...You were given many chances to negotiate the release of your people via cash transactions as other governments have accepted...

Today our swords are unsheathed towards you, GOVERNMENT AND CITIZENS ALIKE! AND WE WILL NOT STOP UNTILL WE QUENCH OUR THIRST FOR YOUR BLOOD....

from Full text of the last email the Islamic State sent to the Foley family Global Post, Aug. 21., The last time James Foley's parents heard from their son's captors was on Aug. 12. They received this message.

Lovely message to send grieving parents.

I'd really like to see the fatwa and the larger theology they use to rationalize the "cash transactions" thing here. Is it something like this: the existence of infidel nations would be permissible to a Caliphate as long as they obediently hand over protection money?

Here's an op-ed to challenge your thinking in a different way, bslev:

The Arab world has to take on Isis in its own backyard
By Shashank Joshi, The Financial Times, August 19, 2014

If Iraq’s neighbours will not address the threat, outsiders can achieve little, says Shashank Joshi

The Middle East hosts a formidable array of air power. Between them, the six nations of the Gulf Co-operation Council possess more than 600 combat-capable aircraft. Add Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt, and you have 1,000 more.

Why, then, is only the US dropping bombs on the jihadis of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) as they expand their “caliphate” in the heart of the region? Why has Britain deployed half a dozen fighter jets to nearby Cyprus while a vast cache of firepower lies dormant nearby? And why are distant European powers rushing to arm the embattled Kurds?

The Arab world has failed to come to terms with the most grievous threat it has faced since Saddam Hussein led Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait two decades ago. It has preferred to ride on the coat-tails of outsiders while castigating western “inaction”. It is time for the Arab world, and neighbours such as Turkey, to act.

To help them do it, the west must first understand three Arab fears. First, [....]

I am reminded by reading it that Obama's foreign policy often leans this way, i.e., push others with more skin in the game to do the leading, and just assist. He gets criticism for it from Republicans and even from Hillary Clinton types.

Empathy for fellow human beings and a wish to prevent their wrongful suffering and death is both natural to most and admirable where it exists. When death occurs in great numbers it is natural for empathy to lead to a sincere wish to help.  I say that and whatever follows with absolutely no snark or disrespect intended.
History has already happened, it has already determined facts on the ground everywhere even if they are hard to see clearly, but the future is still in flux. Our  country has tried for some time to solve problems with military intervention. It hasn’t worked that I can see.
    When my son was in his early twenties and before 9-11, he decided to join the Marines. My entire extended family piled on in an attempt to dissuade him. My father who had spent a good deal of time in the Phillippeanes during WWII would have, I believe, joined in but had already passed. His mother obviously aware of his immaturity and wanting him to see it too, used many arguments but mostly asked him if he thought he would be willing to kill someone just because he was told that it was the right thing to do. His maternal grandfather who had spent a rough tour in Korea during that war probably was the one who talked him out of joining.
 I am grateful beyond expression that my son did not join and somewhat shamed that I only pushed him to choose a different service that might confer the benefits of service but would likely not extract the price paid by so many. I tried to get him to join the coast Guard.Had he become a Marine he would have been around two years into a longer commitment when 9-11 “changed everything”. He would almost certainly have been held in for several deployments in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Instead, he is now a very good family man sharing with his first generation Vietnamese/American wife in the raising of two very fine children, but his entire life would have probably turned differently than it has if he had joined. He would almost certainly be a different person today and I have no reason to believe he would have been a better one. He might be dead or crippled or just all fucked mentally up like so many.
 It is inconceivable that going forward you or I will ever face a foreign enemy in a shoot or be shot situation. We are safe to express our wishes for things others would be forced to do. Though our thoughts expressed here will have zero affect on our nation’s policies, we are still advocating for one thing as opposed to another. That, I believe makes the following a fair question. Would you/could you, make the same choice if your son was one of the ones to carry it out? If your son whom you have described with the same pride I have in my son came to you with a decision to change the apparent arc of his current life and to join the Army or  Marines as a rifleman so that he could go fight ISIS as you suggest it is our responsibility to do, [and with which I do not totally disagree] what would you advise him? 

 As for myself, If my son had joined after I had not wrestled him to the ground and performed a humanitarian intervention, then heaven might have forgiven me but I could never have forgiven myself had he come to harm.

Edited to correct a couple mistakes in construction.

I thought of posting this, too, I like some of the points he makes.

Obviously one of them is that he agrees with me about the counter-productivity thing, and points out that Bin Laden eventually did, too. To have staying power, a movement has to win some genuine hearts and minds, even if it's a small, passionate group. Jihadi cool targeted to adolescent male frustration is not a lasting thing, it's really just another version of using youth for "cannon fodder." The cannon fodder thing, that's what's been proven to have happened with so many young suicide bombers as well.

