Posted on 09/14/2014 5:04:58 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
It’s a poopshoot parachute…those fruits and veggies are fast acting ya know
If they gain control of the region, it impacts the global economy. The Saudis are the biggest exporters of oil in the world. And when you consider the oil production of the OPEC countries, the impact is enormous.
We also have thousands of Americans vulnerable to attack at our diplomatic missions and military facilities abroad. Militant fundamentalist Islam is a threat around the world from Indonesia to the Philippines to Nigeria to Mali, etc. Having ISIS altering borders in the region and forming a terrorist state with billions of dollars does pose a threat to this country now and in the future.
Do you believe the few people in the Obama Regime who say 20,000 guys on monkey bars with video capabilities are a direct threat to CONUS? Only if they cross the border or airspace is that even possible.
Now you are being silly. I am not afraid of an invasion by ISIS, but they can certainly do tremendous damage thru terrorist attacks against our country. I can recall how the DC snipers (two people) paralyzed our area with fear for over a month. Or how 19 people with box cutters killed 3,000 Americans and have cost us trillions of dollars in the aftermath. Biological and chemical weapons could be used by the well-funded Islamic terrorists and perhaps nuclear weapons given to them by state actors, e.g., North Korea, Pakistan, or Iran.
Why not go after Boko Haram, who are just as evil, but in a different continent?
Boko Haram is just another manifestation of militant Islam. There are plenty of others throughout the globe. We are seeing the rising influence of this movement in places like Turkey, a NATO member. Erdogan has moved closer to the Islamist world view and been unhelpful to us and Israel in combating the threat. Militant Islamic fundamentalism is the enemy no matter where it exists.
We are broke. Bring the troops home.
There is no doubt that we are declining as a military power mainly due to the classic battle of "guns versus butter" that has marked the decline of other great powers. In Europe most of the countries are spending less than 1% of GDP on defense. The welfare state sucks resources away from defense. Butter always wins because it has more constituents. As the US declines in its ability to project power globally, other countries will fill the vacuum. It will become a more dangerous world. We cannot retreat to a Fortress America and think we can insulate ourselves from the impact of global events. We have strategic national interests abroad.
The troops have been coming home for decades. Our presence abroad has declined significantly. We used to have over 500,000 military personnel in Europe in the 60s and 70s. We used to have a 600 ship Navy, which is now well below 300. Our military is being hollowed out. We couldn't even replicate the numbers we had to fight the first Gulf War. We are scaling down our military based on resource levels, not on threat assessments. Our political and military leaders are rationalizing the reductions to fool the public and to keep feeding the growing appetite of the welfare state. We are following the same path as the UK. The only problem is that there is no other "America" to take up the burden.
Thanks for the well-thought out reply. I suppose it all comes down to how a broke national government can justify continuing to police the world using the financial backing of our descendants.
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