Liking the alternative.............................

      Mr Obama stands accused, at home and abroad, of having no strategy to deal with the mess.  Jeb Bush, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, accuses the president of alienating America's friends and failing to inspire fear in its enemies.  Critics say Mr Obama is so keen on his "pivot" to a security policy focused on East Asia that he neglects the Middle East - or he is simply to gutless to act.
      The alternative is to see Mr Obama's position on the sidelines as a deliberate choice.  For a president elected to extricate America from its wars in the region it makes sense to commit American forces only in circumstances of great need and on a limited scale.  In general he will intervene only when convinced that to do so will not make things worse - which is to say, in the Middle East, rarely.

-As excerpted from this The Economist essay, A dangerous modesty