Monday, September 5, 2011

Ross Douthat writes in the Times...

...today, "It's Still the 9/11 Era" (my emphasis):

...our post-9/11 attempts to transform the Muslim world have cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, and won us — well, what? A liberated Iraq that’s more in Iran’s sphere of influence than ours, an Afghan war in which American casualties keep rising, an Arab Spring that threatens to encircle Israel with enemies, a Middle East where our list of reliable allies grows thin ...
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...after 10 years of conflict, we aren’t exactly in short-term territory anymore. And pointing out that things could have been worse doesn’t change the fact that our post-9/11 grand strategy has been associated with a steady erosion of America’s position in the world.

In this context, the fact that President Obama has kept the United States enmeshed in occupations and interventions across the Muslim world isn’t evidence that our strategy is working. It’s a sign that he doesn’t know how to get us out.

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