re: Obama and the military brass at odds with strategy to fight ISIL

Wait... people think the key to beating ISIS/L and calming down tensions in the middle east is to bring in the Israeli Army?

I could list the many, many reasons this is not a wonderful idea. I will stop at Number One though which is every Arab nation, at best, despises Israel. It would be like trying to put out a kitchen fire by dropping napalm.

Germany and France are a different matter. Germany almost never sends troops abroad and that is because the rest of the civilized world wrote their constitution so that they wouldn't get the urge to go on foreign adventures. They do make up a large part of the NATO force in Afghanistan and they've had their share of fatalities in doing so. They are a pacifistic country for the most part and guess what? We went out of our way to encourage that for obvious reasons.

The French said at the beginning that going into Iraq was a bad idea and they stuck by their guns. They also have sent combat forces into Afghanistan and yes, they have their share of fatalities as well. Even though the French spend a ton of money on their military its already pretty stretched with all of their defense commitments in place as is. Them being willing to lend air support is more then we could have hoped for.