The Longer View of "Interventions"

OK, this is worth posting as a counter to the (and my) anti-interventionists.

...When the opportunity arose to change things in Islam, our leaders were not ready. The stakes are high, Henninger warns: The next half century will be concerned primarily with Islam and China. America seems to be withdrawing into itself. Europeans are too few and too old. At the moment, the pivotal point is the Islamic world. To some degree, it has already invaded the West in mind and territory.

To the degree that the United States renounces any active effort to reorient oppressive governments, the people of the world will gradually adjust to Chinese dominance. The United States seems to be a democracy that just talks. Islam has no real military power: Its terrorism won't work against the Chinese.

"If U.S. timidity is seen as U.S. acquiescence to a system of 'reformed' Middle East autocracies, the debate between the American and the Chinese models is over," Henninger writes.

Schall, a great thinker, quotes Henninger (another one) to the effect that the real reason for the current unrest in the Middle East is, precisely, the US' re-shaping of Iraq. AND that in the next 20-30 years, it will be PRChina v. Islam--or PRChina v. the US, because Europe will be meaningless by then and Muslim terrorism is absolutely useless against the PRC--which will use overwhelming military force against it.

Some good questions here.