First, I will express my sorrow for this development and sad state of events in Iraq.
I have discussed my thoughts on this issue on other threads, and they all seem to have a common theme. We are dealing with asymmetric wars throughout the Middle East.
So I think the bigger picture issue, for this thread as well, is how do we help these people, who are victims of an asymmetric war ?
Of course the first thing that needs to be accomplished is to get the people food and water and shelter.
What is next ?
Hey, sorry it took me a while to get back to you.
I think the next step, if ISIS is to continue advancing, would be to evacuate the Christians and Yezidis far from anywhere that ISIS could reach them. Israel is an option, and I doubt that Iran would capitulate to radical Sunnis. The farther reaches of Kurdistan may also be helpful.
But on a more global scale, the US has an insane amount of resources to take care of any refugees that come to our country, in terms of food, water and areas to house them; it would hardly be a drop in the bucket for us to take care of even a hundred thousand refugees. If more of our people were aware of the horrors our fellow Christians in the Middle East were facing, as well as that suffered by the Yezidis, Druze and other religious minorities, I'd like to think we would have organized larger relief efforts already. As it is, many of us are just hearing about these horrors for the first time this week, thanks to CNN's and Fox News' coverage just getting started on the crisis.
But I fear that any US intervention in Iraq and Syria may be limited; from what I can gather, public opinion has been tending more towards "Let's stay out of other peoples' wars", but on the flip side, as people grow more aware of the ISIS crisis, people are growing more supportive of whatever military or humanitarian support may come--even a ground invasion wouldn't be unpopular, I don't think. And I don't think the government has caught on to that, if they even care.
