Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
We are back to this national interest thing again (which is really boring). If the elected President of the US believes something is in the national interest then your differing personal opinion is irrelevant.
Just as irrelevant as your personal opinion of Germany's military deterrent capacity and its impact on Germany's national interests.

The topic of the thread is the avoidance of small wars. I stated that my personal opinion is that we'd avoid a lot of small wars, and an enormous amount of expense and trouble, if we applied a much more rigorous standard of evaluating national interest and avoided commitment in cases where that interest is anything less than clear and compelling and where our goals are not clear, practical, and achievable.

Of course that's only my opinion, and of course it means absolutely nothing: nobody asked my opinion or listened to it before they went about trying to install governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and nobody's going to ask my opinion if any subsequent exercise is contemplated. If we only posted about matters where our opinions make a difference we'd be doing threads like "what shall I have for dinner".

I have no doubt whatsoever that the US will continue to do stupid things. My personal opinion is that not doing stupid things is better than trying to do stupid things better... but that opinion, like my other ones and like most opinions expressed here, has no bearing whatsoever on what actually happens.