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Gen. Martin Dempsey took a cautious approach to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Syria. He did not approve of the way Gen. McChrystal expanded U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and the hasty manner in which the Iraqi army was trained under his predecessors leading to some commanders being appointed who later became members of sectarian death squads. Under his command the U.S. limited its role in Afghanistan and Iraq and handed more responsibility to local forces. Gen. Dunford who succeeded Dempsey as chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff for the U.S. follows the cautious approach set by Dempsey. Dempsey's approach extends to what he believes is an Heisenberg effect in physics where when you you observe or touch something it changes the way it functions and operates. For critics such as Senator McCain, who served in Vietnam as a pilot, if Dempsey did not want to intervene in some country, he could invent the reasons not to get involved. President Obama exceeded the caution exercized by Dempsey, leading to a situation where the U.S. after hasty action under a Republican president seemed to lurch in the opposite direction under his Democratic successor by not taking action where U.S. presence was needed, followed by a corrective course to make up for this....

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Critics of the Obama administration's so-called "light footprint strategy" for the Middle East say it is more about keeping distance from problems in that region. This is a reaction to the extensive involvement of the U.S. in two wars in that region and intuitively makes sense, as well as being in line with American public opinion to focus on problems at home. The shift or pivot to Asia of president Obama also comes in that context. The problem with this approach is that this ignores the fact that most of the momentum and effort for the freedom struggles throughout the Middle East from Tunisia first, then Libya, Egypt, and now Syria, comes from within. The lead role is now being taken by France and Britain, with German public opinion also lined up in support. The U.S. in forfeiting its role as a facilitator with strategies such as "no-fly-zones" is losing the opportunity to gain the goodwill in the Middle East with cost that is negligible in comparison to the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, and comes after the huge U.S. effort to remove one dictator in Iraq. A minor followup effort is all that is required from an administration that pushed for the "surge" in Afghanistan. When history is written the investment of the Obama administration in Afghanistan may show little results, if what is considered by the media and experts as an unpopular and undemocratic government of Karzai falls in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. There is little doubt in public opinion in the U.S. and worldwide that the movement for freedom and democracy in the Middle East and democratically elected governments will become a lasting facet of the new Middle East. It also provides huge opportunties for trade and investment as is shown by the gains made by Turkey in just 2 years. This is why the Obama adminstration policies in the Middle East show a lack of grasp of the facts showing the Middle East as opportunity more than threat for the next decade, especially in its overreaction to the Bush era policies. This happens as there is a demographic explosion of young people in the Middle East. An administration that was keen to sense the demographic changes in North America, has failed to grasp this fact and why the struggle in the Middle East flashes daily on television screens young people carrying on the struggle. A pivot to Asia means a pivot to the Far East more than Asia because India is part of the South Asian-Middle Eastern region, which presents another paradox because as China is slowing the entire South Asian-Middle Eastern region of Asia is where future growth is expected to accelerate in the next decade. ...

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Scott Shane of the NYT provides this exceptional account of how the ideology of Wahhabism on which the Saudi monarchy is based has influenced the evolution of Islam, but not in the way other religions have evolved into more moderate and open religions. Christianity evolved from the period of religious conflict, and evolved to the point that the basis of progress was based on education and technology in most of northern and southern Europe. Where the evolution did not take place because of more intolerant behaviours such as in Spain with the Spanish Inquisition and ideas from the medieval period, this development based on education and technology lagged severely behind.  Wahhabism developed as a result of a sect started by a religious cleric Wahhab in a poor desert region around Mecca and Medina, now the Saudi Kingdom, who sought the help of a tribal chief Ibn Saud. They used the religious-political alliance to gain tribal dominance in the region. Wahhabism sought to change Islam by banning worship and religious rites at tombs common in that period. It also as Brookings scholar William McCants cited here says, drew "sharp lines" and intolerance between believers and non-believers- all non-believers including other sects of Islam, Shiites, Christians. The movement spread throughout the region, but was crushed by the Ottoman Empire based in Istanbul, Turkey, by the 1850's, only to be revived in the 1920's following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. A Norwegian expert Heggenhammer cited here says clearly Islam did not benefit from the evolution that other religions had, and Wahhabism has slowed this evolution into and open, tolerant religion because of its "sharp lines" and intolerance of other faiths and ideas with the Wahhabism from a medieval perod. In India the British rule brought enlightenment thinkers (John Stuart Mill for example was a clerk for the British East India company). But no such change happened under Ottoman rule to inspire leaders like Gandhi and Nehru to setup a new constitution that made changes from medieval Hindu beliefs such as caste and religious practices based on superstition.  The development of an oil rich state in Saudi Arabia with the discovery of oil, and the dependence from 1950-2010 of the global economy, has led say experts to the export of the Wahhabist kind of Islam to other countries in Middle East and South Asia. This they say made the evolution to democracy and peaceful coexistence difficult or impossible in the region. ...

