Leon Panetta, the current Secretary of Defense, warned today that he would not accept large cuts in military spending as part of a deal to slow the increase in the government's debt. Penetta insisted that we need to borrow money from foreigners to bring the government's wars to "stable conclusions".
Unfortunately, Penetta seems to be affected with the same type of delusions that plague most U.S. politicians.
The government's wars in the Middle East are not going to come to a stable conclusion regardless of how much money we borrow from China to wage them.
Regardless of when we leave Afghanistan -- next week or next year -- the Taliban will reassert their power. There is not a damn thing that can be done about it.
What about the TRILLION dollars we spent in Iraq? Oh, it's a stable "democracy", right? Wrong. Violence in Iraq is escalating. The Iraqi Shiites are now in cahoots with Iran to control the country. The Sunnis are alarmed, so they are escalating their attacks. The Kurds are scared to death of being slaughtered by both when the U.S. government leaves, or sooner.
The U.S. government is bombing Libya for what reason? To get rid of Qaddafi? Well, he's still there. My guess is that he's not leaving soon. The U.S. government has pissed off a very nasty snake for no reason. As a result, Americans will die in an airplane bombing at some point soon. Gaddafi has done it before and he'll do it again. Why did the U.S. government invite this???
It's time to wake up to the reality of the 21st century.
We've moved from a bi-polar world to a multi-polar world. The American government can no longer throw a few billion dollars around to keep people in line.
We need completely new thinking on foreign policy. We are not going to get that new thinking from a bunch of old snakes.
That's the problem.
