Fiddling.....................................

Walter Russell Mead pens an essay suggesting big troubles lie ahead in the Middle East.  He is totally unimpressed by the Obama administration's current path.  While WRM doesn't say it, his essay paints a picture that looks to us history majors a bit like Europe's attempt to appease Nazi Germany in the late 1930's.  Trying to avoid a little unpleasantness, they unleashed a cataclysm of unpleasantness.  Full, thoughtful essay is here.  Two excerpts here:

"Could the Obama administration in its second term be making a series of Middle East policy mistakes even more expensive and destructive than those the Bush administration made in its first? That is admittedly a high bar, but the trends are unsettling to say the least. The region is unraveling and American policy is in deep disarray."

"The administration has been zealously guarding against the Little Satan of unnecessary involvement in a regional war while ignoring or even facilitating the rise of the Great Satan of full-blown regional strategic disaster. Its poor handling of an escalating series of regional problems is increasing the chance that those problems will cascade into a major global crisis."