News coming out of Iraq is anything but encouraging, as an Islamic terrorist group, which is apparently a spin-off of Al Qaeda, and apparently too extreme for even them, continues to take control of one town after another in northern Iraq and Syria. The militants, who claim they want to create an Islamic state in both Iraq and Syria controlled by Sunnis, is over-powering the Iraqi army, ill-equipped to stand off the insurgents without U.S. support.

U.S. troops moved into Iraq in 2003 to overturn the regime of Sunni ally Saddam Hussein, convinced he was hiding weapons of mass destruction. They were never found. We spent the next eight-plus years establishing a government that the Sunnis want to overthrow. The Shiites represent the majority of Iraq’s population while in nearby Syria, the Shiites control the government, despite the fact that the majority of the people are Sunni.

It’s been only two short years since we pulled back our troops and declared that we had reached our goal of driving back Al Qaeda and had established a stable government with free elections. Most Americans support any effort to overthrow Al Qaeda because of its worldwide goal to kill much-hated Americans. Our involvement in Iraq was not, however, without controversy. While we were successful in pushing Al Qaeda back, the war unfortunately did precious little to change the views of either the Shiites or Sunnis, who have been warring for decades. It was inevitable that the two factions would be at each other’s throats again; it was just a matter of time.

Unfortunately, if we look back on our involvement in foreign conflicts over the past few decades, we think our track record will show that while we’ve sometimes succeeded in temporarily quieting the unrest, human nature dictates that those with opposing views are slow to change. Both the Sunnis and Shiites are fighting for the long-held principles in which they believe.

Just what role the U.S. will play in the current uprising may change from day to day, depending upon what happens. At any rate, we’ve got to be doing a lot of soul-searching that after spending close to $2.2 trillion dollars, losing 4,800 American military personnel and having 32,000 come home wounded, the threat of civil war and the loss of innocent lives in both Iraq and Syria looks to be as great today as it was back in 2003. The fact remains that air strikes, ground fire, killing and bombing does little to change attitudes.