Comment Re:Careful, they might shoot back (Score 1) 336
The thing is, why do we need to be "serious about victory"? Why is this cause so important that we should murder millions of civilians, over an ideology?
It was exactly the same with Vietnam. What did we accomplish there? Nothing, except killing millions. How is Vietnam today? It's actually doing just fine, despite us losing there. Why do we care about how people on the other side of the planet live their lives? If they want to live under Sharia Law, who cares? If the people there are willing to allow them to govern them, and are unwilling to stand up against them, why should we? (The Sunni Muslims who live in the cities ISIS controls actually seem to support them; that's why ISIS is so strong there.) Now obviously, not everyone there likes them: the Kurds especially hate them. But that's fine, we can just equip and train the Kurds and let them keep ISIS contained.
You simply haven't made any kind of case why we should become mass murderers and draw the condemnation of the world for this cause. They are not any kind of serious threat to western nations, and in fact, the way I see it, they're a help: they're drawing away lots of angry Muslims who were born here to Muslim immigrants. Instead of staying here and causing problems (and us being unable to deport them because they're citizens), they're willingly going over there and getting killed by drone bombs or Kurdish or Iraqi militaries. Good riddance. It's kinda like a honeypot.
Finally, what would happen in your scenario anyway? You sound like you've thought it through about as well as Bush thought through his plans for eliminating Saddam in Iraq. What are you going to do after you eliminate ISIS and achieve military victory? We already won militarily in Iraq: there was no "namby pamby" war there, we won completely and decisively, and then look what happened: we got ISIS. This is what happens when you create a power vacuum in a culture you don't understand and try to set up a lame puppet government. Wiping out a city and eliminating ISIS is going to do the same thing.