Jihadist of the year award...

[abaris]

But if we're going to turn this into a serious thread, you make a good point. Isis may have killed less westerners than lightning, but they are making up for that with the numbers of other Muslims (and indeed just plain others) they have killed. At present the group is small and local and is thus only massacring local folk. But those lives matter as well! I think it's legit to try to stop them on that basis alone. When a fire starts in your neighbours house you don't wait for it to spread to yours before you put it out.

as to how, I'm all in favour of alternatives to force. Any suggestions?

You get no argument about this from me.

The point I was trying to make was, there's always this Western view of things. The kill a few journalists and it's instantly splashed all over the front pages. They kill tens of thousands of muslims or minorities living in the region, it barely makes page five, if that.

The media approach to the matter bears some bitter fruit. For one, there's this underlying feeling of they're out to get us, thereby throwing all muslims into the same jar, without giving a rat's about the fact, that the majority of victims are indeed muslims. And then there's the approach to fighting ISIS by bombing them, because you can't risk to send in ground troops. Bombing will result in even more innocent victims, thereby making part of the case for ISIS or other extremist groups.

That's what I meant by using brainpower before muscle. You can't hope that dropping a few bombs and letting the Kurds do the dirty work for you, is going to resolve the issue.