Think About This

"There is no way the US can return to limited government without abandoning its neo-imperial ambitions and its middle class entitlements. The Pentagon, as that limited government president Eisenhower understood, is as much a big government program as Medicare or Social Security. Limited government Americans are rightly skeptical of a government that insists on a massive investment of time, money and human beings in open-ended nation-building in a place where these is no nation and no credible government. 

I suspect Obama can appeal to these people if he frames withdrawal from Afghanistan in the Beck model [blgr's note: Yes, that Beck!]: it cannot work, it has taken too long, it has cost too much, it has ended too many lives. Above all: we cannot afford it. There is no such thing as absolute security in a world like ours. We need to deleverage the neo-empire as urgently as we need to deleverage American debt.

And why on earth are US troops still in Germany? What dire threat to national security are they deterring?"

-Andrew Sullivan [L&R]