My reaction was that is, as you would say, a "silly" and arbitrary basis upon which determine whether national interests are at stake or whether they're worth defending. Moreover, I was trying to point out through examples that historically, we have not gone to war according to this formula. Indeed, the border-formula is not so clear as a matter of definition.
Pearl Harbor at the time was not part of the United States but some sort of territory, that required defense, was that defense of a border? We went to war with Great Britain in 1812 but their invasion was not the cause of that war, rather, we fought in defense of our shipping. We were invaded by Pancho Villa but we did not declare war although we conducted a "punitive" expedition, a bootless mini invasion of Mexico.
We nearly went to war over the Lusitania, a merchant ship but we did go to war, properly or not, over the Maine, a warship, in 1898. We went to war over the Tonkin Gulf incident, in reaction to a bogus attack on a warship, but we did not declare war.
Concerning ICBMs, we came as close to nuclear annihilation in an incident that I can vividly recall from my young adulthood during the Cuban missile crisis. Iran might be able to get a bomb into a merchant ship and sail it into an American harbor where it could be detonated. Iran might be able to smuggle anthrax across our southern border. The point? They don't need ICBMs. The deeper point, it is not the border so much but the terrorist act.
So my point is not that I "want to go to war so bad" but that I want to know what the rules of the game are. I don't think that is "silly" at all.
But as to your other allegation about filling up my F-150 with 3 dollars gas a gallon, be advised I am paying that (eight dollars a gallon) for years here in Germany and more. Yet, I do believe that it may be in America's national interest to make war over oil, just as it is in America's interest to make war over water or air-or borders or merchant ships or ICBMs.
These questions are not easy and every formulaic approach carries its own anomalies with it. I get that you are turned off by Middle East wars, so am I. But I am equally concerned that we do not chase the pendulum in reaction to Iraqi or Vietnam. I do not forget that we fought in Vietnam because we learn the wrong lesson from appeasing Hitler. We occupied Iraq because we learn the wrong lesson from the first Gulf War.
There is no one formula that answers these life-and-death questions for every generation or for every technological innovation that alters the nature of war. That is what we must do for ourselves but we must get it right. I do not know how to do that without trying to understand the context, the history, and the risks and, if we are smart, we will do so with a great dose of humility.
