Amid the ashes of his hometown destroyed by an atomic bomb, teenager Kazuzo Tagashira started to grow roses and watched them start blooming across the bombed-out ruins here. Tagashira decided to devote his entire life to raising and breeding the roses in the hopes that world peace would similarly bloom in the future.

The examples of Iraq and Syria, not to mention NATO’s 2011 campaign in Libya, should be enough to make us stop and think. Bombardment alone cannot replace a political strategy, even if in Libya - a country with Sunni majority - ISIS cannot feed off the same sectarian claims that helped it in Iraq and Syria.

The British Embassy in Cairo re-opened on Tuesday after suspending public services nine days ago for security reasons, the embassy said in a statement.

Dropping bombs isn't the only way to advance American interests abroad. (...) Certainly, the Islamic State poses an enormous threat to regional stability. But is the focus on military efforts the right one?