There is a climate of skepticism about engagement in failed or failing countries, a fear of getting entrapped in longer term, deeper forms of engagement....Increasingly we need to present intervention as time limited and with strictly defined ambitions. We are at a point in the public opinion cycle in the UK where there is a war weariness after ten years of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is definitely a fear, quite irrational in some cases, that any engagement anywhere will somehow lead to an uncontrollable commitment to large numbers of troops, a large amount of resources and a long term intervention.
We are finding not always as persuasive as we would like it to be...It is very clear to those of us looking in horror at this emerging situation in Syria that we are creating a new hotbed of international terrorism, a new base from which international terrorism will operate that will probably rival any of those we have seen in the last decade or so.
We are allowing this to happen and yet public opinion in Western countries is not yet persuaded that military intervention will be justified or in their own self interest.
It will be a long time before anyone forgets the mistakes of Iraq. Dismantling a security infrastructure when there is nothing to put in its place is clearly a mistake and short term compromises are inevitable if we are going to maintain something of a secure environment.
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