Iraq: License to Intervene

Early in the summer, as ISIS seized control of Mosul and swept southward down the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, a minority of observers, myself included, were wary of an all-out American counter strike against ISIS, in support of Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite regime and behind it, Iran. It seemed like unnecessarily alienating the Sunni world, which makes up 85 percent of Islam.

That moment of wariness has now passed. The extreme jihadi fringe of Sunni Islam, in its incarnation as ISIS (now the Islamic State) has embarked on a policy of forced conversion or alternatively death against the minority Kurdish sect, the Yazidis and against Iraqi Christians. This leaves the rest of Muslims in no position to object to attacks on an obscurantist organization -- ISIS -- which is carrying out wholesale murder of minorities representing other religions. Furthermore, it is a situation utterly intolerable to the international community.

Other religions have done the same as this Sunni fringe, but this was centuries ago. If ISIS' other Sunni allies -- the Sunni tribes and the and the mainly ex-Baathist officers of the Army of the Sons of the Naqshbandi Order -- would like to dump ISIS, this would be a different story as regards the U.S. attitude toward this insurgency. But they probably can't.

Because of this appalling ethnic cleansing by ISIS, the U.S. now has a free hand to move against ISIS. Whether this can be done without putting combat troops on the ground is far from certain.