If you're a blogger like me, you sometimes find in your past blogs, some predictions that didn't come true!
The one that stands out to me the most was this one from February of this year!
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2011/02/dictators-going-down-in-muslim-world.html
What happens next in North Africa or the Middle East will be up to their people. The US is pretty much done invading countries to liberate them. The people are pretty much liberating themselves these days.
Yet, the following month, the US government decided it was NOT DONE with invading foreign countries to liberate them. The US Air Force started its attack on Libya, for the purpose of stopping Muamar Quaddafi from killing anti-government protesters and rebels.
The US didn't send troops on the grounds, knowing that the US citizens were already growing impatient with US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan!
But some of President Obama's staff were also staff members under President Clinton. Some of those staff members felt some guilt when President Clinton didn't send troops to try stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994!
However, I, among many US citizens have been feeling the like US can only do so much for others. We are already at 2 wars right now! Our economy has been in decline. Our government's deficits are growing.
We just don't have the time or resources to save everybody!
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I did support the USA's fight in Afghanistan since that was where Al Quaida was headquartered at the time of 9/11! Somebody had to go after Osama bin Laden, and why not us? Our towers got attacked so let's find the guys who planned it!
I also supported US troops secretly going inside Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden! Why should we get permission to go after the guy who attacked our cities? Pakistan's government is dysfunctional!
As for Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein had NOTHING to do with 9/11, I still felt that he was thinking about retaliating against the US over our intervention to stop Iraqi troops who invaded Kuwait! So I didn't mind having the US go after Hussein.
But as we now know, the invasion didn't go as planned. Overthrowing Hussein was easy, stopping the brutal civil war afterwards was the hard part! From 2006, when President Bush FINALLY listened to advisers who have been telling him we need more troops on the ground, did things calm down!
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The war in Iraq have made many US Americans feel like we need to stop being the "world's police-force". This feeling has intensified since the economic meltdown!
More people here are raising questions like "Why in the hell do we still have military bases in Europe and East Asia?"
Europe has been free-loading off us when it comes to defense for decades! It was one thing to have US troops during WW2 (against Hitler) and the Cold War ( to protect against Soviet communists). But the Cold War has been over for 2 decades already! It's time for Europe to be fully responsible for defending themselves already!
As for Japan and South Korea, they are already rich enough to be fully responsible for defending themselves. Also, some South Koreans are resentful about US troops in their country? Let's have an election on the issue! If they vote us out, FINE! We can leave, and they will be on their own when it comes to North Korea! And North Korea would be less of a threat to the US, since they'll be less paranoid about South Korea being a "US puppet".
As for those who feel the USA should be the ones providing troops to stop civil wars in foreign countries?
We can only do so much!
We as Americans honor our military, we honor our fallen soldiers. This is something sacred to us!
But we want them to defend the USA !!!
If another country or a terrorist agency is attacking us, YES we want to punish the hell out of them! We did that to Japan and Germany in World War 2! We destroyed Osama bin Laden and dumped him in the ocean. You mess with us, we can be very brutal!
But we're tired of fighting other people's battles!
What difference does it make to the average American which dictator is running Vietnam? What difference does it make to the average American which dictator is running Libya?
Some pundits and bloggers demand that the USA continue to be the world's "police officers"! If they feel the world needs a "police force", why don't they get off their rears, start their own mercenary force, and do the dirty work themselves, instead of just being a bunch of "editorial office heroes"?
(credit Tomas Sowell for that "editorial office hero" quote! An "editorial office hero" is the same thing as a "studio gangsta" as far as I'm concerned! Tough talk, no action! )
Stop begging the taxpayers to pay for their adventures already! We're already taxed enough, and we're tired of having our friends and relatives being sent to die for someone else's battles!
