Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton both gave big speeches yesterday, and the difference in how they think America should react to ISIS is striking.

Clinton says we should speed up military action, including more airstrikes and the expanded deployment of special ops soldiers to Syria. She said the 50 soldiers Obama has authorized to leave should be sent “immediately,” and we should be “prepared to deploy more, as more Syrians get into the fight.”

From Yahoo News,

Hillary Clinton called.. for a sharp escalation of the war against the.. Islamic State.., embracing some ideas championed by Republicans and rejected by President Obama. “It’s time to begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts to smash the would-be caliphate,” [Clinton] said in a major foreign policy speech... “This is a worldwide fight, and America must lead it.”

She’s advocating America get more and more involved in the Middle East. She’s calling for the immediate deployment of U.S. special ops to Syria, and already talking about the future deployment of more.

She wants America to lead the fight. Just like the Republicans do.

Bernie Sanders does not.

During his Thursday speech, Sanders said that,

“I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will never send our sons and daughters to war under false pretense… or into dubious battles with no end in sight.”

He called for Middle Eastern nations, not America, to lead the battle against ISIS, saying,

“..The fight against ISIS is a struggle for the soul of Islam, and countering violent extremism and destroying ISIS must be done primarily by Muslim nations - with the strong support of their global partners.”

Bernie is saying the Middle East must be the leader in fighting Middle Eastern extremism. The people of those nations must, with strong American support, dictate their own future. Similar to how a foreign power could not come into the U.S. and force us to become a real democracy, we cannot eliminate extremism from a region that is not our own.

How would we feel if a foreign country invaded us to stop Donald Trump or Ben Carson from becoming president? The racist, hateful, xenophobic part of America is ours, and ours alone, to defeat. A foreign nation could not fight the prejudice and discrimination that exists in America, and neither will the leadership of the U.S. destroy the plague that is ISIS. We cannot command a fight that is not ours.

Real change has to come from the people, the citizens who make up the communities, the human beings who live there — the vast, vast majority of whom despise and detest ISIS.

This isn’t our battle to lead. It is ours to support.

Bernie understands this, accurately describing the battle a “struggle for the soul of Islam” — and, seeing how America is neither a Middle Eastern or Muslim country, it is not our struggle. The majority of blood spilled has been on Middle Eastern soil, with many more Middle Easterners dying at the hands of ISIS than Americans; in Syria alone Daesh has killed over 1,000.

We do not need more American or European control in the Middle East. We are not the champions of this fight.

There is, however, a fight that is wholly ours — the one on our own soil.

ISIS is not an organized, top-to-bottom bureaucracy. It’s an idea, supported by many scattered, individual cells operating largely on their own. The Paris attackers weren’t people from Syria or Iraq, they were Europeans.

Our fight is not in the Middle East, but within our own countries.

Just like the Middle East has to face the extremism that has been birthed there (along with U.S. help, for we did much to destroy the stability of that region), Europeans have to face the extremism that has been birthed in Europe.

There is a LOT of racism in Europe. A huge identity crisis has been unfolding amongst European countries that have very strong ideas of what it means to be French or German or British, and part of that is being white (not to mention some countries have outright racist traditions, like the Dutch Christmas black face, “Black Pete”).

France’s last president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was notoriously prejudiced.

From the Guardian —

“More than any other French president, Sarkozy, who himself has immigrant roots, has turned the issue of immigration into electoral politics. He has rounded up Roma, introduced France's fifth immigration law in seven years, banned Muslim women wearing the niqab in public places and launched a national debate on what it means to be French, led by his new ministry of immigration and national identity. He… shows no sign of softening his hardline immigration policy.”

And Francois Hollande, the current president, is trying to pretend that France is a post-racial society, instead of taking action to truly unroot the country’s very real, visceral racism.

From the Guardian,

“Like Sarkozy, [Hollande] seeks to promote an easily digestible view of cultural diversity that obscures the persistent inequalities that… have their roots in race. The scapegoating of Islam and Muslims, the racialised inequality in housing, education, and employment, and the dominance of a Republican ethos that denies the true diversity of French society go on. Not talking about race won't make them go away.”

Defeating ISIS in Syria won’t eliminate what they have inspired around the globe. We need to start eliminating racism and racist policies from our governments and our cultures, so people who are Muslim no longer have reason to be angry and resentful. Only then we will destroy extremism.

The attackers did not shout about Bashar al-Assad. They said, as the New York Times reports,

“‘This is because of all the harm done by Hollande to Muslims all over the world!’ one of the gunmen yelled in French.”

I’m not saying it’s extraordinarily well-founded, since Hollande has tried to address these deep-seated issues and France didn’t support the Iraq War or intervention in the Middle East until the U.S. and the instability we caused made it impossible not to, but the racism and prejudice that European Muslims face is great.

148 French Muslim graves were desecrated in 2008; “a pig’s head was hung from a headstone and profanities insulting Islam and Muslims were daubed on some graves.” Hate crimes against Muslims in London have shot up by almost ¾. For the actions of a few in the Charlie Hebdo attack, children as young as 10 years old have been attacking Muslims. After 20 people murdered hundreds in Paris, hate crimes against Muslims who had nothing to do with it have spiraled.

So does blood beget blood beget blood.

