American Internvention: A Net Gain
Uriah Kriegel, over at Tech Central Station, has an essay running down how American intervention has been a net gain for the world.
- Inconsequential al Qaeda attacks (see London, Bali)
- Pressure on Syria
- Post-Arafat Palestinian Authority
- Election in Egypt and Saudi Arabia
- Ellen Johnson-Sirlea in Liberia
With all these positive developments, you'd think the merits of American interventionism in the post-9/11 era would be evident in our collective awareness. Yet the image we seem to be working with is one of our toiling in vain. We follow events day by day, often dispirited by local eruptions of violence in the Sunni triangle. Yet these eruptions, though deplorable in themselves, have had little effect on the actual progress of the Greater Middle East Initiative, the American project of refashioning the Mideast. When we look at the big picture, we can see that the project is in very good shape indeed. In particular, with the recent election of Johnson-Sirleaf, the new low Zarqawi finds himself dipping in, the uneventful anniversary of Arafat's death, and the mounting discomfort in Damascus, these have been good days for American interventionism.
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