"modest risk" is lobbing missiles into a country to punish a dictator whom you and many of your closest progressives were only recently enabling and licking the toes of, but who has fallen out of favor with you because he's embarrassed you in some way and so now you assume the even more "modest risk" of arming the rebels opposing the dictator with the tasty toes despite the fact that they are increasingly proven to be radical islamists/jihadists...
the enemy of my friend turned enemy is my friend/enemy
it's quite a pickle
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...es-report.html