Roger Cohen in the New York Times is spot-on but mark my words; most journalists, think-tankers, commentators and politicians have deliberately short memories. In time they’ll simply say: “Our complicity in Arab horrors? Oh but it’s so complicated…”:
Hearings should be held in the U.S. Congress and throughout Western legislatures on these questions: How did we back, use and encourage the brutality of Arab dictators over so many years? To what degree did that cynical encouragement of despots foster the very jihadist rage Western societies sought to curb?
…
There are many reasons I oppose a Western military intervention in Libya: the bitter experience of Iraq; the importance of these Arab liberation movements being homegrown; the ease of going in and difficulty of getting out; the accusations of Western pursuit of oil that will poison the terrain; the fact that two Western wars in Muslim countries are enough.