ISIS Crisis

The Islamic State terrorist group means business.  They have taken over Christian cities in the Kurdish region  of northern Iraq, including Qaraqosh (Iraq's largest Christian city),  and they have launched an offensive against the Yazidi religious community there.  The conquered peoples of the region have a choice - convert to Islam or die.  If this keeps up, an extremist caliphate will be formed from the outer regions of two existing sovereign states (Iraq and Syria) and, even though it's not going to be officially recognized as such, the Islamic Sate group will enforce its control of the region by means of its own choosing.

President Obama has tried to respond to the latest crisis by bombing key ISIS positions and air-dropping supplies to hard-pressed Kurdish and Yazidi communities on the ground.  Already, Republicans are demanding a greater role for the military in this struggle, but Obama is keeping his cool and striking a balance between aid to the people of northern Iraq and American military assistance.  Having said that, I fear that boots on the ground may be necessary in the near future.  Iraq has never been able to put itself back together after the U.S. invasion of 2003, and though George Walker Bush is gone, the Obama administration, as the governing administration of the United States, pretty much owns the new war (which I call the Islamic State War) in Iraq, because the U.S. invasion set current events in motion.  Getting out of Iraq in 2011 was the easy part; maintaining the stability in Iraq and preventing the aftermath of the war from fueling another conflict has proven to be much harder.  The senior George Bush was wise not to march on Baghdad after the Persian Gulf War of 1991 ended with Kuwaiti sovereignty restored. 

Ironically, the air strikes Obama ordered came from the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush.