We must do more to defeat ISIS

Friday’s attacks in Paris have left many of us feeling the same mix of dread and determination that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. As with al-Qaida then, it seems clear we must pay a high price to stop the fanatics of the Islamic State, or ISIS.

We are confronted with a murderous sectarian cult that seeks to build a nation-crushing Islamic state on par with the caliphate that conquered much of North Africa, southwest Asia and Spain in the centuries after the Prophet Muhammad’s death.

The group is not, as President Barack Obama prematurely declared, the terror equivalent of al-Qaida’s junior varsity team. And while Obama might be correct in saying that ISIS has been geographically contained, the Paris attacks vividly show how the threat it poses to the West is metastasizing, thanks to its appeal among jihadists around the globe.

Now fear has fouled the air with the stench of Islamophobia. Witness Franklin Graham’s xenophobic call to halt Muslim immigration into this country.

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and others GOP leaders are slamming Obama for not doing more. But as we learned from our misadventures in Iraq, there’s no virtue in taking decisive action if you don’t know what you’re doing. Given the swirling chaos in Syria, we must not escalate simply for escalation’s sake.

Still, Obama must also resist the urge to stand pat in hopes of containing the mess until his presidency ends. Paris will simply embolden ISIS; it is now pledging attacks on Washington, D.C.

We need a more muscular approach, one that’s better-informed and strategically smarter than our old Iraq strategy. And it can’t wait for the next president.

ISIS’s blood-lust has clarified the fact that this group threatens all civilized nations, regardless of their religions. Thus the welcome sight of Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin huddling on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Turkey this weekend.

There’s word of an agreement to push Syria’s warring factions to start talks Jan. 1 on cobbling together a transitional government, followed by a UN-monitored ceasefire. That’s a start toward stabilizing Syria, which French President Francois Hollande is calling “the biggest factory of terrorists the world has ever known.”

Obama should further tighten the political and economic noose, hopefully with new help from Putin. But if that alone can’t cripple ISIS, we should not rule out the possibility that more U.S. and allied firepower could be required.

As Paris showed, the status quo is not acceptable.

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 4:55 PM with the headline "We must do more to defeat ISIS."