I thought that we were the liberators of the Iraqi people. Remember the parades of flowers and candy?

Since when did we become the attackers?

Focusing on a nit to avoid the point. There is a difference between attacking a country or its government and attacking its people. The US took considerable pains to avoid ‘collateral’ damage. As for being the ‘liberators’.. that is an arguable description.

Oh, ok. Trickle down protection. I’m sure the Europeans love that. We protect them first and some benefits trickle down to us. Why should they lift a finger when we are doing the lifting?

I thought that conservatives believed that our national interests should take first priority.

Huh?? I noticed that you took the quote out of context, which included “You said it.. not I…”. The first statements does not make sense and seems to be a bad attempt at an analogy to ‘trickle down economics’. Not the same thing. As we are seeing during the mortgage implosion, European economics and US economics are interlocked, though to which state they are really interlocked is hard to determine.

So why are we doing all the hard work for the Europeans who don’t appreciate us? So we bitch about their bitching. Our men are dying and our treasure is being spent.

To some extent, I wonder about this too.. which is why I even stated it . I do know that even though the EU is the primary consumer of Middle East oil and does not have coal nor shale-oil reserves, the effect on the EU due to changes in the Middle East will affect the US to some extent. Is the expense we are spending in lives and money worth what we could potentially get back in return through preventing economic or other problems.. not likely. Another item to note; of the EU nations, only Britain, which is technically not in the EU, has a ‘usable’ military. The rest largely depend upon the US’s through the UN.

If the Europeans feels that security welfare is an entitlement, then they have no incentives but to sit on their asses and collect the welfare. They don’t even pay taxes for that welfare. What a great deal for them!

You’ll get no argument from me here. To some extent, that it the point I was making. For another interesting point, look at the amount that the US contributes to the UN.. and then look at the general UN behavior.