I’m not.

I understand this very well. Though I do have posting priveleges at The Valve, and use them fairly often, I enjoy commenting on other people’s posts just as much as I do making my own. And, like you, I often make fairly long comments. It’s nice to have others set up an issue and to then work within, or against, their framework.

I think the Burkean option here is, if and when you have seriously credible intelligence about a very substantial al-Qaeda presence, you hit them hard and quietly in the night, don’t especially advertise it, and otherwise let Somalia sort itself out (or not).

“If you want to follow me, you’ve got to play pinball.”

“You are all individuals!”

I do get the sense that you didn’t anticipate even a temporary success against the Islamists–and that your doom-and-gloom about an active American foreign policy was therefore overdone. Obviously, Things Can Turn Out Badly. I would say that all policy is meant to have positive effects of finite duration–NATO has anomie now, but wasn’t it worth setting up for its decades of relevance? It seems to me one ought to set against your pessimism about the long-term consequences of intervention bot the distinct negatives of allowing the Islamist government of Somalia to continue, with metastasizing effect, and the quite positive short-term gain to our interests. Will there be troubles down the road? Sure. But I rather think there were worse troubles down the road we just short-circuited. All things are contingent and imperfectly forseeable, of course. But circling back to the main point: a reality-based theory of foreign policy (to coin a phrase) ought to be falsifiable, and I do think the events of the last few weeks in Somalia have falsified any universally pessimistic attitude toward the effectiveness of the assertion of American power abroad.

Incidentally, using a minimum of American direct power and a maximum of operation through local proxies surely satisfies some of your policy preferences? Or, shall we say, if we are going to intervene at all, isn’t this a more Burkean way of proceeding?

A note on your last post: I don’t really have the frame of mind that lends itself toward commenting on a blog of my own–I think I do better reacting to other people, and lurking in comments sections. So I’m quite grateful to you for providing a good home for me to lurk in; and I trust its life cycle doesn’t end anytime soon.