It makes sense to get rid of the tarbaby - if we can

The future is with India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil, not necessarily with the middle east.  New technologies - both 'green' and oil and gas based are in the process of radically reducing our dependence on energy from outside of North America - which aside from terror, remains the middle east's only contribution to the world.  Reduced engagement with the middle east would also save a lot of money and probably result in far fewer muslims immigrating, reducing the relative size of what is apparently a largely unassimilable and obstreperous minority.  Michael Lind is a nut on domestic policy, but these comments are spot on.

Among other things, an Asia First strategy would allow the U.S. to preserve its security while reducing the Pentagon budget in the interest of long-term solvency. Having renounced further labor-intensive wars of counterinsurgency and nation-building in the Greater Middle East, the U.S. could downsize the Army, in favor of a military based chiefly on elite special forces, naval and air forces and unmanned drones. Some of the savings could be channeled into homeland security defenses — for example, protecting infrastructure and telecommunications against the mysterious cyber attacks that have been directed at the U.S. and Europe from China. Other savings could be devoted to rebuilding America’s dual military-civilian manufacturing base, which has been ravaged by offshoring and the collaboration of U.S.-based multinationals with Chinese, Japanese and German industrial policies. Any future great-power conflict is likely to take the form of a cold war, in which the ultimate victors will be those whose domestic industrial economies are the strongest and whose banking systems are subordinate to their national interests.

The key is to figure out how to steadily, slowly reorient our policy and extricate ourselves from what has become an enormous waste of time and money in both Democrat and Republican administrations.  It won't be easy but given our straightened circumstances and world realities, it has to be done.  Hat tip to Reihan Salam