I must confess, I have no idea what the Isis is that the Government claims is an Offshoot of al-Qaida, and that it is currently bombing in Syria--

I strongly suspect, however, that it's nothing at all--at least, nothing like what our infinitely iniquitous and infernally mendacious government says it is--in order that it may have an excuse to bomb something.  The only reason I am not giving us peremptory orders to get us out of whatever the hell we're into forthwith, is that I am given to understand that, in opposing Isis--what ever it is or isn't--we have the Kurds at our side, and the possibility of realizing a much-deserved sovereign state of Kurdistan.  And that (as I know from my acquaintance in years past with valiant and honorable Kurds) would be worth bombing for; maybe even fighting for.

(I should say from my experience with one valiant and honorable Kurd):  Omar, who ran a little sundries and concession store across the street from the Basilico San Lorenzo in Perugia, whom I got to know from my stopping in at his store for Cokes during the ferragósto, when everything else was closed, and who told me, when I couldn't place his accent, that he was a  Kurd.  "Ah," I said, "Zoroastrian?"  Which of course was just the right thing to say to him.  He opened up to me like a flower, describing the miseries and calamities visited on his proud and ancient people by everybody else generally, but above all by the accursèd Muslims.  "You so deserve your own homeland!" I said to him, squeezing his hand in a manly fashion. "My Brother!" he said, squeezing back.  I told him how I regretted having to leave (end of term) when we'd just got to know one another, and he said, "Come again on the day you leave."  I promised him that I would.  And when, as promised, I showed up at his shop on  the afternoon of my departure, Omar gave me a bottle of very nice red wine--Valpolicella--and while embracing me in a brotherly fashion, said, "When you drink it, with a friend, think of me, and drink to the Kurds of Kurdistan."   And a couple of weeks later, visiting Phil in Germany, that's just what we did.