ISIS: How do High School Students Want America to Deal With Terrorism?

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, better known in media as “ISIS” or “ISIL”, refers to a splinter group of Islamic militants whose base location is located in both Iraq and Syria. The main goal of this group since their pledge of allegiance to Al-Qaeda in 2004  is to create a hardline, State of solely Sunni Muslim people. They work towards complete failure of Iraq’s government and through means of terror strikes and public displays of violence, they are also trying to send a message to the rest of the world about how serious they are about achieving their goals.

This policy of extreme Islamic expansionism poses a severe threat to not only the civilians in the Middle East, but to people all over the world. ISIS is an international threat with groups and individual members located in many different countries including England, Australia and the U.S. Their violence has reached a point where even Al-Qaeda has deemed them to extremist and too violent to even associate themselves with ISIS.

The current plan for how America is going to help combat this threat was laid out in a speech given by President Obama. Basically, our involvement will be limited to air strikes and supporting the air forces over the area, with no American troops on the ground. The U.S. and some of its other allied nations are also going to help build up the Iraqi armed forces by training them and providing the supplies they’ll need to fight the threat within their borders.

However one of the chief concerns is whether or not the Iraqi army will be willing to fight for an extended amount of time or even at all if this should escalate into a longer campaign. Many American people would rather just send in U.S. troops to wipe out ISIS and end their threat permanently, which of course calls into question whether or not America is justified in getting involved in this conflict at all.

I have recently asked a variety of  high school students around the school about how they would want their government to deal with this conflict. After informing them on the topic as well as a basic overview of the issue, they were given three solutions to choose from.

The first was that the U.S. should send in troops to fight and eventually end the threat.

The second was we go along with the current plan, which is to send support to the Iraqi armed forces as well as take part in air strikes.

The third and final choice  is to say that this is not our problem, and completely isolate ourselves from this conflict.

Overall the most predominant response was to “blow them up”. It would seem the majority of those polled wouldn’t trust anyone but the armed forces of the United States to take care of this threat. There were a few votes for sending support and ignoring the situation, but most students would rather just eliminate the threat head-on.

The only problem with this kind of direct action is that ISIS is not confined into one area. Therefore, we can’t just send in drones, or air strike a base, and have that be the end. ISIS members are located globally, some even located on U.S. soil, leaving bombing out of the question. This issue further perpetuates what may become some growing problems in the near future. Can the military legally strike down U.S. citizens who happen to be members of this organization? Would that be an infraction on their rights as citizens? Even more troubling, would the U.S. take action against its own people in order to save the lives of many others?