It’s a legitimate question because we are asking our military personnel to lay down their lives defending some Muslims from other Muslims. We are requiring them to take sides ... and lay down their lives for one side or another.
As long as we are doing this to our military it’s only fair that everyone be asked to declare their allegiance to Sunni or Shia ISLAM.
Fist person who should answer that question is Obama, who seems to have been arming and training the “rebels” in Syria (read ISIS) and now sending our military to go in and fight the very people we armed and trained.
Next ask every person vying to be the next President.
It’s a more than fair question to be answered. It’s vitally important.
I’m asking people her on FR because I don’t think many understand what they have been asking of our military for over 14 years now.
We supported the Soviets against the Nazis without declaring allegiance to Stalin. This in spite of the fact that Stalin helped kicked off WWII by allying with Hitler so the Nazis could conquer the West without fear of attack from the East. If we could ally with the Soviets, the folks who that made the Holocaust possible, we can ally with Shiites, Sunnis or whatever the least of the evils of the moment is, given that the Middle East is where most of the oil in the world is located, and therefore as important in its own way as Europe was during WWII, if only to deny its resources to any would-be world-conquering power that may consolidate power out of the ruins of the existing states. The reason we're getting involved is to keep the states divided (i.e. prevent the creation of a unitary Muslim empire in the style of the ancient caliphates).
Muhammad created a massive empire because he made accommodations with the losers (Christians, Jews and pagans) in the kingdoms he conquered in exchange for their allegiance to him. This is why Muslim armies grew instead of shrank as you'd expect them to (from battle losses). ISIS will cut through the existing Muslim polities like a hot knife through butter if it isn't stopped, gaining adherents along the way. Why would it make sense to let ISIS gather the majority of the world's oil under its banner? ISIS is the second coming of Muhammad's conquering armies, except the territories it is fighting in are already receptive to its message, being Muslim themselves. The moderates in power will, like the Shah, be toppled if we stand aside the way Jimmy Carter did when the Iranian Revolution was in full swing. Bottom line is that it makes no sense to stand aside as ISIS attempts to unify the Islamic states under its rule, just as it made none to do so during WWII when the Nazis attempted to unify Europe under their rule and during the Cold War, when the Soviets tried the same thing.