I put the line somewhere above 0, Einstein.
The coming financial collapse this aggression quickens and worsens is going to claim a lot more than 0 lives, and harm hundreds of millions. I noticed that you didn't account for this, let alone imagine the broadest, vaguest comparison.
You haven't accounted for the harm these costs incur upon our nation at all, let alone judged them to be beneficial for the gain they get us. Hell, you can't even substantiate any gains from these bases and wars whatsoever. Nobody in Libya attacked us in decades before the bombing, and nobody has bombed us sin... Oh, wait. More Americans died to Libyans SINCE the bombing than in the 20 years preceding it. I can see why it's so hard for you to show results of the aggression you favor supposedly to protect us.
I'm the most aggressive and supportive of killing foreign barbarians to protect Americans that anyone can be.
All I'm saying is that, so long as we're propping up dictators we're actively oppressing peoples across the globe--something our ancestors rightfully killed and died to fight. So long as we're oppressing people we're hypocrites. So long as we're an active source of tyranny in the world, our noses aren't clean, and we don't argue from any sort of position of absolute moral authority.
All I'm saying is that "national defense" is not an excuse to enact the policies a stupid 12 year old could improve upon. It's not an excuse to flail about like a blind idiot and pretend that's defending us. It's not an excuse to blindly follow the idiots the American people elect.
I'm just saying that we should get our noses clean, to put it ridiculously lightly, before we pretend to have the moral authority to do anything we please. That's not to claim any acts of others are justified, it's just a philosophical statement that we should know better, and that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than the uneducated barbarians you want to wipe from the Earth.
Aren't you guys Christians? One of Hosea's (minor prophet, Old Testament) biggest messages to Israel was that they should know better. That all of their neighbors were doing horrible things didn't somehow make Israel perfect--didn't mean that Israel should have overlooked and excused its own moral failings.
Message today? Others' moral failures is no excuse for us to be lazy and sloppy logically or morally. Yes, our society is far superior to virtually all in the Middle East in most ways. That's no excuse to fund dictators so that we can place military bases and bomb anyone who threatens to trade oil with gold-backed currency rather than the dollar. That's no excuse to refuse to rationally assess the success of actions taken supposedly to protect Americans and "American" interests (which are usually the interests of international banks, not the American people).
That's what you're doing, ignoring the content of my messages and arguments, instead accusing me of "blaming" us for this or that.
And, while we clean up our act, I think we need a much more deliberate examination of the actions taken and actions available to combat the threat of foreign terrorism. How can you combat it while your nation often funds it and trains terrorists? You can't. So you stop funding it. Then you thoroughly examine what's left and how you can combat that.
Newsflash: There is not that much left. This is a fact, as testified to by every possible mathematical and scientific measure conceivable to man.
Justinian I, that's somewhat correct, but I don't think there's anything near so simple as an "us" and "them" of politics, aggression, and oppression in the Middle East, and any such assessments are vastly oversimplified.
I don't think anyone America's funded has ever "turned" on us. The elite of the globe, international banking elite rich beyond our wildest imaginations with control over trillions of dollars, absolutely love everything that every terrorist group has ever done. They absolutely love the military industrial complex; it enriches them and gives them the means to topple anyone who threatens their dominion over and profiting from everything on the globe.
A dictator we've been funding for decades plans to trade oil for a new gold-backed currency, not the US dollar? Suddenly he's a terrorist-supporting threat to America and needs to be invaded, or extremist rebels (just as bad as the current authoritarian) must be supported to replace him! I suppose dictators "turned" on the globalist elite, but not the American people.
What have we gotten out of Invading Iraq, Afghanistan, or bombing Libya? Absolutely nothing, and even worse sentiments of the peoples of the region. I don't really care what anybody thinks (they tend to be as ignorant as the average Amerikan), but I think when we get nothing out of actions which cost trillions and thousands of American lives, it's pretty [cluckin'] stupid not to stop those actions and fire and jail everyone who pushed them on the American sheeple.
The globalist elite who seek to be more of slave-masters over us than they already are absolutely love the psychological and cultural impact of things like the TSA groping our wives, mothers, and children at airports just to visit the wife's family for her birthday. They love our subjugation by "authority" personnel who used to be public servants.
The US people used to be sovereign. But they're losing more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more power to those who would oppress them.
Google is a quasi-government organization which logs everything it can about you and your actions.
Retailers log everything they can about your purchases and behavior, and they add extra charges if you don't sign up for their tracking program.
We're pushed more and more to purchase with plastic, because it allows for more tracking and surcharges on every transaction of our lives. Cash still accounts for 70-80% of transactions, but you wouldn't guess this from the focus on pushing more credit and debit card usage on us.
The US military is doing exercises in US towns and cities. On targets representing pregnant women and old men not even aiming firearms at them. SWAT teams are used more and more often to harass and subjugate people for misdemeanors.
So yeah, I see a little more to it than "a necessary measure to protect us" when the elite subjugate us, kill people, and get our soldiers killed for absolutely no gain.
I think a person has to be one hell of an ignorant sheep, completely incapable of independent thought, to be brainwashed enough to believe that human nature has magically changed in the past few years.
History is literally filled with tyrants seeking more power over the people--who they literally always view as livestock not deserving of dignity, let alone rights and freedom--and seeking to take more of the products of people's labor.
It is my opinion that willful ignorance of this move toward subjugation and slavery is the greatest evil of our day. Tyrants with money and power have always sought more of both. But people were generally unhappy with this, and America used to represent a monumentally successful rebellion against such tyranny.
Since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 especially, we've certainly fallen a great deal from this ideal. In recent years, more rapidly than average. The American people are subjugated (government authority) and emasculated (government authority and chemicals in foods), prepared for even greater robbery and slavery.
When something is claimed to be for security, conveniently subjugates the American people, and doesn't even achieve anything of the security which it's claimed to be for, I think everyone who buys the claimed purpose of the action is a damned fool and a rotten human being.
Edit: I'm sorry for all the trolling and filibustering, Einstein. I'll try, in the future, to discuss ideas more. I'm trying my best to achieve your level of intellectual and social development, but I'm just not as smart or righteous as you.
[I wish I could obey forum rules]