About Iraq: yes, we should offer humanitarian assistance to the Yazidi refugees targeted by ISIS as heretics required to chose between conversion to islam or death. Because we can and looking away isnt an option. We tried that in Rwanda and the memory of that genocide still haunts us as well it should. However, this is now officially a religious and tribal civil war that cannot and never will be settled by outside forces. The Iraqis will have to come to terms with one another but this may take some time and involve quite a bit of fighting. The responsibility for the current mess rests with Prime Minister al-Maliki who made the fatal mistake of doubling down on his Shia majority when he should have been going out of his way to bring all parties and ethnicities together. What did he think was going to happen? The nation of Iraq was always a colonial construct in the first place and by resorting to classic wedge politics all he has accomplished is breaking it apart along the entirely predictable religious and ethnic lines. People are going to get hurt here. That is indisputably tragic as are all wars. But the US cant allow itself to get dragged back into this bottomless quagmire. There should be an international response to mitigate and minimize the bloodletting but let that come in the shape of UN peace keepers. And possibly NATO enforcing no-fly zones to protect targeted civilian populations like the Yazidi. Above all Turkey needs to get involved. Its a regional superpower and has a vested interest in maintaining order on its borders. My heart goes out to the innocent victims of this conflict but America has neither the ability nor the responsibility to police the entire world. Especially in a part of the world where the general populace is conditioned to hate our guts regardless of what we do or not. That ship has sailed. At some point the various groups of the Middle East will just have to settle down and learn how to live peacefully next to one another again. Sooner would be better.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:16:55 +0000
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