apparently the first ghastly act didn't furnish the military industrialist complex with sufficient casus belli (more beheadings for a more stable armageddon)

Saudi Arabia was unavailable for comment.

I like to think that I am nominally a pacifist, but when a group like ISIS makes a practice of celebrating genocide and broadcasting crimes against humanity, I start to feel that we need to put "Ride of the Valkyries" on continuous loop and turn every military site they have into a smoking crater.

These guys won't be bombed into submission. Let it go.

What's baffling is that ISIS is turning strategic resources - crude oil, hydroelectric power, etc. - into weapons, ammunition, supplies and cash. It's a big malignant tumour that's sustaining itself thanks to global energy market and the international banking system.

Economic sanctions suppressed Saddam Hussein's regime for a decade. Why couldn't it work again to suppress ISIS?

I don't get their strategy here. It obviously appeals to the home team, but the US isn't Europe. While EU countries quietly pay ransoms to get their nationals back, the US is looking for any excuse to engage in our favorite activity--bloodthirsty mega violence. Just ask Al-Shabaab.

For a country with the apparent attention span of a fruit fly, we sure have a long memory when it comes to getting revenge.

@6: It's only the voters that have the short attention spans. America's vengeance-takers are professionals. They're paid to remember.

I think maybe it's a bit early to predict their inevitable downfall. Strategy might seem bad now, but results are what count.

@2: Actually, even sleepy King Abdullah is sounding the alarm. Wow.

@5,

Maybe because these are religious zealots who won't rest until they've subjugated or killed anyone they don't like. Saddam was content to be left alone with his palaces.

You might consider how political imprisonments and extrajudicial killings skyrocketed in Iran after the Shah was ousted. A secular strongman oppresses anyone who stands in his way. A religious zealot oppresses anyone who stands in his way and anyone who doesn't adhere to the zealot's narrow view of his religion. Which regime would you rather live under?

@3: Yeah, but we lost that war too.

that isis vid sounded like an advertisement for rand paul.

who would benefit if America returned to major military operations in the middle east? would it be the Muslim extremists? probably not in the short-run. no other guesses? pretty sure it isn't our taxpayers or the economic health of America or Americans in general.

If one looks at radicalized self righteous groups, like the Anabaptist that took control of Münster in the 1530s, they tend to burn themselves out if they murder and rape everyone in their sight. ISIS isn't going to last long, they have pissed off Shiites, Kurds, Iranians, Americans, Yazidis etc. People will fight back if they know they can't deal with them... They aren't going to grow in strength, but fight numerous battles with all the groups that want them eradicated.

People who are willing to die for their beliefs. A gift and a curse.

@5, economic sanctions? Are you kidding?

ISIS needs America's war machine for PR. We are fools if we fall for ISIS' plan. And we are major fools.

@19: No, I'm not kidding. Warfare costs a HUGE amount of money. ISIS can terrorize civilians indefinitely but it can't defend Iraqi oil exports. No oil exports, no funds.

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
- A. Einstein

President Bush the Elder knew what he was doing.

@sgt_dork: you're a tool.

There's one of two possible motives here. They might trying the more obvious play and hoping it scares off American involvement. ISIS seems smarter than to expect that to work, but they have been focused locally rather than planning attacks across the ocean.

The other possibility is they want America to entangle itself in another prolonged invasion. Not because they expect to win a fight, but to grow a steady stream of recruits from the displaced. They could also want to US to overextend itself and hasten the day when extravagant military expenditures cause US influence to collapse. This was Bin Laden's plan, so they're probably familiar with the concept.

Jesus the 1984 esque deletion of memory is strong. Before any American journalist were beheaded, before ISIS had any moves to attack America, we bombed ISIS positions around Kurdistan for "humanitarian reasons." Unprovoked. You think 4 guys in a pick up truck have a chance versus a drone they can't see, hear or detect on radar with a 500- lb guided bomb? We started this war, then apparently collectively deleted the memory of this event to postdate the justification to be the executed journalist who was killed after we had already started bombing people who were not at war with us.

Watch the video of Foley's execution, at least up until he get his head chopped off. The British jihadi gives a very clear and simple explanation as to why they are killing Foley, and then states very clearly what will happen if America continues to attack ISIS. The generated outrage that infects even so called liberals in America is disgusting. Here's a thought: Stop killing other people, and maybe, just maybe, they'll stop killing you. Or not. Drop high explosives on people continents away and act shocked, SHOCKED! they have the gumption to fight back.

Just let Iraq break into a viable Sunni Rump State that includes upriver Syria, a Shi'ia Rump State in the Mesopotamian river valley, and a Kurdish state in the north and quit interfering in other nation's business.

@38: Before we bombed ISIS fighters, they were massacring ethnic minorities. Civilians, many of them women and children. Why? Because they didn't subscribe to ISIS's twisted version of Islam.
We have a MORAL OBLIGATION to do SOMETHING to stop that sort of outrage.

The best part about the rise of ISIS is how it's improving U.S.-Iran relations.

Humanitarian bombing! Kill people to stop the massacre! War is Peace! America's Moral Obligation to put it's nose in every other people's business at the point of a gun. Seeing as it worked swimmingly in 1991, 1998, and 2003, let's just keep doing the same strategy over and over again. Who knows, maybe this will be the time it works, I know it.

