If the guy who broke into your house to shoot you is there because your brother broke into his house 3 days ago, then it's certainly relevant although maybe not immediately relevant.
Not really relevant to the point I was trying to make, but well taken in any event.
We have to deal with the security situation and the causes. Blowback is not a fairy tale. We have to see the whole situation. Bailing out the water is pretty futile if you don't plug the hole. And plugging the hole has everything to do with stopping foreign policies and actions that give terrorist forces the moral leverage to easily radicalize people.
Your tacit premise here may not in fact hold. I am reading this to mean that faulty foreign policy is the root of the evil with which we must now contend. It MAY be true, but what if it is not? What if the policies to which you refer have served only as grease for skids that were going to slide down the ways eventually in any event? What if the truth is that both the foreign policy, and more importantly, the nature of Islam are the salient determining factors of how some operators proceed? Do not be too keen to assess Islam as the innocent or at least impotent factor in this. I cannot accept that at this juncture. Stick your snoot into Qur'an and you will see why such dismissal is deeply ill-advised.
You may not be "wrong", but perhaps your analysis is not quite complete? Just a thought.
Where are the sanctions on countries buying oil from terrorist controlled fields?
$64 question, that. Do we even know which nations are doing the purchasing? What if it's China?
One simple fact like that seen by would be terrorists thinking about joining goes a long way towards painting the West as evil. Then it's off to the internet to confirm evil U.S. imperialism. Adopting Islam and chanting "Allahu Akbar" is the easy part. They do love those religious guys though more, I'm sure, compared to the vast majority of fighters who are simply mercenaries looking for a paycheck, as those doofuses are more useful for high profile attacks that will likely end in their death.
Again, your point is well taken, but I believe there is more to it than just that. In this that you cite, we have given them at least some of the rope by which they seek to hang us. But there has to have been a core drive somewhere, in SOMEONE, to conquer. You must bear in mind that this whole deal is not just a giant case of mere vengeance. This is CONQUEST. Vengeance is but one of the facets being employed to keep the troops motivated. The real seed here is the conversion of the entire world to the law of the prophet. Vengeance cannot sustain the monument of the actions we are seeing. People get their fill and grow either weary or are sated and that is the end of it. But give them a far broader and DEEPER objective, and they will go on for a lifetime, generation over generation.
I don't buy that this ISIS creature which is obviously funded in various ways by nation states is really some manifestation of "true Islam". I've read a few issues of Dabiq magazine. I've read about their sex slave bazaar in Mosul. You gotta do a lot of scripture twisting even for the Koran to justify the level of depravity they are practicing. Islam is a convenient tool to mask the true nature of proxy terrorism by many actors and grease the skids for some disgruntled youth seeking revenge and glory.
Doesn't matter what YOU believe. What matters is what THEY believe. Our opinions and views on this are irrelevant to the actions THEY will take. This is a real deal, no bullshit HOLY WAR, for heaven's sake. People need to see this, understand what it means in all its implications, and make a decision on where they stand because there is no sitting this one out, I suspect. When was the last time a real holy war was fought? I cannot even say, but I suspect it was notably prior to the time of anyone living today. That may be more significant than most people realize. If only 1 in 100 Muslims sign on to this notion of fulfilling God's will as expressed in prophesy, that is a 130 MILLION man army. We need to sit quietly awhile, open up our imaginations wide, and think about what that really entails, and where it would likely lead.
We are treading the edge of a razor blade whilst juggling bowling balls.