Trump does 180 degree shift on Syria

Fishking said:

Close, but not quite. There are be what is best interests for the people and those very same people do not want it. The concepts we try to impart in some of these countries are completely foreign to their understanding and they do not want it, even though it would be better for them if they did. If they wanted it, they would have it. If they wanted it, the insurgency would end it a matter of a few weeks because no one does anything there without the neighbors knowing who it is and what they are doing.

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That is the problem. Who are we to tell them how to live. If they want a king the same as England that is not for us to decide. If they want to tie their government to their religion again that is their choice not ours. We need to be flexible with other people and allow them to live their life the way they want. Our way is not the only way.

The fact of the matter is if they do not have something our rich and powerful want to exploit our government would not be involved anyway.

There are lots of small countries all over the world we could easily help with a lot less money than we spend on our military to do the bidding of the rich and powerful.

Fishking said:

You're confusing what it takes to garner public support and what it takes to declare war.

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We have only declared ware on 5 different occasions. 11 if you want to count individual declarations during WW1 and WW2. There is no confusion. War was declared and the people supported the decision.

Fishking said:

The U.S. was culturally non-interventionist and it used to take a lot more to pull us into a war. This is no longer the case.

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I don't think so. We have not declared war since WW2. We have gone more than 70 years without declaring war.

Fishking said:

We also have a Constitution, and if we ignore that document we are not a nation governed by the rule of law.

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The constitution basically says that congress shall declare war and that is what has happened 11 Times. However there have been thousands of times our military has been used without the declaration of war dating all the way back to right after we became a country. What is your point.

PIPEWRENCH said:

I don't think so. We have not declared war since WW2. We have gone more than 70 years without declaring war.

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Yes...again, before WWI and WWII, the U.S. was very reticent, culturally, to get involved in other people's wars. We'd do our own wars but wars on behalf of others, that was something we didn't like doing.

Fishking said:

Yes...again, before WWI and WWII, the U.S. was very reticent, culturally, to get involved in other people's wars. We'd do our own wars but wars on behalf of others, that was something we didn't like doing.

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There were only 3 declarations of war before WW1 and none after WW2.

However, the number of military actions (where war was not declared) are too numerous to list. Just the military actions with the Native Americans number into the thousands. So numerous are these military actions that a lot of years there were more than 1 per year. The use of our military when war was not declared dates all the way back to our founding fathers. They didn't think they were unconstitutional. Our military has been used in police actions all over the world and on our own people almost every year since we have been a country.