In short, we must bomb Assad in order to prevent war crimes! Protestors are being shot in the street, Civilians are in danger, people are being tortured because they don't belong to the ruling regime's particular sect and subscribe to their particular religious beliefs! Oh wait, that was 2012, this is 2014. Remember citizen, we are and have always been at war with Eastasia. Support the troops! @ 39

@40, Agreed! The budding US- Iran rapprochement is only matched in sheer blind mutual hypocrisy by the nascent Israel-Saudi Arabia alliance. Anyone, Dan Savage and venomlash included, who is looking at this through the prism of "outrage" or "humanitarian reasons" or "genocide" is a naïve fool.

@42: To ISIS, any civilization that is not theirs is inherently evil and must be ultimately destroyed. You may think that such a statement is naïve, others would say it's prudent and wise, and also something that history has taught us.
It is not a stretch to draw comparisons from the passion of the Nazi followers of the early twentieth century to those joining ISIS literally from around the world. Add to that all the technology, arms, and wealth at their disposal and you have a very bad infection someone's got to clean before its too late.
Actually, I wish it was as simple as you say - a PR stunt by neocons. Unfortunately, it is really not.

The tired canard of "If we don't fight (North Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, Putin, and now apparently ISIS) it'll be the Munich Agreement all over again" is a staple of post World War II American foreign policy. For one, Nazi Germany was an industrialized country of 70 million at the head of an international military alliance. ISIS controls an area the size of Belgium with a population of 6 million. So no, the passion of the Nazi's is a bit of a stretch to compare to ISIS. Their technology, arms and wealth are all second hand pick me ups from our previous batch of Iraqi collaborators, while the Nazi's seemed to be able to make their own technology, arms and wealth that were on par if not better than the rest of the industrialized world.

This country went against a superpower that by God covered the majority of Eurasia and didn't have this current disgusting level of fear mongering and pants wetting. ISIS is a regional insurgency in the Maoist theory of insurgency's second stage, and should be left to be Iran's problem, which it clearly is. It is not some sort of civilization destroying "infection." Which if we want to talk about the language of genocide, damn, that sentence right there about "infection" says more than anything the blatant racist "neocons" could ever say. @43

The fact is both the well meaning liberals like raindrop and the bomb-em-back to the stone age conservatives like venomlash are two sides of the same coin. They both claim to never start a fight, but hell, do they get provoked easily.

@44: I wish we had the luxury of treating ISIS as a regional insurgency (or a JV team as the President calls them) that can be handled by the enemy of my enemy who is my friend: Iran. True, things like this have fizzed out before.

Not since the Nazi's though, has a force been as expansive with such a passion to annihilate Jews, and in addition - infidels. Not like military machine like in WWII, ISIS nevertheless has to its advantage the internet immediacy of global resources to practice asymmetrical terrorist strikes. They would, if they could, blow up the dams in northern Iraq, at the very least. We can only hope Baghdad remains out of their reach.

I understand that hysteria and hype are unleashed red herrings in these situations. But the president was wrong in thinking that the bankrupt and doomed ideology of ISIS (paraphrasing his comments after the first beheading) will in itself be their downfall. There was indeed that sentiment in America and Europe as Hitler was starting his aggression - but we see then that intellectual bankruptcy or "bad karma" is insufficient to rely on for foreign policy.

Despite the time, technology, and other factors - those in themselves do not negate lessons from history because the volatile human condition (in all its permutations) remains a constant.

@44: "The fact is both the well meaning liberals like raindrop and the bomb-em-back to the stone age conservatives like venomlash are two sides of the same coin."
HA HA HA oh man mah jimmies.

@47 I get it, you think that ISIS=Nazi's, the analogy is clearly spurious. I'm tired of belaboring the point, although one part of your post stands out. "They would, if they could, blow up the dams in northern Iraq, at the very least." The dam you are referring to is the old Saddam Dam, ISIS controlled it for 10 days or so in the beginning of August, and despite how "crazy" and "insane" they must be, they didn't blow the dam and flood Mosul when they dad the chance.

ISIS controlled territory overlaps with few exceptions Sunni Arab majority areas in western Iraq and have shown little ability to take and hold hostile ground in the face of opposition. ISIS is a classic regional insurgency in the Maoist tradition, which means it survives due to the acceptance, tacit or otherwise, of the population it operates in.

What, pray tell, is the plan after ISIS? Seeing as it existed when we did physically occupy Iraq with ground troops, let's accept your premise that, say airstrikes and Special Forces somehow give courage to the Iraqi Army that threw down their guns and ran from Mosul earlier this year, and they defeat ISIS conventionally and retake the Sunni part of Iraq. Are we going to help Assad user of chemical weapons, gasser of his own people, ally of Iran take back Sunni eastern Syria? And since you seemed so worried about helpless little Israel, Assad is also an avowed enemy of Israel and ally of Hizbullah

This sentiment of "we must do something!" is what passes for strategic thinking. Strategically it is bankrupt, the squandering of U.S. treasure and blood to help our enemies, and morally it is just supporting the death squads of Assad, Hizbullah, and Shi'ia Iraq over the death squads of ISIS. The world will go on if we let it have a war that we manage to not embroil ourselves in. Maybe we should try it, just this once.