What was it Washington said in his farewell address about foreign entanglements? (And said, with great wisdom, about so many other things pertinent to our decline since then).
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washington%27s_Farewell_Address
“What was it Washington said in his farewell address about foreign entanglements? (And said, with great wisdom, about so many other things pertinent to our decline since then).”
Washington and the founders were right about staying out of the affairs of foreign nations, particularly Europe. Russia has more business invading Crimea and Ukraine than we had invading Iraq.
Since WWII we’ve played international policeman to the detriment of our treasury, national security, and the blood of young people sent to fight wars that weren’t in the national interest. What we accomplished was allowing Western Europe, Japan and Korea to build huge competitive economies without having to fund their own defense. We also made the world hate us.
What our interventionist globalist politicians fail to recognize is there are and always will be rivalries in the world and regional balances to aggression. We wasted 50,000 lives and billions in Vietnam. Had we stayed out, North Vietnam would have taken over the south (same result we got anyway) and then would have been an economic and military counterweight to Chinese aggression. Sadaam’s Iraq was the buffer between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. We invaded Iraq twice, angering the Islamic world and removed the restraint on Iranian expansion. As a result we will soon face a nuclear Iran and we still have Islamic terrorists plotting to kill us. The Taliban are poised to return to power in Afghanistan as soon as we leave resulting in a trillion dollars and thousands of lives of wasted effort.
Heed the warnings of the founders. Bring the standing army home and deploy it to secure the border. Retain a strong navy to protect American shipping on the high seas and build an effective missile defense system. Let the rest of the world fight each other while we live comfortably in the homeland.
Russia and China are enemies. India and China are enemies. Pakistan and India are enemies. Iran and Saudi Arabia are enemies. Vietnam and China are rivals. Russia and Germany are natural enemies. France and Germany are rivals as are England and France. Absent US intervention countries will make the decision to fund their own defense or not. Either way, it should not matter to us.
The founders knew if we left these nations alone to fight with engage with real or perceived threats along their borders they would not spend resources trying to attack a strong but benign nation protected by two large oceans. It is imperialist behavior by the US that incites the hatred of other nations, not our economic wealth.
The real threat to US security is the ongoing invasion across the southern border by millions of uneducated, unskilled third world people who come to escape poverty and take advantage of our generous social services.