The End of Pluralism (The Case for Intervention in the ME)
* Wondering if Bill Clinton's ideas as quoted below have to do with Hillary's views in favor of intervention. These views have shaped Obama but he's relatively cautious.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/the-end-of-pluralism/374875/2/
-- snip
The two most destructive conflicts in the Middle East today are in Syria and Iraq, two countries that have imploded not because of too much intervention, but because of too little. In Syria, our failure to intervene with air support to help rebels hold territory and targeted military strikes to diminish the regimes ability to kill not only exacerbated the humanitarian toll, but also undermined moderateswho have begged endlessly for the most basic weaponryand strengthened extremist groups like ISIS. The claim, oft-repeated by opponents of intervention, that there is no military solution is a straw man, setting up a false dichotomy between military action and successful diplomacy, when the two, in fact, go hand in hand. Assad has no real incentive to negotiate in good faith in the absence of a credible threat of military force.
Consider ISISs recent capture of territory in the strategic Syrian city of Deir Ezzour. The groups military success had very little to do with hatreds of any kind, ancient or otherwise, and more to do with the failure of the international community to support the rebels of the Free Syrian Army, who warned American officials, including Samantha Power, that ISIS was closing in. For weeks, they pleaded for assistance but were ignored. The FSA numbers are big, but we dont have weapons, we dont have ammunition, we dont have anything, complained one FSA commander.
In Iraq, the original sin was the Bush administrations decision to invade in 2003 (or was it the elder Bushs failure to back the Iraqi uprising of 1991, effectively allowing Saddam to stay in power?). But, again, there was nothing inevitable about the fall of Mosul to ISIS in June and the eruption of civil war in Iraq. To emphasize, as Obama has, that this is a conflict between Iraqis and must be resolved by Iraqis, is banal and self-evident, but it also impliesin the context of Obamas broader approach to the regiona certain studied detachment. This is not our civil war, but theirs. Except that the U.S., through a staggering combination of incompetence, neglect, and myopia, is directly implicated in the countrys political deterioration. As Ali Khedery, the longest continuing serving U.S. official in Iraq, writes: The crisis now gripping Iraq and the Middle East was not only predictable but predictedand preventable. By looking the other way and unconditionally supporting and arming Maliki, President Obama has only lengthened and expanded the conflict that President Bush unwisely initiated.
If anything, the lesson of Bosnia, Kosovo, and, for that matter, Rwanda, is that supposedly primordial conflicts over religion, sect, and ethnicity are the very ones, due to their intractability and viciousness, that are more likely to require outside military intervention. Ultimately, the end of the Bosnian war did not mean that Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats hated each other any less; it meant that, despite their hate, they would agree to abide by a peace agreement. This return to politics would not have been possible without, first, the resort to force by NATO and the international community.
In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Bill Clinton took on the inevitability argument: People say, okay, maybe its not inevitable, but look, there are a lot of ethnic problems in the world.
And youve got all these ethnic problems everywhere, and religious problems. Thats what the Middle East is about. Youve got Northern Ireland. Youve got the horrible, horrible genocide in Rwanda. Youve got the war, now, between Eritrea and Ethiopia. They say, Oh, weve got all these problems, and, therefore, why do you care about this?
Clinton came to the conclusion that it was worth not just caring, but acting. There was a difference between realismrecognizing that religious and ethnic hatreds are real and resonantand resignation, where the powerful say nothing can be done and look away. He came to this conclusion years after first reading Balkan Ghosts. Luckily, by then, it wasnt too late.