Was it this bad before the USA invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam?
No, and it wasn’t this bad before Obama ignored the Syria situation and mishandled al-Maliki in Iraq even worse than Bush did.
But in the words of Colin Powell, “You break it, you own it.” Yet we’re not taking responsibility for what we broke, we’re letting it get worse instead.
Tomdstone, don’t think we have a duty to defend the innocent?
To stop crime?
Yes, the ideal is no war. But if someone brings it to you and won’t listen (because you’re not doing anything to stop them), then you have war, whether you want it or not. It only takes one side to make war.
Yes, the ideal would be to go in and treat these like crimes and arrest, give trials, and imprison these heinous criminals. But how do you do that when they have weaponry, even stolen heavy weaponry?
You MUST use force. Even police use force to arrest people. When those people are heavily armed and attacking the police, they must use greater force to subdue that person.
The pope and his bishops and the bishops and patriarchs in the Middle East ALL say that force must be used. The Church teaching and history is clear that force can and even in some cases must be used to defend the innocent. Jesus himself made allowance for it, and spoke of needing swords.
Do not imagine that the Second Coming has already happened and we live in a world where there is only the Church Triumphant, not the Church Militant. Such delusions are dangerous.
And do not delude yourself or other faithful by cherrypicking a couple of select phrases from the Pope or someone else out of context. In so doing, you oppose the greater context and meaning and advocacy of the Pope and the bishops today; oppose the perennial teachings of the Church (which, to do so publicly, is heresy); and oppose the teachings of Jesus himself.
Force can be justified. Our Church leaders have determined that some level of force IS justified in this instance. They are only asking for careful consideration over what that level of justice should be.
And by the way, “boots on the ground” are often more effective and have less collateral damage than air strikes (dropping bombs). Individual soldiers right in the face of a situation are in better positions to carefully use force and defend and rescue people (women and children enslaved, for instance) and to possibly capture (without killing) ISIS soldiers.
Thus, soldiers on the ground are the RIGHT way to fight this war. Not with impersonal bombings with less discretion, no capacity for capturing without killing, and no capacity for individually freeing or defending the victims.
Human comedy and tragedy. And today we have our politically enslaved military experts like Kerry and Kirby telling us how we shouldn’t be worried about the Kurds about to be murdered in Kobani.
