Bull in a China Shop

As I scan the headlines this morning, it is clear that Iraq is going crazy again, with suicide bombers killing hundreds every day and civil war ready to break out. On the other side of Iran, The Taliban are moving east into regions of Pakistan, killing police and instituting Islamic law, and the government of Pakistan seem paralyzed to do much about it.

It only seems like yesterday that the Surge seemed the answer to all our problems in Iraq, and might be applied in some fashion in Afghanistan. I wonder what General Petraeus thinks now.

The people whose opinion I respect on the Middle East have never believed that things were so pacified in Iraq that we could leave in peace. They expected a civil war to break out between the Shia and the Sunni, with terrible bloodshed taking place and us unable to stop it. It remains the reality that by removing Saddam, we opened Pandora's Box and that country will probably have to split in three parts before any kind of settlement can be reached. (Joe Biden, by the way, has been arguing this way for quite a while.)

As for Afghanistan, our continuing actions there since 2001 have simply driven the Taliban into Pakistan and have now paved the way for the Talibanization of that country, or part of it anyway. With its fragile, endangered government, and military unwilling to take on the Taliban, Pakistan becomes the West's nuclear nightmare, a nuclear power threatened by radical Islam.

We blunder around in that part of the world, like a bull in a china shop. Will we get out before wrecking the whole place? Or will someone come a shoot the bull?

We arrogantly throw our military weight around the world like we know all the answers and can solve all the problems to our liking. When are our interventionists going to learn that we don't know all the answers? Frankly, at this point, I don't see that much difference between Republicans and Democrats here. Both are caught in this interventionist mindset that is so dangerous to our future.