And guess what, that segues a little into what you and Lulu are getting at with young folks joining up out of temporary passions or needs. I'm turned off by all sides doing that, always have been. As a proud feminist, I am extra turned off by it: the more young male hormonal excess is manipulated by elders to their own ends, the less I like it. It's hard for me to  find respect anyone who signs up for military duty out of some passionate beliefs about one thing or another or something that happened. If you've got those kind of beliefs, whether you hate what those Yankees or Indians did to your kin or the Kaiser did to France, work for them in another way, not by volunteering to be an instrument of war. Soldiering should be professional, just like policing should be professional. Throwing in youthful passion is doom for us all, the best drill sergeants beat it out of them.

More:

SNC Head: IS more of a threat to Muslims than Christians
By Mohammad Nemr for An Nahar, translated by Al-Monitor, Aug. 28, 2014

[....]  Muslims are the most affected

Everyone fears the danger that IS represents for minorities, especially after the Yazidis in Iraq and several tribes were forced to leave their homes; in addition, the Christians were forced to choose between converting to Islam, paying a jizya [tax] or being killed.

However, the head of the opposition Syrian National Council, George Sabra, thinks that “the fear that IS creates affects Muslims more than Christians. The proof is that the Sunni Muslims in Raqqa were the first to face IS and the first to become its victims.” [....]

The Islamic State and the regime

When speaking of the danger represented by IS, some believe that if dictatorship is not eliminated, there is no point in eliminating terrorism, especially since the second is inevitably the result of the first. It is important to eliminate a disease from its roots instead of simply cutting the branches off. Sabra agrees with this logic and believes that “terrorism cannot be divided.” He explained, “IS, which is spread across the Syrian and Iraqi lands, is one entity. It will not be logical for its presence in Iraq, and not Syria, to be a danger for the region, especially since the Syrians endured its danger first.”

On the subject of “terrorism is one,” Sabra believes that “the terrorism of the regime and its allies, in addition to the security, sectarian and military reinforcements it recruited from Lebanon and Iraq, represent a pressure on the Syrians’ lives, inciting violence, extremism and instability in the region.”

Source of terrorism

The Syrian opposition does not want the US role to be limited to fighting IS but to also include the Syrian regime, because, according to Sabra, “It is well known that the Syrian regime and the Iranian intelligence services have significantly contributed in establishing the Islamic State’s plan and supporting it.” He said, “Two years ago, IS occupied Raqqa and it is still present in the province’s headquarters. When the regime’s aircraft shell the schools and hospitals, they keep away from the headquarters. IS also used its military and terrorist expertise against the Syrians and the Free Syrian Army, but there were never any significant clashes with [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad’s forces.”

The Syrian opposition addressed a letter to the US administration stating that Syrians are waiting to truly fight terrorism, and that it cannot be done unless the head of terrorism is eliminated, which is the Syrian regime [....]

Making sense of Isis
By Aijaz Zaka Syed, Print Op-Ed, News International (Pakistan), August 29, 2014

[....] After facing long years of Islam-bashing and being blamed for the crimes of Al-Qaeda and others, this is just what we needed. A grand PR nightmare and disaster for an already much demonised global community.

An Indian friend who has been enjoying the fruits of the good life in Norway and never stops singing paeans of the generosity and tolerance of the Scandinavian countries, talks of a sudden change in the way people view Muslims now. If this is the case in the Norwegian paradise, you can imagine the love and goodwill the faithful are showered with in mainland Europe or America.

The Islamic State and the so-called caliphate it promises is like our worst nightmare come true.

As Yvonne Ridley reasons, Isis has achieved in a matter of weeks what the US and its allies failed to do in 10 years of occupation. This hasn’t happened by accident; military victories on this scale take strategic planning and inside help. So who, exactly, is behind Isis?

More importantly, who stands to benefit from this carefully calibrated mayhem in the heart of the Middle East? The same folks who created Al-Qaeda and used it ingenuously and effectively for years until Osama and his baby had exhausted their uses and were past their sell-by date.

Look at the uncanny similarity in the methods used by Al-Qaeda and IS – from the chilling murder of Daniel Pearl to the barbaric beheading of James Foley this month, both US journalists incidentally. There is a method in the madness.

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist but the scepter of Isis – and all such groups – is evidently a grand conspiracy against Islam and its followers, just as Al-Qaeda had been. And you see the fingerprints of CIA, Mossad and their willing collaborators all over this baby.

As author Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya argues, the targeting of Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria and attempts to remap the Middle East are aimed at paving the way for the clash of civilisations that the likes of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis have obsessed over for years.

So it is good that Arab and Muslim states seem to be waking up to the monster that is staring them in the face. The recent Arab ministers’ brainstorming in Jeddah and the Saudi-Iran confabulations seeking a common front against Isis are welcome. So are the strong denunciations by top Islamic scholars and ordinary Muslims [.....]