Part One argues the case against direct American military intervention in Iraq and Syria. Part Two will focus on policy measures that can help defeat ISIS without requiring the United States to get bogged down in another costly war that further undermines national security
There is no precedent for either the scale or the manner in which ISIS has possessed the popular imagination. From the outset coverage of the terrorist organization has been stylized in florid, apocalyptic prose. Competing narratives for its origins, motivations, capabilities and portentousness have resulted in much of the discourse being speculative and rife with dissension.
Opportunistic politicians like Donald Trump and Ben Carson have engaged in a squalid endeavor to prey on the fear and stoke the hatred that has emanated from terrorist attacks to score political points and gain popularity.
After the San Bernardino attacks it seems a critical mass has been attained in national sentiment. The war drum has started beating feverishly in Republican quarters and much of mainstream media appears to be following suit.
If a major intervention including both air and ground offensives is launched, then it will be a tragic confirmation that any lessons that were learned from the Second Gulf War have been undone by the Republican revision of history that ascribes all blame for the consequences of the Iraq War to Obama's troop withdrawal. This dishonest narrative claims that had 10,000 or more troops stayed on in Iraq the country would never have descended into the sectarian fault lines and administrative failure that allowed ISIS to germinate. It ignores the sectarian carnage and Prime Minister Maliki's persecution and political disenfranchisement of Sunnis that occurred for years when over a hundred thousand American troops were still in Iraq.
It conveniently omits the now well known fact that Baghdadi started planning and recruiting for ISIS while incarcerated at the Camp Bucca detention centre -- an American military prison.
And there are more reasons why war could be catastrophic. The past savagery of ISIS leaves little doubt that in the event of a major bombing campaign they would hide among dense civilian populations and expose a large number of innocents to slaughter.
Recent Russian airstrikes in the Syrian cities of Homs and Aleppo resulted in a significant number of civilian deaths, striking hospitals and a major marketplace.
With the social media prowess that ISIS has exhibited, civilian casualties could become a powerful tool for ISIS to incite more anti-Western loathing and motivate terror attacks.
The other question is what the future would hold even if ISIS were militarily defeated. The complex and ugly political intricacies in the region are, if anything, worse than what they were in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. Turkey has started to help train Kurdish Peshmerga fighters against ISIS but remains locked in a conflict with the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). If a Syrian Kurdistan is demanded by the Peshmerga in the event of an ISIS defeat this is likely to encourage the PKK and cause more security problems for Turkey.
The hostility between the House of Al-Saud and the Iranian regime has worsened and their proxy war now extends into Syria and Yemen.
With the amount of influence Iran currently has in Iraq and with the Syrian regime the political intrigues will only gain intensity if another power vacuum is created by Western military intervention.
To the West the Israel-Palestine conflict has also heated up and remains an unsettling influence on the entire Middle East.
This is the political quicksand where some want to bring another Western invasion, in a region where anti-Western sentiment is already at an all time high. Throw into this mix the vastly differing political interests of Russia. Will the Russians collaborate? Will they budge on the issue of Assad? Or will the man whose regime has killed and tortured far more people than ISIS itself remain in power and escape accountability? Russia's focus on bombing the anti-Assad Sunni rebels of the Free Syrian Army stands in direct contradiction to the American policy of arming and training "Moderate" Sunni rebels against ISIS and Assad.
War is not the answer. ISIS is the misbegotten child of many parents, chief of whom are the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the atrocities committed by Bashar-al-Assad against his own people. Bringing further violence to a long-traumatized region infested by corrupt and destructive autocrats will not be astute policy, valiant resolve or strong leadership. It will be perilous idiocy.