The Second-Largest Army in NATO

Originally posted August 14, 2014.

That would be Turkey! Let the Turks wipe out ISIS. American interests are not threatened, and American intervention is not required. As Pat Buchanan rightly notes, the war hawks led by John McCain and Lindsey Graham are at it again. Americans should dismiss the rantings of the war hawks and insist that the five essential tenets of the original Weinberger/Powell Doctrine be satisfied prior to any American intervention abroad.

Turkey, a nation of 76 million, has the second-largest army in NATO, equipped with U.S. weapons, and an air force ISIL does not have.

If President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to crush ISIS, he could seal his border to foreign fighters entering Syria and send the Turkish army to assist President Bashar Assad in annihilating ISIS in Syria.

The jihadists of the Islamic State may be more motivated, but they are hugely outnumbered and outgunned in the region.

The Syrian government and army, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia-dominated government of Iraq, a Shia Iran of 70 million, and the Kurds in Syria and Kurdistan are all anti-Islamic State and willing to fight.

All are potential allies in a coalition to contain or crush ISIS, as is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, if U.S. diplomacy were not frozen in the 1980s.

Only last August, McCain and Graham were attacking Obama for not enforcing his “red line” by bombing Syria’s army, the most successful anti-ISIL force in the field.

The threat of the Islamic State should not be minimized. It would provide a breeding and training ground for terrorists to attack us and the West. But it should not be wildly exaggerated to plunge us into a new war.