It seems to me that in the post WWII era, with a noted escalation in the post Cold War era, we fight far more often for national emotion than for national interest .
Fear, pride, anger, ego, false duty, etc. It rarely ends well when we confuse emotion for interest. To make matters worse we have even morphed our national security strategy in this same era to codify an emotion-based approach to interests.
We need a return to the practical pragmatism we practiced more as a rising nation. We've lways been driven by emotion, be it our decision to fight the Barbary pirates while everyone else paid tribute, or the constant string of "remember the xxxxx" battle cry's that work so well to motivate Americans to war - but it has gotten worse in this era of self-determination, shifting balances of power and our own strategic confusion over all of the above.
Clint Eastwood once said the best acting advice he ever received was "Don't just do something, stand there. Gary Cooper was never afraid to do nothing."
Our foreign policy is not Eastwoodesque or Cooperesque in any way. Certainly not Wayneesque, and in no way George Washingtonesque. We need to just stand there and think about that.
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