First of all, I do believe that the federal government has incorrectly taken control of things that should be left up to the state, local, or private sectors. By doing this, they are spending tax dollars on things they have no business being involved in. However, I do believe that that job of protecting our citizens is one of the things that falls to the federal government to control and manage.

Secondly, I would agree that the federal government is wasting much of its tax revenue on wasteful programs that should be eliminated or turned over to state, local, or private management. I would even agree that the federal government does a poor job of managing the military and that much of what is spent could be eliminated by better efficiency and organization. The argument could probably be made that the federal government could “afford” this war if they were not wasting all of the money they shouldn’t be wasting.

So, what does all this mean? Let me pitch this whole war thing another way…

Let’s say you have 3 kids. One day one of them is walking down the hall in your house and just drops over dead. No warning. Nothing that you could have done to stop it. A few days later you find out that your child had a rare disease that has no symptoms, and without warning can strike. Since you did not know there was any danger there was no indication that you should do something to protect this child.

To make matters worse you find out that that disease is caused, in most cases, not by something that you did, but rather by the combination of places that you have lived. It is just luck-of-the-draw that your two remaining children also have this disease in them just waiting to strike with no notice.

The doctor tells you that your remaining children could quite possibly live a full life with the disease never affecting them. But, the disease is there and he gives you 50:50 odds that it could strike again at any time. The doctor then tells you that there is an experimental treatment that so far has had great success and would raise the chance of survival to 85% or 90%. There is one problem though. Since the treatment is experimental your insurance will not cover it and the cost is $1,000,000 per child.

You know without even looking that you do not have $2,000,000 sitting in your bank accounts to write this check that has a high likelihood of protecting your 2 children. You are lucky though, the drug company is willing to give your children the treatment in return for you making monthly payments. You review the loan documents and in the fine print you find that if you die before the full $2,000,000, plus interest, is paid back you are obligating your children to continue the payments for you.

You have two choices. 1) Stick to your “no deficit spending” policy that you have for your family and take the gamble that the disease will never strike. 2) Realize that there are some things that you do not gamble with and commit you and your children to $2,000,000 worth of debt.

I think the choice is pretty clear and simple… at least for me. It is not the money the matters, it is about protecting the people that you are responsible to protect. I think you can be pro-war or anti-war, but I don’t think you can simply use the “we can’t afford” it argument to not choose a side. Either we can’t afford it because we shouldn’t be there to begin with, or we can’t afford to not afford it because we should be there. That is the real issue that needs to be decided, and the real issue that Obama had to struggle with.

Constitutionality – If this war is just, and not merely a war on a religion or an ideology we don’t agree with, why have we not declared war in accordance with our Constitution? I can tell you why we haven’t. If we limit ourselves to the confines of the Constitution (what a wacky and crazy idea, since it’s just a “G**d*** piece of paper”), we would have to go back to Congress and justify our entanglements in Pakistan (who is an ally, but that hasn’t stopped us from bombing their civilians) and Iran (who has yet to enrich uranium beyond a level achieved by Southern Company’s Georgia Power). By declaring that we are pursuing a “Global War on Terror” during the Bush administration, we are attempting to give ourselves “carte blanche” when it comes to where and when we can attack any nation around the world.

Imperialism – Muslim extremists are not attacking us because they hate us for the freedoms we enjoy here. They are attacking because we are trying to force our belief system upon them there. We’ve been telling people around the world how to live for the better part of the last 100 years. They don’t care about how we live, but they want us to stop telling them how to live. The foreign aid we “give” to them has strings attached to it. Every dollar we give in aid must be spent on products and services provided by American companies. Not that I am supporting foreign aid, but what benefit do they really get when they cannot spend money to suit their needs? Other strings our “gift” includes: policy decisions made on our behalf and unbalanced trade where American companies dump exports, to name a few. Would we stand for it? No.

They use tactics like suicide bombs and 747s into the side of buildings because we weren’t listening, just like their governments in the region. The only way they see to make the governments there listen is to resort to violence against civilians, so the logic follows that it would work with us as well. What our military invasion response did was awaken the inner extremist in many of those who were previously able to sit idly by, until Team America showed up to blow up their homes, mosques, and “Main Streets.”