America is complicit in ISIS's rise. But that doesn't mean we should bomb Iraq.

What if, instead of sending bombs and weapons, we only sent relief aid: food, medicine, and evacuation opportunities? Indeed, continued humanitarian aid is a part of Obama’s strategy. But it should be the only part.

I make this suggestion as an anti-war libertarian who is as opposed to getting re-entangled in Iraq and making relief aid the government’s domain as any libertarian can be. But I also recognize that the last decade of disastrous American foreign policy lays at our feet some responsibility to help those subject to ISIS’s brutality; and a purely humanitarian response could potentially fulfill that obligation without launching Iraq War 3.0.

There are a number of advantages to this proposal. First, emergency relief aid does not engender the kind of resentment and retribution that airstrikes and military occupation produce. Second, there’s no risk of humanitarian aid being turned against us in the future. Weapons and equipment can fall into the wrong hands — and indeed they already have in Iraq and Syria — accidentally arming current or future enemies. Food and medicine will, in the worst case scenario, feed and heal jihadists. Not ideal, certainly, but not adding to the American or Iraqi body count, either.