Murdoch's News Limited and some other media corporations do indeed love the free (for them) theatre of War. All that action footage and drama.

If it bleeds it leads.
Preferably overseas.

Yet with Obama and Action Man Abbott at the helm might bombing the good fight in Iraq and Syria have the desired results?

It makes good sense to fight IS in the Middle East rather than in Melbourne and Sydney.

Suseonline, "And still, the terrorists will remain with us..."

That is a very timely reminder that there is no word yet on what action has been taken if any, to correct the reported bungling and corruption in the Immigration Department (Dept of Immigration and Border Protection).

Immigration policy and multicultural policies need to be reviewed.

Suse,
The reason "Racist Bigots" aren't flying into a frenzy is because they're a figment of the SJW's fevered imagination, just like the "Viagra rape squads" in Libya and the babies left to die on the cold concrete floor in Kuwait in 1990.
Notice how, once again all these Feminist tropes such as "rape as a weapon of war" are being co-opted by the warmongers and regurgitated by the faux progressive, clickbait media? Why don't you worry about the criminal misuse of your narrative and stop worrying your little heads over the "Racist Bigots"?

In case we were wondering how this would play out in the short-term, with all the foreseeable and inevitable long-term consequences, the following is the lead in a current article in the Guardian: "National security laws allow whistleblowers to be jailed and give Asio sweeping powers to gather online data."
It looks like we too are headed for police state status. Admittedly, as an occupied country our range of activity is limited, but I would still have hoped for a bit more back bone from our Federal pollies

Don't worry halduell, they won't be much of a problem here.

We've all seen them play at war among themselves, & kill lots of civilians in cold blood, when they can catch them. However we have also seen what happens when these middle eastern Muslims run into real men.

John Howard was a man of vision. He saw this coming, & tried to remove our guns before we could deal with this garbage. Fortunately you don't need weapons to clean out a rat infestation, A this one will be no harder.

Bruce, I generally agree with the trust of your argument, but you say this: "No doubt the United States feels compelled to contain the damage from past mistakes." Here I respectfully disagree. The US does not make "mistakes". Its long history of invasions, occupations, bombings, assassinations and attempted assassinations all serve various goals perfectly well. Those goals are the generally the further enrichment and power of the 1% whom Eisenhower presciently warned against in 1961.

In the Middle East there are specific goals that are being pursued. You can read about them in Hersh's 1997 article in the New Yorker, and by reading about the Yinon Plan. The fact that whole societies are laid to waste in the process I suspect worries them not at all.

The analogy with Vietnam is a valuable one. Many of us are old enough to remember the "fight them there or we will have to fight them here" BS when it was never about fighting "communism" or any other bogey man du jour, as has been amply documented in a number of excellent books. Unfortunately there are some (including some of the above commenters) who remain captive to this nonsense.

Just a small correction. The Americans sabotaged the 1954 (not 1964) Geneva negotiations that ended the France - Vietnam war because they knew that if genuine free elections were held, as provided for in the peace treaty, Ho Chi Minh would have won. Can't let democracy prevail when there are wider (oil, drugs, "containing" China etc) issues in play.