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The fantasy of Middle Eastern moderates

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The fantasy of Middle Eastern moderates Empty The fantasy of Middle Eastern moderates

Post by confuzzled dude Mon Aug 18, 2014 5:23 pm

For decades, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has been to support “moderates.” The problem is that there are actually very few of them. The Arab world is going through a bitter, sectarian struggle that is “carrying the Islamic world back to the Dark Ages,”said Turkish President Abdullah Gul. In these circumstances, moderates either become extremists or they lose out in the brutal power struggles of the day. Look at Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and the Palestinian territories.

In an excellent essay for The Post, George Washington University professorMarc Lynch cites careful historical studies that demonstrate that in a chaotic, violent civil war such as Syria’s — with many outside players funding their favorite groups — U.S. intervention would have had little effect other than to extend and exacerbate the conflict. “Had the plan to arm Syria’s rebels been adopted back in 2012,” Lynch writes, “the most likely scenario is that the war would still be raging and look much as it does today, except that the United States would be far more intimately and deeply involved.”

Asserting that the moderates in Syria could in is not tough foreign policy talk, it is a naive fantasy with dangerous consequences.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-the-fantasy-of-middle-eastern-moderates/2014/08/14/1e8807a8-23e6-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html

Inconclusive mumbo-jumbo from usually sensible Fareed. Looks like he lost his thought process in his haste to criticize Hillary Clinton.

confuzzled dude

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