The next president, like it or not, will have his or her hands full with the Middle East. The starting point for getting anything right is to reject the proposition that we will always get it wrong; that it is not even worth trying. Failures in Iraq beginning in 2003, and Syria and Libya beginning in 2011 do not dictate that the United States can do nothing right in the Middle East. Those failures had specific reasons and authors, just as the brilliantly successful diplomatic-military campaign resulting in the liberation of Kuwait did in 1991. To say we are fated to fail is to change the message and the meaning of the American experience. In practical terms, if we turn our backs and leave terrorists and the mass murderers of the Middle East to their own devices, we do so at our peril. What happens in the Middle East will not stay in the Middle East.
Frederic C. Hof: The Non-Option of Disengagement from the Middle East – MENASource
