Just before the McCain-Obama election, someone told me that it won’t matter who wins the election because the next president’s goal will be to spend as much money as possible while the dollar still had some value.

Mathematically, the US can’t pay the debt, even if the debt is monetized. At some point, all governments eventually default on their debt.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?

–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.

Jeff, is there room to debate the size of U.S. military? 100%. Do American troops at some stage need to pull back even if there is a good chance it all goes to hell and hand basket all over again? Yes. However, there are not many Americans, except the extreme far left who would never fight even if their families were being slaughtered, who are comparing anything current day to Vietnam.

As far as what motivates terrorists? They will kill people with no military involvement, or with military involvement. There is no happy place where we figure out their ‘feelings’ and we all get along. Come on. Many of these true believer terrorists are literally still in the stone age. They aren’t leaving.

Michael -

I’d have thought the parallels with Vietnam would be obvious. In both conflicts, you are fighting an unseen enemy who hides in civilian clothing amongst the general population. And both conflicts have resulted in the untimely deaths of many US soldiers, with precious little to show for their sacrifice.

As regards what motivates a terrorist, one of their motivations will be a sense of injustice. This would explain the video producted by one of the July the 7th bombers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4206708.stm). It would also explain why you never hear about countries like Belgium or Holland being threatened with terrorist attacks – those countries know better than to invade countries which pose no threat to them. And if you look at the terrorism over recent decades related to Israel and Northern Ireland, much of it has resulted from perceived injustices from what are seen by many in the local population as occupying forces.

I disagree with your assumption that terrorists will continue to kill people come what may. Look at what happened in Northern Ireland. Also, let’s consider the issue of the taking of American lives in particular, given that the US is supposedly in Iraq and Afghanistan for reasons of national secuirity. Surely the terrorists are more likely to take American lives when the US in their backyard than when the US poses no threat to them. They must know that every body bag makes it harder for the politicians to justify maintaining America’s presence over there.

Jeff

For a second take away all of the American shortcomings, real or perceived, and let’s examine the logical ability of some of these Islamic terrorists (that is not a knock against all of Islam, just the nuts). What do the extreme ones do? They practice Sharia law among themselves. People that far off on a limb are not motivated by logic or rationality. They will kill for some excuse forever — embedded in the stone age — no matter what the West does or how they react.

Michael (Covel) -

The fact that someone believes in Sharia law doesn’t make them beyond reason.

No legal system is perfect. People who believe in pure Sharia law are no more blinkered than people who believe unquestioningly in their own country’s justice system.

No doubt history will judge some aspects of today’s Western legal systems as barbaric, others as ridiculously lenient, and others as illogical. It’s all a matter of perspective…

Jeff

“The fact that someone believes in Sharia law doesn’t make them beyond reason. No legal system is perfect. People who believe in pure Sharia law are no more blinkered than people who believe unquestioningly in their own country’s justice system. No doubt history will judge some aspects of today’s Western legal systems as barbaric, others as ridiculously lenient, and others as illogical. It’s all a matter of perspective…”

This is f****ing nonsense.

Shalom @ Michael David Rubin,

Also, our logic may be accurate(perhaps we read it somewhere or heard it from someone) but divorced from our own experience and intuition, which often results in local conclusions that are often wrong.

This is no different from most traders that try to follow someone else’s system(rather than making it their own) but fail.

“Everything that logic can give us is ultimately founded on something other than logic, call it faith, or common sense, or intuition, or insight, or primary intellectual conviction.” – C. S. Lewis