[lhc-]

When will NATO destroy an entire nation, civilians and all? How is that a remotely reasonable response? That's like suggesting that Pakistan would be justified in nuking Washington DC because American drone strikes have killed civilians there. There's no world where its justifiable to murder a nation of civilians, ever.

[graycat]

> There's no world where its justifiable to murder a nation of civilians, ever.

Yup, and that's just what ISIS is trying to do -- everyone in the world, convert to radical Sunni Islam and follow ISIS or die.

To heck with the details: The US, France, Germany, England, all of NATO has a right to defend themselves.

With the ISIS ideology, they will be trying to kill everyone else, infidels, as long as there is just one ISIS person left.

At this point it is not enough to stop the ISIS killings. Instead, we must stop the ability of ISIS to do harm outside of their area.

Sure, taking the desert area of ISIS and wiping it clean is not reasonable, but neither is ISIS.

I don't want to kill them. I especially don't want to hurt the girls and young women, especially the ones they have made into sex slaves. I don't even want to hurt their flocks and camels.

But I want to stop ISIS now and forever in the future. I don't want to spend even one drop of NATO blood. I don't want to spend even one US penny more than necessary. But I want ISIS stopped. We are not obligated to put up with their wacko nonsense. It is our responsibility that they be stopped. If they had any responsibility or deserved any from us, then they would long since have stopped their wacko, medieval nonsense. Since they have not stopped and have no sense of responsibility, we need just to stop them.

Stop them from the air. Take out their leaders and their oil infrastructure. Occupy their oil areas and take the oil. For the rest of the area, we might for a while try to send them back to tents, flocks, and camels cooking their food with camel dung. I I suspect it won't work, that all they have is what their radical clerics tell them, and those clerics will stop only when dead.

Basically they have a wacko, violent, ugly, stupid medieval culture enabled by oil money and nothing else, are 1000 years out of date, with no hope of moving ahead the needed several hundred years. No hope.

And their nuke threat is real. Time to stop them.

[tremon]

While I agree with the point you're making, how many civilians are left in ISIS controlled territory though? I don't have any numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if 50% has fled and another 40% has been killed by ISIS. So how many people are there, not including the people that chose to join ISIS?

I've seen some footage from Sinjar after it was retaken by the Kurds: not a single building was left standing. It's hard to imagine anyone still living there.