Like many, I was deeply saddened and disturbed by the murders of our ambassador and other Americans last week. The brutal pictures showing him being dragged, whether alive or dead I don”t know, through the streets by Islamist thugs were horrible.
Over a decade ago, when Bush was president, I was for going to war in Afghanistan and then also, contrary to the pope and U.S. bishops, in Iraq. Since then I have done a complete turnabout and now think that the Iraq war was a mistake, and Afghanistan might have been, too.
So ironically, though I voted against Pres. Obama, I had hopes that he would at least end these wars and bring all our troops and personnel home. Yet he hasn”t done that, and instead got us embroiled in several other uprisings and rebellions in that part of the world.
As Frank Weathers said recently, the only sensible thing to do is repel boarders from the walls of the embassies. And I would add, we either do that, or we simply get the hell out of these countries. Do we need an embassy in Libya? In Yemen? In Egypt? If these countries” governments either cannot or will not stop violent attacks against Americans, and if we are not willing to defend our people there, then we best online casino should leave. Close up the embassy, sell it, give it away, whatever. Just get out of there.
Our country has many serious problems. We will not reverse our image with Islam, especially not with militant Islam. They hate us, in part for wrong reasons and in part for good ones (e.g. our exports of consumerism, pornography, contraception, etc.). Pres. Obama understands little of Islam, that much is clear from his idealistic belief that when he became President the Muslim world would change its perception of us.
Anyone who has studied history from 600 to 1500 AD will know that Islam spread through invasion and subjugation. Christian areas were put to the sword and Christians were given second-class status (at the very best). This is enshrined in Islam, which is both religious (theological) and political in nature.
Talk to Muslims today, and some may say it is a religion of peace; others not. My Eastern Orthodox friend Timothy Flanders explains why this is so. In short, Islam is akin to Protestantism: there is no authority within Islam that can definitively interpret the Koran and Hadith. Instead, multiple conflicting interpretations exist.
But back to our country. Why do we still have bases and embassies all over the world? Why do we spend billions to maintain them? We need to retrench as a country. We are not the overlords of the world we once were. We are not the police of the world.
Leaving these countries will not make Muslims there like us any more than they do now. But it will enrage them slightly less. Meanwhile we can work to build a robust culture, founded on Christianity, within our country. A robust Christianity is the only thing that can stand against militant Islam.
I am ashamed and disappointed by Pres. Obama”s responses to these assaults on our countrymen. I also do not think for a minute that Romney, if President, would bring our troops out of these countries or close bases and embassies. It seems neither major political party sees the writing on the wall here. God help us.
What do you think? Should we have embassies in unstable countries made up of people who hate us? Should we have bases all over the world? Will either party do something about this?
14 thoughts on “America Needs to Retrench”
Ron Paul has been saying this for decades, but I doubt main parties will do anything in the near future to address our massive overseas presence. A lot of us are very much embraced with the notion of American Exceptionalism, and can’t really put themselves in the shoes of other nations.
Sebastian, yes he has been saying it. I am not a Ron Paul devotee, but many of the things he has said, including on this issue, I am in agreement with him on. Unfortunately he has come across as too far from mainstream to get nominated.
Should we have embassies in unstable countries of people that hate us?
‘people that hate us’…I am a Catholic working in South Asia. Sure as heck, Christians are a minority here, and sure as heck, there are a small portion of the population that think it’s their life work to make those Christians’ lives a living hell (or cut them out completely)…but I can say, sure as heck, that the vast majority of ‘people’ here do not hate ‘us’ (Christian, or Western, or American or…).
If we think they hate us, the battle is already lost. ‘They’ and ‘muslim’ are far too sweeping terms to use. There are millions of Muslims and Arabs who really want to just get on with their lives, in peace, in friendship, and really couldn’t care less – the problem is, precisely because of this, they usually don’t make the noise.
Unstable countries still need support – more than ever – and they need someone to reach out with a hand of friendship, like Ambassador Stevens (RIP) dedicated himself to doing in the case of Libya. That’s the risk of trying to build the bridge, occasionally someone extreme will knock you off the construction, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build (to paraphrase Mother Teresa).
