How would YOU handle the ISIS terrorist organization if you were in the Oval Office?

[LeftyMom]

39. Lean on our allies to stop funding them.

In the long term it would be wise fund secular education and media in the region, because right now a lot of the education materials and funding are wahhabist and a lot of the tv channels are sectarian and that's what's fueling a great deal of the animosity and violence. But right now I don't think we can intervene in that too much without mistrust, that really needs to be a longer term project.

But as far as Iraq specifically goes, there's currently a situation where the population is not evenly distributed over the oil wealth, and fighting over the areas that are is unfortunately inevitable. We're making a mistake in reading religion into that conflict as the primary motive, religion is a tool, there's a reason they're fighting in the areas where the oil is. For that matter the breakdown of Iraq's colonial borders into something that better represents the ethnic and religious divides is also inevitable, and dragging that out is not going to make that process any easier, let alone make it bloodless. Likewise we've set up this situation by propping up strongmen, because this created a situation where religion and resistance were comingled, and that's always a powerful mix. The fall of strongmen in the face of popular resistance is volatile but it's also inevitable and in the long run it's almost certainly for the good. The short run is going to be really fucking ugly and our involvement is likely to make it more so.

And of course we need to work on better energy sources, because resource wars won't end until the resource is less valuable.