U.S. Doesn't Need to Police Mideast

After 11 years (and counting) in Afghanistan, with nearly 2,000 military fatalities and almost half a trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money spent, we must bear reports of our officers being gunned down by Afghan soldiers and police and of pallet-loads of hundred-dollar bills being whisked away through the Kabul airport. Having spent so much money and lost so many troops in both countries, we are left to wonder whether these sacrifices, far from winning friends and allies, have simply nurtured a new generation of foes in the Middle East. “Middle East” is actually a misnomer for the belt of countries across North Africa and Southern Asia that are the homelands of Islamic terrorism and present the geopolitical threat that instigated our nation-building enterprises in Iraq and Afghanistan. This “Islamic Belt” includes Iran in the center, the Arab countries to the west, and the “stans” (Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.) to the east. For the past three decades, the Islamic Belt has been the world’s most dangerous neighborhood, home to political upheaval, internecine violence, and suicide bombers.