Truly, Pelosi has a dizzying intellect:
She argued that troops on the ground would be counterproductive, because they would only feed the violence, and she paraphrased a quote from Hannah Arendt to make her point: “People think that one more act of violence is going to stop violence, but instead it’s like a flywheel that just keeps producing more violence.”
“The worse it gets there, the less reason I think we should send in troops,” she said, and then paused. “Just an endless flywheel.”
An endless flywheel. This is what we get from the woman who was once Speaker of the House and in line for the presidency.
Let's just blow by the possibility that opposition to President Obama can only be based on racism. That was always a lazy argument by those who spread it for nearly 6 years now. I'll assume that Nancy Pelosi isn't motivated by racism.
Let's also leave aside the obvious evidence of recent history that American troops did greatly reduce the violence and give the Iraqis a real chance at democracy (one they still have despite errors on our part and their part). And ignore that our almost complete absence from Iraq allowed the violence to restart to terrifying levels. And ignore that our refusal to intervene in Syria has allowed the violence to escalate beyond anything that Iraq experienced while we fought in Iraq.
Let's just contemplate this thinking's effect on the precious concept of R2P--Responsibility to Protect.
Recall that our failure to stop the Rwanda genocide during the Clinton administration led to the idea that we have an obligation to use our military power to help the helpless. Asking our troops to die for our national interests might be wrong, but helping people whose fate is not a direct threat to us one way or another is a pure application of our power.
Our Libya War was justified by many as an application of R2P.
So why isn't intervening to stop a Rwanda or a Khadaffi massacre just "an endless flywheel?" Shouldn't we have just let the Yazidi die in northern Iraq? Should President Clinton have just let the Bosnian Moslems get slaughtered? Was our effort in Kosovo just another turn of the flywheel?
There is no good war and no aggression should be opposed because it is all just some flywheel that good people with guns can't affect? Really?
If that bit of Representative Pelosi nonsense-based foreign policy isn't obviously stupid, I'm not sure what I could say.
Fine. If "flywheel" quotes are enough to sway you, let me then respond to Pelosi's philosophy with another quote:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Good men. Stupid women. Whatever. Same result.
Let me at least finish with some serious policy advice on this subject. I'm not arguing that one more act of violence is going to stop violence. No, that is just about a perfect definition of applying ineffective force to a problem--something I've long argued is folly.
Violence inflicted by evil people is stopped by good people with guns applying decisive violence against the evil-doers.
Endless idiocy is no answer to endless jihadi violence.
UPDATE: Obviously, I don't think Rep. Pelosi is a racist and while I have no clue about her intelligence (but those would be the working assumptions if a conservative had opposed the president on equally idiotic grounds), I assume it is somewhere north of "dumb."
But my goodness, what a dumb thing for her to say and what a dumb way to guide our foreign policy.
