Bill

"Global Leadership" does not mean a duty for Global Action. In fact, a leader that is too quick to jump in first and do everything himself is often the worst kind of leadership, as it tends to disempower the very audience it attempts to lead.

Yes, we have grown used to having a warfighting army on the shelf ready to go for the past 65 years, and for 40 of those years it was necessary as part of our Cold War containment strategy and our commitment to defend Western Europe from a potential Soviet invasion. European nations require larger armies in peacetime than maritime nations (Japan, US, Britain to name 3).

We have become a one-trick pony and it has shifted the base of national power from the Congress to the Executive; from the people to the President. It has allowed an emotional people to act on our emotions and leap into conflicts without the cooling off period provided by the process laid out in our Constitution. For the same reason people can't buy a gun the second they want it.

But we don't lead so much as preach, cajole and dictate. Seems to me we are increasingly making more noise to a smaller audience due to the application of this very type of "act first, think later" leadership we have been applying.

The fact is the US has never suffered from having a small peacetime army. Yes, we have been slow to foreign wars, saving billions of dollars and millions of American lives. When did that become a bad thing?