By Jonathan Power

American Middle East interventionists used to chide President Barack Obama for not doing more. Why was the US running away from Yemen, why didn’t the US go into Syria and depose President Bashar al-Assad, why did Obama pull troops out of Iraq prematurely, why didn’t he put boots on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS)? Why, in short, didn’t the US didn’t do more to use its military might to subdue the stormy parts of the Middle East?

The first answer must be that he didn’t have to be George W. Bush’s surrogate. It was Bush who triggered much of the upheavals with his invasion of Iraq (—although ex-President Jimmy Carter bears the responsibility for arming the Taliban and thus the establishment of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.) Why did Obama want to continue to try and mop up after Bush’s dirty work?

That said Obama made his own serious mistake of intervening to depose Muammar al-Qaddafi in Arab Libya. Although the UK and France led from the front the US was backing them up in every way- with intelligence and close-in naval support. While this failure is not in itself responsible for the Middle East debacles it helped spread Al Qaeda and now the Islamic State through northwest Africa.

Alan Kuperman wrote in the current affairs magazine, Foreign Affairs, “As bad as Libya’s human rights situation was under Qaddafi, it has gotten worse since NATO ousted him. Immediately........

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