The US ought to put boots on the ground to combat ISIS

Rebuttals The problem with ground wars waged by the US in the middle east is two-fold. First, it discourages sectional and national/international unity by allowing the US to deal with the bad guys. Strongly disagree. First, the US only discourages international unity when it undergoes military actions unilaterally or with unsupported causes/pretenses (ex. faulty Iraq War intelligence). This saying however does NOT hold true to the majority of US military action undergone in the Middle East. Operation Desert Storm for example, was hugely popular with Europe, Saudi Arabia, and the Kuwaiti government, where the latter two countries became permanent US regional allies. Kuwait for instance, is currently home to over 9,000 US military troops, while Saudi Arabia is one of America's largest energy suppliers and is a strong US military backer and buyer (1)(2). Further military cooperation with Egypt and Israel has also led also led to strong strategic partners there; the former allows US & Europe generous access to the Suez Canal and military bases, where as the latter has been a key player with the Iranian nuke crisis. 1)https://militarybases.com... 2)http://www.whitehouse.gov... Second, in the act of dealing with the bad guys, we get the bad rap as the killers of civilians, invaders, etc The true bad guys and killers of civilians is the international criminal organization known as ISIS. They have murdered thousands of kurish and Iraqi- Christian civilians, beheaded western journalists, kidnapped little girls and sold them as sex slaves, ransacked public buildings, and occupied Iraqi/Syrian cities while imposing a radical and distorted form of Islamic Law. The United States (a Geneva Convention signatory) therefore gets a bad rap for allowing genocide and human rights atrocities to continue uncontested. To the first point, this should be obvious. If a Western power can swoop in and deal with the issue every time there is one, why should sectarian groups, such as the Shia, Sunni, Kurds, etc, drop their fighting[1] And who’s to claim that Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds, or the Iraqi Armed Forces would not assist or fight in a US-led ground operation? Your source has absolutely no claim on this. Meanwhile, historical precedence (such as the Sunni Awakening in Iraq 2007 and the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan 2001) proves that local ethnic groups/tribesman will fight hand and hand with US military personnel in counter-insurgency operations and that their joint-efforts can be successful. Why should nations with antagonistic relations, like Israel, Syria, Iran, etc, unite to face a common threat if we do it for them? The idea with US military intervention is to help those countries help themselves; entirely different than saying; do it alone. Back in Iraq 2006 for example, US military forces were pulling out due to heavy violence caused by ongoing Sunni/Shia civil war (which was instigated by Al-Qaida in Iraq). Yet in 2007, the US recommitted itself to the region with an additional 30,000 surge troops. The surge in US ground forces led to increased shia/sunni neighborhood security and had a calming effect on Sunni-Shia relations (1). The Iraqi people were then able to turn their attention and unite appropriately against the real terrorist threat, which was Al Qaida in Iraq, who were then soundly rolled back. 1)History of the Iraq Surge:http://foreignpolicy.com... Imagine your innocent family is killed in a bombing. Would you be more likely to harbor animosity for the killers… Are you seriously trying to assume that the majority of voters here are Shia, Sunni, or Muslim Kurds currently living in Iraq??? The people you are directing this question to don’t nearly have a credible enough background to come even remotely close to answering this question. But maybe I should ask them how theu would enjoy living under Sharia law or the iron fist of Saddam Hussein. So what do we get out of this increased hate for the US? Recruitment for terrorism. So what do we get when the US pulls out or has otherwise had no military presence in “that part” of the world? Let's see: >> Yemen Embassy Bombing (1992), World Trade Center Bombing (1993), Attack on USS Cole (2000), and September 11thattacks (2001) – No US troops in Afghanistan. >> Attack on Benghazi Embassy (2012) – No US troops in Libya. >> And finally -after a complete US withdraw from Iraq in 2012- the rise of ISIS. US Ground Forces is the Most Efficient Way to Defeat ISIS Redeploying US Ground Forces to Iraq is truly the most military efficient way to defeat ISIS. Thus far, ISIS has proven that it could take on the Syrian Army and the US trained and supplied Iraqi Army– even when outnumbered and fighting on two-fronts. In the case of the latter, 800 ISIS fighters were able to rout 30,000 Iraqi soldiers while they were backed with US tech (http://www.militarytimes.com...). ISIS is also one of the most –if not the best- well funded terrorist organizations in history, and continues to make millions through black market oil channels, seizing of public banks, and collecting taxes on captured cities. To date, ISIS’s total network is projected at nearly $2 billion dollars (http://www.theguardian.com...). ISIS has also been able been able to recruit thousands of terrorist sympathizers across Europe, Asia, and Africa, and even from the United States. In what has arguably become one of the largest terrorist organizations in modern times, the CIA analyzes that ISIS could muster up to 31,000 fighters across Iraq or Syria (http://www.cnn.com...). To date, ISIS is currently involved in multiple countries across the middle east where they have expressed ambitions to plant ISIS flags on top of the White House (http://theweek.com...). ISIS is also currently supplied with captured US tech and is not an easy military opponent to defeat (http://www.dailymail.co.uk...). It is therefore time that the most dangerous and lawless terrorist organization in history meets the full fury and might of the most powerful state militaries the world has ever seen. A prospect and commitment that only be realized when the US redeploys its ground assets to the Middle East. The US already has 9,000 combat troops stationed in Kuwaitt, there re-deployment to Iraq can be enacted swiftly, and their victory against ISIS will be the quickest over any other military option. Its stop for the US to stop messing around with airstrikes that do not directly accomplish a counter-insurgency purpose and realize that the best way to stop ISIS and terrorism from rising up in the first place is to correct the mistakes of the past – which was no security/military presence or status of forces of agreement with the Iraqis. Redeploying US Ground Forces to Iraq is more preferable than alternatives. Redeploying US ground forces to swiftly defeat ISIS is more preferable to a long-drawn out aerial campaign that may or may not defeat ISIS. It is also more preferable to get involved now before ISIS gains the capability and drive to launch a devastating terrorist attack against the West, the region dissolves into political or economic chaos, or that rouge-states (like Iran) attempt to take advantage of the crisis by meddling in the affairs of the Iraqi / Syrian governments. The US can prevent this and retore political & eoconmic stabiity by reestablishing ground security in Iraq and elsewhere. US ground presences have proven to be successful in COIN ops in the past, and we can assume that there would be wide international support for a ground war against ISIS - based on the number of European and Arab countries who are already engaged in or threaten by ISIS. The American military has the power to unquestionably help the Iraqi people against ISIS; and since 9.11, it has been is in the national secuirty interests of the United States to support democratic govenments agianst terrorism. A fight agaisnt ISIS will by no means be easy, but it will be made easier with US ground forces; and if ultimately have the power to help, we should.