Larison: ISIS And The Administration's Ridiculous Threat Inflation

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Of course the administration has a lot more information than I do--and more than Larison does--but, given what I've seen, I have to agree with DL. They seem to be exaggerating the threat.

OTOH, Larison weighs the national interest too heavily, and frequently seems to ignore moral considerations.

I expect he's right that it's in our interest to just ignore them.

But our interest is not the only legitimate interest.

I'm inclined to want us to bomb the bastards.

(And, of course: administrations sometimes exaggerate the threat to us when they have some other reason--e.g. moral reasons--for attacking. Bush invented a threat from Iraq because Cheney, PNAC et al. wanted to invade for their own wacky reasons. Clinton mostly resisted the urge to pretend that our interest was crucially at stake in the former Yugoslavia...but when the moral case for intervention seemed to be on the ropes, he did play the national interest card at a few points. My guess is that Obama and other members of the administration believe that ISIS needs an ass-kicking, but they know that the prudence card beats the morality card in such discussions...)