Vice President Joe Biden will be attending a peace talk in Geneva on Monday to negotiate with Syria, Turkey, and several other countries on how to shut down ISIL. The talk will potentially be delayed past Monday due to the fact that the UN is trying to find an appropriate representative for the Syrian rebels.
Biden said, “We do know it would better if we can reach a political solution but we are prepared ..., if that's not possible, to have a military solution to this operation in taking out Daesh” (Al Jazeera). He said that if Syria was not willing to come to a peaceful resolution regarding ISIL, the United States and Turkey will consider mounting a military response.
During Obama’s state of the Union address that we discussed in class, Obama specifically mentions that the United States should not be the world’s peace force. Biden seems like he is potentially going against this sentiment in the peace talks. While he could mean that the United States is interested in giving support to Turkey in the form of money, weapons, and air strikes, it is interesting that troops may be deployed to yet another Middle Eastern country.
I think that the United States should stay out of the ISIL conflict. There are already many countries that ISIL has greatly upset and they will probably feel the impact of that with or without the United States being involved. It is probably more important at this point to protect ourselves domestically from potential attacks from extremists.
What do you think the United States should do to stop ISIL? How far is too far in our ‘policing’ role? Is Biden’s actions and Obama’s words conflicting or is one not being fully truthful?
