re: #24 rhuarc

a quibble, you state that taking out the ISIL leadership is incredibly easy… based on what?

tactical nuke? Villages being held hostage?

I don’t doubt that the US is already doing what they can to take out the heads of the hydra but I sure as hell don’t think it will be easy. Do I like our continued involvement in the ME, not really, but at least this time, it’s not entirely the West that is participating here. Granted, most of the allies are folks that have bought their equipment from us, received their training from us and are “generally” aligned with us, but they’re actively participating this time instead of it being a seen/perceived as outsiders to the region, these nations have a vested interest in bringing the extremism under control if they truly want stability.

This has better “buy in” than our grand coalition in either Afghanistan or Iraq, as such, I actually appreciate the fact that the administration held our supposed regional allies feet to the fire to be involved in helping to try and combat fundamentalist extremist elements as opposed to believing that we’ll simply be greeted as liberators.