It is an evil circle that, if fed, will never stop. America taking the lead in attacking ISIS will only cause more extremism, more attacks, which will then make more people hate Muslims, which will then cause more attacks, and on and on it will go.

We have to understand there is blame on both sides, and not every person who joins up with ISIS wants the world as ISIS wants it. They are angry, disillusioned, and shunned from society. They are the victims of racism and hate, and ISIS offers them shelter, manipulative kindness, understanding, a family, a purpose, and revenge upon the people who have hurt them.

If America goes to war in the Middle East, we are playing exactly into ISIS’ hands.

They want more American troops to attack their countries, not only for ISIS to kill, but so hatred of Americans will increase. They want our soldiers to commit evil acts, so they can recruit more people who hate the West.

America spurred this hatred by spreading terror and murder in Iraq (and elsewhere in the Middle East) and, by intervening again, we will only spread more.

It is exactly what ISIS wants.

From Huffington Post,

“In that largely Muslim part of the world, the U.S. left a grim record that we in this country generally tend to discount or forget when we decry the barbarism of others. We are now focused in horror on ISIS... [Yet we] ignore the virtual library of [U.S. generated] videos and… images widely viewed… with no less horror in the Muslim world than ISIS’s imagery is in ours. As a start, there were the infamous “screen saver” images straight out of the Marquis de Sade from Abu Ghraib prison… There were the videos that no one (other than insiders) saw, [that]... the CIA took of the repeated torture and abuse of al-Qaeda suspects in its ‘black sites.’ In 2005, they were destroyed by an official of that agency, lest they be screened in an American court someday… There was the video of U.S. troops urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. There were the trophy photos of body parts brought home by U.S. soldiers. There were the snuff films of the victims of Washington’s drone assassination campaigns in the tribal backlands of the planet (or “bug splat,” as the drone pilots came to call the dead from those attacks) and similar footage from helicopter gunships. .. And that’s only to begin to account for some of the imagery produced by the U.S. since September 2001 from its various adventures in the Greater Middle East.”

There is a reason some (and some is very important here) Middle Easterners hate the West. We’ve killed their brothers and sisters, their mothers and fathers. We’ve bombed their lands and destroyed their homes. We’ve dishonored their dead bodies and tortured their loved ones.

The last thing we need to do is incite more hatred towards the West.

America cannot, as Hillary calls for, be the leader in this fight.

If we are, we help ISIS. They want us to attack. They want us to be the dominating force in the war against Daesh, so hatred of the West will grow. They want to divide the world into two encampments, believers and non-believers. They’re trying to start World War 3. They want the Earth to descend into terror, fear, and violence. We are watching their efforts to start a massive holy war.

And, if the U.S., instead of the Middle East, leads this fight, we will be doing precisely what they are trying to make us do. We will escalate the budding war between Muslims and the West, and send the world spiraling into the great war that ISIS desires.

American lives will still be protected by supporting the war against ISIS, by continuing to screen people who come here, and by monitoring potential terrorist cells. The White House was actually informed about 9/11, but deaf to warnings. We can protect American lives without leading a war in the Middle East.

Bernie Sanders understands all this.

He is not rushing headlong into conflict. He is not advocating we incite more hatred of the West in a region that already has very good reason to despise us. He is speaking strongly against hatred and intolerance on our own soil (while Hillary kept silent for days, until an aide spoke for her), and speaking against the rejection of people fleeing the same threat we’re afraid of.

He is proving, yet again, how wise he is about the devastating cost of war. He shows great foresight and sagacity.

Hillary, in stark contrast, is showing hawkishness and rashness, very ready for America to take up the mantle. Ready to send American lives into danger.

Doesn’t this look familiar?

In 2002, Bernie Sanders famously voted against the Iraq War. Hillary Clinton voted for it.

Bernie predicted the instability that would follow, asking —

“Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed and what role will the U.S. play in ensuing a civil war that could develop in that country?”

He showed incredible calmness and clear-headedness. In the face of great opposition, in the face of lies, he rationally evaluated the information and made a logical, correct decision. Just like Bernie thought, a power vacuum was created and extremism blossomed. That 2002 invasion, as Bernie predicted, played a huge part in creating the instability and civil war we see in the Middle East today.

Yet Clinton wants to do the same thing all over again.

It seems she has not learned anything at all from the 2002 vote she now has, finally, called a “mistake.”

U.S. leadership is not the answer. We cannot go into a country on the other side of the world with guns and bombs and expect to leave lasting, positive change. We cannot be the leaders in a fight that is not mainly ours. We can be supportive, as Bernie advocates, but we cannot be heading the charge.

Because of this, and along with the disastrous Libya intervention, I do not trust Hillary Clinton on foreign policy.

She puts my American brothers and sisters in danger needlessly. She is unlearned of the tragedy of war. She does not view it as a last resort, but a first course of action. She is far too eager and ready to reach for weapons (and somehow I don’t think she’d be so prepared to send our soldiers to war if it were her loved ones risking their lives).

This is not our fight and we cannot, as Hillary demands, lead it. Like Bernie says, we must strongly support the Middle Eastern countries in their fight. But we cannot wage this war for them.

We must take care of our own, the millions of poor people, the millions of hungry children, the million and a half impoverished veterans, thousands of whom are homeless, 22 of whom kill themselves every day. We must heal our people, not make more broken soldiers.

This country has seen enough bloodshed.