Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, the United States has been embroiled in multiple conflicts to find and eliminate terrorist organizations around the world, but the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant poses a much more dangerous threat to the security of the country.

Most living Americans cannot remember a time when the United States did not act as the primary global police force, which has been the country’s role since the end of the Second World War. Acting as the world’s police force has also painted a target on the country’s back in the places where the people did not agree with the US’s policies and beliefs.

Currently, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, is waging a war against the government that the US installed in Iraq, following the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Unfortunately for the Iraqi ruling party, ISIS is not your grandfather’s insurgency group.
Some of the blame regarding ISIS’s ability to capture large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria must be placed at our doorstep. Wars destabilize countries, and destabilized countries are ripe for the picking by extremist groups with enough financial backing to foot a proper army.
ISIS declared a new Islamic caliphate, and the group’s rivalry with Al-Qaeda could spark a dangerous contest to decide the leadership of the global jihadist movement.

Peter Bergen, CNN’s national security adviser, called ISIS a threat to Iraq, but only a potential threat to the United States. While it is true that ISIS’s current threat to the US is limited by thousands of miles, as long as the US has an interest in Iraq and the Middle East, ISIS will pose a major threat to this country.

This situation calls for a major rethink in the country’s foreign policy. No one is calling for the country to turn to isolationism, but rolling into a country, leveling it and leaving it has shown to be a failed strategy when there are groups looking for the opportunity to establish a rogue state bent on the destruction of the US.

As it stands, American soldiers have been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for the last 13 years, or as long as the Vietnam War. How many more billions will be spent trying to prop up puppet governments that are just as corrupt as the regimes the US ousted? How many more American lives will be sacrificed if the bombings of ISIS-held territory proves to be ineffective, forcing troops to once again be deployed to Iraq?

Eventually, the US will be forced to decide whether or not to put boots on the ground to fight back against the ISIS threat. This is a powder keg with the potential to be Vietnam on steroids. Those in the country’s decision-making positions will be forced to decide whether to throw more American soldiers at an extremist group willing to fight to the last man for their cause.

Lessons learned in fighting insurgencies and guerillas will dictate those decisions, but those decisions will affect this country’s foreign policy for decades to come.