Regardless of their religion, I cannot stand religious fanatics. The scope of ISIS’s victories and the way they treat the people they subjugate are both appalling and terrifying.
The American in me wants to do something about this. I want to crush this fanatical movement and I want to help the hundreds of thousands of people who are fleeing from their homes. But I have no good ideas for how to do either of those things, primarily because other than the Kurds, there really aren’t any forces that we want to empower to confront ISIS. Things are so convoluted that I can’t even keep up with the shifting alliances. The government in Baghdad has now authorized airpower to help the Kurds launch a counteroffensive, after having denied the Kurds the ammunition they needed to defend their turf.
The whole Middle East is just an appalling cauldron of violence and disaster.