I think it was a mistake to get involved in Iraq. Iraq and Iran are counterweights of evil. Let them fight each other- none of our business. Same with Syria. Same with n korea really, as it's a failed state we need Star Wars defense and that's it.

How big exactly would nazi Germany have grown to before it would have "affected us"? What if it had nuclear bombs? Wasn't it prudent to stop it before it got too big to defeat?

If we had not battled Hitler's Germany , he would have taken over the world until someone stopped him. Same with islam

That's what Ayn Rand thought too

Blaming our leaders has the effect (if they heed it) of giving the crazy bad guys a veto over our foreign policy. It's irresponsible to allow that to happen.

So you're saying the extermination of a race of people isn't sufficient justification to enter a war ?

I (and hopefully the country I live in) will live and conduct transactions by the principle of value-for-value transaction. If the rest of the world (or even the universe) chooses to live the way they live, that is their own business. As soon as it interferes with MY business, then I will act. If that means that I have to build a Galt's Gulch to live according to my values, I will do so.

You are a tough cookie.
I like it.
Why indeed should we get involved in the world's atrocities? Well then, the next question becomes: If by our inaction ISIS for example grows bigger and stronger and creates a world wide caliphate, shouldn't we have tried to wipe them out when they were relatively smaller and weaker?

Listen to the following YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppykq...

Blaming our leaders (not ourselves) for so-called blowback is not stupid. It is calling a foolish act as being foolish. It is calling A as A.

The motivations of crazy bad guys are their own problem, indeed, and frankly none of our business until it directly affects us.

No, actually I do not necessarily agree that we should come to the aid of our traditional allies. Horrible atrocities do not necessarily affect us directly. If those horrible atrocities DO affect us directly, then it is in our best interest to act.

Nation-building is not our responsibility. Tasks that take longer than our lifetimes require a nation that operates on the principles laid out in America's founding documents and/or Rand's books.

Pearl Harbor was adequate justification for a war. The Germans were off the US Atlantic coast prior to 12/7/1941. Had they done enough to merit us going to war before that time? That is certainly debatable.

The oil embargo after the Rape of Nanking was a choice to not endorse the use of force. Japan's actions (and the U.S.'s) had consequences.

Iraq, to me, was the poster child for lessons we should have learnt much earlier than this. (1) If we're going to intervene in a conflict, we should first understand what it's about and have chosen a specific set of goals we will achieve. (2) Having decided to intervene, we should be committed to stay (and the American people should be prepared to accept the necessary casualties) until we achieve the goals. This includes follow-through by occupying the aggressor countries after the war, as we did after WW2, until we can trust them not to try again once we leave. (3) We should be willing to censor the news so that the public don't prevent (2) from happening (this was our major failure in Vietnam and in most wars since then).

If we're not committed to carry out all of the above before we begin an intervention in a foreign country, then to begin at all is nothing but a stupid waste of American blood and treasure.

You didn't take it quite far enough. If, as you say, we fear the blowback effect what response, if any, would you recommend, particularly when the atrocities are most horrible? There is no doubt that you would agree to come to the aid of our traditional allies, but how far should we allow ISIS, or Hezbollah or Hamas to go before we act? I am not trying to be contentious because I agree with you, but eventually there will come a point where it will be in our best interest to act.

"We" deliberately provoked Japan to attack us by declaring an oil embargo against them after the Rape of Nanking. (We were then the world's #1 oil exporting country.) That is not fundamentally different. It was just FDR's sneaky way of making it look (to an American public who didn't want a war) as if Japan started the war. Which they did, but not against the US.

But go ahead. Tell me that modern interventions are different, and were done just to obtain oil. Yeah, right.

Blaming ourselves, or our own country's leaders, for so-called blowback is stupid. It just hamstrings ourselves without really helping victims at all. Anyone who's read AR should know better. The motivations of crazy bad guys are their own problem.

