So, two years after President Obama called the troops home he’s sent in the jet fighters to fight ISIS – the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. To me ISIS sounds like an acronym you find in a GI Joe movie or Marvel comic. Yet, they’re a deadly serious group intent on creating an Islamic caliphate carved from Iraq and Syria.
“As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,” President Obama explains while authorizing military action. Why am I not convinced? If you don’t want to be dragged into a war, the best way is to leave your military at home – not deploy them. Apparently, Obama is protecting US personnel from these ISIS fighters, but isn’t that best accomplished by removing the personnel from conflict not adding military action?
Clearly, the tipping point was when ISIS took over the city of Qaraqosh, the largest Christian city in Iraq and told the people there to either convert to Islam, pay a fine or face death (by sword). Naturally, the people there left. I don’t blame them. ISIS has the habit of following through on their threats. An enemy that keeps its word has to be taken seriously. ISIS posted videos of their killings and after beheading their victims they placed their heads on spikes. A time honored tactic designed to strike fear.
Now, the cynical part of me says if Christians weren’t involved Obama would have waited longer. Before now, Obama was waiting for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to step aside as a condition for US involvement. It seems al-Maliki’s policies of favoring Shia’s have helped create ISIS. In 2012, no doubt inspired by Arab Spring, Sunnis started demonstrating against al-Maliki’s government charging him with treating them as second class citizens. Remember, Sunnis had it good under Saddam Hussein and now the tide had turned. So, when Iraqi troops attacked protesters in the town of Hawijah, killing 53 people an al-Qaeda offsoot known as ISIS retaliated by breaking almost 500 militants from Abu Ghraib in Baghdad.
A new group of terrorists are born. Just like that