Spreading ourselves pretty thin in wars

[Realitycheck]

Now Syria, then what? A surge for each and every one of them? Then what? Its really getting old being counted on to be NATO's lynchpin. As I have always said, the bully pulpit only gets you so far. A lot of people in Iraq and Afghanistan still hate us. What will be the magical solution? I understand how justification could be taught and rationalized upon the minorities in Iraq, but is it really going to sink in amongst fundamentalist Islamists elsewhere who are quite likely to just be tired of their corrupt leaders and will probably just return to the status quo eventually? Is the rest of NATO ready to start increasing their defense budgets to take up the slack? Oh wait, we're moving further and further from NATO. When does the cycle stop?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Now Syria?

 

We haven't put troops on the ground in Libya, either. Could you clarify your post?

[Realitycheck]

Oops, McCain isn't even gunning for them, though it looks like they are pushing to do something diplomatically. I just spoke too soon. Please delete.

 

And what do you know, Gaddafi just asked for a seizefire.

Edited April 30, 2011 by Realitycheck

[lemur]

I think military strategists aren't stupid. They know what a war of attrition is and how to win one or lose one. There's an MIT news article on fuel/energy concerns and developments in military applications. Here, I went ahead and googled it: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/energy-conference-0322.html

[Marat]

The real question has to be, what do all these military interventions actually bring the United States in terms of concrete benefits? The 'war by accident' in Iraq, which I guess doesn't have WMDs after all, cost over a trillion dollars, and now the U.S. is fretting over cutting ten billion here and there to get the deficit under control. But the trillion spent in Iraq got us absolutely nothing in terms of making the corn in Iowa grow faster, the buses arrive quicker in Jersey City, or the VA hospital any more efficient in Boston. All it bought was some sort of satisfaction for a minute or two on the evening news that there was no longer a regional bully in charge of Iraq who, if he summoned all his strength, might be able to annex Kuwait or fight Iran to a standstill, but who could never have done anything more to harm the U.S. than ferry a few dozen troops to New York with his miniscule navy and land them in the harbor, where they would have been immediately arrested by the police for visa violations.

 

In terms of practial value to U.S. security or interests, these military campaigns are simply inexplicable. Their real purpose is to conjure up plausible excuses to pump public tax money into the military-industrial complex where it generates huge profits for military contractors. On a more ideal level, it helps sustain a kind of romantic, religious nostalgia for the days when America could actually do more useful things with its military than just cause more loss than gain through the unanticipated blowback effects of making people in the regions attacked hate us forever, sparking simmering ethnic tensions into full-scale wars, and creating openings for terrorist organizations.