Kerry Puts Middle East First
Geoffrey Aronson writes that, in the absence of a strategy for dealing with the Middle East, seeking advice from leaders in the region can be compared to listening to the inmates in an insane asylum, where useful advice is in short supply.
Events in the Middle East, so far from the typical American experience, can exert a direct and often malicious influence on American life. In the last two decades, hundreds of thousands of Americans have served in harm’s way throughout the Middle East as soldiers in the war on terror.
President Barack Obama has noted the “vital national-security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts, because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”
