George Friedman writes today about US history of trying to take prudent action within the framework of the Jeffersonian principle of avoiding foreign entanglements.
Jefferson undertook the complex and dangerous purchase of Louisiana because he thought it carried less risk than allowing the territory to remain in European hands.The risk, of course, was retaliation from the British.
In the same way, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, realizing that avoiding foreign entanglements was impossible, tried to reduce future risk.
Today, of course, the Islamists want to kill us. Friedman writes,
But the real challenge of the United States is defining the emerging threat and dealing with it decisively.It does not appear to me that our leaders are doing that. We are not even allowed to call people like Nidal Hasan a terrorist! Our soldiers' training manuals are scrubbed of references to any Islamic threat. We are arming al Qaeda terrorists in Syria. We take no action in Benghazi to support and protect our ambassador and four courageous men.
But, hey, who am I but a mere citizen journalist/blogger?
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