Via the great Caroline Glick, who notes "Roger Cohen of all people, in the New York Times of all places."
FOR REAL.
Sort of shocked!
(However, this sentence is probably why they let him publish it: "Europe’s Muslims felt the ugly backlash from the depravity of the decapitators, who were adept at Facebooking their message.")
"The Great Unraveling".
"It was a time of weakness. The most powerful nation on earth was tired
of far-flung wars, its will and treasury depleted by absence of victory.
An ungrateful world could damn well police itself. The nation had
bridges to build and education systems to fix. Civil wars between Arabs
could fester. Enemies might even kill other enemies, a low-cost gain.
Middle Eastern borders could fade; they were artificial colonial lines
on a map. Shiite could battle Sunni, and Sunni Shiite, there was no
stopping them. Like Europe’s decades-long religious wars, these wars had
to run their course."
"The nation’s leader mockingly derided his own “wan, diffident, professorial”
approach to the world, implying he was none of these things, even if he
gave that appearance. He set objectives for which he had no plan. He
made commitments he did not keep. In the way of the world these things
were noticed. Enemies probed. Allies were neglected, until they were
needed to face the decapitators who talked of a Caliphate and called
themselves a state."
"Words like “strength” and “resolve” returned to the
leader’s vocabulary. But the world was already adrift, unmoored by the
retreat of its ordering power. The rule book had been ripped up."
Read the whole thing.
