A recent CBS News poll found that 57 percent of Americans now support sending ground troops to the Middle East to fight ISIS. We must have forgotten that our previous involvement in the region led to the vacuum in power that has facilitated the group’s ascent.

Do we know we are falling into a trap? Do we have some alternate, possibly profitable, scheme of which I am unaware? Or are we simply backed too far into this corner of exceptionalism that demands we continue our pursuit to police the world?