How to Avoid an ISIS 2.0 in Iraq

Washington and Baghdad have a golden opportunity, but it is slipping away.

With Mosul and other key cities now liberated from the horrible scourge of ISIS, Iraq stands at a crucial crossroads.

Iraqis and Americans have squandered historic opportunities to build a new, stable and prosperous country together before.

We must not let that happen again.

The key danger, as before, is this: extremism combined with sectarianism build on each other in a vicious spiral.

That dynamic, in the absence of a functional state, further polarizes populations within Iraq and produces and endless cycles of violence, which…