Re: Should the US Raise Security Threat to the Nation at its Highest Level for Sept 2
That's what I said.
Hows Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, looking?
How were South and Central America looking in the 90s and 00s? How does Angola look, with UNITA out of the picture? How does Iraq now stack up to years of sectarian violence, when the US was there?
Bahrain has actually calmed down, though a lack of peaceful protest might not actually be a great thing. Yemen is dealing with the remnants of AQ, but are also undergoing a peaceful transition to a modified government -- undeterred by some fringe terrorist activity.
We even see Iran, of all nations, making tentative moves to reconciling with the US, and possibly even working in some capacity with the US in reining in Islamic State. If I told you in 2012 that the US and Iran would have a common enemy, you'd have called me a lunatic. (And with good reason.) And yet, here we are.
Now Libya, Mali, Ivory Coast, Somalia, and the rest of Central Africa looking?
Unfortunately, parts of Africa (especially Central Africa) have been mired in civil conflicts for years, of varying intensities. Even so, the number of conflicts has dropped precipitously since the early 1990s, when the USSR ceased to be a major player in foreign affairs. M23 has given up, LRA is running scared in the forests. Insurgencies like those groups tend to burn themselves out in time, in part because they rarely work, and in many cases because their repeated failures push them to commit atrocities that alienate their intended constituency.
In addition, we've seen a big shift after WWII from interstate conflicts to civil ones, and many of those are basically small insurgencies that eventually burn out. The end result is that the number of people getting killed in wars has been falling.
Now hows things working out with the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and China?
Erm... Japan and China are on fire? Are they shooting each other? Are they bombing each other's cities? Is Japan likely to invade Manchuria again?
Which says nothing about Russia and the Ukraine or any there getting involved. Nor Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Again: The Russia-Ukraine conflict is far less devastating than the Russian invasions of Chechnya; Pakistan has had issues for years, so no change there, except for a
decline in violence in Kashmir and Jammu; Afghanistan has also been wracked with violence for decades, in no small part due to the meddling of outsiders.
Moreover just because Egypt and Pakistan have had issues for years. Doesn't mean they don't play into all the other conflicts arising or that have arisen.
Egypt's conflict is strictly local, and has not flared up into widespread violence. In fact, and as you seem to have missed, Egypt has been instrumental in the recent Israeli-Palestinian cease-fires. Locking up Muslim Brotherhood leaders is definitely not a good thing, but it's actually not substantially different than what was happening in Mubarak's regime. Neither Egypt nor Pakistan's political issues seem to destabilize their neighbors.
Which this doesn't even Count the Palestinians and Israel.
I did mention that conflict. It's been dragging on for decades, and a brief flare-up is really not new. In fact, this round of violence was far shorter than, say, the 1st and 2nd Intifadas.
Also AQ is not beaten down. Their numbers have increased and so have their attacks.
Osama Bin Laden is dead. Several major leaders are dead or jailed. Organizations like Islamic State have no fear of splitting from or criticizing AQ. They're hardly a major world threat at this time.
Which this doesn't count Ansar al Sharia which has spread from Yemen to Libya. Nor does it count Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Surrounding region.
Boko Haram is no worse than M23, or LRA, or a whole series of insurgencies that have been active in Africa since the 1960s.
So again... The world is certainly far from perfect, but it's also not even remotely the case that things are Worse Than They've Ever Been. Compared to just 30 years ago, there has been marked reduction in the number and severity of conflicts. The only way you can think the world is
en fuego, and so much worse than some nebulous time in the past, is to not actually know very much about the long-term and short-term history of conflicts, wars, insurgencies and conflict.
