Existential Threats To Common Sense
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The military lesson is straightforward: if two of your enemies are duking it out, let them. Does that lesson have any relevance today? The Sunni and Shi’a sects have been duking it out across the Middle East for centuries. Neither one likes the US; extremists from both have threatened to annihilate us. Why then, should the US intervene on either side when they make war against each other? War is always terrible and innocents are killed, wounded, and displaced, but isn’t it better that Sunnis and Shi’a kill each other rather than Americans? You don’t see China or Russia taking sides.
The military lesson is straightforward: if two of your enemies are duking it out, let them. Does that lesson have any relevance today? The Sunni and Shi’a sects have been duking it out across the Middle East for centuries. Neither one likes the US; extremists from both have threatened to annihilate us. Why then, should the US intervene on either side when they make war against each other? War is always terrible and innocents are killed, wounded, and displaced, but isn’t it better that Sunnis and Shi’a kill each other rather than Americans? You don’t see China or Russia taking sides.
