All the posturing and name calling is over for a while, back to the daily grind, but since Obama no longer has to avoid conflict, can we finally do something about Syria?
The US government is 16 trillion dollars in debt. Shouldn’t our first priority be to address this debt crisis, instead of racking up more debt with another foolish and expensive war?
We are falling into a financial abyss like Greece, where we’re at the mercy of lenders such as China.
I’m sure we can do both, and having Syria as an ally might be a good thing down the road…oil reserves and stability in the Middle East.
Not so sure about Syria being a foolish war, that’s a tough call, you might feel differently if you were Syrian, yes?
Sometimes doing the right thing is more important than turning a blind eye.
We’re not even close.
I am really glad Obama won, he is a good statesman …Romney was just scary.
I spend a lot of time in the states and as far as I can see you need to cut your dependancy on oil, its way too cheap which encourages wastfulness, there is only 50years worth left out there at current consumption so those gas guzzlers need to go!!!
No, Ben, as long as you’re here, we’ll have PLENTY of posturing and name calling.
And when you leave I can try and make up the loss.
I’m not going to argue with you, but I feel the need to point out the flaw in this statement.
The US does not have money. We can not afford to fly people to Syria to help them with anything.
Yet you still want to do just that.
Let me change it to a situation that is less on a national level and more on a personal level.
You have maxed out your credit cards. You literally have no money, you can’t afford a plane ticket anywhere. There is a shortage of manual labor in Washington. Sure the right thing to do is to drop everything and fly to Washington and help out. However you can’t afford that, fortunately your credit card company is willing to buy you a ticket, further increasing your debt, so you decide to fly out and help. You’ve done the right thing, but your situation is worse.
I agree that people in this country need to be a little less selfish and help each other out more. However they also need to get their priorities straight. If you can’t afford something don’t do it.
Has our “helping the world” approach got any returns with the Sandy damages? I haven’t heard of a lot of “the world” coming to our aid. Might be time to take a bit of a breather and get our feet back on the ground.
I doubt we are maxxed out as a nation, but even if we are on the wrong side of the balance sheet, don’t we have some responsibility to help those who are not as fortunate as ourselves?
A far as Sandy is concerned, yes, there folks who lost a lot, but in contrast to what that same storm did the Haiti, not so much.
It’s all relative, we are a rich country and our idea of poverty is nothing in comparison to the kind of poverty suffered in poor nations.
Are you saying that we should put our troops in harm’s way so we can have cheap oil?
Have you been in the troops?
Is being in harms way not thier job?
If maintaining American interests abroad is not a reason to use our military, then what are we doing in the Middle East at all?
You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
The military exist for a reason, the folks who join the military do it for a reason, it is not a peace force, it is a force of might, if they are doing their jobs, then they are in harms way, it’s the job they get paid to do.
And yes, I am ex military.
What is happening in Syria is criminal and by doing nothing we are supporting the actions of a criminal. Would you stand by on the playground as someone you didn’t know was getting beat up?
I’d gladly take a hit to my income, pay more taxes, if it meant that dictators were put out of business.
There was a great political cartoon in the paper on Wednesday. First panel is a postman, struggling under a gigantic mailbag of political ads. Second panel is after the election, and the postman has a small bag and saying “Glad that’s over”. Next panel, he’s struggling under another giant mailbag, this time of Christmas catalogs.
There was some overlap at my house, but I don’t think the annual deluge of Christmas crapmail has truly begun yet…
Or should it be jobs, jobs jobs? Wasn’t that what the discussion always seemed to come back to during the campaigns? Certainly they didn’t spend much time talking about the national debt in the debates…
If I’ve learned anything from observing the last 34 years or so of US involvement in the Middle East, it’s that stability is unlikely to be created by US involvement.
Apparently this is a very hard and fast rule when you’re dealing with banks and tax collectors. They tend to always win. How come those rules don’t apply for governments? If it’s not okay with us, how come our governments (local, state, national) keep doing it?
The President has almost no influence on the price of oil. The assumption that he does comes up in every Presidential campaign. It’s hard to really know how things would have turned out in the Middle East without our involvement, or with less involvement, but I wonder if it’s worth all the effort we’ve put in over the years.
Keeping the military industrial complex financially healthy.
Once again well written Mr. Foss.
Just wanted to add, to those engagements in the middle east, i think that a great majority of european citiztens think that the usa aren’t there to “bring demcratie” but to keep the russians/chinese/(anti-american)-islamists out.
Greetings
Byc
B.T.W.: How many americans did not vote? If you count every citizen who had the right to vote i bet that less than 30% really voted for Obama.
