Incompetent rulers

Angelo Codevilla writes in part in American Greatness,

...Human beings can tolerate almost anything from rulers except demonstrations of incompetence.

Habits of obedience, the majesty of office, the lure of patronage, as well as repression, powerfully shield any ruling class. The Islamic Republic had promised its people that religious scholars would rule righteously. Instead, the mullahs delivered corruption, privation, and endless war.

...To make war—to kill and be killed—while pretending to be doing police work, nation-building, or enforcing international law, as the U.S. government did in Korea, Vietnam, and the first Persian Gulf War; and pretending to make war, as it has done since 2001 in every corner of the world without designating an enemy or having reasonable plans for victory, is to act as sorcerers’ apprentices.

Incompetence is too kind of a description. In 2001, al-Qaeda’s violent Islamism involved only some 400 men, nearly all engaged in a domestic Afghan quarrel. Today some 30,000 such fighters infest the globe.

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