Middle East: Is It Time to Come Home?

Is it not long past time to do a cost-benefit analysis of our involvement in the Middle and Near East?

In this brief century alone, we have fought the two longest wars in our history there, put our full moral authority behind an "Arab Spring" that brought down allies in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and provided the air power that saved Benghazi and brought down Moammar Gadhafi.

Yet this week U.S. embassies were under siege in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and U.S. diplomats were massacred in Benghazi.

The cost of our two wars is 6,500 dead, 40,000 wounded and $2 trillion piled onto a national debt that is $16 trillion, larger than the entire U.S. economy. And what in heaven's name do we have to show for it?

We face pandemic hatred of our country from Morocco to Pakistan. The sight of American flags being ripped to shreds and burned by mobs has become so common over there we seem almost to have gotten used to it.

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Mex Seiko

It's time to come home. My thoughts exactly. We lost 3,000 lives in 9/11 and invested 10,000 as a response taking somewhere between 50 thousand to 100,000 lives in the process. We Liberated the Iraqi people only to open them up to extreme Islam control. Now we have Islamic Extremism "springing" all over the place. That said I'm concerned that by vacating all Middle-East premises w leave them room to plan and plot to come here and bomb us again. We would have to be laser sharp at detecting all these plots and dissolving them.
- aceituna
  
  Our problem is that our latest president did not continue on the same path that the previous president started on and messed up the whole thing. If Romney wins he wil have a terrible mess to clean up, not only foreign policy but many domsetic policies also. We are going to have to be patient and encourage him as he tries to undo all the crazy knots that Obama has tied.
  - Mex Seiko
    
    I don't like the current prez for many, many reasons, but dealing with this collective mess of crazy Muslims is not something that this candidate or that candidate or even the previous prez can do right. The whole Islamic thing is very difficult. You can't say you're at war with Islam, but we are. You can't say you're killing Muslims, but we are. We're not fighting terrorism. Terrorism is like a symptom, a side effect. We are fighting Islam, suicidal fanatic lunatics. There are many, many Muslims that are rather cultural, like the bunch of Catholics that don't go to confession weekly. They're passive. For now. But when rubber meets road, they are Muslims and eventually we'll have to deal with ALL of them. ALL.
aceituna

It is time to stop sending monetary aid to the many countries that we do especially those where Muslim is the main religion and there is persecution of non-Muslims.
Old Observer

That's a good question. For one thing, we should stop sending money to those countries that hate and attack us. They do not use it for the good of their people, but buy weapons while the elite live grandly–remember the gold bathroom fixtures in Iraq a few years ago? We could certainly use a lot of our soldiers on our southern border!
Wordman

Clearly, we need to re-think our middle east policy. Obama doesn't have a clue. Supporting the so called Arab Spring was a total bust. Those dictators were bad character, but they kept radical Islamic passions in check. Any successful approach is going to have to factor in the culture. Bush thought we could defeat and rebuild Iraq a la Japan. Nice try, but It apparantly doesn't work with Islamic countires or we just don't have the national patience to finish the job. But, If we're going to dis-enage from the middle east as many conservative are raging about, we're going to have to achieve long-term energy independence. The Chinese will fill the vacuum in a heartbeat, and they wont have the Christian vs Muslim cultural issues hindering them as we do. Apart from that, the Swiss model of foriegn policy advocated by Ron Paul is sounding more and more attractive. Need some REALLY sharp people to figure it out and take action, people who wont put political correctness (right or left) ahead of making wise choices.
- Evermyrtle
  
  I think Obama does have a clue, He knows exactly what is going on and is doing nothing to stop it. We must remember "He is one of them and will never desert them, he has proved that he will support them.
  
  We are between the devil an a hard place, a Muslim and a Mormon.
LoneStar

We have only one Friend and Ally in the middle-east and that is Israel. We need to get the heck out of all the muslim countries, they are full of hate for the USA and Israel. They will soon turn against Israel, and we must not abandon our Friend Israel no if ands are buts about it. [ Vote Romney-Ryan] obuma has to go before the USA is done far.
http://www.facebook.com/brad.lewis.7946 Brad Lewis

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend
the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and
domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or
purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the
duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."
If you had termites would you wait till the next contract date to have the exterminators deal with the termites. If not, then why don't we do something about politicians when they break their oath of office.
We don't have time in our nation to go fishing, golfing, when we may be sitting on the Titanic. The ship is going down and we act as if we have all the time in the world.
One president said, " Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." You may say that your lone voice doesn't matter but your voice teamed with thousand of other is a force to be heard.