Quote:We can debate the partitioning of international entities until all the day is long.  The bottom line is that there is nothing that can be said that would justify teaching nine year olds to kill innocent people and tape recording it for propaganda.  That's a kind of evil that is beyond a simple dispute over borders and speaks to a larger geopolitical mandate by the original head of a cult to spread an ideology by force if necessary to the four corners of the world.  There is no normalizing relations with someone committed to the obliteration of our way of life.  

I refuse to see it that way. I believe that ISIS is a group born as a spiritual offshoot of Al-Qaeda, and I believe that by normalizing relations with Arab states in the Middle East, it can be marginalized. They've got Iraq, nothing can stop that, but if we are to fight a declared, conventional war against them, I'd rather it be with the support (or at least non-interference) of surrounding states.

 

I firmly believe that normalized relations in the Middle East are possible, and they are within reach if we're willing to open the gates and slowly send a sacred cow out to fend for itself on the pasture.

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