Two months ago Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that all combat specialties in the armed forces would be opened to qualified females. This decision reopened the question of whether or not women should be required to register for Selective Service. In Rostker vs. Goldberg in 1981, the Supreme Court ruled that since the main purpose of the draft is to provide manpower for combat forces, the government’s exclusion of women did not violate the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. Since women can now serve in the combat arms, a legal challenge to the exclusion of women from the draft might very well succeed.

The failure, ahem, suspension this week of United Nations sponsored talks in Geneva aimed at stopping the carnage in Syria was all too predictable. The talks were initially delayed by the inability of Syrian opposition groups to agree on who should get a seat at the table. Then after just five days of negotiations, the negotiators realized what should have been apparent from the start—an end to the Syrian civil war is highly unlikely absent conditions on the battlefield conducive to a negotiated settlement. What are those conditions?

Poor strategic decision making since 2001 has involved the United States in messy civil wars that will take years, if not decades, to resolve. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, regime change has come easily, but a limited commitment to stabilizing those nations has resulted in messy, bloody, and expensive aftermaths. Those wars show that military success alone cannot ensure a stable post-conflict outcome. Only the presence of US military forces, economic aid, and a long-term political commitment from US policy makers to rebuild and restore defeated nations can ensure enduring peace.

On June 2, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken told France Inter radio that the U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS had killed 10,000 members in the nine months since the attacks began. This was undoubtedly a salvo in the information campaign against the extremist group, as well as an attempt to downplay the recent loss of Ramadi to the Islamic State.