The media has hyped up the evilness and the power and strength of ISIS to the American public. You have Fox News which spent weeks ranting about Christians being persecuted by ISIS, and idiots like Rep. Trent Franks and Gov. Rick Perry, Lou Barletta, and Marco Rubio who have all been claiming that ISIS is planning on attacking us. That Franks guy claimed that we know it to be a fact that ISIS "we know that ISIS is present in Ciudad Juarez or they were within the last few weeks..."
Apparently, conservatives like to have an enemy, a boogyman that they can be afraid of, and conservative politicians have jumped on this chance to turn ISIS into that boogyman.
As far as the majority of our dumb arse citizens know, ISIS is the biggest threat that the US has ever seen, and they perceive our airstrikes against ISIS as being a war.
It's almost a reverse "wag the dog" scenario.
Republicans need to ridicule and criticize and attempt to control Obama, so republicans create the worst ever evil villan (by exagerating the threat and power of ISIS), and "force" Obama to combat that enemy.
Obama needs a big win, so he sit's back goes along with the game (knowing all along what the conservative goal is). He is then (apparently) "drug" into this war, doesn't have a plan then comes up with a plan, and wins a "10 year war" in just 10 weeks. A pretty spectacular win at that (based upon the median and conservatives exagerating this enemy to no end), with zero or limited US military casualties. Obama becomes a national hero, and centrist and independent voters show up in drove to vote conservative idiots out of office.