Share the View: How to Defeat Islamic State

Share The View

THE LATEST OPINIONS FROM BLOOMBERG VIEW

JANUARY 28, 2015 bloombergview.com

MIDDLE EAST The Editors: "The Kurdish flags now fluttering over Kobani after four months of fighting demonstrate that Islamic State can be beaten on the battlefield in Syria. Plentiful U.S. air power -- some 750 airstrikes -- combined with determined allies on the ground can get the job done." Read more... Noah Feldman: "Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces say that, with the help of three months of U.S. airstrikes, they've retaken the town of Kobani on the Syria-Turkey border from Islamic State. ... The victory, if you can call it that, carries three lessons about how the conflict with Islamic State is going -- and how it can and cannot be affected by the use of force." Read more... DECLASSIFIED Eli Lake: "One of the more remarkable facts about Iraq in 2015 is that Kurdish fighters today protect the diverse, oil-rich city of Kirkuk from a jihadist army. And while this arrangement has proven beneficial to the people of Kirkuk so far, it's just the kind of thing that imperils a unified Iraq going forward." Read more... Josh Rogin: "The Saudi state television station apparently blurred out the image of U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in the broadcast of her and President Barack Obama's meeting with new Saudi King Salma" yesterday in Riyadh. Read more... HEALTH-CARE REFORM Christopher Flavelle: The announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services, setting firm targets for shifting Medicare away from fee-for-service payments, "makes sense -- that payment structure provides incentives for excess care, and HHS is right to move past it. But that shouldn't mean the Medicare agency gets a pass on the details. There are a few reasons to wonder just how serious HHS is about these changes." Read more... TECH Katie Benner: "Can Samsung buy happiness? The Korean electronics conglomerate is sitting on $63 billion in cash and eyeing everything from chipmakers to software providers to help it create the kind of technological ecosystem that Apple has so handily constructed (and which Samsung so visibly lacks)." Read more... ECONOMICS Justin Fox: "Elected officials have long gotten in trouble for not being well-prepared for snowstorms." Yesterday in New York, "most of the questions were about whether officials had overreacted to what turned out to be a run-of-the-mill snowstorm." Read more... Noah Smith: "The U.S. withstood an almost-unprecedented series of shocks in the years from 2000 through 2011. The list of disasters is so extraordinary that it's worth repeating, just for emphasis." Read more... SPORTS Kavitha A. Davidson: "If we learn anything from Deflategate -- and at this point, that's still a pretty big 'if' -- it's that despite a season full of promises for reform, it's clear who still calls the shots in the National Football League. No, it's not actually Commissioner Roger Goodel, despite his near-totalitarian grip on player conduct and league justice. It's the team owners who employ him, and can still put him in his place when the need arises." Read more... COMPANIES Leonid Bershidsky: Mattel chief executive Bryan Stockton resigned Monday "after a five-quarter sales slump and three years of flagging sales of the company's best-known brand, Barbie. It is, however, definitely not the end of the Barbie phenomenon, or, at any rate, of what Barbie stands for."Read more...