Both Kunduz and Russia\u2019s bombing are symptoms of the same phenomenon: the vacuum created by Barack Obama\u2019s attempt to stand back from the wars of the Muslim world. America\u2019s president told the UN General Assembly this week that his country had learned it \u201ccannot by itself impose stability on a foreign land\u201d\u009d; others, Iran and Russia included, should help in Syria. Mr Obama is not entirely wrong. But his proposition hides many dangers: that America throws up its hands; that regional powers, sensing American disengagement, will be sucked into a free-for-all; and that Russia\u2019s intervention will make a bloody war bloodier still. Unless Mr Obama changes course, expect more deaths, refugees and extremism.<\/p>\n
Having seen the mess that George W. Bush made of his \u201cwar on terror\u201d\u009d, especially in Iraq, Mr Obama is understandably wary. American intervention can indeed make a bad situation worse, as odious leaders are replaced by chaos and endless war saps America\u2019s strength and standing. But America\u2019s absence can make things even more grim. At some point, extremism will fester and force the superpower to intervene anyway.<\/p>\n
That is the story in the Middle East. In Iraq Mr Obama withdrew troops in 2011. In Syria he did not act to stop Mr Assad from wholesale killing, even after he used poison gas. But when IS jihadists emerged from the chaos, declared a caliphate in swathes of Iraq and Syria, and began to cut off the heads of their Western prisoners, Mr Obama felt obliged to step back in\u201d\u201ddesultorily.<\/p>\n