Tom Dempsey wrote:I'm not trying to be snarky here, but, I do wonder how many of you have spent any significant time actually beyond our borders. The opportunity to keep advance infrastructure in place around the world is part of what makes the US the undisputed No.1 military power in the world. This is our stuff, parked on their land, and the locals are just as NIMBY/suspicious of it's presence as American's would be about, for example, a Bolivian Army advance base parked in upstate New York just in case the Canadian's decide to attack them or their "allies".
I used to spend a good bit of time traveling outside the US. Have not for several years, but that will probably change this year.
You do have to watch those Canadian's............ Mayo on everything.....just not right,
Most of the foreign aid could be viewed as rent. If you are in favor of further withdrawal from the world stage, I sure PRC and RF will be quite happy to take the USA's place at the table. Opportunities once lost are rarely regained without pain. And yes Murph, other countries do pitch in, France was in Haiti before the US got there following the earthquake. The Koreans and Australians fought by our side all through our Vietnam engagement. Even the PRC has humanitarian missions all over the world. It's a big world and should be viewed as such. As for that Montana "utility" that got the PR electrical grid contract, if you can't smell the corruption in that deal, blow your friggin' nose!
Used to be that we spent a lot of effort aiding countries just to keep up with the Russians and the PRC -- seems that folks have forgotten why that might be important to do but would rather crawl back in their holes and pretend that the rest of world doesn't exist or matter.