CAN'T GET THE SOVEREIGNTY CAT BACK IN THE BAG:

Doing away with ISIS requires honesty about what America's business is and is not, what is within our capacity and right to do and what is not. In short, while we have neither the capacity nor the right to determine who rules whom or how anywhere but at home, we have the power and the duty to destroy any individual, band or movement that means to kill us.

Each side recognizes the American people's demand, and avoids it for its own reasons. The Obama administration does so by a de minimis military campaign in former Iraq, combined with mild cooperation with Iran. Thus, to avoid inconveniencing the Middle East's progressive forces, it kicks the ISIS can down the road. Meanwhile, Republicans Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina give that can another kick with implausible calls to "get the locals involved in dealing with their own problems." They seem not to notice that ISIS is our problem now.

Mainstream Republicans -- Sen. John McCain and commentators at Fox News and The Wall Street Journal -- also seem not to notice it because their salient concern is the same as that of the Bush administration: the unity of territorial integrity, and the decency of Iraq and other states in the region. Focused on other peoples' business -- on matters that, patently, are beyond our power or right to decide -- they neglect what it takes to forcefully mind our own business.

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