PLEASE NOTE: What follows is obviously not directed at my friends at The 99. It is an essay excerpt written for a different place. I wanted my colleagues to see it, because parts of it are inspired by things I've learned here and by links I've followed that were posted here.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Let us Synchronize our Moral Compass

We should be ever mindful of the fact that ISIS are a creation of US imperialist slaughter and mass displacement, along with secular liberal authoritarianism and suppression.

Any US meddling in the region should be opposed wholesale by the genuine left, if it does exist, for the horrors of US imperialism that it is

I am struggling to reconcile the logic of Europeans, Americans, or other foreign entities who heroically opposed the Iraq war with now supporting mass slaughter against sovereign nationals or so-called rebels in Syria, Iraq, or anywhere else in the Middle East. My position is this:   Oppose any bombing of Syria or any sovereign region by the US, France, Great Britain, Australia, Russia or any other murderous regime with a squadron of warplanes ready to inflict the terror of aerial bombardment.

Solidarity with those people being terrorized from the skies is the natural position of a truly sentient human being with an undamaged mind.

With great sound and fury, French President François Hollande has promised to "lead a war which will be pitiless."
He then ordered a mighty fleet of warplanes to bomb Daesh militants into dust.
And drop many bombs those warplanes proceeded to do.

The Syrian civil war is a complicated, convoluted, FUBAR situation.
Without a solution to it, the refugee crisis won't end, the slaughter will continue, and Islamic jihadists will have a safe haven to export their deadly trade.

A nation is in mourning today after a horrific ISIS attack that claimed dozens of innocent victims.
That nation is Lebanon.

There are several important, although conditional, gains against ISIS in the last few days.
The most dramatic was the retaking of Sinjar by the Iraqi Kurds.

Turkey has been a NATO ally since early in the Cold War, but President Obama's decision to embed special forces with the Syrian Kurd militias has put us on a collision course.

The West Rightly Condemns Isis Vandalism of Ancient Sites – But Not When the Saudis Do It

Explosives pulverize historic sites in the Middle East, bulldozers erase ancient tombs and shrines, historic forts are torn down and Ottoman facades destroyed. The home of the favourite wife of the most revered man in an entire religion is even turned into a block of toilets. How can the world prevent this wicked desecration and extinction of a heritage that belongs to all mankind? I am, of course, referring to those iconoclastic Wahhabi-Salafist Muslim head-choppers … the Saudis!

On September 30, the Mirror broke the story.

Putin has outmaneuvered Obama. Washington is trapped by its own political rhetoric.
At least that is how this news story will appear to the war hawks and hard-core partisans.

General Austin's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week about the condition of our War against ISIS was so bad that at least one Senator wondered if he was pulling her leg.