What To Do, What To Do?

I just had a flashback.  Early '90s, cocktail party, mainly liberals.  Yugoslavia was splitting up, and Serbia was attacking Bosnia or Kosovo.  People were all saying "we need to do something."  And I, fairly liberal but aware of the realities over there and the limitations on possible US actions, said "What should we do? What, exactly, do you think we should do?"  "I don't know, something!"  "So, we should bomb somebody?"  "Well..."  "And who, exactly?  With so many civilians mixed in, with a low-scale conflict without clear front lines, who do we attack without accidentally hurting the people we want to help?" "Well, we have to do something!"  I was fully sympathetic with helping the people being attacked.  But I didn't see a good way to help them.  Do we bomb?  Do we send troops?  Any use of force risked hurting innocent people, and adding to the chaos. 

Nowadays, conservatives are saying the same thing about ISIS:  "We have to do something!"  Of course, they have no qualms about using force, or about hurting civilians (since they seem to hate everyone over there anyway.)  But what, exactly, can we do?  We are, and have been, bombing.  Modern weapons are pretty precise, but you still end up accidentally killing civilians, or mistakenly attacking the wrong people.  Do we send in troops?  Does anyone really want that?  Even conservatives are leery of that.  So what, exactly, is your plan?  "We need to do something! Obama should do something!  Anything!"  And, I guess, if he doesn't do anything, or do what you want, that proves he hates America, or is a Muslim, or something, and verifies your hate for him. Well, we have been doing things.  And you criticize whatever is done, even when you barely understand what's going on.   What exactly are we going to do against a fairly small group of nasty people, who blend into the population? Yes, they are all over TV and social media, but that is a perception issue, not reality.  This short news cycle inspires a sense of "OMG, we have to do something RIGHT NOW!"  Well, we are doing something.  And headed toward doing more.  Sit down, and let's figure out something appropriate and effective to do.

Particularly since a group of Christians were killed in Libya, there are calls to intervene more strongly.  Many on the right see this as a culture war, perhaps as the final showdown between "East" and "West," even as the start of Armageddon.  So they're clearly not seeing the world accurately, and are letting their delusions warp what they want to see happen.  If we listen to them we'll end up fighting in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and who knows where else.  Of course we're already fighting there, and elsewhere, but you know what I mean: a full-scale ground war.  That's what they want.  Some of them want that because they're psychopaths, and/or religious fanatics; most because they're bloodthirsty idiots.  They think it will be like an action movie, where the good guys go in and clean things up, and nobody gets killed on our side.  That's not the way the real world works.  From the people who don't believe in science, who don't believe in history, who don't know much about the region and don't even want to- what is the conservative plan?

What, exactly, are we going to do?