I don't think ISIS and whatever groups take their place ad infinitum will be stopped until the Middle Eastern countries want them stopped. Right now they are using these destructive forces to achieve their own ends, that will never be clear to us. Maybe it will take us leaving them all alone to fight it out for 10 or 20 years to make that happen.

If they do not want to be partners in the modern world, so be it. My hunch is that most of them do, and will stamp this BS out if we were to stop enabling it.

Unfortunately, the US bears much responsibility for their rise. We broke Iraq. Period. Like him or not, Saddam gave Iraq some semblance of stability. Like Tito did in Yugoslavia. Not everyone needs or wants "American democracy." It's just not in some folks DNA. And we have got to stop trying to force in on the world. We break a whole lot more than we fix with our meddling.

That they are wrong in their interruption changes nothing. ISIS and the other groups are at war with us and won't stop. Dying to them is meaningless. Our choice is this.

My view is that if Obama had listened to many of his advisors and kept 20,000 or so troops in Iraq,  provided more support in Syria to moderates, and backed up his talk with the Syrian president, that much of what is occurring now would not have happened.

Keeping troops in Iraq and a closer eye on Maliki would have prevented him from immediately turning on the Sunnis literally the day after the US pulled out. The US should have forced Maliki to follow Iraq's constitution (which required more inclusion). The US should have forced Maliki to keep paying the Sunni sheiks who were part of the Awakening. Some of these people are apparently now part of ISIS. The US should have forced out Maliki several years ago. By keeping troops in Iraq and paying more attention, at least some of that would have been achievable. By not keeping troops in Iraq and keeping some amount of influence there, the US let the gain of the Surge and thereafter completely slip away.

By not being more active in Syria, the US let ISIS gain strength and get further organized. By not immediately using airstrikes when ISIS came surging into the Mosul area, the US allowed ISIS to seize a very large amount of weapons and related supplies. It would not have been hard to spot and bomb the humvees, tanks and trucks heading for Syria.

Now, the US has part of a foot in Iraq and is helping the Iraqi army and Kurds fight ISIS, but is stuck in and with a very complicated situation.

I was speaking from the point of view of a citizen.

It seems to me, based on the text I read, that this is some gesture meant to lend an air of legitimacy to the bombing campaign. Or an air of inevitability.

But unfortunately we ignored the problem until it got so big now it's hard to find a solution.

President Obama could have been planning a reaction to ISIS for months if not a year but chose not to.   Now he is again scrambling to choose between a bunch of bad outcomes.

However to make any of that happen the president would need to do the following...

A) Have a clear vision on what America's role is in the world.
B) Sell the American people on it

Those two things are severely lacking from our president.   The policy of "Not doing stupid stuff" to me is a policy of inaction.   We have this whole military machine, intelligence apparatus, foreign aid etc... set and in place.   Use it or loose it.   Until Bush the 1st left office the job of president from FDR to him was easy when it came to foreign policy.   Fight communism and push the American way of life.   Once we lost our great adversary it became a little murkier.   Bush the 1st had the first Iraq war.  Clinton the Bosnian war and GW the post 9/11 world.   Each had a clear mandate, a clear policy goal for American foreign policy but the common theme was we are the great good int he world and we must be the ones to implement it.

This president to me tries to have it both ways.  At his core I think he believes America has been too involved in world affairs for too long and that money could be spent here.

But while I'm not totally unsympathetic to this argument like all things it's not a zero sum game.  Not involving ourselves in world affairs has a result.   We leave a huge void and someone fills it.  We will loose influence, both politically and economically.  

Look no further then Europe.   They dismantled their military as a continent post WWII and took a position in the passengers seat when it came to the Cold War.   Doing so enabled them to establish a large welfare state and focus on internal rather then external affairs.

To me I don't think it's a coincidence that we became the worlds economic engine.   Say what you will about where we are today but we wouldn't have gotten here if we hadn't meddled in everyone Else's business.

This president to me doesn't get it.   He has to make hard choices either way.   Listen to Rand Paul and withdraw or listen to Hillary and other Hawks and stay engaged because being engaged keeps us on top.

Unlike many libertarians I really don't think it's an option to withdraw.  Like it or not.  Fair or not.   We've become the policeman of the world because if not us who?

What the libertarian in me does say is we could be way smarter about it and not think we can change the world over night with our military.   Iraq was a complete mistake.  

We must be engaged, we must lead, we just have to be smarter about it.   I think that's the core of the "stupid stuff" comment but they take it to far and let other people take the lead and then are surprised when other people do a crappy job.

It's not easy by any means.   That's why we should lect people with experience or at least a vision in the first place.   Looking back on what Obama was selling it is pretty easy to draw a line from those speeches in Berlin and Cairo to where we are today.

Today is the Obama doctrine, or lack there of played forward.   We left a void and the bad guys filled it.

What's he going to do about it?   Time for him to make up his mind and sell the rest of us on what the plan is.