Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Back-in-the-day, America's interactions with the rest of the World were called foreign “adventures” or “entanglements” which are great words to describe our clumsy, lumbering foreign policy. Societies are complicated. We American's have no understanding of why people in far away lands are seemingly indiscriminately killing each other? But someone from there would understand so let the problems of other nations work themselves out until equilibrium is reached. Our presence in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Japan & Germany for-that-matter, are unsustainable because those places aren't America. As for America's interests: if something is big enough and bad enough that we need to invest blood & treasure, we have ample proof that we can do it from 30,000 feet & 5,000 miles away, then "good luck to the new guy."

There's no “winning” the kinds of conflicts we've been getting into. We can't win because we have a superiority complex: we think democracy should be spread around the world, or women should be able to drive, or drug use can be stopped. If people in the armpit of the world massacre each other, we think it’s our job to straighten things out, as if we know better. If there's going to be foreign entanglements, we should do it with money or with drones, and if it gets really bad... Nukes. Soldiers are for short-term-overwhelming-force-mopping-up-then-gone action. Otherwise, keep away from the hornet's nest, and spend dollars like we print the things.