There’s a lot of nasty stuff going down in Syria. Toddlers are being killed in front of their parents. This is prompting liberal internationalists like Shadi Hamid to demand that the USA intervene in Syria. This is the same Shadi Hamid, liberal internationalist, who admits that democracy in the Muslim world is going to manifest an illiberal Islamist cast. Tough Copts, that’s how democracy rolls he explains us (no doubt he understands that American Muslims should be happy that we let them practice their religion, and shouldn’t make a big political fuss about their rights and dignity for the purposes of social comity).
Thank god most of the American public is totally exhausted from foreign wars. But here’s what’s been getting on my nerves: Muslims constantly complain that the USA is too involved in the Muslim world. They’re right about this in my opinion. But Muslims talk about it as if there is a “Muslim world.” Many Western Muslims follow the interpretation of their religion where they can’t take arms up against co-religionists. Muslim nations have their own international organization. And, this organization has been pushing its own distinctive form of Islamic human rights.
Here’s a suggestion for Muslims and Muslim nations who are used to thinking about a Muslim world and Muslim civilization: why don’t you take care of your own near abroad problems yourself for once, instead of appealing to the greatest kuffar power of them all? The reality is American intervention brings no great joys to the world, nor does it redound to our reputation. Combined with the Muslim world’s ostentatious assertion of cultural distinctiveness, it makes me wonder who really has the “responsibility to protect.” This is really a philosophy where America minds its own business when Muslims want it to mind its own business, but America better be the beacon of universal rights when Muslims wish to avail themselves of universal human rights, no?
Memo to the world: America is exhausted. We have to take our own trash out before we can clean up your disaster of a front-lawn. If Islam is the solution fucking prove it for once.
Addendum: Iraq’s Shia dominated government, underwritten by the American tax-payer, has tacitly been supporting the Assad regime.
