President Obama made comments about Syria Tuesday, naming yet another terrorist organization, the Khorasan group, plotting attacks on the U.S., most likely an attempt to blow up an airplane in flight.
As of Monday, how many Americans ever heard mention of the Khorasan group? Yet, overnight, they were hit with air strikes ordered in our names.
The headline from President Obama's remarks was his emphasis on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar, which have joined the 40-nation coalition against ISIS.
Max Abrahms, an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University and a terrorism theorist, joins Jim Braude on Broadside to discuss the airstrikes.
"ISIS is certainly a regional threat. It's an existential threat to Iraq, existential threat to Syria. One of its main goals has been to overthrow the Assad regime," said Abrahms. "But this group that you're describing, the Khorasan group, is different. It's not anti-Assad, it's anti-Western. And so their goal, like al-Qaeda, is to strike the U.S. homeland."
