The one major issue that I cannot agree with my fellow Freepers on is our foreign policy. The Iraq and Afghan invasions were the dumbest foreign policy moves this country has made in a long time. You don’t fight a loosely organized band of loony religious terrorists by invading and occupying countries. It’s as if nobody in the military ever read Mao’s book on guerilla war. The guerillas will never stand up and face a regular army. They will retreat and wait for a better time and place to attack.
We are wasting our good men and women on something that has no end and no definitive objective. These wars are also bleeding us dry financially, and as with all government endeavors, present plenty of opportunities for scam artists and profiteers to rip off the taxpayers. Politicians don’t care about our troops. They care about campaign contributions from defense companies.
Then there is the issue of our government taking away our rights and justifying it by invoking the war on terror. What happens when our government turns on conservatives and declares us to be terrorists? When we stand by while the Constitution and Bill of Rights have been shredded in the name of Homeland Security, what will protect us from the all-powerful government we helped create? This blind trust in government when it goes to war puzzles me. Government lies all the time, and especially during wartime.
Finally, while our troops are guarding the borders of Iraq, building schools, and handing out trash cans as a public service (Is this really how conservatives want to see our militar being used?), our own borders are wide open. We are allowing more and more Muslims into our country. This is the biggest threat to US security; not what happens overseas. We are creating our very own Future Terrorists of America groups, and nobody seems to care.
I know that most of the people here disagree, but I think it is nuts to continue to expand our presence overseas. Foreigners are going to take over our country without even firing a shot while we are meddling in other countries trying to turn tribal cultures into Western-style democracies.
Look for youtube videos of what our troops are saying about the Afghan soldiers and police they are trying to help and train. It’s a joke. As our soldiers say, all the Afghan guys do is sit around and smoke pot all day. They are completely unreliable. It is an exercise in futility.
“I know that most of the people here disagree, but I think it is nuts to continue to expand our presence overseas.”
I’m quite sure you have the majority both here and in the country agreeing with you. But there is no similar majority to cut and run from existing treaty obligations without fair warning to our allies. And that is the primary reason Ron Paul is viewed as an extremist, and lost the Republican Presidential nomination.
And the extensive British counterterrorism/counterinsurgency experience was totally ignored, even by Gen. Petraeus in his early days (fortunately, he seemed to have learned from it), costing us greatly in Tal'Afar and Fallujah.
It's sadly pathetic how FReepers who complain about government waste will support a system where "success" for senior officers is often measured in how many dollars they can hand out, not actual progress, and how many projects get funded multiple times.
It’s as if nobody in the military ever read Mao’s book on guerilla war.
Actually, it's as if nobody SENIOR in the military has ever read much at all on these topics. Many of the junior to mid-level officers are sickened by it all.
One can definitely support the troops without supporting the way these wars have been executed.
ping for later.
And see my FR homepage explaining the “definitive object” in Iraq; specifically, to begin eliminating the direct causes of extremist ideology that manifest as terrorist attacks (poorly articulated by our former president as “draining the swamps”).
I agree. We should have the strongest military on the planet and be ready to pound into rubble anybody who dares attack us, but why we need the empire to stretch into 120 or so countries - especially when the empire if flat broke - is beyond my ken.