It's War

The Islamic State means business.  It wants to create a bi-continental empire vaster than anything the Romanovs could have imagined, as evidenced by the terror group's capture and execution of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya who had  traveled there seeking work.  Except that Libya doesn't work these days. The overthrow of Qaddafi in 2011 was expected to yield a fairer and more just government there, and now, with the country in a civil war, there's barely a government there at all.  As with Syria, Islamic State fighters have moved into Libya to take advantage of the chaos to fight for power while al-Qaeda, also struggling for dominance in the realm of Islamic revolution, has been trying to keep the Islamic State at bay.  

The grisly beheadings of hostages have led to retaliation from Jordan and Egypt, the latter country pounding the Libyan frontier with air bombing.  The outrage among the Arab peoples against the Islamic State has led some observers to believe that the terror group, having gone too far, has invited destruction upon itself.  Don't make me laugh (and this is no laughing matter).  The Islamic State gains support for its cause just as easily as it repels others.  Muslim extremists from all corners of the globe have gone to the Middle East to take up the fight, as if it were the Spanish Civil War or some other romanticized cause.  If they can't go to the battlefield, they'll take the battle to the non-Muslim world, as happened just recently in Denmark with the attacks on a free speech event (which included a Swedish cartoonist who had caricatured the Prophet Mohammed) and a bat mitzvah at a synagogue.

This is a war, and it's no longer a war confined to the creation of a caliphate from Iraqi territory.  In fact, it never was just that.