[Wash Times] As the Islamic State expands the caliphate carved from what used to be Iraq and Syria, the American people demand that it be destroyed. Our ruling class responds with dysfunctional debate. Democrats blame Republicans for starting the Middle East's war and vow not to worsen matters by intervening again, while most mainstream Republicans blame President Obama's Democrats for throwing away what they call George W. Bush's victory in Iraq and yearn for American "boots on the ground" to "save it."One side maintains that the Islamic State, or ISIS, is none of our business, while the other presumes that America's business is to establish acceptable regimes. Both err -- the first by neglecting that Middle East potentates' agendas sometimes intrude upon our business, and the second by failing properly to distinguish between what is others' business and what is ours. Both avoid the substance of the American people's demand: Kill the cutthroats who behead Americans, who make converts among disaffected sectors of our population and encourage them to kill us.
Doing away with ISIS requires honesty about what America's business is and is not, what is within our capacity and right to do and what is not. In short, while we have neither the capacity nor the right to determine who rules whom or how anywhere but at home, we have the power and the duty to destroy any individual, band or movement that means to kill us.
Each side recognizes the American people's demand, and avoids it for its own reasons. The Obama administration does so by a de minimis military campaign in former Iraq, combined with mild cooperation with Iran. Thus, to avoid inconveniencing the Middle East's progressive forces,
| Iran as a progressive force? An interesting use of the term... |
Mainstream Republicans -- Sen. John McCain and commentators at Fox News and The Wall Street Journal -- also seem not to notice it because their salient concern is the same as that of the Bush administration: the unity of territorial integrity, and the decency of Iraq and other states in the region. Focused on other peoples' business -- on matters that, patently, are beyond our power or right to decide -- they neglect what it takes to forcefully mind our own business.
And so the dysfunctional debate continues. On one side: bipartisan agreement on doing nothing that would compromise "Iraqi unity" regardless of what happens to ISIS -- just a lower commitment of American involvement and continued efforts to involve a more local powers in the fight. On the other side: save Baghdad from ISIS by reoccupying at least some of Iraq. Sacrifice American lives, continue giving sophisticated arms to Iraqis who promptly surrender them to ISIS, but make sure that no such weapons reach the Kurds and the Shia because, though they fight ISIS, they pose a threat to the Bushy dream of a "united, democratic Iraq." While our ruling class exchanges nonsense, hunting season on Americans remains open.