Is this former Army veteran and mother of three brave, or irresponsible?

Samantha Johnston, 25 — of Emerald Island, North Carolina — made a big decision recently. An enormous one.

She thought the United States wasn’t doing enough to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), so left her three children with a caregiver and booked a trip to Iraq to join the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in their quest to rid the world of the bloody jihadists (she served as a geospatial engineer when she was officially part of the U.S. military).

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“These children here who are homeless, orphaned; mothers and sisters have been raped and sold, fathers who have been killed,” Johnston told the Daily Mail. “They are suffering, and I knew that I couldn’t just sit and do nothing. I couldn’t look my children in the eyes and say, ‘I didn’t do anything to help.’”

She hasn’t fought directly against ISIS yet, but called the current training period “the calm before the storm,” according to a report on Fox46 Charlotte. ISIS has captured much of Iraq and recently captured over 100 tanks, artillery pieces, and wheeled vehicles after the fall of Ramadi.