A job at Cagney’s certainly has more potential than her chances at political commentary for sic(k) willie – or of passing the bar. :)

Please, Mandeee. Stick to Inquirer level stuff. You are way over your head trying to comment on national or international issues.

It’s interventionism , not isolationism and the sooner that is reported then we can address our foreign policy in a honest manner.

It’s our interventionist foreign policy and rampant internationalism as the world’s policeman that Americans object to. What happened to the Powell Doctrine?

We all remember the manufactured Gulf of Tonkin incident, babies left to die when removed from incubators, mobile WMD labs, flying drones of death and all the other nonsense from Iraq, Saddam being involved in 9-11. All lies and fabrications and a corporate media that went along with it.

Undeclared wars with no goals or exit strategies just endless wars that benefit a few kibe Wall Street, the military industrial complex, banks and in the Middle east …Israel. Enough of US Wars without end as a bulwark of our economy.

NO ONE in his right mind is saying “let’s not defend ourselves.” Anyone who presents the either/or alternative of doing what we’re doing now or surrendering to them is presenting a false dilemma.

The question to be honestly debated is this: HOW should we respond to threats and attacks?

Going over to Iraq or Afghanistan and pretending they’re like Western Europe or Japan was after WWII is suicidal. It’s not like that over there for one thing. For another, we don’t have the money to do what we did in Western Europe in part because WE’RE STILL IN JAPAN AND GERMANY just to name two out of 170 or so countries our military is stationed in. Most of these countries have plenty of money to defend themselves and, if they don’t, SCREW ‘EM! IT’S NOT OUR JOB!

Bush was right when he stood under the “Mission Accomplished” banner. He just didn’t know when to quit and neither does Obama.

The legal way to wage war EFFECTIVELY in the Mideast (or elsewhere) is to:

1. PROPERLY DECLARE WAR AS CALLED FOR IN THE US CONSTITUTION (but not done since 1941).

2. BRING BACK THE CONCEPT OF A “PUNITIVE” WAR. The basic role of law is to punish injustice in the overall effort to discourage (by example) future injustice. The Constitution does not authorize our central government to “rebuild” foreign countries with beneficence derived from taxpayer pockets.

We invaded two different sovereign countries at a relatively low cost in numbers of lives and dollars spent. Our forces toppled dictators and destroyed their military and their infrastructures. After that WE OWE THEM NOTHING!

We don’t have to be their friends. We also don’t have to stay there and offer their terrorists an endless supply of targets.

Limit the objectives of wars to the traditional ones that we can REALISTICALLY accomplish and freakin’ MIRACLES CAN HAPPEN! Right now, no one can tell us what the objective is other than some nebulous goals of “stability” and “democracy”–but not how much of either in any firm, definable quantities. According to the excuses being made now about why we can’t just pick up and leave, we will NEVER be able to leave those countries.

The thing I sense most from military members and other supporters of endless, preemptive wars is that they’re worried we’ll lose face and look weak and then be subject to more attacks due to that widespread perception. Gee, if we can’t accomplish in eight years what previous generations accomplished in about half that time, do we not look weak now?

We really need to admit–something Lindsey Graham among others refuses to do–that we’re really in a very difficult and needless occupation doing police work and charity instead of primarily killing people and breaking things which is what a military is for.

One can support the military all they want but in the end the military is NOT in charge. I’m a veteran and I admire the patriotism of the members of the military and their doing their proscribed duties in a professional and often heroic manner. However, it is up to US, “We the People,” to determine how many of them are risked and what appropriate objectives they pursue in their patriotic and professional roles.

It is much more efficient in terms of dollars and lives to re-invade a country if the people there allow their governments to attack us again than to occupy them forever. An overwhelming, incredibly destructive “tit” for their “tat” will make their aggression counter-productive if we leave them to rot afterward. Right now, we’re playing right into their hands by keeping our conflict at a level that they can participate in and use to recruit. Seriously, we’d have to kill just about every last one of them to stop their resistance from continually recruiting new members and waging violence against our forces there. In fact, were the situation theoretically reversed, I’d hope that we’d have people here that dedicated and willing to fight the invaders.

We are doing the members of the military no favors by Marshall-planning every country we invade and, to the benefit of corporations and their political representatives, Vietmanizing every war. Lindsey Graham and other corporate whores WANT TO KEEP THINGS AT A SLOW BOIL. They miss the Cold War due to its continuing excuse to make a lot of spending, favors, and other corruption an emergency or priority that never ends.

If we were to wrap things up over there, Lindsey Graham and others would lose a LOT of power and income. They are keeping it at a lower intensity with occasional, expensive and deadly “surges” with no real intent to finish anything–just more opportunities for political grandstanding, huge spending, and hundreds or thousands of OUR soldiers killed.

You can whine about the “innocent” people there who will suffer but it’s about time we hold them to the same standards we have here: the people are ultimately responsible for everything their country does. If we don’t prevent our country from carrying out a wrong by whatever means necessary, then we will suffer. The same principle should apply to them.

Look at our leaders. THERE IS NOTHING magical about them yet too many voters treat them like movie stars and worship them as if they were gods.

The proper salute for a corrupt politician should be spitting on them, not making excuses and fawning all over them. HOUND THEM, DISTRUST THEM, DESPISE THEM FIRST AND FOREMOST and then MAKE THEM EARN YOUR RESPECT if they’re capable.

They’re all human beings and not even the best by far that we have here–most of them being corrupted by money and power. Yet we turn over more and more power and money to them and don’t even make them obey the US Constitution on even the most fundamental of cases–like waging war.

Politicians don’t have magical supplies of money either. They can’t create anything out of thin air even though they try.

They are NOT our keepers. We should be THEIR keepers however. These wars are excuses to manipulate us to their advantage. It’s time to break the cycle of abuse and stand up to them and their criminal actions here and abroad.

We (or at least I) do read & remember history. I did say if a country represents a “necessary interest” for the US, we should be there. I’d include in that category people who attack us – in that case, we should do what must be done to end the threat to the US. Maybe you don’t see it that way?

We can argue, I suppose, over whether a country is a “necessary interest” or not. But, I DO say that we can consider our own economic position in making that determination. It is very possible, IMO, that limited resources can & should cause us to re-visit where we have a presence abroad and whether they continue to serve our current & future interests.