If war is not the answer, what is?

Step Six. Massively increase (US) humanitarian contributions to UN agencies for the now millions of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons in and from both Syria and Iraq.

As Ms Bennis says, a "Coalition for Rebuilding" will be more likely to weaken support for ISIS than a "Coalition of the Killing".

Other comments on Ms Bennis' plan: The West should not supply more arms to those groups who transgress human rights. It is actually against the (Leahy) law in the US – and the law should be enforced and not selectively and cynically bypassed by the US government and its agencies.

Given the uncertainty about who are "the good guys" in this situation, the US and any coalition should work towards an arms embargo on all sides. The West imposes a wide range of other "economic sanctions" in many parts of the world – why cannot armaments be included? The powerful military industrial complex would be the major impediment.

It is worthwhile therefore to re-visit the warning in President Eisenhower's 1961 Exit Speech regarding the "economic, political, even spiritual influence" of the military industrial complex - and its "grave implications… involving… even the very structure of our society". The "unwarranted influence …. and the potential for the disastrous misplaced power of this complex exist and will persist". 50+ years on – how prescient was the warning.

The emerging "inclusive" government in Iraq should continue to be encouraged to share power and become genuinely representative of all major sects/cultures. The government should attempt to hire back the secular Sunni army officers who defected to the rebels and ISIS when Saddam Hussein was ousted – restore their pay, positions, prestige and dignity.

Focus should be brought to swaying support from Sunni tribal leaders away from their support of ISIS. This will be challenging. These tribal leaders and their followers have been relentlessly targeted, oppressed and dispossessed by the West during the US/coalition invasion and throughout the subsequent Shia-dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki. A genuinely inclusive government in Baghdad is critical to this process.