ISIS In Iraq: Is The U.S. Seriously Going To Sit On The Sidelines And Watch Militant Islamist Groups Take Over?

ISIS, an army of more than 5,000 heavily armed al Qaeda affiliated fanatics pledged to rebuilding the Caliphate and implementing strict Wahhabi Islam by murder and savagery, is taking control of much of Iraq. Meanwhile, the President of the United States is working on his short game.

As the Western World and its “moderate Muslim allies” dither and debate and the innocent people of Iraq are being slaughtered, President Barack Obama has already gone on the record as saying that the United States will not be sending ground troops to help Iraq defend itself from the radical Islamist forces of ISIS.

In a related story in The Inquisitr, ISIS recently had hundreds of US civilian contractors surrounded and imperiled. Meanwhile, while the US President sits on his hands, the Iranians have sent troops into Iraq.

By saying that he has ruled out the possibility of using ground troops, the President of the United States has actually told the enemy — in this case ISIS and the flocks of Sunnis rushing to join their attempt to establish hardline fundamentalist Islamic rule in Iraq — that we will not act in any kind of sustainable way.

While President Obama has indicated that he may employ air strikes or other means of combating the violence being spread by ISIS, even a cursory understanding of warfare in the Middle East should tell the president — and anyone else paying attention — that all the enemy will need to do is hang on long enough to outlast what appears to be the President’s unbelievably fragile will to save an ally on the brink on unimaginable horrors.

If you’re a radical Islamic jihadi, you couldn’t hear better news. Not only are you faced with a situation in which all you need to do is outlast an enemy who apparently has little resolve, but that enemy intends to send targets for the Russian-made surface to air missiles ISIS is rumored to be equipped with — to say nothing of the high grade American-made equipment ISIS has picked up from fleeing US-trained Iraqi forces.

Make no mistake. As The Washington Post points out, ISIS intends to fulfill the vision its founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, laid out: to establish a new caliphate of Sunni Muslims that will stretch all the way from Syria to the Persian Gulf. It would be criminally naive to think that ISIS would be content to stop there.

Militant Islam has had pretty much the same MO since the religion’s inception. Evangelism by the sword has been part and parcel of Islamic expansion from the time Mohammad decided to punish Mecca for ignoring his message. While there are certainly Muslims who do not favor violence in Iraq or elsewhere, radical groups such as ISIS are bent on enforcing their view of Islam upon all in Iraq, Syria, and beyond.

The Islamic terrorist group has already warned Iraqi women not to be caught in what they consider inappropriate dress. ISIS has also threatened those who may consider opposing them that they will be treated as traitors. To make their point, these madmen have gone so far as to behead a man and play soccer with his severed head.

Edmund Burke famously said, “All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Do we in the United States lack good men, or are we a country full of good men who are doing nothing because there is a serious lack of leadership? The President of the United States is weighing options while ISIS is in Iraq closing the noose around Baghdad.

Nobody wants war. No sane person, anyway. But what does it say about who we are as a nation if we leave what had only recently been an ally in the Middle East to fend for itself when the kind of unspeakable evil that ISIS represents threatens? Where are the Winston Churchills? Where are the FDRs? Will Americans stand up and demand that our elected officials show that kind of leadership, or will we turn our nose and declare the burning, raping, and murder is “not our problem?”

Tony Blair recently claimed that the violence in Iraq is not the result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. With all due respect to the former prime minister, while the ousting of Saddam Hussein is not solely to blame for the violent uprising, the cultural and political powder keg that has exploded in Iraq (and Syria) can be blamed — at least in part — to a premature withdrawal of American and other troops that were needed to maintain stability in the region. Ousting a dictator is a net gain of zero if we’re going to let the region descend into chaos, as one former US soldier, J.R. Salzman, poignantly reminded President Obama.

This is my friend SGT Turcotte. Will you apologize to his family for throwing away our sacrifices, @BarackObama? pic.twitter.com/gciRraPw82

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) June 13, 2014

It may not be politically popular to suggest that we still needed to be there. We’re all weary of the aftermath of a war that has dragged out way too long. However, the fact is that the region was not stable. Conservatives saw it — and for the most part were shouted down. Now that ISIS is in Iraq and horrific violence is spreading across the country, is there anyone who doesn’t see it?

Ugly as the thought is, the United States can not afford to sit this one out. Like it or not, sooner or later that means putting boots on the ground. We cannot win here with air strikes alone. If we sit this out, no matter who wins, we would be the losers. Hopefully, no one really needs to have the potential horrors of allowing ISIS to overrun Iraq and establish a Syrian-Iraqi Caliphate spelled out.

And for anyone who thinks Iran sending troops to fight ISIS is a good thing, both sides have the ultimate goal of a worldwide Caliphate that will make Islam the only religion for the entire world. An Iran-supported Iraq a country whose last president called for the destruction of our ally Israel and whose clerics continue to do so, is not any more acceptable.

The US can’t afford to sit this one out and allow ISIS in Iraq to establish a terror state from which to launch a violent Jihad across the Middle East and Africa. The future and freedom of millions of lives are at stake. The entire civilized world must stop ISIS.

[Images Courtesy of vox.com]