Osler's Razor

I suspect that President Obama thought his presidency would be about domestic issues-- health care, infrastructure, and the economy-- when he took office in 2009, and again when he was re-elected.  The world was settling, with the Cold War over and the United States backing out of conflicts in the Middle East.

It didn't work out that way.  Now there are a host of conflicts on the world stage, driven by economics, war, and disease.  A question remains open:  What is the United States' responsibility to resolve problems abroad?

There is disagreement on this-- and I am on the side of disengagement with international complexities, especially military ones.  After all, this will be our third war in Iraq in the last 25 years, and none of them seem to accomplish much.

President Obama, meanwhile, seems to be moving in the other direction.  Ron Fournier wrote an interesting and compelling piece in the National Journal, which compares Obama to President Woodrow Wilson:

One hundred years ago, a pacifist president reluctantly led the United States into World War I. Woodrow Wilson eventually won "the war to end all wars," but failed to achieve his greatest desire: a new world order. That would wait until after World War II. Faint echoes of Wilson sounded throughout President Obama's address to the United Nations on Wednesday.

There stood a man who rose to power by opposing George W. Bush's "dumb war" in Iraq, who slowly and reluctantly recognized the gathering dangers of an Islamic State, now urging the league of nations to build a timeless peace—even as he vowed to shed blood for it.

Is the President right to make this move into international disputes?  Some say no.  What do you think?