Acording to The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, not everything that happens in the Middle East is about us. At some point the region has to grow up.

We no longer have the desire nor the means to do the heavy lifting, not to mention that our past military excursions there have shown mixed results, at best. The possibility that the United States might bomb Syria if Assad didn’t give up chemical weapons was hugely unpopular in this country. A couple of decades or so ago, pictures of children dying of starvation in Somalia led us to intervene militarily in that country—disastrously. Today, even images of grotesque deaths from chemical warfare do not move us to consider similar actions.

Friedman’s column suggests that a lack of pluralism plagues the Middle East. The region will be forever convulsed, he says, unless it embraces diversity. The Iraqi Shiites have to allow Iraqi Sunnis to be part of the power structure, as well as other minorities.

When the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt overplayed its hand by trying to turn a fairly secular nation into an Islamic republic, people revolted. Now the military may be doing the same thing in reverse by persecuting the Islamists.

Don’t even begin with the Syrians: each group appears to lust after the annihilation of the others.

Perhaps when enough blood has been shed, the principals will no longer confuse governance with religion. They may reach that stage sooner if we stay engaged and provide opportunity to change from “war war” to “jaw jaw.” Winston Churchill coined this phrase during the time of another seemingly endless confrontation called the Cold War.