Just read it

I thought about not even trying to excerpt any portion of Victor Davis Hanson's latest NRO piece, so important is the piece in its entirety.

But I've decided to excerpt the premise and the concluding paragraph. Don't worry; that doesn't spoil anything.  His analysis of how his first-paragraph bullet points have played themselves out is must-read stuff.  So read it.

Here's the beginning:

Obama’s unfortunate Middle East legacy was predicated on six flawed assumptions:

(1) a special relationship with Turkey;

(2) distancing the U.S. from Israel;

(3) empathy for Islamist governments as exemplified by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt;

(4) a sort of non-aggression agreement with Iran;

(5) expecting his own multicultural fides to resonate in the region;

(6) pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here's the conclusion:

The present chaos of the Middle East was caused by our withdrawal from Iraq and a widespread sense that the U.S. had forfeited its old responsibilities and interests, and was either on the side of the Arab Spring Islamists or indifferent to those who opposed them. Tragically, while order may soon return, it is likely to be as a sort of Cold War standoff between a pro-Russian, pro-Chinese — and very nuclear – Iranian bloc, and a Sunni Mesopotamian wasteland masquerading as a caliphate, run by beheaders and fueled by petrodollars, with assistance from Turkey and freelancing Wahhabi royals from the Gulf.

And an irrelevant post-America, sitting a sea and an ocean away, waiting for a catastrophic attack, or three.