The last thing the United States should be doing is entering into a centuries' old theological dispute in the Middle East. No amount of face-saving, rationalizing, or wishful thinking can erase that fact.
I know, Hitchens was just writing something truly incisive about that ("baby sitting a civil war", or some such).
All the same ...
We know that al-qa'ida has tried to play off common prejudices and rivalries, in order to draw in the psychic energy that its own bankrupt ideology cannot muster single handedly. In that way, they are comfortable being parasitic. If one looks away from Iraq, to Southeast Asia and those following the development of al-qa'ida "inspiration" there, you also see various efforts to stoke ethnic violence, as a means to another end.
So, given that, the question is: does one have to have a strategy, other than retreat, for countering the induced spillover into open hostilities of those things in the Pandora's box of every society, such as confessional differences?
I'm not sure as a matter of the ethics of nation building that the U.S. has an unequivocal obligation to do everything to forestall the escalation of sectarian violence, but I think it is too fascile to just dismiss the question.
What's more, there is an error in rational decision making to avoid. How much of a decision to retreat in the face of sectarian lawlessness is due to the experience of the prior years? Supposing a Saddam-era Iraq had spilled over into sectarian violence in the worst way - would the World have stood by, altogether?
sullylink
