There is a saying: If you break it you own it. I don't think it applies to Afghanistan in the sense that we now have ownership of the country nor does it in the sense that we broke it because it was already broken to begin with. But by ousting its former government we have encurred a responsibility to put the country on stable footing before we leave it. It is no longer merely a question of our interests but is also one of duty. Or at least this is the mentality of many in the US. Perhaps the best thing we could do for the country is to leave it, and let restabilize along new lines, but although that idea is alluring its veracity is far from certain. As for the more general point that the US resorts to wars too often, and it spends too much on its military. I agree, and indeed all of this money spent has not even bought us dominance over primitive tribal militias with only extremely modest military hardware. It seems to me that the greatest threats confronting the US are likely domestic and ones of international economics. We would be better off spending more on those problems, or else just decreasing spending to avoid further debt, by spending less on the military. Homeland security and surgical strikes seem to be a much more efficient and cost effective way to deal with problems like terrorism than are the foreign entanglements we repeatedly jump into. At the same time, it cannot be denied that if terrorists got ahold of WMDs that the results could be catastrophic enough to justify drastic preventative actions. And as time goes on, WMDs are becoming more and more easily accessible.

I am very pleased to see Andrew Bacevic on RT. He is an intellectual force to be reckoned with. But in US "mainstream" press, you would hardly know it. In fact, the vast and growing numbers of American progressive thinkers have been left outside of the national discussion. But the mainstream media is loosing its importance as the alternative media increasingly is the only one with some "real" information. One can find much more on the writings of Andrew Bacevic on Antiwar.com, and many other information sources gaining in popularity.

I thing that US foreign policy is fundamentally defective. It relies on threats, sanctions and military action. This creates long-term problems. Instead of at least trying to make an honest effort to make peace with somegovernments, like N. korea and Iran, who are not threatening anyone and could be useful, the US just antagonizes and provokes them. If the US thinks that it can confront iran or N. korea and not suffer immense casualties, then it is truly deluded.