Mixed Messaging of Confronting/Not Confronting National Security Issues

Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Apr 10, 2017 at 19:25

Question: Does America matter anymore?
After more than seven years of 'sequestering the American Military presence around the world, does America have any more duty to be the pre-eminent world 'police force'; or not?
The lawyers' and academicians' answer; apparently it depends.
Some think that when chemical weapons (of whatever nature) are deployed, some line is crossed in accomplishing that which war is supposed to accomplish - defeat of the enemy, both of mind and will. All that materiel determines is the means.
Not hard to face; America has enemies; has had enemies from even before the colonies form their second version of government; by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. What did that accomplish in the face of the enemies? The newly established nation showed it had the determination to defend itself from all comers, foreign and domestic.
Innate to that, though, was internally there was still dissatisfaction-the American Civil War proved that and such internal thinking is still innate to this day. Were it not so, the crumbling institutional educational structure provides more than adequate proof to that end. The first and second World Wars took this determination to the ends of the earth as powers of darkness absorbed the desires of the ancients and used all to try and defeat the world in global catastrophe. What stopped it? American resolve.
But in these later modern epochs of war-making, why is that resolve so shaky? In fact, is there even an effort to seek a common sense of resolve as the world makes a travesty of shattered dreams of humanity and brotherhood? Instead, from internally and externally, not only is that resolve buried under reams and reams of political discontent, one wonders if it can be resurrected in the American conscience or if the intent of some is to make out a monument of irreverence to its reference and bury the resolved under the catacombs deep under the foundation.
America resolve used to be found in the determinant 'national security issues'; foreign trade used to be an extension of that and as was demonstrated by Jefferson protective actions along the Barbary Coast, the beginning of a world-wide sense of international resolve worked its way into the world psyche and found itself deeply established in 1898 as the world was given notice and was later prepped for the great 'white fleet.'
Fast forward; and NATO type collaborations were the rule of the day as nations tried to protect against the likes of the Soviet Union. Even under a differing political machination, that threat has morphed; but it is not gone. Intermix the collaborations with the religious infighting that Islamist idealism are interjecting and one wonders, is there going to be a resolve to intercede for peace? Not if there is a Chamberlain-like consensus that warring factions will burn themselves out.
Who here thinks that the Russians will tire of their neo-Stalinist ideals and somehow orchestrate a peaceful solution to Syria's innate inability to provide a peaceful state which could allow the return of the refugees? What might an American resolve lend to the dialogue?
Maybe nothing but forestall the transition of the current strife in the region that will climax into a full blown World War III? But if the former America resolve that kept tyrants from wreaking total devastation and destruction on other parts of the world would work: is it really wrong to try?

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