It's not really about defending others from their own folly, or against dark forces from whom they can't defend themselves. American armed power exists to defend American interests. In the main, America is best off when tyrants and aggressors are put down sternly and swiftly, because to have these on the loose threatens the increasingly far-flung reach of our trade, our travel, and our extended families.
I tend to favor non-intervention in quarrels less threatening than, say, the discovery of nuclear capabilities in North Korea, unearthing a funding trail that connects Palestinian and al-Qaeda terrorism to Iraq, or learning that Celine Dion's touring south of the border again. But one's judgment on these things is more trustworthy if one has lots of high-quality information than if one is a regular schlump-on-the-sidelines like myself. So we have a national security apparatus with lots of intelligence resources, and which is watched, hopefully closely and continuously, by elected officials for signs of mission overreach.
The painful things about American extra-national military interventions are twofold:
It's simply very hard to know when it's a good idea to entangle ourselves in the conflicts of others. We private citizens are unlikely ever to be able to cross-verify enough of the arguments for an intervention to be confident that we're hearing the truth and nothing but. Governments are uniformly run by people who like having power and love to wield it, so their institutional tendency is to favor such things. We have few checks on overreach other than the desire of officials to be liked by the citizenry, which, come to think of it, has worked surprisingly well even on appointees. Basically, once we put the reins in their hands, we have to trust them to know where they're riding off to, and why.
The dangers are considerable. But the options are few, perhaps none, especially given the perilous state of the world and the amount of envy we engender with our success.
A country needs a military in proportion to how much she has to defend. We need a large one, as possessors of a quarter of the world's wealth. But size alone isn't sufficient. We also have to have our fingers on the pulse of the world, be intimately acquainted with its troubled places and the roots of their miseries -- and sometimes that draws us into others' quarrels all by itself.
Robert A. Heinlein once called America a "blind giant" for her habit of stumbling into wars unknowingly and under-preparedly. Well, we have a better intelligence network now than any previous generation of Americans -- but much of it depends on alliances and involvements that George Washington would have thought unwise, even treasonous. Thus the times have changed.
Worst of all the agonies of this subject is this one: That intelligence network does frequently learn things that private persons ought not to learn, for their own good and the good of the country. Sometimes, its agents must do things in the interests of the nation that would be considered crimes if done by ordinary citizens. It all grows out of the nature of the Game of States, in which "there are no morals, only expedience." (V. I. Lenin)
I'll return to this anon.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://www.palaceofreason.com