The United States formally withdrew all combat forces from Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in late 2014. After 13 years of continuous combat operations in the Middle East, this war-weary nation may have to return. ISIS’s deadly reputation grows everyday as they carve a bloody path through the Middle East.

Make no mistake, this is the world’s problem and the United States must lead the fight.

America withdrew its military presence from the Middle East, and created a power vacuum there, and ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) or ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant), a malevolent terror group, took advantage of the unstable and corrupt area.

ISIS plans to create an Islamic State across Syria and Iraq that is now a caliphate ruled by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been elevated to the position of caliph. The caliph is the successor of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, and is the political and spiritual leader of the state. There have been caliphates in the Levant since the 6th century A.D.

It is the world’s responsibility to annihilate ISIS. For too long, the United States has stood by while ISIS grows bolder, conquering more territory and committing horrible atrocities in the name of Islam. If ISIS holds on to its territory and becomes a stable caliphate it will become a haven for criminal activity and terrorism.

This has happened in the past; a nation was allowed to march on unsuspecting victims unabated, conquering and exterminating those that failed to step in line, or surrender all their freedoms. Great nations watched Hitler and his Nazis do these terrible things and did nothing about it.

As Edmond Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Al-Qaeda and ISIS are fundamentally different terrorist groups. Groups like al-Qaeda are like weeds that cannot be eradicated, using cowardly tactics to fight the United States. They operate underground in clandestine cells, acting independently from each other. ISIS, however, is an organized army which holds vast amounts of land and aspires to statehood and, according to Islamic law, ISIS must hold on to land to be a legitimate caliphate.

There is absolutely no chance ISIS would be able to stand toe-to-toe with the United States in a conventional fight. America has arguably the world’s most powerful military. Putting boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria would crush ISIS, and by taking away the land they have seized is to make ISIS’s claim as a caliphate have no legitimacy.

ISIS is a group of Islamic radicals that is hungry for real state-hood and legitimacy. They use religion to justify their terrible crimes, which include unspeakable executions. Everyone is a target to ISIS.

To defeat ISIS the United States must better understand them. The United States failed to understand the enemy in Vietnam and is repeating that mistake now. Burying our heads in the sand won’t make the enemy go away.

A state of neutrality will not work, and the United States must change its course. Staying out of it will force the Muslim world to deal with a scourge in their backyards, but if they lack the power to deal with them, the whole Middle East will fall to these Islamic extremists. The United States must act now while they are easy to defeat instead of waiting for the inevitability of dealing with them when they are more powerful, and setting their sights on American malls, airports and sporting events.

ISIS recruits fighters from around the world spending millions of dollars on propaganda, and making expertly directed films of their executions.They encourage all Jihadists to make their way to the Levant and fight with them or harm infidels in any possible way anywhere in the world. There are 20,000 to 31,000 ISIS fighters, 15,000 of them being foreign-born Jihadists.

ISIS would like nothing more than to watch the United States burn to the ground.

People in the United States are starting to question the government on whether or not this country is going to do something about ISIS. The Obama administration is getting more pressure than ever to answer the call of war.

“For the first time, a majority of Americans (57 percent) favor the U.S. sending ground troops into Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS,” CBS reported. Fifty eight percent of Americans believed ISIS to be a major threat to the United States in October, but the number rose to 65 percent in the last month.

American intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, are gearing up for an assault on Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq with a population of more than a million people, and the de facto capital for the terror group known as ISIS or ISIL. Mosul will be assaulted in April, requiring 20,000 to 25,000 Iraqi and Kurdish forces. It will be a bloody block to block battle against 1,000 to 2,000 ISIS fighters who may fight to the death.

If Mosul is successfully liberated from ISIS the United States must capitalize on the opportunity and finish them off, and if the attack is a failure then this country needs to set the example for the world, showing that tyranny will not be allowed to reign free, and finish the job that 6,831 American troops gave their lives for.