One of Sullivan's problems is that he employs the "they" all too frequently. And his use of it is inevitably to load it up with as many negatives, and associated terms, as possible. It's a variant of the Bush binary logic which is unfortunate in someone as intellectually nimble as Sullivan.
Iraq was not a "terrorist" issue for the US; nor is Syria; nor is Iran; nor, for that matter, is North Korea. The first three are/were definitely issues in the ongoing stability of the ME as well as the prospects for better lives for its inhabitants. But the tools to address those issues are fairly complicated. Definitely, not bomb them into the stone age. Which appears to be the basic policy now. Excuse a bit of hyper wording there.
North Korea is not a terrorist issue. In some ways it is a more serious issue, that of nuclear proliferation. And requires some very "nuanced" approaches to address.
As for the Islamist threat, that's not, at least not first of all, a threat against the US. My basic read of the nature of that threat remains Gilles Kepel in Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon in the Age of Sacred Terror, and, best of all, Michael Doran's "Somebody Else's Civil War," from FA.
But it needs to be addressed and done so with a finessed mix of carrot and stick. But the Bush folk have lost the bag of carrots. |
