Foreign Policy

US security forces stink.

"In his final State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama noted in passing that the United States spends as much on defense as the next eight countries combined. He might have added that the proportions are similar for the Foreign Service and the intelligence community, which cost $50 billion and an estimated $80 billion respectively. The president might well have asked why, if that is so, is there so little bang for the buck in terms of what the U.S. taxpayer gets in return.
To be sure, no one has invaded the United States since Pancho Villa in 1916, but every war fought after 1945 has been either unnecessary, inconclusive, or a failure while the intelligence community is repeatedly caught flat footed in terms of anticipating the moves of both competitors and enemies. And a string of 294 fortress-like diplomatic missions around the world has done little to lessen foreign concerns over the seemingly persistent blundering of an imperial Washington that sometimes seems to be more concerned with style than substance. The Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan is, for example, currently sponsoring an “I Love English” video contest."

Government doesn't make us safer, but it makes us poorer.

"So people sometimes wind up in the wrong places and as a result people die. But one has to suspect that having the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time is somehow systemic in the federal government, particularly related to those individuals who have to do official tours overseas. When I was a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, complaints from officers and non-coms about the rotation system were frequent. One-year tours in Vietnam meant that soldiers were just learning how to do their jobs when they were replaced by someone new who had to learn all over again how to survive. Many did not live through the learning curve and one might reasonably suppose that some thousands of American soldiers might have come home alive if the system had been able to maximize combat effectiveness." 

Socialists can't manage.