"God protects fools, drunkards, and the United States": Here's Hoping.
In his new USA Today column, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit produces a tidy and edited list of the current crises in the Middle East:
In reverse order: ISIL is winning in Iraq, and we are losing. Airstrikes — quite modest ones compared to those unleashed against Saddam Hussein's armies over a decade ago — aren't doing the job, and the Defense Department doesn't seem to be able to round up enough (any?) of those much-touted "moderate" Syrian rebels to form a serious opposition force. The Kurds are stressed, and we're not getting them enough supplies. Meanwhile, the Kurds' long-term enemies, the Turks — Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States — are actually bombing the Kurds rather than ISIL.
Then there's Ebola, of course:
We don't seem to be doing very well at treating the handful of cases of Ebola we already have. Dallas patient Thomas Duncan has infected at least two nurses who treated him, and about 1,000 people are being monitored. The Dallas hospital that treated Duncan is hemorrhaging patients and money as no one else wants to stay there. And this is just the consequence of one imported case of Ebola….
As quite a few people have remarked, the most troubling thing about the Ebola crisis isn't even the Ebola, but rather the widespread incompetence it has revealed among people who are supposed to take threats to the nation seriously. And that incompetence, alas, isn't limited to Ebola.
