"Evil thrives when good men do nothing" gotta put a stop to this
Bomb the hell out of the Syrians? Surely they have suffered enough.
Iraq III? Maybe this time.... maybe....
Send the ground troops into Saudi? Quatar?
Acknowledging that some of ISIS / Al-Qaeda gripes do have some merit, stop interfering in other countries affairs, stop propping up dictators because they are "our" dictator.
Something else?
Unfortunately for the Syrians, my money is on bomb the hell out of them, trying to limit the number of "collataral damage" of dead women and kids, but hey, not our fault.
And so we go round the merry go round again.
Now obviously option 1 is probably the best approach, option 2 is the most likely, and option 4 is the one that is appealing in the wake of hundreds of innocent people dying.
Beyond that, there's not much more we can do.
You don't like your local police officer, call him terrorist and see the world's most expensive bludgeon deal with him. Don't want to deal with rebellious village? Tell Americans they are terrorists.
Compared to ISIS, Asad is a secular moderate. Hell, Al Quaida is moderate compared to ISIS. Every other sensible actor in Syria left the country long time ago.
Though fusion is a long way out, hypothetically, if we didn't have any reason to interfere and could just leave the Middle East to figure out its own problems, they wouldn't have a reason to see us as the enemy.
Our dependence on foreign oil is no longer an excuse for our meddling in the Middle East.
We meddle a lot less overall in the Middle East the last 8 years than the prior 8, right? If we don't then Russia steps up to do it themselves (for better or worse US has no leadership there anymore so maybe why not Russia give it a shot?)
In the end I personally don't believe the massacre is in any way "caused" by US or other foreign involvement in the Middle East. This is not the first caliphate, nor will it be the last, and it's not about righting wrongs or a struggle for independence, it's literally about inflicting mass casualties on the infidels in as an atrocious and terrifying (i.e beheadings) manor as possible.
Over 100 murdered is a mind boggling atrocity but also a terrible security failure. Not just in failing to catch and prevent it, but failure to take out the shooters at the concert sooner. (I haven't read a detailed account of how the shooters were stopped if there is one)
The reality, I believe, is much closer to the same reason it always comes down to when men commit acts of brutality in order to subjugate or terrorize a population. They do it because of ego, pride, opportunity, and a desire for establishing their own power, not because someone else made them do it or in seeking justice in face of tyranny.
If anything, I think it's more likely the premature US withdraw from the Middle East and a lack of stronger support for Israel which has contributed to ISIS flourishing. A perceived faltering of support between two allies is the best invitation for increased pressure and targeted attacks (physical, political, clandestine, and otherwise) against the bonds between those allies. It doesn't surprise me at all that countries and religious fanatics with the stated goal of the destruction of Israel would work tirelessly to popularize the notion that if only not for the US "supporting Israel" the Middle East would somehow be more stable.
Mostly I pin the blame for the flourishing of ISIS collectively on the Middle Eastern countries which themselves have epically failed to confront the rising threat of ISIS on their own turf, while doing seemingly everything possible in their own domestic policies to in fact encourage ISIS recruitment. Assad'd deployment of chemical weapons is mirrored in Egypt's own treatment of citizens in Sinai, and over and over again throughout the Middle East, we see effectively a ceaseless and brutal civil war stretching back, what, 1400 years, only interrupted by periods of apparent calm when one tyrant or another manages to temporarily cement themselves so far above reproach that their own raping and plundering goes uncontested for a relatively short while.
The Middle East has been facing endemic war between Islamic sects basically for the entire history of Islam itself. The "holy wars" (call it barbarism or medievalism) being carried out in the name of Islam (by so-called "Islamic terrorists") is evidence enough that this is not actually problem of foreign policy, but a deep seated and historically pervasive domestic problem.
The inescapable "defunding" of the Middle East over the next few decades is unsurprisingly leading to a surge of sound and fury, signifying little, and ultimately will disappear in a whimper. These are countries which by and large by their own actions and circumstances have squandered a most incredible glut of natural resources (as is human nature) and as that era comes to a close in relatively short order, will bring with it a humanitarian crisis throughout the region, which frankly, neither the US or any other World power, is either responsible for, nor has the political will, nor even the available resources, systems, or infrastructure to adequately address.
The massacre in France is abhorrently evil and sensationally shocking. Statistically, it is a drop in the bucket. I can't even comprehend, for example, the scale of horror and violence which is being inflicted daily against disenfranchised Muslim women and girls who are married into bondage, raped, and brutalized, as a token reward / enticement for ISIS recruits, even wrapping this torture in a veil of propriety and calling it Sharia.... A sickness like that, to me, can only be understood, explained, spread, and ultimately eradicated domestically.
ISIS formed in the power vacuum created by the United States toppling Saddam Hussein. [0,1] So yes, the country that had its leader and military demolished was unable to combat the rise of ISIS, you're right. But pinning the failure on them is to ignore the reasons they failed to do so.
>The Middle East has been facing endemic war between Islamic sects basically for the entire history of Islam itself. The "holy wars" (call it barbarism or medievalism) being carried out in the name of Islam (by so-called "Islamic terrorists") is evidence enough that this is not actually problem of foreign policy, but a deep seated and historically pervasive domestic problem.
To collapse the rise of ISIS into the same civil wars that have been raging for the past millennia and a half is the same willful ignorance of the complex cultural history that you deride in your first paragraph. The roots of ISIS are in Wahhabism, a faction that existed mainly in Saudi Arabia. It wasn't until Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud in 1945 (following the discovery of oil there in 1938) that this nation had any serious ambition at exporting their brand of Islam further in the middle east. Then, with the Oil Crisis of 1973, Saudi Arabia proved its political power and was able to leverage it against the United States. When it came time to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan, the United States armed the Mujahadin, a proudly Wahhabist faction.
The US being the reason that ISIS has flourished is not an opinion, it's the conclusion made over and over by analysis of historical facts.
[0]http://www.cfr.org/iraq/islamic-state/p14811 "The group that calls itself the Islamic State can trace its lineage to the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003. The Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi aligned his Jama’at al-Tawhidw’al-Jihad with al-Qaeda, making it al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)."
http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-inte... [1]"More pertinent than Islamic theology is that there are other, much more convincing, explanations as to why they’ve fought for the side they did. At the end of the interview with the first prisoner we ask, “Do you have any questions for us?” For the first time since he came into the room he smiles—in surprise—and finally tells us what really motivated him, without any prompting. He knows there is an American in the room, and can perhaps guess, from his demeanor and his questions, that this American is ex-military, and directs his “question,” in the form of an enraged statement, straight at him. “The Americans came,” he said. “They took away Saddam, but they also took away our security. I didn’t like Saddam, we were starving then, but at least we didn’t have war. When you came here, the civil war started.”
ISIS is the first group since Al Qaeda to offer these young men a way to defend their dignity, family, and tribe."
We'd have to make more electric cars and find a way to make them affordable to replace gas powered cars. Have electric car conversion kits to replace the engine and take out the gas tank and replace it with batteries. You got used gas powered cars as low as $500 and owners that can't afford electric cars so you have to do a government program for them to subsidize the conversion.
Getting off fossil fuels will help fight climate change as well. So it is a win-win.