How do we stop ISIS before hundreds of thousands more people are killed here and around the world?

Dear Madam or Mr. President,

     One issue I would like to discuss is stopping ISIS. ISIS is a very powerful terrorist group that is possibly our greatest threat to the US since Al Qaeda or the Taliban who carried out the attack on the US on 9/11/01 which was responsible for killing 2,996 innocent american lives. ISIS is a very wealthy organization that gets their money from selling oil and they bring in 2 million dollars in revenue each day from selling up to 40,000 barrels. They control 7 oil fields and 2 smaller refineries in northern Iraq. Although ISIS is more organized than the Iraqi army, they are less powerful which is helpful for us since Iraq is our best ally for fighting ISIS. Although ISIS has recruited 17,000 fighters, I believe if we can focus on defeating them, we can.

     In the last couple of years, ISIS has been responsible for killing 20,000 people around the world. The recent attacks like the ones in San Bernardino, Orlando and Europe have been inspired by ISIS or have been direct from ISIS and the people responsible for all attacks have pledged allegiance to ISIS.What is really scary is that ISIS uses social media to recruit new soldiers and uses their app that they developed called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, or just Dawn, that provides the latest news about the jihadist group to its users. Hundreds of people have downloaded the app, and they use it recruit more people and share propaganda. ISIS also shares videos like the one of the beheading of US journalist, James Foley, to spread their message. They also put out a 400-page annual report detailing their operations, strategy, and achievements, like carrying out over a thousand assassinations. And the report included social media-friendly infographics of their operations, too.

     ISIS is strong, but is not strong enough that we can’t try to defeat them. Mr. Trump, if you are the commander in chief, I would like to say that I support your temporary ban on muslims because although i’m not saying all muslims are bad or terrorists, most if not all members of ISIS are either muslim or are of muslim descent, and if we have temporary ban, it can give us a big enough window to bomb ISIS. Although many innocent may die from bombs we drop, hundreds or thousands more will die if we don’t stop ISIS before they kill innocent americans and other innocent citizens around the world. If we also have much stronger background checks, we can stop potential threats from entering the US which is where we failed in 2001. The 2 responsible for San Bernardino came to America, got a citizenship, but then they pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack before they were killed which is why having strong background checks can stop this from happening. What America needs to do is to bomb them. Wipe them out completely. If we bomb them, we don’t need to send thousands more ground troops to fight and potentially get killed. Anyone that is connected to ISIS needs to be killed. Whether they lead a section of their army or they just pledge allegiance, they need to be stopped before we have to deal with another horrifying event like 9/11.

Sincerly,

Seth Bradley

Edith C. Baker school

Brookline, Massachusetts.