ISIS

The question of what the United States should  do about ISIS and other threats from the Middle East may be one of those where the so-called prudent, middle-of-the-road solution is worse than either extreme. The present policy on ISIS is a middle-of-the-road one of moderately funding and supporting its opponents, inflicting minor casualties on it with drone strikes and very limited bombing, and hoping it will be contained. (Until recently the administration even refused to attack the oil convoys which provided ISIS with much of its funding out of concerns for environmental damage  to the desert of Syria and Iraq.) 

One  “extreme” alternative would be to  bow out of policing Syria and Iraq  and let ISIS and its Shia and other opponents  fight it out. Proponents of this argue that we have no strategic interest in determining what factions rule Syria and Iraq, that random and infrequent attacks by terrorists are not a casus belli, and (sometimes) that our leaving ISIS alone might lead to their leaving us alone. 

Another approach would treat ISIS as a serious enemy which is making war on the United States and respond by giving ISIS a taste, not of George W. Bush’s war or Barack Obama’s war, but of Franklin Roosevelt’s war – hard, ruthless, unrelenting, and ending only with their unconditional capitulation or total destruction. Proponents of this argue that the war with Islamic fanatics has already begun, that the fanatics plan for a fight to the finish, and that we should wake up and give them one.

I do not know enough to decide which of the extreme alternatives is better. I prefer some version of the first one with our  obtaining our oil in North America and moving away from policing Syria and Iraq and eventually the rest of the Middle East. However I do not know if it is too late for that or not. If the enemy really is implacable and bent on conquest, it should be destroyed while it is still weak.  I do know that it makes no sense to hit a person, a group, or a country  just  hard enough to make him or them mad and vengeful, but not hard enough to put him or them down. Yet that seems to have been our government’s practice under both Bush and Obama.