What Should Be Done About ISIS? And Who Should Do It?

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11. There is a battle for political control

in Iraq and Syria. Iraqis and Syrians must determine the outcome. The answer can't come from the outside. Iraq is a sovereign nation and has a responsibility to protect its people, its values, and its territory. They are not a nation without the means to do so. The historical part that the U.S. played in the events that facilitated the rise of IS neither obligates nor justifies another aggressive war in Iraq.

Its true that those with great power have an obligation to protect the weak and defenseless. But there are conditions for violating a nation's sovereignty and territory to intervene to protect the weak or to stop atrocities. Those conditions aren't met in Iraq.

On the other hand, ISIS isn't an ordinary political and military group. In an ordinary conflict, there might be crimes and transgressions by both sides, but after one side or the other wins life generally returns to a semblance of normal. ISIS doesn't appear to be like that. Their crimes are especially shocking (systematic officially sanctioned rape) and there's not much reason to expect the atrocities would end with the cessation of hostilities. ISIS is a kind of evil on par with the Nazis -- a complete nullification of normal human values. It might be that they need to be destroyed for the good of mankind.

How that can be done militarily -- against an irregular enemy that recognizes no rules or conventions of war -- is beyond me. The territory they occupy is vast and populated by hundreds of thousands of civilians.