Disagree, in part, and agree, in part."...The safety of our own people would be better served by protecting our people here in our country..."
Disagree, insofar as I perceive that the safety of our own people are best served by a multifaceted approach that deals effectively with internal, border-region, and international and overseas matters.
Agreed, we are not protecting and enforcing and controlling our own borders, and it ticks off a lot of people (you, and me, as well) that we are spending so much money overseas and so little money and effort and dedication on border security."...Our border is out of control yet we are protecting civilians on the other side of the planet..."
But it is not a 'one or the other' proposition - both are needed - we must secure our own borders AND deal effectively with threats (present and future) around the planet.
Mixed feedback. Agree that we need to do a much better job with intelligence and targeting and fire-permissions in connection with drone attacks, but we do need to continue to utilize drones to hammer bad guys in places where we do not otherwise have direct access to them, rather than sending our own people into places that would constitute a suicide mission."...while instigating more enemies by causing civilian casualties..."
I'm with you, on saying it's time to get the hell outta Afghanistan. We're not doing much good there, anyway, and more spinning our wheels than anything else."...Bring the troops home and if they must die et them die defending our country and not someone else's..."
I'm not with you, with respect to pulling-in our horns globally, and bringing them all home.
We lost that ability after the Spanish-American War; we've long-since become a global player with global interests, and there's no going back to Dreamland Isolationist Past, as tempting as that is sometimes. We, collectively, depend far too heavily upon globalization, and our part in it, for our economic and geo-political life as a nation.
Agree, in large part. We need to do a much better job of picking our fights, and getting them over with quickly, and then getting the hell out."....Perpetuating these wars to continue escalating with pointless deployments for people who obviously have shown they won't help us fight their own radical population is draining our governments capital resources and causing American families disproportionate grief to the results achieved by these desert skirmishes filled with IEDs..."
But, IMHO, we should not abandon the idea of Intervention when necessary to our own interests and immediate or long-term safety, and we should not allow disgust with the stupidity of recent war-making to swing the pendulum so far to the other (Isolationist) side of the scale that we paralyze ourselves and injure ourselves more in the long run than we help or defend ourselves.
Agreed, in large part, if not completely."...Each time a soldier dies the government pays out 400k in life insurance benefits. How many soldiers have died for this theoretical war on terror? As much as congress makes in a year pales in comparison to the cost of dead soldiers fiscally and socially here at home. Close bases in a foreign state that want us gone and secure our land of freedom for the free."
War is an expensive business. We need to do a much better job of picking our fights and winning them more quickly and disengaging.
We can also probably close a few bases here and there (outside of present combat-theaters where we can completely pull out at any time we like) but we have done a lot to scale-back our overseas presence in recent decades and there is probably not a lot more fat to trim without surrendering strategic or tactical advantage or pre-positioning in a variety of potential future hot-spots. It IS a balancing act, isn't it?