The Thin Red Line World

Meticulous account of Obama’s dilemma, to intervene or not, in Syria. The moral arguments are on one side, the political ones on the other. “He is worried that arming the rebels will have unintended consequences: a genocide against the Alawites; weapons falling into the hands of Islamist extremists, as happened when the U.S. armed Afghan jihadis in the nineteen-eighties; or a rapid political collapse that demolishes the state’s institutions” (8,589 words)