@WJRue just tweeted a link to this post at the new blog Paradigm Cure. It deserves reading.
The Conventional Wisdomites sigh and roll their eyes every time the likes of Andrew Bacevich give another talk about America’s global ambitions and the wrecking of Constitutional restraints in presidential war powers. Respectable foreign policy journals and magazines hardly publish such irresponsible dreck. But the fact is, we’re now “at war” hither and yon, with no end in sight; and what it means for the Nation, few care to investigate in serious ways. And the issue now is that the problem looks ready to run utterly out of control.
“It’s time to think seriously about intervening in Syria,” writes Steven Cook in a piece at the Atlantic. Which, regardless of the substance of this terrifying article, is a useful title, anyway, because you can shave off the last word, insert a blank, and get a pretty good sense of where we’re at as a nation.
Comments
The sequence and preponderance of upheaval in Muslim majority nations is more than a coincidence. Yet a significant strand of academic literature continues to overlook the role of the majority religion in spawning these events.
Certain attributes of the religion itself may be contributing to the upheaval and more, including, by creating conditions whereby Muslim nations find it difficult to create wealth, spawn violent radicalism, are unable to form or sustain democracy, etc.
Differences in identities do not have to lead to conflict. The developing nation of democratic and secular India with myriad of caste, language, ethnic, and culture identifies is a one example of that. It is probably no surprise that India’s greatest source of instability can be traced to its fast-growing, restive Muslim minorities.
Steven Cook’s piece on Syria, for instance, has no reference to Islam whatsoever. And yet, it seems to suggest an interventionist course.
However, prudent policy response, even besides armed-intervention, requires analytical study of the impact of the religion in this ongoing upheaval.
Without that we may end up creating more Pakistan like states in the Arab world: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/08/pakistan-and-the-arab-spring/
You are right Peter, this article by Mr Cook is quite terrifying.
I can't believe people are actually calling for intervention in Syria with blunt statements like this: "intervention in Syria"
I wonder sometimes how these people conceive of the use of military force in these situations. Do they have any clue about military force, especially its limits. Dont they understand that in a situation like Syria which is mired in violent civil war, that when the United States intervenes with force it becomes an agent to one side in the war and is a part of it?
It is almost like they see American military force as pixie dust: just sprinkle a little bit here or there and everything will be fine.
In the end though, folks like Mr Cook should be content since they have in America a political class who is always willing to listen to the possibility of applying military power in the world, all the while as an American people sleep, because they dont really care if we do or don't.
gian