1. I am not your friend and expect no change in that status.
2. Whether "I admit it or not" is the subtle way of accusing me of lying which is poor form here as opposed to whether "I realize it or not." On the particular question, I have positively stated that I oppose nation building even of the post-WWII Marshall Plan sort. Better the money be spent on weaponry used against the enemies who deserve to be killed.
3. I don't think there was any justification for the US to be involved in Somalia and there is none for our involvement in Libya under Hussein unless we seize Libya's oil fields as payment. Hussein is nearly as bad as the paleosurrenderman on matters of foreign policy and is only marginally better than El Run Paulie. FDR was the last Democrat vaguely trustworthy to run a war. That Iraq and Afghanistan have lasted this long coupled with Hussein being Commander in Chief is almost proof that we should get out but it becomes less of a proof as the election to choose Hussein's successor approaches assuming we can find and elect a Republican POTUS willing to wage war appropriately. As to cost, seize oil fields as necessary to reimburse every nickel spent on the wars against Islamoterrorism. Surround the fields with cobalt and credibly promise that any soldier of ours who may be harmed will result in the evaporation of Mecca, Medina and the Dome of the Rock, one by one, in ascending order of significance.
4. Ask me if I care about Russia. Despite Chechnya and the bombing of a Moscow theater, Putin consistently disappoints and despite all the diployak and despite all the trade agreements, he seems as anti-American as he would have been as KGB boss in the dismal "republic" of East Germany in decades past. Putin is Ahmadinejad's political love slave and wields Russia's seat on the UN Security Council accordingly. Castrate Putin by getting the UN diployakkers out of the US and the US out of the UN. Most of paleoPaulie's Bircher enthusiasts will find that familiar.
5. I have had it with the squandering of money on the American welfare state and the utter inability of the customary political elites (much less eccentric nutcases like paleoPaulie) to smash our enemies. Won't do me any more good than it does you to whine against the American military. You are the world's welfare agent??? Who knew?
6. That is an interesting idea as to Europe and Russia and their peril from Islam. I agree that it is time they bore their own burdens. First step: Out of Libya. Qaddaffi survives and (his oil generally reserved for Europe) is withheld as the Eurowimps freeze at home in the dark.
7. I don't think Ron Paul is crazy. I KNOW Ron Paul is crazy as do most here on FR. He is on Hannity right now ignorantly whining over the fact that we took the red Iranian stooge Mossagh Dagh (sp.?) out of power in favor of the Shah. He is also having a public, ummm, romantic dream about how we would feel if China got a little stronger and treated us the same way. He ignores the fact that this is why God invented the US Navy, carriers, fighting aircraft, nuclear boomer subs, fast attack craft and our nuclear arsenal. Paulie is also hallucinating about Woodrow Wilson being an interventionist guru.
8. If we are broke, it has nothing whatever to do with military spending. It is the vast expansion of the welfare state. In nominal dollars, JFK's last budget was $100 billion of which $60 billion was for defense in peacetime 1963. 60% of the budget was defense and a LOT less of a percentage today. "War" on Poverty, HUD, Energy, Education, EPA, BATF, and a zillion other ways to waste oceans of money. Also shrimping subsidies for Galveston, nursing scholarships for Galveston and every other stinking earmark pork barrel stuffed by your lying Congresscritter into the federal budgets he votes against.
9. Europe (more accurately Catholic Europe) beat the Islamofascisti of their time in lifting the siege of Vienna (Jan Sobieski and the Polish Hussars) and in destroying the Islamic fleet at Lepanto (Don Juan) in the 15th and 16th centuries not 1000 years ago. El Cid of Castille alternately defeated and led Moorish forces in Spain (domestic political strife) in the 11th century. After he was fatally shot by an archer and his corpse strapped onto and propped up by his widow on his war horse and sent toward the Moors to terrify them, his home city of Valencia fell to Islam for a couple of centuries. Islam was limited to the Iberian Peninsula and small areas of the Balkans until driven out of the Iberian Peninsula by Ferdinand of Aragon (and his wife Isabella of Castille) just before Columbus sailed to discover the Western Hemisphere. Their presence in the Balkans persists to this day but only in a couple of republics. The bulk of Europe was never in jeopardy. Today Islamic demographics threatens to accomplish what Islamic military forces never could.
10. With a "leader" like the paleopipsqueak in the White House, the US would need no foreign enemies. See him now, on his knees, with one of Osama's buds sticking a gun in his ear, and the paleosurrenderman weeping an ocean of tears pleading that he had always been Osama's defender and apologist in Congress and then signing an executive order accepting "Sharia Law" and an Islamic caliphate for America and then becoming a dead treasonweasel.
#130 was directed at jpsb. I pinged the rest of you as entertainment.
However I concider the Marshal plan and the MacAuthur occupation of Japan a huge suscess. If the enemy is utterly defeated, his will to fight broken then maybe nation building might work. How is is done today is doomed to failure.
We had absolutely no business in the Balkin or in Africa even worse we were on the wrong side in Kosovo. That is Russia back yard let them handle it. As Bismark said the entire region is not worth one solders life.
The only reason I could think of to be fighting in the middle east is in defense of Israel, let Arabs eat their oil.
Putnam is still fighting the cold war, maybe bombing Serbia so Islam could seize Kosovo was not such a good idea.
As a proud USMC vet I never whine against the military. I challenge you to support that assertion.
Wilson was an interventionist guru, the USA had no business in WW1. He was also taken to the cleaners by the French and British, re his 14 points.
The rest I completely agree with.
Mistake in Paragraph 9 of #130: Valencia fell to Islam for a couple of YEARS not a couple of centuries.