Long story short, I am an 18 year old American citizen who has always been interested in the military. For the last year and a half, I have been following the situation currently underway in Iraq / Syria pertaining to ISIS and their genocide. I did some research about potentially traveling to the middle-east and joining arms with Iraqi Kurdistan (YPG) forces. I contacted them via Facebook and asked all sorts of questions including whether they accept individuals with no prior military experience. They contacted back a few days later and said that they do in fact accept non-military personnel. They provide training as well as places to stay, things to eat, weapons, etc. I am heavily contemplating doing this upon graduation from high school. You may ask, "why not just join our military?". Well, I would rather prefer to have a direct impact on those suffering. I feel that as a Christian, I should do more than just sitting at home and watching the news. I am willing to give my life for this cause. What should I do?

Thx

1. Contacting someone through facebook is the dumbest thing that you can do.

2. If you want to fight ISIS the best thing you can do is indeed join the US military so you can be properly trained and sent to fight there with other Americans. If you're on your own there's the danger of you getting kidnapped and then be beheaded as have so many other Americans, Brits etc.

3. US military will also provide you with a paycheck I presume and health care(insurance).

4. Since you are still in highschool it means that you're a teenager. I don't think that your parents would let you travel there which means that they should lock up your passport and not allow you to travel like all those other teenage morons who have left their country to go fight for ISIS.

5. Since you're a teenager that means that you're gullible and you'll believe whatever a person says to you so travelling to meet up with people you don't know is the most dangerous thing that you can do.

6. If you want to help them more directly, you could start some type of charity: Gather food(cans etc), clothes,blankets, medicine and other things they need there and find some way to send them to the people who actually need them.

The best advice I can give you is go join the US military since you haven't got any experience being in the army, you just going there and getting trained there will ultimately get you killed because of your lack of experience in guns and fighting.

Direct impact? Join the US Military.

In case you haven't paid any attention to the news, the US is bombing the hell out ISIS in Syria & Iraq.

Nothing makes more of an impact than tons of bombs & rockets unleashed by fighters & bombers.

Or a gunship. Or even a drone strike.

(Far more of an impact than any ground soldier with just an AK-47 or RPG launcher ever could.)

Keep very quiet about it. The authorities in Iraq and Syria are going to take a keen interest in anybody who enters their territory with the intention of joining the war.

You believe the advice given on a random Facebook page? You are going the right way about getting kidnapped so your family has to cough up a fortune in ransom.

Both sides exploit naive people like you.

Why post in TURKEY section when they are very anti KURDISTAN and have done little to help???? To join such you need to be Kurdish really & speak the language...Can see you want to do good, and that is great and commendable, but it is NOT your war, is it? Christian? why not become a missionary of sorts then?

Neither ISIS nor Peshmerga will take you as you are not Muslim and seem to have little understanding of what the fighting is all about. You are more likely to be executed as a spy.

Learn to distinguish fiction from fact.