I do not agree with you here. I think the other middle eastern countries can remove ISIS from their countries if they wished to do so. I think they would rather let us do it so they do not have to commit to it as much or as many resources.
Yes we are the very symbol of freedom and peace. We are the ones who show the rest of the world what it is like to be peaceful. But just because we are peaceful does not mean that we do not know how to wage war.
When you look at WWII I have a feeling that Japan would have attacked the USA in Hawaii none the less if we were or were not activily helping Europe. As Hawaii was just a territory and not a state Japan wanted a base closer to the east so they could have all of the pacific ocean as their territory. They had to take out our fleet to do that and thus the attack on Pearl Harbor. They just did not understand the power we had when it comes to making war. Same as ISIS does not understand our power either but right now our hands are tied in that regard as you and I well know.
KN,
Hawaii was never one of the places Japan wanted. They only started thinking about invading it after WW 2 started. They had an area they considered their own, and it was a wide swath of the Pacific ocean, but it was never all of it. They attacked us because we cut off their oil supply, back then we were the #1 exporter of oil, and we convinces everyone else to do the same. We also cut off their supply of other natural resources. We did that because of their war in China. After they attacked us many Americans wanted to center on japan and leave Germany out of it… after all, they didn't attack us. Roosevelt always planned on declaring war on Germany too, but Germany beat us to it by declaring war on us. What I was saying is if we didn't embargo Japan they wouldn't have attacked us, Germany would have won, and then between the two of them they'd have attacked us someday.
Regarding the Middle East, the other countries don't have the strength to defeat ISIS. They don't because of failed states like Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and others. Those are breeding grounds for radicals and then they spread. Heck, the strongest of the Arab nation, Egypt, is having a hard time and they really want to eradicate ISIS. The Generals in charge there hate Islamic fundamentalists and yet they can't eradicate them. It's a very hard problem, maybe the hardest we've ever faced. WW 2 wasn't as hard because there were two defined enemies we were facing and their satellites, all we had to do was concentrate and crush them. Now, we are fighting an idea… that's hard to beat.
I know it is hard for a lot of the middle eastern counties to get tid of the ISIS issue because they have their own people who are supporting them. It is like trying to root out thieves or other bad people in the poorer neighborhoods here in the US. You know that people know who they are and what they are doing but no one wants to turn them in out of fear their families will come at them. I think that is the issue in the middle east.
"Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. Soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs. Source"
-- Arundhati Roy, "Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire"
Iraqi military declares famed Mosul mosque captured, ISIS caliphate 'has fallen'. Iraq's U.S.-backed military seized the ruins of the famed al-Nuri mosque in Mosul Thursday, dealing a major defeat to the Islamic State three years after the militants stormed into Iraq. Ref. USAToday.
This was a good opinion piece. I don't know the veracity of the 40,0 figure but I can believe it. As KN and I have said many times, military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) is the most danger, difficult type of operation to undertake. Massive firepower support is a must unless you have overwhelming superiority in ground forces. Since Iraq does not have that superiority they used firepower. That always entail collateral casualties.