U.S. war planes stopped combat operations over Iraq [1] . However, Iraq did not enjoy a peaceful sky for long. On August 8, 2014 two U.S. Navy carrier-based jet fighters struck Islamic State artillery units near Erbil, marking the start of a new war. That is not quite the case, of course. The second horseman of the Apocalypse has not left these lands at least from the start of the Iran–Iraq war in 1980. Only the protagonists change (with the exception of Iraq itself). The new force is the Islamic State of Iraq, a terrorist group that sprang up in Iraq and achieved success in the civil war in Syria, success that enabled it ...