Dinner and a Movie or Frontlines with ISIS?

(I drafted the blog post below March 12, 2019, but I was concerned that even this brief exchange might put my friend in danger so I checked with her before I published. She asked that I not publish it while the conflict was going on, so I filed the post away in the draft file on my website. At the time the situation on the ground in Syria was precarious. I recently re-discovered this file two and a half years later. My thesis still holds even while the circumstances on the ground have changed. I...