This thread has moved on apace.
I have an admission to make. I opened the thread just after steve started it, got distracted and then read the initial post without looking at the title, I then wrote my post. Net result I missed the Israel bit in the title and, despite being post #6, had only seen the opening post.
My second confession is that my previous anti-American rant comes from a place of love. I have always been a fan particularly of the founding fathers and the constitution and the idea of America they embody. I think this leads me to feel more let down by the direction of more recent trends: being let down by a friend being worse than betrayal by a stranger.

On a more Utopian note what do you think would be the effect of the US reducing its military expenditure to a point where its forces were only equal to Western Europe (as a block with similar GDP and population), any savings to be diverted into an enormous hearts and minds operation. What could you do with that kind of budget?
Reduce subsidies to US producers of cotton and rice which would kick start agriculture in some of the world’s poorest countries and shame Europe and Japan into following.
A foreign aid budget that would make friends for the US all over the world.
The US provides Israel with a subsidy of about $500/cap/year that kind of money extended to the Palestinians’ along with real pressure on Israel to give up enough land to make a viable state would do more to reduce the risk of Islamic terrorism than any size of military.
Is a stockade always the best way of protecting your population? Might making friends with them ‘injuns not be a better bet in the long run?