Several members of this board have asserted the position that the United States is the primary threat global stability and that the world would thus be best served if it were to retreat from the international stage, practicing a kind of Splendid Isolation.And if you really believe that everyone that disagrees with conservatives somehow thinks that the world is all flowery meadows, rainbows and unicorns, then I feel sorry for you. It's not like agreeing that there are threats out there means that one can't disagree with the way they have been handled.
I have frequently been maligned for insisting that, according to neoconservatives, the threshold for meaningful threats dropped precipitously after 11 September 2001, when a small group of like-minded men killed about three thousand people using box cutters.
I think you'd find plenty of people who would deride the idea that we should be spending nearly so much money in the War on Terror. They'd tell you that it's primarily a political sop and that, given some sober thinking, it's obvious that we could choose instead to just accept certain statistically improbable risks without throwing billions at them, often uselessly.
Many people on this board are skeptical that the United States gains much from playing power politics. I'm not saying that they don't believe in maintaining military force sufficient for the national defense. What they do think, however, is that conservatives have vastly overblown the real and apparent threats to American national security.
