"...it’s a reasonable bet that had Barack Obama not been able to promise that it would be a mostly European affair, Gates would now be a military analyst on Fox News.He gives the president too much credit. Obama staggered in to this, pulled this way and that by France and his own Valkyries. Regardless, I agree with the president that it’s a good thing for others to lead this latest foreign adventure.
It’s not the 1990s anymore. The American public’s appetite for humanitarian war has always been meager. And now the American government’s capacity for waging it is meager, too.It's Time for Europe and the Middle East to Grow Up
But in a strange twist, Europe’s appetite has grown. The continent’s military capacity is still tiny compared to America’s, and it still lacks unity, but the shame of European inaction in Bosnia lingers in British, French, Italian, and German minds. (Peter Beinart – The Daily Beast)
Arabs and Europeans need to grow up and take care of their own problems. We should always be faithful to our global friends, but we can do so by playing a supporting role instead of full out fighting their battles for them. Europe is much closer than we are to Iran, The Middle East and North Africa .
This is only the beginning of the "unraveling of the Middle East"
We learned of the Sunni-Shia blood rivalry during the early years of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Look for it to explode across the wider region, says respected scholar and foreign policy expert Robert Kaplan. Add to this the anger spilling over in the Muslim street, financial crises in the west, and the fact that we're already tied up in two wars, and for what?
China is not a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system, as we proclaim it should be; it is a free rider. We are at war in Afghanistan to make it a safe place for China to extract minerals and metals. We have liberated Iraq so that Chinese firms can extract its oil. (Robert Kaplan - Beyond Libya)
Events are sliding sideways, and each country is fracturing in its own way. This Arab revolution began with a humiliating slap, has included virginity checks, rapes, twitter feeds and Facebook posts, and no one can predict how it will all end, or if it will end at all. We should not be picking sides between rotten murderous dictators and rotten murderous Islamists. I know, they're not all America-hating terrorists, but we've proven woefully inept a sorting the friends from the enemies. Better to stay out of it.
Globally and domestically, things will get worse before they get better. Instead of dropping million-dollar packages from 50,000 feet, we should be marshaling our forces here at home.
Globally and domestically, things will get worse before they get better. Instead of dropping million-dollar packages from 50,000 feet, we should be marshaling our forces here at home.
