Often they also open a window which allows former sinners to make a come back.
It is too early to have a definitive opinion about the handling of the Iraq crisis by the Obama administration.
It is the moment to be intellectually, morally revolted by the comments of the Neo Cons, whose opinions should have remained mothballed for ever.
I fail to understand the factual presentation by the president. We are all too familiar by the way this highly intelligent man often gets lost in his "thinking aloud". The saying goes that all ills stem from the Iraqi Prime Minister. I would argue that the situation is less about Iraq than about the United States, the West, and the so called Sunni allies. ISIS should not be allowed a safe trans border heaven in Syria and Iraq. This cancer must be fought fast before it metastasizes. This has to be seen independently of what happens in the political Baghdad sewer. What comes after is for the Iraqis to decide. The longer one waits to intervene the more uphill the battle will become. It has been said that the English never draw a line without blurring it. The Americans should not repeat the axiom and kill the beast instead, not allowing for an increase of Iranian or "good"(?) Sunni intervention. Rightly so, many voices support the idea that a US intervention should be lethal but calibrated, in Iraq and in what is not longer Syria, but part of a regional, sectarian Caliphate.
As if the situation were not bad enough the ones who had it all wrong are making a come back. Dick Cheney and daughter), the vain "Mountbatten alike Vice Roy" of the occupational US authority, Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz (in attack mode, before the World Bank, and during ) and Co. are in demand in the predictable media, with the usual blond " Valkiries" in awe ( sounds familiar). Their original invasion sin is forgiven by the "usual suspects", their bungling the occupation erased, and their amnesic voices reduced ,to be heard in a remake of "The night of the living dead" by the FOX machine ( I rather enjoy Bill O' Reilly though ).
In Winston Churchill's words they accuse Obama for being "a sheep in sheep's clothing".
What is at stake is more serious (a given) and urgent (question mark). The region is of economical and geo political importance and what has been perceived as Washington"s tepid interest has created a void. The region is not an appealing one and pretending that the "clash of civilisations" is not happening over there is preposterous at least. I fail to see a positive outcome for the foreseeable time. Islam looks more often than not as a religion frozen in time, hostile to change other than for pragmatic self aggandizement (the Emirates). The Wahabite, Salafist and Shiite strains are equally adverse to self scrutiny or a concept of pluralism and Renaissance.
We call allies the same countries which favor Sharia law, female mutilation. the demise of Israel (be it often in Delphic terms), or diversity. For the need for oil we sacrifice the need for clarity.
The Middle East always seems to bring the worst out of actors and possible scenarios alike. We have to live with a dysfunctional theocratic hybrid at the door. This is an arduous, unpleasant "denial" exercise. Let us not further complicate it by allowing a non state to annihilate a whole post WWI construction which was arbitrary and sloppy but which served its purpose well for a century. The West cannot allow itself to become the funeral house of its ambitions. ISIS has to be stopped and hit hard now before it hits us. What happens with Iraq's sectarian Juggernaut is for the Iraqis to decide. At the end oil is a commodity in need of buyers, even the Jihadists understand that.
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