With regards to Iraq, I also believe that due to our ill-advised invasion and conquest of that benighted country 11 years ago, we need to acknowledge and shoulder our primary responsibility for what has since happened there.

I understand completely the reticence of many Americans to get fully involved there again, given our recent very unpleasant experience. But that said, it's since become quite apparent to me that ISIS is a true horror show, and I believe that we owe it to the Iraqi people to not allow any of them to be forcibly subjugated under the brutal auspices of such a heartless and murderous regime.

While I'm not certainly suggesting that we consider the military re-occupation of Iraq, I nevertheless have every confidence that we possess the capacity to stop ISIS from gaining a secure foothold there, and give the Iraqi people a chance to reconstitute themselves and decide their future.

What we apparently lack at present is the collective will to do so. Rather, we are allowing ourselves to be beholden to history's ghosts, without taking heed of its lessons -- one of which says that failure to act is often the biggest failure of all.

Further, I believe that we should neither fear to embrace change as circumstances might warrant, nor hesitate to alter our country's course as prudence may dictate, and also remember at all times that nature abhors a vacuum.

And because the circumstances in Iraq have changed markedly and clearly not for the better, I think prudence now requires that we resolve whatever our differences with Iran presently are, and work with both the Iranian and Turkish governments to neutralize the threat to the region that's posed by the potential emergence of a medieval caliphate, freshly reincarnated from the 8th century.

Iraq cannot be allowed to become a socio-political vacuum, to be filled by Heaven only knows what. Therefore, our immediate goal here should be to prevent that, and to offer that country's various peoples a real opportunity to chart their own destiny, which they've heretofore not enjoyed.

We owe that much to them, at least, along with our further respect for whatever choices they make. And if that means the eventual division of the country along ethnic and sectarian lines, then so be it. But let that be a voluntary separation, and not a drawing and quartering.