Well there’s that also 
Yes, it’s a hugely mixed bag, lots of reasons to do something, probably as many reasons to stay out. The sucky part is that innocent people are being killed by something that is preventable (in theory), so unlike a storm which can be predicted and even planned for to a degree, the Syrian people are being killed simply because they are in the way.
It would be wonderful if we did things for the “right reasons” and perhaps the problem isn’ so much doing it for the right reasons, but that there is more than one right? Sorta like the the naming of a conflict, from the Syrian civilian perapctive they may feel that it is a genocide, from the Syrian military they may think it is a foreign incursion or terrorism, from the rebels or insurgents position it is probably seen as a war.
My wife is on the “do nothing” side simply because we are not really players in that conflict, it has gotten very complicated as Hamas and Al Queda have become involved, so any support we put into Syria will be hard pressed to pick a side without alienating another side.
I think that at a minimum we should enforce a no fly zone so they can’t bomb the civilians and do some fly overs to take out radar and heavy artillery, this way the casualties will be limited to small arms fire and the civilians will have more time and space to make themselves safe.
@John Foss,
Stability better or worse, that’s a tough call, kinda hard to know what would happen if we hadn’t done something, each situation is unique and there are many factions trying to make a difference. I used to be active in international develoment, small projects in developing countries, grassroots stuff, and I often felt like I was swiming in quicksand, as a group we would discuss these same issues, wondering if things would be better if we simply stayed away. Have you ever tried to stay away when a friend or family member was struggling? It’s a tough call to know when enough is enough.
@BYC,
What do the Austrians think of the Syrian conflict? Is there a concensus as to the best response?
@BYC,
As to the voting, yes, a smaller percentage of the people vote in the USA than in other countries, so Obama probably only got votes from 30% of the total population, but if voting were mandatory he probably would have gotten a significant majority of the popular vote, winning by a landslide. The only people who support Romney are the wealthy and the conservative, both populations are overrepresented which is why they do as well as they do. Times are changing in the good ole US of A, the Latino vote alone is going to force the Republicans to change their positions on many things, many things.
It was a very enlightening election, shines some light on where we are heading, quite possibly the USA is going to become more liberal and socialist over time versus going back to our closed minds, closed border days of old.
They talked plenty about the debt during the Presidential debates:
It seems people don’t like to do anything about it because it’s easier to push our financial troubles onto future generations. But at some point, the interest on the debt will eclipse all other expenditures, and we won’t be able to afford basic government needs like defense, a court system, or transportation. You can also forget about being able to afford stimulus packages for job growth.
there was a time when the Republicans were the progressive party and the democrats the conservatives … so things can switch again.
On election night I was in deep blue country in the US (with kind words of Obama for the homeowner there on the wall…)
Well I have also to admit that the Europeans in the room (including me) paid for the champagne. Europeans usually do not grasp the details of US elections but were extremely worried by two aspects of the Republicans: regressive positions on society (abortion and so on…) and foreign policy. There was a strange poll in France that showed that only 8 percent of right-leaning people would have voted for Romney.
Since I suspect there are many worthy people in the Republican party why do not they stand up against stupid regressive societal issues and focus on running efficiently common goods?
That information is closely tracked; I’m pretty sure you can find it online. Many eligible voters choose not to vote, for various reasons. And possibly others chose not to vote for President, possibly because they didn’t like either candidate. Just as we have the right to vote here, we also have the right to not vote. But I don’t respect peoples’ right to bitch about stuff they didn’t vote on. If non-voters complain to me, I tell them to pipe down and vote next time; then I’ll listen.
Absolutely. As with economic conditions in this country over the last four years, the Romney campaign ran with many assumptions of how things should have been by now. But I don’t think anyone can be sure how it would have turned out had other economic fixes been tried. Should GM have been allowed to go bankrupt? Perhaps, as it would have led to a leaner, meaner GM. Time may tell.
Yes it is. Sometimes that’s exactly what that person needs, if not what you need, since you can’t help them if they aren’t ready for it. This is what Al Anon teaches.
Maybe now they’ll be able to again. For the last several years it’s been the Tea Party, kind of holding the Republican party hostage. Go against the ultra-conservative Tea Party and you could get black-listed. Maybe it’s time for the Tea Party to become and actual party, and be separate from the Republicans? Then they can be as irrelevant as I think they should be.
Multiple parties, coalition government, representative of the populace…
Hmmm, somehow I just don’t see other party being in favor of losing their percentage 
How can we get rid of the Electoral College system?