I still say "stay out of it". What is our interest there? It's not lives lost because that mantle would go to a lot of other African country conflicts. Why aren't the Chinese in there spending millions to launch drones and rockets? The Russians, the Europeans (it's right on their border and they could be taking the lead if they wanted), or heck leave it to those in the direct neighborhood. Why do we seem to be more concerned about it than the rest?
I'm with you... we got no business putting our kids into this mess!
What is pretty amazing to me is how half the people in this country listen to the flat-out lies and distortions spewed by the powers that be and sit on the sidelines and snipe about what is going on with NO input on to what should go on.
Just the fact that we have not rushed in all "gung-ho" John Wayne has not only made it possible, but has forced others with a vested interest to stand up and do something - THEY are putting 'boots on the ground'. Whether intentional or not - I don't care - it has resulted in a brilliant way to respond. Several entities are now involved who previously would have just sat on their thumbs (sounds like O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, doesn't it?) - actually doing the fighting required to attempt to save their situation. Jordan, Syria - both sides...govt and rebels, Egypt, Kurds, and even Iran!
Couple of big missing components to this are Saudi - no surprise, since it is their power structure that is funding/fomenting all this.
And Turkey - regardless of their issues with the Kurds, they should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for not getting into this in a bigger way, even if it is another area besides northern Iraq. I understand that they want to let the Kurds wear themselves down against ISIS - they would be thrilled if all Kurds were killed in the process. We, too should be ashamed for not helping those guys more - bigger/better/more arms - but that would affect our relationship with Turkey, and we might lose base access for making war in the area. Kurds have been the most effective ground force against ISIS so far with not much more than AK's for weapons. It is a dilemma...
Another area the Perpetual Whiner's Society (PWS) is going on about is Ukraine. What a stinking mess that is...the recent Ukrainian govts are corrupt, putrid, boils on the butt of the region, while Russia is even worse. It would be good if Ukraine could be brought into western European society, but it is so bad, they can't even mobilize their own defense. If Russia is successful, there is another piece of the USSR stitched back together. We are tweaking them kinda like we did in Afghanistan using different tools - sanctions and the price of oil. Another good idea, no matter whether intentional or not.
The biggest disappointment to our response, in my opinion is how half this country can't see 7" beyond it's collective nose to understand that this approach is actually working fairly well. And we are NOT on track to kill another 5,000 of our kids with misbegotten imperialistic voyeurism like in Iraq! Almost half of this country has the attention span and ability to learn from history of a large bowl of bread dough!!