Bill,

Best I can tell only a small minority of the locals or the foreign fighters buy into the political viewpoint of ISIL - but most all buy into the need for some sort of Sunni governed space in that region and the need to restore new stability to the current competition for where the line between Sunni and Shia influence lies. ISILis the only one stepping up to lead that effort. The US needs to own the fact that what we did in Iraq is what put both of those issues in play.

In this regard ISIL is very much like the Nazi party in Post WWI Germany. Few Gwrmans bought into their extreme ideology or approaches - but virtually all Germans believed in the need to turn back the injustices of Versailles.

When people need a ride desperately enough, and only one bus is coming around, they tend to get on the bus.

Who, besides ISIL is offering a solution to the fundamental problems at the root of this conflict?? Not the US with this new approach (that I believe the President was bullied into taking once the two beheadings occurred). We were doing better before, but needed a much clearer narrative and stated goals for our strategy.

if we truly stand for what we say we do as a nation, we need to champion an approach that is about evolving toward a more sustainable political future for the region, not simplistically trying to defeat those we deem as beyond the pale and to restore the obsolete and illegitimate political structures that brought us here to begun with.

Either way, I don't know how Turkey does not soon devolve as well into a similar conflict for a new, more legitimate governance for the Kurds. Turkey should be pressing for Civil Rights reforms similar to what the US wisely adopted in the 60s if they want any hope of staving off revolution and possible civil war.

As is often the case, governments hold both the primary cause and cure in their hands, but also the ability to simplistically employ legal violence to force the increasingly unsustainable status quo. Most opt for the latter.