If you have even remotely been paying attention or if you watch TV you have probably heard about ISIS. They are a growing extremist group in the Middle East. The group is not only killing and threatening people in their country, they are threatening multiple countries, including the U.S.

The group’s name “ISIS” is a representation for the phrase “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria”. The group executes hundreds of people at a time and they don’t care who they are killing. They kill women and children as well as men, it doesn’t matter the age.

ISIS doesn’t only recruit people from the Middle East either. They have people joining the cause from all over the world. There are about 40 people from the U.S. that have even tried to join. I guess you could say they are almost having sign-ups for the group. Most will be accepted, but a few are going to be denied.

I asked Jordan Dirr, a junior at Elder, what his thoughts or concerns were about the situation with ISIS. “This whole thing has gone completely under our nose. They have help from several Americans and Europeans and they are on U.S. soil waiting to do something big,” Dirr said. “But now their time is limited because President Obama is sending 475 troops over in addition to the 1,000 that are already over there helping train Iraqi soldiers.

We kept talking and he mentioned something interesting. “They have actually traced the beheading videos back to the Islamic Mosque Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That is also where the Boston marathon bomber had practiced his faith,” he said. “I don’t want any more Americans dying.”

Their latest threat to the United States is to “raise the flag of Allah in the White House”. Obama finally decided to take action against the group and we have begun initiating air-strikes on the group. We have destroyed some of their bases but they continue to grow in size at a rapid rate. It almost doesn’t seem to harm them one bit.

Obama addressed the nation on September 1o, a day before the thirteenth anniversary of the September 11th  attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Obama came out saying “The U.S. will hunt down the terrorists wherever they are”. But Obama has also said that there have been no immediate threats from ISIS toward America.

We are going to “systematically degrade their capabilities,” Obama said. “We’re going to shrink the territory that they control. And that’s how we are going to defeat them.”

He warned, however, that if allowed to grow and recruit more foreign fighters, the group could possibly make an attempt to take action on U.S. soil. We have partnered with countries to help take these extremists down and that is exactly what we are going to do. I expect nothing less out of our government then to completely wipe out these terrorists.

ISIS is recruiting in so many ways trying to get young people to join them and whatever they are doing is working. They are promising the people protection, land, food, and housing. Basically just buying them into the group. They don’t care what happens or who they hurt along the way, they just want soldiers.

“One of the things we’ve seen about (ISIS) is they’re really good on social media,” Obama said. “They understand how to message the disaffected youth throughout the Arab world and throughout the Sunni world what they are doing.”