Wical 1

Johner Wical
Professor Deborah Kellner
ENGL 0099
11 January 2017
Academic Journal
The ISIS Threat to U.S. National Security: Policy Choices, By William F. Wechsler

guides us through a transcript of a series of Capitol Hill conferences by the Middle East Policy

Council. The meeting was held in Washington, DC, on January 21, 2016. The author claims that

the U.S. is in the very early stages in the war against ISIS. He goes onto to blame Assads reign

in Syria and the past war in Iraq to the incline of the Islamic State in the Middle East. Wechsler

makes clear that if the U.S. made destroying ISIS its number one priority it would have already

been more aggressively fighting ISIS. If we would have dropped our current lackadaisical

approach many of our foreign policies would have been altered. He wraps up the article stating

For the foreseeable future, offensive containment is the best U.S. policy available (Wechsler,

19).
I agree that if the United States made it our top priority we would be able to crush them

in a reasonable amount of time. It baffles me how our previous administration left such a

breeding ground in the Middle East for these animals. With aiding the overthrow of the

government in Libya and letting Assad do whatever he feels in Syria we have created a mecca

for the ISIS fighters. Also by pulling out so rapidly in Iraq we have left them very vulnerable to

ISIS fighters. All in all, the Middle East is a wreck right now and everyone is pointing the finger

at the other side of the aisle. This area in the Middle East has been in wars since the creation of

time and sadly I dont see much changing any time soon.

Work Cited
Wechsler, William F., et al. "The ISIS Threat to U.S. National Security: Policy Choices." Middle

East Policy, vol. 23, no. 1, Spring2016, pp. 1-24. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/mepo.12170.