Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
Bill:

The IS goes beyond a dispute among Muslims. Way beyond. This is an ideology that has designs on the world. We underestimate them at our peril. I keep bringing up the Bolsheviks from 100 years ago as a parallel. If that is right, we will regret not taking action, at least to the extent of shipping money and weapons to the Kurds. We won't even do that.
Carl,

I have written similar comments and still agree with myself , but that still doesn't mean the best way to fight them is to get in the middle of them fighting each other. In my opinion you're damn right they're a global threat, and most importantly to us they're a threat to our nation and our interests. There is no daylight between us on that aspect.

Where we tend to diverge is how to deal with the threat, do we gain strategic advantage by getting bogged down in a quagmire in Syria? I don't think we do, and since there are already many countries providing support to the various separatist groups and Assad we won't bring much to the table to begin with, and we sure as heck IMO don't want to own the Syrian problem if Assad does fall. That plays into the AQ strategy of weakening our economy through prolonged asymmetric warfare. I also suspect we're providing covert support, and covert means you shouldn't be aware of it, but we can still suspect it. Again comments that we're not doing anything may not be accurate. This is one reason low visibility and covert operations are a difficult policy tool for democracies, since voters want to see action, or politicians risk getting tossed out. In many cases, again IMO, covert action would be the most intelligent approach, but political pressure often denies the President that option. The commis on Fox News beat the drums that it all the President's fault, while the commis on CNN want to have a hug fest with Hamas and wonder why Israel actually needs to kill people to defend themselves, but I digress.

For Iraq, I think the situation is presenting us with an opportunity to strike AQ while maintain legitimacy. The President may prove to be right in his decision to postpone striking to let the situation evolve and put pressure on the Iraqi government to reform or die, and also to remind the people just how bad AQ is, so they'll be willing to rise up against them when the time is right. As a nation we don't have strategic patience, but these would seem good approaches to me to decisively defeat them in Iraq. I don't know what his calculus is, so while frustrated like most, I'm not passing judgment on his strategy until I understand it.

The best thing that can happen in this fight is that the Iraqi people rise up (with supporting fires from the U.S. and others) and crush ISIS. That would be both a physical and psychological victory that could compel other entities to do the same.