This is a matter of opinion, for the most part, and I will ignore that section. But I do think someone ought to say that your #1 is extremely misleading and close to outright false (through no fault of your own, I'm sure -- it's been the most common talking point of the western media for months/years), while your #4 seems to me unlikely. I've written about one elsewhere, so I'll focus on four.

I can't articulate exactly why I think ISIS would not take that line, but it does not feel of a kind with their previous propaganda. I mean, hell, I guess I could get on one of their shill websites and verify this for myself (though I'd rather not draw the scrutiny), but are they actually saying things like that this week in the wake of the back-and-forth in the US about refugees? I really think ISIS has successfully ingrained the 'us vs. them' mentality to such an extent already that they have every age 18-25 impressionable male Muslim for half a million square miles dying for them. The icing just doesn't matter.

They've a lot more immediate evidence where that came from, if they're looking for brainwashing ammo.

One closing thought -- #3 makes me wonder. I read that France ordered massive airstrikes on strategic targets in retaliation for the terrorist attack. Wonder why. If the west had the targets, they should have been dirt a year ago. Proportional response? Haven't we moved beyond the Geneva Convention? As the War Nerd said today, multiple times, everyone in ISIS should die. Where's the humanity in doing it excruciatingly slowly while journalists get beheaded and Kurdish women get raped?

Of course, Brecher being what he is, he provides the answer as well as the question. The US has to cherry pick ISIS militants without so much as stubbing the toe of a member of any other armed force in the region, for fear of being seen as 2003 redux (and pissing off our "allies"). That's a lot harder than bombing everything in north-central Iraq and most of non-Kurd Syria. And of course, a guardian-angel orbital missile campaign is naught but red numbers without an army of some sort on the ground. There are 1200 such armies, all who worship the same god, and none of them can agree with any of the others. c'est la vie. No longer remember what the prompt was.