[ConstantineX]

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I've always been one of those people that believed in what the US typically does. You know a country has a problem and we all the sudden send 1k-500k troops.

I hear a lot of people say that we, as in the US armed forces, should stay out of other places. Their feelings are that other countries should be able to fix their own problems. Another argument on their side is that our country needs all the attention that we're giving other countries.

While this makes sense from one point of view the other has always been that if we don't help then people like Sadaam will take over and eventually get so big that they're a huge threat to us.

My question is if we were a country that never fought other peoples battles what do they think would happen? Like for example if we didn't go to Kuwait in 1990 to force Sadaam back to Iraq what do they think or what would they have hoped happen?

My line of thinking has always been if we don't stop them when they're small then they can become so big we wouldn't be able to stand up to them ourselves.

I'm don't want this to become a thread where people bash back and forth. I'm would like to become educated on this subject so maybe I'll have a better understanding of their beliefs and change my line of thinking.

What I was really hoping is that some people who really didn't like the way we do it to carry me through their thought process and let me know how they THINK it would be if the US did it their way.

Anyway I hope that I've made sense of what I'm really trying to find out.

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You are asking a huge, complicated, open-ended question. I don't think you're going to get any fully satisfying answers. But, one thing is for sure, just because your country's elected government chooses a particular course of action, and that course of action is supported by a majority of the population, does not make that particular course of action right.

Regarding the war in the Middle-East, the Left will tell you that the war is about oil. The Right will tell you that the war is about terror, freedom and democracy. They are both right and they are both FOS.

Very simply, if there was no oil in the Middle-East, than it would simply be another Africa. Just like we are not in Africa, we would not be in the Middle-East.

For a president who had no foreign policy and few issues to focus on, 9/11 provided a Mount Rushmore moment (historically, the greatness of a president is determined by the events that occur during their presidency). For his foreign policy wonks (Cheney, Wolfowitz et al) 9/11 was the golden opportunity to advance a preexisting agenda that had been offered to, and refused by, the two preceding presidents.

Essentially the policy was based on the post WWII success of Germany and Japan. Democratize a Middle-Eastern country and, like moths to a flame, all the other countries will be drawn to the shining beacon of light and hope that would be their newly democratic, neighbor.

This concept is eerily reminiscent of LBJ's culturally flawed thought process regarding the North Vietnamese. Which basically centered around LBJ thinking he could just " set right down with old HO and work out a deal to solve this little old dispute among neighbors".

The thought process behind Middle-Eastern policy is, at minimum, more culturally flawed, and IMO, not very likely to work in any short-term (<8-years) time-frame. Further, the commitment required of a unilaterally acting US exceeds the available resources of men, material and money. Finally, the US public does not possess the will to fight a long-term foreign war of democratization.

Few people know that during WWII the US was precipitously close to financial collapse and that there was a strong under-current of desire to prematurely end the war.

With all of that said, we as a country and as a world, need access to oil that is stable, economical and reliable. Until there is an alternative source, we can not afford, on any level, to be forced into a potentially, devastating oil crisis.

On a final note, any US citizen who thinks that they were lied to or duped into supporting the war is either a liar or ignorant.

Prior to the start of the war in Iraq, everything regarding the implementation of the democratization of a Middle-Eastern country was published and on record. Further, Paul Wolfowitz was interviewed during the run up to war and admitted that the administration was focusing on WMDs, because WMD's were a better rallying point than a complicated foreign policy paper.

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Awesome post BPA. This post really clarifies both sides of the main issues and I think it's important to note how both political parties are fatally wrong when choosing to address only one portion. (I.e., Republicans should acknowledge their were some economic motivations behind the war, and Democrats should acknowledge there were security and ideological motivations as well)

What is an interesting question to ask is whether the confluence of these issues is accidental. Is it just an accident of history that the world's security issues are intimately tied to its economic ones? Did and does terrorism and authoritarianism arise because of economic incentives to do so? A very gross survey seems to show that countries that export valuable natural commodities seem possess these maladaptive governments. Why?