That's right, MSI, but we have become both by default.
There's nothing in the Constitution about "default" World Policeman or Social Worker, either. The previous post on the ratchet US gov't military & bureaucracy and the book "Dependent on DC" clearly show that we become such an overweaning autocracy by design, not by some sort of accidental default.
Ignoring the ME got us 911.
The more reasonable conclusion is that getting our fingers in that light socket of the ME is what got us 911, and will continually ratchet up violence if we don't get out. There are a billion Muslims, another billion Chinese, all of whom can't be made to love the US by force, no matter what the ever-changing neocon catechism has become. Unlike the cold war, these are not armies of conquest, but armies of ignorance that are spurred by our violence as much as by their own.
By their own words, 9/11 was caused by US presence in the ME, not by its absence.
Regardless, its clear that keeping out of things like the Israel/Arab blood feuds will reduce the massive corruption of our political system, contamination of intel services, the predatory excuses for invasion of a hundred countries, and of course a $trillion or so in unnecessary expenditures.
This is no different than its been in centuries past -- the more we meddle in foreign "entanglements", the greater our enemies become in number. Ancient Rome discovered at the end that they had enemies everywhere, and if the didn't have them, created them. |
