Tuesday, November 20, 2012

A World Full of Troubles

We're in a heap of trouble.
I write this while sitting in Colorado, on break from a superb seminar on defense and foreign policy sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the El Pomar Foundation. The seminar is remarkably free of political finger-pointing and direct criticism -- or even mention -- of the Obama administration. Most of the material is descriptive and neutrally analytical, rather than politically prescriptive and hypercritical. But the picture being painted of a growingly dangerous world makes any sentient person question the administration's performance in getting us into such a fix.
Our defense forces are being precipitously and unwisely hollowed out. Our capabilities in intelligence and diplomacy are inadequate. Our policies in several regions of the world are conducive not to American strength and peace, but to weakness and instability.
Take Syria. Patrick Clawson, director of research for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said it is "a mess and it's going to get worse." It's awful already, and if Assad the dictator falls, "it will get even worse than it is. And it is unlikely that trouble in Syria will stay in Syria. It's going to be hard to stop this process from escalating."

Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/11/20/a-world-full-of-troubles

No comments: