Americans have been down this road already.
We invaded a sovereign nation. Tossed out its leader. Captured him. Tried and convicted him. Then we executed him.
Americans sought to help rebuild a government in our image, with mixed results.
All the while, nearly 5,000 of our young men and women died seeking to make Iraq a beacon of freedom and light in the Middle East.
Then we pulled out.
Do we need to go back into a country and put “boots on the ground” in an effort to defeat the Islamic State, which wants to claim Iraq as its own?
No. Why? The country has no more stomach for additional loss of American life. We do not want to expend one more young life in a country into which we never should have entered in the first place.
President Obama says the United States is “not losing the war” against the Islamic State. He acknowledges “tactical setbacks” with ISIL’s taking of Ramadi, a key Iraqi city. But the air campaign will continue. We’ll continue to train Iraqi soldiers to fight the enemy on the ground. We’ll continue to provide intelligence to hunt down and kill ISIL leaders when and where we find them.
This fight continues to look as though it will take a long time to conclude. That, I submit, is the very nature of this new kind of “world war” in which we’re engaged.
Do we put our troops back onto the battlefield once again? No way.