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While I understand your position, I disagree with it in its entirety, and I say this as a staunch, patriotic conservative.

I “served” the military as a civilian contractor before and during Gulf War I. While I was never personally in danger, I have nothing but respect for those who do.

However ...

You give no justification for WHY we need to project far beyond our borders. You can maintain a blue water navy without doing what we do. Britain, Russia, China do, just to name a few. We don’t need in excess of 700 military installations across the world. I’d prefer to spend the bucks to put those installations on our northern and southern borders to keep out the evil ones who, yes, will always be with us.

The world still sees us as posturing - we can’t conclude the war in Afghanistan or Iraq because we’re prosecuting it like wimps. Mookie causing problems early in the war ? Bomb the crap out of him and his followers. Falluja ? We only needed one round if we would have finished the job the first time. Taliban resurgence ? Wipe them out in their bases in Pakistan and tell the Pakis to either clean up their mess or we’ll come in and do it for them. We did it to Iraq - why not Pakistan ? Why are we pussyfooting around with the Saudis when we know they’re exporting terrorists ?

Oil - it’s all about oil. We won’t drill at home so we need to “protect” those abroad who sell it to us. So we put up with the Saudis so we can buy their oil at grossly inflated prices and never change for the “protection”. We “invade” Iraq for the same reason. If we didn’t need foreign oil we wouldn’t need to be all over the globe with forces.

Think about it, and please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. Why were we attacked on 9/11 ? Because we symbolize the Conquerer to Islamic ignoramuses, so we are a target. We have no border security and no visa enforcement, so we don’t prosecute and deport those who are here illegally, so we’re an easy target. We’re weakening ourselves economically to do what - protect our “supply lines” for oil ?

Sorry, I don’t believe we should be making the world “safe for democracy”. Democracy is a crappy concept, as anyone who has studied German history in the 20th century will attest. Unless we are willing to be dictators, I don’t believe we should be rebuilding or giving aid to countries who are communistic, socialistic, or just plain totalitarian.

I for one am very tired of being my brother’s keeper. Whether it’s welfare, foreign aid or a bloated military due to being the world’s policeman, enough is enough.

Secure our borders, get rid of all illegals, stop the handouts and let’s get America back to worrying about the health and welfare of this country. Let private interests give aid to those who need it here or abroad - it’s not properly a function of government.

Britain is not looking to extend its influence into countries large and small. China and Russia, just to use two of your examples, are. And make no mistake, neither of them is friendly to us. We don’t live in a 1920’s world anymore. People and countries are closer and more interlocked than ever before.

You and I have a basic disagreement.

You think we can pull back into our borders and pull our head and feet into our country like a turtle and wait for the islamofascists or people like them to come to us the way the did on 9/11, then respond afterwards.

I maintain that it will not work. It didn’t work for the “America Firster’s” in the 1930’s, and it isn’t going to work for us today.

While you and I agree that we should have more oil, nuclear power or whatever it takes to distance ourselves from the Middle East, you are in danger of being an apologist for the islamofascists by using their mindset as an excuse for them to attack us and hate us, thereby placing the burden on us.

This is probably no surprise to someone like you, because you sound like an intelligent person, but if you are the United States, there are going to be people who are going to despise and hate you with intent to kill no matter what. How else to you explain the terrorist attacks on other countries who have nothing to do with the war in the Middle East? If you think that pulling back into our borders is going to assuage them and keep them from attacking us, you are mistaken.

And by the way, the people who attacked us are responsible for their actions, NOT US. If you want to think that, fine. But get used to people lining up to kick you in the butt, or worse, if you do.

And we are not in Iraq to take their oil. If we were, we would be pumping it under armed guard and shipping it to our refineries. That is utter bunk. Only a child is going to say oil had nothing to do with our being in the Middle East right now, but only a child who doesn’t have to heat a home or pay for gasoline to drive to work is going to maintain that oil is not worth fighting for.

If someone can’t get to work and earn enough money to buy food for their family, they are going to be at the front of the line screeching for our government to do something because they retreated into a shell and let people like Saddam Hussein or any number of dictators like him take over the Middle East without firing a shot. If someone wants to live in this country and enjoy its riches, they had better take into account the blood that is coursing the the veins of our economy, and that blood is oil.

I know plenty of people on Free Republic who think we should just drop a bomb on Mecca if an American tourist has their makeup mussed by a muslim.

I couldn’t disagree more strenuously. But I do know one thing: what we did before 9/11 obviously did not work. Doing more of the same will give us more of what we got on 9/11.

There is something else I know. We live in the greatest, most unselfish country in the world. We are a force for good in this world, whether the rest of the world ( or even many in our own countrty ) wants to recognize this basic fact. We are lucky to live here, and the world is lucky to have us.

