Q: Why Did an American Journalist Get His Head Cut Off?

[frazzled]

132. Why not take it back even further--to the Crusades?

I mean, really, this all started in 1095.

I was one of the loudest and most staunch opponents of the war in Iraq. I harangued my senator to vote against the Iraq War Resolution in 2002--I must have called his office 12 times, to no avail. Then in 2003 I marched with 50,000 people in Boston to protest it. I wrote letters, I accosted politicians.

But even I am not stupid enough to lay blame for the current actions of ISIS/ISIL—whom nobody here has been much interested in while they were busy imposing tyranny on Syrians in Raqqa and Aleppo: tortures, executions, mock trials for things like alcohol consumption, abuse of children—fully on the shoulders on our invasion of Iraq.

Sure, it roiled up the currents that have been there all along, and which had been suppressed by the equally appalling rule of tyrants and dictators in that region. But let's not let our opposition to one thing turn into faux support for the other.

We have what we have now. We can't go back and change the past. This group is a monstrous travesty, and you can shrug your shoulders and live in the past, blaming Bush: but that won't do anything to correct the situation on the ground right now. You're going to have to take some kind of position that is more useful than opening another can of beer and flogging the Shrub one more time. It's lazy, it's uncourageous, and it's pointless.

So ... what do you propose to do about the situation with ISIS now?