ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

[Lemur]

Go back to the Monroe Doctrine and spend a couple of decades building real relationships with the rest of the New World.

The Old World will get along just fine without our boorish efforts.

A decent take from today:

I’d say eight years of blood and treasure and failure in Iraq is enough. Unless, like Wieseltier, you see the entire planet as a patient and America as the only nurse. [...]

So let me put this as kindly as I can. We lost 5,000 young Americans trying to keep this centrifugal country in one piece. After eight years, and huge expenses in training and equipping the Iraqi army, we bear no blame and never have for the pathological sectarianism of so many Arab countries, culturally or politically. And it’s time to have enough self-respect to say so. The sanest, wisest way to wriggle out of this trap is precisely to do nothing – again and again – until the pathology of dependence is finished.