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The UN Refugee Agency says 7.6 million Syrians were displaced and refugees in their own country, 3.6 million Syrians are in other countries as refugees. Worldwide it says about 60 million are refugees. About half of the refugees are children. Of this about 14 million people were displaced in 2014, with 11 million of this displaced in their own country. Fighting in Iraq, Syria and Libya, appear to be the main cause of displacement in 2014. Never before in the agency's 50 year history are there so many displaced people in their own countries.

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One hundred years after the First World War Germans look at memorials and museums in Kiel about the naval buildup in Germany in 1910-1914 in a different light. Germany's effort to match Britain's naval supremacy and the increasing tensions and nationalist rhetoric led to the war- worse, the defeat created conditions for a larger conflict in 1939-1945. To put this period behind it Germany has emphasized the dangers of war and getting people to realize what war is. Kiel itself was 80% destroyed at the end of the Second World War.

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Karen Eliott House was a former publisher of the WSJ. Now with WSJ in Murdoch's News Corporation's hands, she is a fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center. Here she points to the diverging situation between the USA and Saudi Arabia. She thinks the US cannot protect the Saudi monarchy (which dates back to Abdul Aziz and his support from President Roosevelt first by recognition of the new state of Saudi Arabia in 1932 and support during the war), from its domestic challenges. One of these domestic challenges is changing demographics as the young or people below 15 years age make up 40% of the population, rising unemployment, and pressures for modernization which the monarchy has done little to respond to, and the lack of democratic forms which would give people a chance to vent their feelings. For the U.S. the frustration is that the Saudis have done little or can do little for the USA in the way of moderating oil prices as they move still higher, because of speculative trends, decline of production in its own maturing oil fields, and needs to finance huge new plants and cities to provide employment to a growing population. In fact Libyan oil officials has been more of a moderating influence recently than the Saudi oil officials. So it appears that what Karen is saying is that the Saudis are pursuing their own interests in their region and the wider region that includes South Asia and Northern Africa, and the US is pursuing its own interests, which at this time are not as clearly defined, except securing oil supplies and protecting Israel. The 2 countries USA and Saudi Arabia are going their diverging and different ways in a way that is irreversible....

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A leader of the Syrian moderate democratic opposition to the Assad regime calls for help from the Obama administration for the moderates and Free Syrian Army. The request for Manpads to counteract Assad's air attacks and the deteriorating situation around the city of Aleppo and in Northern Syrian areas controlled by the Free Syrian Army. The collaboration between the Hezbollah, Assad's forces, and the ISIS as each attempt to increase the areas under their control pushing out the Free Syrian Army and moderate forces fighting the Assad regime. Hillary Clinton comes out against the Obama administration's policies in August 2014, saying "don't do stupid stuff" basis of Obama policies is not the basis for a sound foreign policy. Obama comes out with a $500 million aid plan for the Free Syrian Army but the approach is vacillating and slow, leading to a rapidly deteriorating situation, and a complete breakdown of what was a period of hope called the Arab Spring.

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The Alawite sect in Syria, a sect of Islam different from Sunnis and Shiites, consitutes only 12.5% of the 22.5 million population of Syria. Alawites live mostly in the mountainous coastal region near the Mediterranean. Under the French the Alawites who are open to foreign influences and western education, were used as a buffer against the majority Sunni population, with many Alawites joining the government and army. One of the Alawite military officers, Hafez Assad, took over Syria in 1971.

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Senator McCain and Senators Lieberman and Graham say the U.S. is squandering goodwill of people in the Middle East by not taking action to to help the democracy movement in Syria in its struggle with the Assad regime. They say this is a unfair fight as the rebels are lightly armed and face the artillery, helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft of a brutal regime. The lack of active U.S. and European support only prolongs the struggle and cost in human lives.