and figure out what to do.

McCain and Graham need to join them...

But they wont, some kid from a poor neighborhood will go and die, some pilot will die too...

Thus is America

deserve our help. They are in the middle of a once-upon-a-time nation into a destabilized pile of rubble. If we help Baghdad we will be helping Iran. If we bomb the insurgents we will be bombing Sunnis and Saudi Arabia will not like that. The GOP needs to do nothing other than help the President get our people out. If they politicize this they do not deserve to remain in office.

Probably to buy time/space to protect Baghdad and give Iraqis a chance to get their shit together and fight. It won't solve the underlying political problems, but there's enough of a menace there for the US to act now--you wouldn't want the capital to collapse and a major Sunni extremist/Shia/Kurd war and the potential for jihadists to control the whole country.

. . . and will likely do nothing more than fuel the conflict to the point where the rebels can clearly associate the Maliki regime with its former U.S. benefactors.

Intervening militarily in Iraq has always involved choosing sides in their civil conflict. Re-intervening after telling all sides that their solution is political will put the lid on any notion or pretense that the U.S. wants a political solution there.

I'm not sure why folks think the Maliki government is some bastion of democracy worth defending as if they have some legitimacy that the U.S. is able to broker to the Iraqi people. They regularly oppress and agitate the Sunni minority and others outside of their political circle. The violence from government forces against that community are documented. It's an autocratic government which is little more than a dictatorship at this point.

Airstrikes aren't going to stop the sectarian strife, they will exacerbate the tension and division and we have no way of managing the aftermath. The idea that U.S. airstrikes or military intervention will unravel resistance to corrupt government has been disproved in Afghanistan. The most we will do in that case is begin again to be the primary defense of whatever regime folks think should be in power there - PERPETUAL WAR.

See how that works? It's a slippery slope back to untenable paternalism, imperialism.

keeping the middle east unstable for years to come is the actual U.S. military and foreign policy objective.

Answers: More dead Arabs. More hatred of America. More terrorists.

Al Maliki has essentially purged the Baghdad 'coalition' government of all Sunni. Sunni troops in the Iraq Army have by and large deserted and joined the ISIS forces. The al Maliki government is currently allied with and receiving support from Iran. The Revolutionary Guard is IN Iraq right now. Southern Iraq is contingent to Iran. Any help to the Iraqi Government is aid to Iran. Period.