I don’t think of myself as either a dove or a hawk when it comes to war.

I can acknowledge that sometimes war is the only way to defeat evil and provide safety and security for people. But we don’t fight war like we used to, and until we start fighting to win, we shouldn’t even threaten our enemies because it doesn’t scare them.

If your best-case scenario is a “tie”, why even start? The drums of war are beating in America and we are preparing to risk more American lives, spend billions, and if history is a judge, further destabilize a region that has been unmanageable for centuries.

The bomb-them-all-to-hell crowd cites the previous world wars and points out how Germany and Japan, with their barbaric and murderous ways, were brought to their knees. It’s a great example of fighting to win, and it is exactly what we WON’T do to ISIS. And they know it.

Nowadays, we fight “humane” wars with “smart” weapons meant to minimize civilian causalities and leave infrastructure standing for the good people to go on with their lives. In the wars we won, we leveled entire cities — men, women, children, babies, pets. Ask the elders of Dresden or Hiroshima about winning and losing a war, that is, if you can find any who survived.

Maybe it’s the advent of TV and the ability to show horrific pictures of war. Maybe America has softened in its old age and restrains itself from destroying civilizations, even though we could. Or maybe we just aren’t mad enough yet to truly wipe this evil off the Earth.

Any way you slice it, until we are prepared to WIN a war against ISIS and accept that involves killing nearly every PERSON who fights, supports or claims allegiance to them, we are just dancing around the edges.

And from listening to the rhetoric being spewed, I haven’t heard any serious person articulate a desire to actually defeat ISIS and do WHATEVER is necessary to achieve a full and total surrender. Or kill the last person standing.

This I know for certain, ISIS (and its affiliated terrorist friends) aren’t playing by the same rule book.