I must have retyped this post a half dozen times because my care meter is almost empty. I'm at the hospital at my mom's side while I type this, so don't think my lack of caring is from being lazy or just not caring about the actual discussion here. Now, to the topic at hand.
I was going to quote people, but upon seeing the [m'kay] that was, I decided to keep this short and simple.
Fasty. *sighs* I'm an independent, for future reference. My views sway both liberal and conservative (which by the way, liberals are just as hard to argue with as conservatives are, it's called politics, [poo] as it may be).
I gotta say, you don't know a lot about the US military, it's allies, how NATO works, or even the basics of a real modern war.
Saudi Arabia. There, done. Just found you a strong US ally that wasn't mentioned before. Israel is a strong US ally. They don't want us to leave or stop supporting them. We've been allies since the 1980's and we have strong agreements with them. Matter of fact, only about 500 US troops were in Israel untill 9000 new troops were added in early January. We're not leaving, nor should we be leaving.
South Korea would be pretty damn pissed if we pulled our 35,000 troops out. They need us to keep the peace between North and South Korea.
Japan, considering they aren't allowed to build aircraft carriers, I doubt they'd want us to leave.
See here's what you also fail to understand. We are not alone. NATO is a massive alliance of military coordination and operations.
You do not just leave our less powerful allies to defend themselves. That would piss a lot of people off, which makes our country weaker. Also, you don't protect your country by putting all your forces in one country. We have plenty of men and women to defend our country on our shores. We could bring troops back from other countries if we needed to bolster our forces, as needed.
Having 65,000 troops in Germany provides a large number of men ready to deploy across Europe at a given notice. Having men in Japan and Korea provides men to deploy across Asia. You get the idea. You don't defend our country by making your arms reach confined to your own borders. You don't win wars by having the enemy come to you. How well do you think that would have worked in WWII? Just wait for Germany to start bombing the US like Japan did? No. You take the fight to them. By weakening your offensive abilities, you're weakening your defense as well.
Ron Paul may have said he'll bring the troops home, but I'm depending on him to see how it really is if he gets in office.
Oh, and Crater seems to be doing fine handling the rest. I wouldn't buy unpasteurized milk if you paid me. It should be a federal law to wear seat belts, not text while driving, and not talk on the phone without a hands-free headset while driving. Some things should be laws no
er what. I wish humans were smart enough to do the right thing without it being a law, but we're not there yet. I'm all for smaller government and freedom, but you have to draw the line somewhere.