I think that was just another example of a demented brain venting excess stupidity. However, Ron and Rand aside how could one sleep at night knowing that those innocent people were being gassed. How else could the USA reassert it's strength after appearing so weak for so long.
The government has made it's bed and now has to lay in it at our expense.
In a word...it SUCKS!

Of course. Obama was and is the enemy within.
So many sacrifices of lives and limbs in addition to the $Trillion. Our soldiers have to operate in a civilized and controlled manner to their detriment. For the jihadists anything goes. Same of course with the dictators.

Thank you. I'm glad he returned safely too.
There is no way to know if the different factions could have ever learned to live peacefully side by side, but certainly without any enforcement of peace, it was guaranteed not to work.
I hate Obama and everything his administration did and his throwing the peace achieved in Iraq is at the top of the list.

So again, you're saying the U.S. never should have entered the war, barring Pearl Harbor ??

It wasn't the cruise missile attack that supposedly set him off (his own words, despite what the sister says). It was the American air strikes in support of the anti-ISIS coalition fighters (particularly the Kurds). If it was the Americans that upset him, why kill Brits?

The extremist elements of Islam have waged war against Western society since Mohammed decided that conversion by the sword was righteous in the eyes of Allah. Every effort to seek a peaceful solution by the West has only been viewed as time to "buff up" in preparation for the next jihad by the extremist Islamists.

As the most successful example of Western civilization, America has been a key target for the Islamists. We helped Osama Bin Laden defeat the Russians in Afghanistan, saved the Holy city of Mecca from the Iraqi dictator, stopped the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs, and we got 9/11 in return.

Chamberlainesque thinking of somehow avoiding conflict and staying out of the fray to secure "peace in our time" is dead end thinking. It doesn't work. Never has. Strong support of Muslims trying to achieve a non-violent society is one thing that will help, but unfortunately non-involvement is not an option open to us.

Like it or not, if we understand the oppressive end of a worldwide caliphate, we have to be prepared to aid all nations under assault by jihadists. That includes Muslim nations, a deteriorating Europe, Russia, China, and the Philippines.

Well Obama and HRC left the country in a vacuum.

Fully cementing a democracy sounds good but with the Sunnis ,Shia and Kurds all hating each other splitting the country might have been the only way.

Many Sunni sheikhs say once the American soldiers left, the minority Sunni population of Iraq suffered under a government dominated by the Shiite majority. That government stopped paying most of them, and even arrested many.

(As an aside, we should note that there was a political, as well as a military, dimension to American influence in Iraq: Obama continued to support the government even as Sunni fear and anger grew. "We were encouraged," he said in 2013, "by the work that Prime Minister Maliki has done in the past to ensure that all people inside of Iraq — Sunni, Shia and Kurd — feel that they have a voice in their government."

(But they did not feel that. Sheikh Zeidan al-Jabri led a series of Sunni protests and sit-ins in Anbar, which were eventually violently dispersed by security forces at the end of 2013.

("For a year, we did not attack anyone; we were an example of democracy on an international level," he told me from exile in Jordan. "And what did the world do? The world simply turned its face from us and gave Maliki the permission to attack the demonstrations and kill hundreds of innocent demonstrators.")
I am glad your husband returned safely.

The problem with Iraq wasn't the war, but the reconstruction. The war was an unrivaled and absolutely dominating success. Reconstruction got bogged down because of mismanagement and a fundamental misunderstanding about congruity between governmental/economic structures and religious tolerance. Islamic-based nations can't sustain an economy based on choice because their ideological mindset is communistic - not individualistic. We (being America) made the cardinal mistake of believing that everyone who wants "freedom" wants free markets and representative government. They don't. Their religious hierarchy is incompatible with the tenets of a free market and representative government which respects freedom of speech and religion. That is where we stumbled (and we made exactly the same mistake in Afghanistan, only there we misunderstood the extreme tribalism as opposed to sectarian identity we see in Iraq with Shiites and Sunnis).

The only way a country like that was going to change was for us to run the entire country for two generations - similar to what we did in Japan and West Germany following WWII. Nation-building doesn't happen overnight or in the space of a couple of years, but over 3-4 generations.