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For The Middle East, ‘A Time Of Festering’

Michael J. Totten says the Middle East is finally going to have what it wants: But we are not going to save Iraq and we are not going to save Syria. It’s over. That’s what the Middle East wanted, and it’s what the Middle East is going to get. Arab governments complain when we intervene […]

Michael J. Totten says the Middle East is finally going to have what it wants:

But we are not going to save Iraq and we are not going to save Syria. It’s over. That’s what the Middle East wanted, and it’s what the Middle East is going to get.

Arab governments complain when we intervene and they complain when we don’t intervene. Basically, they complain no matter what. So asking what they want is pointless. It takes a while to notice this trend over time, but there it is. They have not stopped to consider the consequences of this behavior, but those consequences are about to become apocalyptic for Nouri al-Maliki.

“We’ll kill you if you mess with us, but otherwise go die” is not even close to my preferred foreign policy, but it’s what President Barack Obama prefers (phrased much more nicely, of course) and it’s what the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer, including most liberals as well as conservatives.

Still, it’s only a matter of time before we get sucked in kicking and screaming one way or another. Because the Middle East isn’t Las Vegas. What happens there doesn’t stay there.

We’re out for now, though. This is the time of festering.

Consider all the effort and all the money — $25 billion — that the US spent training and equipping the Iraqi security forces. And all for nothing. They’re giving up with barely a fight.

A few years back, I asked a US veteran of the Iraq war what he thought was accomplished there. He told me that it gave him and his men a great sense of satisfaction to build schools for poor Iraqis, and to give them things they had never had. But he said it has been painful, in the years since he came home, to face the fact that the Iraqis weren’t capable of keeping it, because they hate each other too much.

I wonder what that retired soldier thinks today.

UPDATE: The president said today:

Stepping back, he cited the United States’ own tortured history in Iraq and the desire not to let American efforts there go to waste. “We have enormous interests there,” he added, “and obviously our troops and the American people and the American taxpayers made huge investments and sacrifices in order to give the Iraqis the opportunity to chart a better course, a better destiny.”

They haven’t had that opportunity? How many more bombs do we have to drop before Maliki and the rest will get it right? Does anybody believe anything we do now can make a lasting difference? That we can save Iraq from itself?

UPDATE: This comment from reader Roger H.:

For my part, I feel conflicted and part of me wants to grab a rifle and get back in the fight. The sane part of me knows–and has always known–that the enterprise was doomed from the outset. (I was one of the Marines who took Tikrit in the invasion. ) We in the post-enlightenment West do not understand religious culture. Nor do we understand tribalism. These are the two most powerful forces in the Middle East and understanding that a decade ago might have saved us a lot of lives and money.

UPDATE.2: Noah Millman:

People who think the world will swiftly get more peaceful if we mind our own business may well be just as wrong as the people who think that by sticking our nose into other people’s business we can force the world to be peaceful.

Noah’s reflection on the Iraq situation raises a difficult to answer moral question: at what point does the US cease to be responsible for Iraq’s fate? As he says in the beginning of his post, the US does bear some responsibility for Iraq, because we invaded it and destroyed the power structure there. But at what point does that responsibility end? I’m not asking rhetorically.

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