I must offer this premise. There is no easy way out nor an easy path to follow.  But we are indeed down a path, one that attacks the Sunni backed ISIS.  We now have picked sides in a religious war.

What must be realized in this region of the world, the Mideast, is that borders drawn by westerners are of little matter to they who live in the region.  And that is precisely what the national delineations are, lines drawn by westerners.

From the Sykes–Picot Agreement which in a fatigued fog resulting from WW I drew up the borders of several countries of the Mideast, to the Balfour Declaration which established Israel, these border formalities come in a distant second to the religious sect affiliations of the Sunnis, Shites and Kurds.

It will be ever thus, a continuation of what has been… ever thus.  Yet somehow we believe we must intervene to build a nation or control an area. Folly.

Humanitarian concerns create the complication.  What one must ask is why any intervention on our part is not coupled with the Red Cross or the UN.  Coupled and complimentary only to the saving of those trapped in the situation.

To insert personnel into regions of religious conflict, then declare we must involve militarily to protect those same people is reminiscent of the Putin game of “we must defend our people”,  therefore we must invade.

ISIS is clearly backed by someone with deep pockets.  Logic would lead one to those who are Sunni and those who have the cash to sponsor such activities.  Saudi Arabia leaps to mind.

The Sunnis may now gather to create a new enemy of the United States.  And when, exactly, does the bombing of ISIS not create the “new terrorists” that Obama so fears?

Contain but do not intervene.  Provide relief in close cooperation with exactly those organizations that are in existence for just these situations.

James Longstreet