We must keep loving, from near and far. Idealistic as that may sound, it’s the only option.
Lucy, thanks for your comment. Do we need an embassy to love people of a country? Is it even possible for a government to “love” a country or a people in a country?
Sure I painted in broad strokes and did not mean to imply that everyone in a country hated us, but if enough do to assault us, and we are not willing to defend our people, then yes, let’s leave.
And if many Muslims couldn’t care less and just want to get on with their lives, then how about we let them and remove our bases and embassies?
Unstable countries need support, perhaps, but is it the job of _the United States_ to be the ones to support them? How about their neighbor countries? We cannot support every country that needs help.
(Lucy, as an aside I was showing my wife this discussion and the cursor crossed over your picture and up popped a brief of your profile, which I didn’t know would happen. My wife was living in Tulsa near her adult children for two years when they talked her into going online to meet someone. She was a widow for 10 years. She tells me she was online (EH) 2days when a match was made. I remember scanning through photos when hers appeared, and I was going through them so fast that I past hers a couple photos back when my mind said, “Wait a minute, go back and check that out again.” I did and we stated communicating through the web site. I sent her my phone number and asked her to give me a call which she said she would; no word after a week. I sent it again, and again no answer and when I asked, she said she got a wrong number. So I sent it one more time, and after a couple days of no phone call I messaged her again asking if she is ever going to call. I got an email back saying, “I know, I know – I’m trying to get up the courage.” I’ve loved her from that moment on. We talked for hours every day over the phone for the next 6 months and I flew her out to O.C. CA to meet. We meet at the baggage claim at John Wayne Airport, a meeting I’ll never forget it as I watched for her from afar. We flew back and forth several times to see each other and meet family, and continued talking on the phone for hours in between trips. I finally popped the question a little over a year after our meeting online and married a couple months later, first in Tulsa OK by judge, and then here in O.C. by our pastor a year later.
You two make a nice looking couple, and we wish you the best.
Jim aka Stilbelieve [someone else had the ID with two Ls) and Natasha)
Thanks Devin for this opportunity to get my mind off of the serious matters we are facing in our country and our Church.
Bases in strategic places enables quicker response times to places that may need our help.
Sure, but does everyone need *our* help? And how many strategic places do we need to have? Here’s a map I found of our military presence worldwide: http://www.mysteriousage.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/US-Military-Bases-Around-The-World2.jpg
Am I reading that map right? We have troops in Russia and China back in 2001?
Yeah what that means, exactly, is unclear to me. Wikipedia had a list of all our military bases but not all the places we had troops of any kind.
And embassies are for the benefit of Americans working, living in those countries as well as people from those countries wishing to immigrate or travel to America. My wife of two years, and an immigrant from Russia (Siberia) of six years ago this Christmas week, and a U.S. citizen as of two months ago, has need for official documents from Russia concerning her $1000 per year pension (after 24 years as a language instructor for military cadets), in which she has to go to their embassy in San Francisco, 904 miles round trip. That is a hardship especially with Obama gas prices over $4/gal.
It’s not embassies in “unfriendly” counties that is the problem, it’s our President and State Department that are the problem. Especially when they outright lie to us about why things are happening, as they have the past couple weeks.
Stillbelieve, yes that is a good point, that our embassies serve Americans travelling and living in other countries. And for countries like Russia that are big and well-established and (relatively) stable, okay let’s keep the embassies. But in ones where like Libya and Egypt where there has been violent conflict and war, why not close them and tell Americans to stay away from them?
I agree with you that our President and State Department have grievously failed in the past weeks.
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The 9-11 attacks were committed by Saudi-Arabians, so why were you favouring the attack on Irak? Bush should have bombed Saudi-Arabia!
BTW, Afghanistan is used to harvest drugs and the profit is shared by the CIA. They need the money for their black ops.
Sigh. Taking care of and policing the world will be our end if we do not change course. We have too many worries stateside to even think we can “take care” of and offer aide to others. We are mortgaging our future to guard America’s ego of being the big brother for everyone. How can we give or offer hope of stability when we don’t even have that ourselves. Plus who is paying for all the aide??? Living off credit and loans is not a life, it’s slavery.