There have been plenty of things out there on this subject, but two books that echoed my thoughts on this (or I theirs) are: Dinesh Desouza’s book ‘What’s So Great About America’ and Natan Sharansky’s ‘The Case For Democracy’.

One of the things that irks me most about the Left in America, is that listening to them talk about JFK and what a great hero he was just illuminates their hypocrisy. In his Inaugural Address, he spoke the famous passage: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

We are being asked now to bear a burden in defense of democracy. The currency of our burden is the blood of our countrymen and the money from our treasury.

What we are doing over there in the Middle East is a good and noble thing. The fact that we hope to gain something from it does not detract in any way from the deed we are trying to do.

What we hope to gain from it is National Security. Yeah, it is a bit of a pipe dream to think we can plant the seed of democracy in the Middle East and somehow break them out of their Seventh Century mindset. We did not go over there just to free the Iraqis and Afghans. I would like to think I am altruist, as are the rest of my fellow citizens and the entire country.

But the truth of the matter is...we are involved in this for our own self interested reasons. There ARE reasons we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not in a number of other third-world hellholes like Darfur and Somalia.

Like it or not, we run on oil. We can and should change that, but as the fact stands...we are willing to pay for what they have, and we have an interest in keeping their product (oil) on the market for us to buy.

But more important is the fact that the Middle East is a festering pustule of hate, discontent and violence in this small world of ours. That hate, discontent and violence has been unchecked for the last four or five decades. We have been content to let them do what they like to each other, as long as they keep shipping us our oil.

On 9/11 we had 3,000 of our fellow citizens slaughtered in cold blood. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, pregnant women, brothers, sisters, friends, co-workers, Americans. Some of them were pulverized to a fine mush under the weight of collapsing buildings. Some faced the choice of burning alive or plummeting a thousand feet to die on the pavement below. Others died screaming in terror as the planes flew past skyscrapers before hitting their targets.

I had an acquaintance of mine who died on one of those planes, American Flight 11. His name was David Kovalcin. My last memory of him is sitting up on a porch until 2 AM on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee drinking beers talking about life long after all the other people had gone to bed.

My new boss on 9/11 was a Colonel in the Army who had just retired weeks before. I was having my first interview with her in her office, when her phone rang. It was one of her former subordinates calling to tell her that a plane had just hit the Pentagon. After she hung up, she looked at me and said “I have a lot of close friends in that building.”

On 9/12, that mindset had to change, because we could not just sit back and wait for the next thing to hit us. If those people who perpetrated the horror of 9/11 had weapons that could kill a million people, they would have used them. They intentionally rammed those planes into the WTC to try to trap as many people in the top of the buildings as they could. If they could get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they would use it without hesitation. We did the right thing for the right reasons going into both Afghanistan and Iraq.

What we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan may yet fail. If it does, with a great deal of certainty, we are going to be fighting a bigger and deadlier war at another place and time in the future towards the same end.

So, yes. We may yet fail. If we fail, we will be no worse off than we were on 9/12, waiting patiently for the next attack on us. And if that happens, we may be required to use the “glass parking lot” option, or even worse.

For our own safety and survival, we may be impelled to make them fear us more than they hate us. But I am morally satisfied that we have wielded the power we have in an unprecedented way. Since WWII, America has wielded the power we possess to make the world a better place. We may have done it clumsily or wrong, but there can be no doubt that we used our power to make the world a better and safer place, and not to conquer territory, make people our slaves or subjugate them.

We have fought a cultural battle, and have largely won. Whether you think that is a good thing or a bad thing is a reasonable debate, but many (if not the majority) of the people in the world would come to America given a chance. They already have our slang, entertainment and Chicago Bulls jerseys in remote parts of the world.

What we need to get into their hands is the real reason America is so great. It is our attitude. Anyone can really BE an American. There are not many countries around the world (if any) that can make that claim. If I go to France, give up my citizenship and become a French Citizen, I will NEVER, EVER be French. But you CAN come here and be an American, no matter who you are. The gift given to us by the Founding Fathers is the essence of what makes our ideas great.

As Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying (and it is so true) Democracy is HARD. Self-Reliance is HARD. And even though 5000 years of history say we may not be able to do it, I say we should try.

After all...it IS possible. There was near common unanimity after WWII that we would never be able to establish a democracy in a feudal society like Japan. But it worked. Look at them now.

The point is...if we have to carpetbomb the entire Middle East with nuclear weapons (and we may yet have to do that) history will record that we, as a nation, attempted to give another nation a hand up off the ground to try to end the cycle. We ARE trying to do it that way. As the strongest nation on the face of the earth right now...I think it is our responsibility to make the attempt.

We need to be in it for the long haul. And that is going to be hard.