Bill Kristol: What Could Go Wrong If U.S. Just Bombed ISIS For A While?

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Conservative commentator and Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol wondered aloud Tuesday what could possibly go wrong if the United States were to decide to bomb members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, who have terrorized areas of those countries in recent months and killed an American journalist last week, for a little while.

“Someone said on a panel with me, ‘We can’t just bomb. We have to really think about this and have a long debate and discussion,'” Kristol said in an interview with fellow conservative Laura Ingraham during her radio show in a clip pulled by Mediaite. “You know, why don’t we just [bomb]? We know where ISIS is. What’s the harm of bombing them at least for a few weeks and seeing what happens?

“I don’t think there’s much in the way of unanticipated side effects that are going to be bad there,” he continued. “We could kill a lot of very bad guys.”

Kristol acknowledged that ISIS would likely try to “kill as many Americans as they can when they get to that, and they’re getting to that already with the ones they’ve captured over there.” It was an apparent reference to the ISIS killing of journalist James Foley last week.

In the video of Foley’s death, his masked killer said that the murder was the consequence of the U.S. military launching air strikes against ISIS. After killing Foley, his killer then brought another captured American journalist, Steven Joel Sotloff, in front of the camera and warned President Barack Obama that “the life of this American citizen… depends on your next decision.”

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