An opinion piece in Forbes by Doug Bandow claims that the biggest threat to Middle East stability is actually the intrusive involvement of the US military:

The situation is serious, but Washington policy is almost beyond parody. Announced Secretary of State John Kerry, the U.S. was “not going to stand by while the region is destabilized or while people engage in overt warfare across lines, international boundaries and other countries.”

This from a government which routinely bombs, invades, and occupies other nations for any number of perceived infractions. Washington overthrew a democratic Iranian government, intervened in a Lebanese civil war, invaded Iraq, ejected Libya’s government, worked to oust Syria’s secular regime, supported Saudi Arabia as it helped Bahrain suppress democracy protestors, and now is aiding Riyadh as the latter bombs indigenous rebels in Yemen.

You can’t really argue with that. For years, both conservatives and liberals have argued, with very few exceptions, that an American military presence in the Middle East is necessary to keep the region from falling into chaos. After decades of intervention, we have not seen an improvement in Middle East stability. In fact, the situation has obviously worsened.

And in the face of this reality, the American response is what? More intervention. People say, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place, but if we left now, things would get much, much worse.” So … we should double down on our failure. This is like a compulsive gambler who won’t stop because of what he’s already lost: “The only chance I have to get back what I’ve lost is to keep betting big—ever bigger with each new loss.” And betting bigger costs more money, so our compulsive gambler must borrow ever more money. And all the while, the situation becomes worse.

Yeah, that about sums it up. Everyone called Ron Paul an isolationist. Even his own son pulled away from a non-interventionist model for foreign policy. It seems to me we might want to review what he had to say, and perhaps stage an intervention for our intervention-addicted federal government.