No boots on the ground — for now.

Whether you know it or not, or whether you choose to believe it, the United States is in a state of war. We’re not at war with any specific nation, but with an entity — an organization — a terrorist group.

Not since President George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” have we seen a conflict happen for ideological reasons and to stop an imminent “threat.”

These “evil doers” are calling themselves the Islamic State. You may know them as ISIS, or ISIL as President Barack Obama calls them, but suffice it to say that they are bad people doing bad things.

Now, while it seems clear that ISIS is a threat, we need to be ever-vigilant with what we allow our government to do in response.

No one wants to see more beheadings of Americans, or anyone for that matter, but another thing our country does not need is another pointless ground war.

Remember, most of the casualties we suffered during the second Iraq war happened after President Bush rolled in on his jet and declared victory.

The War on Terror proved one thing that President Obama needs to clearly understand and acknowledge: you can never rid the world of violent extremism or people with guns that hate America.

The second Iraq war made it seem like our government thought this was an attainable goal and even convinced us of that fact. It isn’t attainable. And now, after we pulled out of Iraq, we are cleaning up the mess we made by going there in the first place.

President Obama stated that he has no intention of deploying combat troops into Iraq and Syria, the places where ISIS has a seemingly unstoppable presence, but instead has begun an air-strike campaign against the terrorist group.

Furthermore, we’ll have specialists training the Iraqi military to fight ISIS. But that could easily start an escalation to the point where we have to respond with more military on the ground in the region.

Don’t think so? What happens when the people we’re training come under fire? Do our specialists stand there and let the Iraqis fight? No, of course not; we fight.

‘Murica!

Once our specialists come under fire, which they probably will at some point, we’ll end up having to send in additional troops to support their position. And it won’t take long until we’re in an all out ground war with ISIS.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that we may need to send in­ additional ground forces if our current campaign does not prove effective.

We’re on a slippery slope to that inevitability.

What can we do? We need to let our president know that we don’t want another ground war.

President Obama, or the next president, will go on television and tell us how we need to send troops to defend our citizens, to protect freedom. If it’s anything like President Bush’s “weapons of mass destruction” propaganda regarding Saddam Hussein prior to the U.S. invading Iraq in 2003, we’ll buy what he or she is selling.

We cannot let it come to this again. America cannot always render aid in these situations and keep acting as the world’s big brother.

ISIS needs to be stopped — that much is clear — but right now they are not a direct threat to American shores. That could change, but it’s going to take time for that to happen. Lending aid via air strikes is perfectly fine. It keeps American casualties to a minimum.

Many of us lost loved ones in the previous war or know someone who did. There’s no need for this to happen again.

The United States kept out of World War II for a long time. It wasn’t until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 that we finally declared war.

This is not to say that we should wait until we’re attacked, but since they don’t have an air force, they don’t pose a true threat for the moment.

It’s easy to get swept up in the fearmongering Washington likes to doll out, so listen closely to what our government tells us we should believe, and try to make a smarter decision than we made in 2003.