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I know I'm going to get slammed in this thread but someone has to defend some of the uneducated things said in this thread so far. First off, I suppose I'll be called a hawk, a neocon etc, a warmonger etc. As someone who spent 22 years in the Marine Corps and went to combat three times I have no desire to see anyone have to go to combat again. It is and should always be the last resort in the use of all of our national instruments of power (DIME, Diplomacy, Informational, Military and Economic).

I never liked Bill Kristol or any of the other 'neocons' attitudes concerning some type of conservative purity test that if you weren't for war 'A' or war 'B' then you weren't really a conservative. Similarly, now the opposite is happening. If you believe in war 'A' or war 'B' was needed and in our national interests, you are now a neocon, a war monger-er, a heretic to conservatism.

Our national security strategy was undergoing a huge revision after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. For many years our military concentrated on our two main threats to our allies and our National Interests, the Soviets overrunning western Europe and North Korea overrunning South Korea. We trained towards large set battle pieces. The same type our forefathers fought in WWII and the Korean War. As a Marine it was a little different because we were the countries expeditionary force. September 11th, 2001 changed all of that.

Out of all of the many changes after 9/11, the main thing that changed in our National Security Strategy is the consideration of preemption. We now have many areas in the world that are not true nation/states in the sense of the idea we have. These areas have either no recognized national government or a weak/almost non existent national government. The question our leaders as well us ourselves have to ask ourselves, can we let a lawless ungoverned area be a place where an Islamic Fascist group can incubate and thrive and plan it's attacks on us and our allies.

"Enjoy sending your children to die in Somalia/Syria, etc."

Forgotten Amendments, perhaps you have forgotten the pre-amble to the Constitution. The part where it talks about the Federal government providing for our common defense. It's one of the five items that we the people have specifically charged the Federal Government with doing. Many of our forefathers, including the author of the Constitution were wary of large standing Armies and therefore advocated an almost non existent Army after the Revolution. The War of 1812 almost proved that policy to be disastrous. And many of those same founders realized that and implemented a standing Army.

If in your above statement you are talking about Somalia as in Operation Restore Hope from 1992 - 1993 I would agree with you. We should have never gone in there because simply it was not about feeding starving people. We can feed all of the starving people in the world if all it was about is delivering food. Unfortunately, there are many that it is to their benefit to have starving people. It's where they derive their power. People in America don't understand this, but in many parts of the world food is power and that was so in Somalia in 1992.

However, if it is about the Somalia and Syria of today then you are dead wrong. It is in our National Interests to go into lawless areas to kill and destroy these Islamo Fascists (Boko Haram and ISIS) so that they don't come over to blow people up in Kansas City or St. Louis or Minnesota, preemption.

"17 years of making war against a country that didn’t attack us is pretty much the definition of “unrestrained”."

thoughtomator, the country harbored and protected an Islamo Fascist group that did attack us. We can't think in 20th century terms. We have groups out there now that are as powerful or more powerful than traditional nation states. Afghanistan was a lawless area, I won't even call it a country (then or now) because the state government does not control all areas. They had a chance to give us Bin Laden and they didn't for a number of reasons. That is why we went in there, to wipe out the people who did attack us and the people who were harboring him. And also to prevent it from happening again.