Regardless of what impressions you've gotten from the news, we did a bang-up job in Iraq from 2007-2008. Petreus' 'Surge tactics' cleaned up the country like night and day. It [b]worked[/b]. It's easy to say "do bad things to bad people," fine -- it's just as easy to say "we can't win, we never had a chance." The truth is, we could have won, we had a chance, and we let it go. Packing up and leaving has damaged our ability to win -- we're about as credible as a red line in the sand, and everybody knows it, and we can't just make that go away. Now everybody knows -- just wait, and the Americans will walk away. Who in their right minds would work with us now? Iranian rebels tried, they're dead. Syrian rebels tried, they're nerve gassed. Iraqis tried, and they got beheaded for it. Libyans, Afghanis... We don't have the balls to finish what we start, and everybody who throws in with us, pays for it later. "How long is long enough?" As long as it takes. If we can't do that -- and we can't -- then we shouldn't get started in the first place.

So to reiterate -- no, I don't think we should just run over there and bomb people. It's a bad idea, but not for the reasons you're thinking. It could TOTALLY work, we could absolutely win the war and save lives in the process. These aren't boogeymen -- they bleed, they die, they get scared and go home. We've beat the shit out of them enough times, we can always do it again. Hell, the only reason we're talking about ISIS is that Al Qaeda is ashes. Damn straight, we can beat them.... except we can't, because the nation can't stomach it. So anything we do to solve the problem will only make it worse.