Yes, there’s oil involved and the policing of the global marketplace for it (oil which we would do well to get more of here at home, but which won’t likely happen with a ballooning EPA and an activist-sympathetic administration). There’s also Israel and the larger region to think about strategically, as well as our national security. Should ISIS/ISIL be able to control and hold any territory, like other Islamist held territories or those sympathetic to Islamist causes, this will create a genuine threat to our interests and safety pretty soon afterwards.
Thousands of fighters from the Western world have joined their ranks. This is dangerous stuff.
Vice magazine has another dispatch up from the Kurdish controlled territories of Iraq. Perhaps the Kurds would not easily give up Kirkuk after taking over its defense from fleeing Iraqi Army forces and defending it from ISIS/ISIL.
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https://twitter.com/MsIntervention/status/481798600092286976
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Walter Russell Mead tears into the current administration’s unraveling foreign policy, while Jeffrey Goldberg takes a rather bleak, non-interventionist stance, and tries to redirect focus away from the Obama blame (whom most of the press is just getting around to judging more objectively after exhausting all other options):
I’ve often thought of real neo-conservatives as liberals who’ve left the fold. Many Left-liberal loyalties and underlying liberal humanist sympathies remain, but now married to American military power and a more realist look at international affairs. The use of force is justified to promote those ideals, especially regarding Israel.
So, perhaps the more Left-liberal and ‘progressive’ our culture drifts, an eventual backlash out of the grad schools, social sciences, and policy-halls of liberal humanitarian thought awaits.
Just as many libertarians are most vocal about criticizing liberal collectivism and Statism, neo-conservatives are often most vocal about criticizing Left-liberal and non-interventionist foreign policy.
What am I missing?
Our nations foreign policy is to fight global warming by regulating everything to death. What does that have to do with Iraq? Besides, if oil is cut off, we will use less of it and Tom Steyer, our shadow President, will be happy.
Ron, didn’t you hear?
Global warming is such a catastrophe, it will require immediate withdrawal from all coal mines, oil producing countries, and even the Keystone Pipeline.
A team of the the best and brightest regulators, activists, bureaucrats and scientists are working on this around the clock.
New formulas are being worked on for your daily energy consumption. The EPA is growing by leaps and bounds.
Avoiding our impending doom requires global activism. This activism trumps strategy and ‘evil’ warmongering, greedy capitalists and self-interested people like you.
Why do you resist?
As a matter of fact, I’ve sent an alert tweet to activists at EPA headquarters regarding your callous disregard for these Command & Control solutions to our collective Gaia problems.