I take your point but a long career covering the government leaves me in no doubt that when an official lists “goals” he or she is sending a message by the order in which those goals are listed. Also, the order in which they are listed seems to conform very closely with the policy goals of the Obama administration and the importance they attach to those goals.

OMB’s basic role is to use the budget to set administration priorities by deciding who gets what. This memo is part of that process of picking winners and losers.

What you said makes sense, and is pretty true, but I need to clarify that when I said “go get him” I was mostly referring to sending in a specialized team (Say Deltas?) to arrest him and bring him to trail, let the UN and AN send peacekeepers in, and let the AN take control. Have Africa setup a stable and just government.

As for the original topic, I’m not quite sure how we got onto Darfur and other countries .

Such a title for this article clearly misrepresents what is actually in the memo. At no time is any priority given to any of the four “principal challenges’ over another.

In reality three of the four pricipal challenges is directly linked to current Defense and National Security issues. Energy & medical cost are tremendous burdens on the current Defense budgets.

Just a few days ago DoD Buzz’s leading article was on the ever increasing cost of medical care for our troop and their families.

To your last point first, if we had anything to drop on enemies besides JDAMs, or maybe had enough troops so they weren’t forced to fight for their existence when pressured, we might be able to kill less often. I guess we agree that far.

Now, without making this too personal, I have a great deal of experience with addicts. The ease with which you write them off betrays a lack of understanding that I can’t hope to correct in the space of a comment. Poverty is a cycle unto itself. Mental health has not been a primary concern although it generates huge friction within our society. Addiction is intertwined throughout.

You show some insight when you say “…how can we help them get out of poverty if they can’t help themselves first?” That’s really the whole problem in a nutshell. We have a hard enough time fixing societal problems in our own country where we speak the language and know the population and terrain. Have you ever had to invite the police into your home, or lived where greater police presence was necessary? It’s not a pleasant experience for anyone, cops included. Fighting a society’s problems is very personal and very nuanced. It requires great patience and focus over years and maybe decades. But another nation’s problems? You seem to think we can just march in and make it all better: “…we just need to go get him.” And then what comes next? We cannot stay “over there” long enough, nor do we have the troops or other people needed to effect lasting change. We do not have the patience, or the money. So what will come next is more of the same, plus we will have killed people and lost some of our own.
______________________

This has gotten pretty far off topic, so I’ll just say every item on that priority list in the article is critical to our strength and vitality. The armor means nothing if the body inside atrophies. Hopefully we will also quit wasting our energy trying to save the world.

Most Americans who live in poverty are into drugs and alcohol, how can we help them get out of poverty if they can’t help themselves first? We pull them out they’d just go right back down under due to their addictions.

Now countries like Darfur has been asking for international help for awhile. If you ever watch the news about Africa you would see people asking “Where is America?” We wouldn’t be uninvited guest. Their leader has a international arrest warrant out for him, we just need to go get him.

As for the civilians, we can easily stop the civilian deaths if we didn’t drop a Jdam on someones house everytime someone sneezes near one of our soldiers. (Much like we are now doing in Afghanistan)

We’ll just let our poor dumb fellow citizens rot, cause hey, it was all their fault… but when the economy burns out (like it practically has already), how are we going to pay for rescuing all the forgotten souls everywhere?

Ever hear this Thoreau quote?: “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious intention of doing me good, I should run for my life…” We do not live in these places, we lack an understanding of the problems. You advocate the US going to “help” people with some of the most fearsome weapons ever devised. The outcome every single time we’ve tried it, is we kill a shamefully large number of the people we’re trying to save.

This is NOT an argument for “isolationism” or any other buzzword you can think of. If we wish to help, we first must understand. We must be humble. We must know the limits to what violence can achieve, and only join battle when no option remains. That’s how to be a force for good in the world. The “S” in USA doesn’t look like the one on Superman’s chest. The ONLY job this nation has is giving its citizens a stable place to live.

This is a good discussion, but I have to disagree with most if not all of what you said.

“I think a review of history will show that no one can subdue every enemy. No nation or empire ever has”

Your right, that’s why we’re working with our allies. We couldn’t of won WWI and WWII without allies, the same goes for every other war we been in. Oh and with Uzbekistan, and North Korea, we probably would of dealt with them if it wasn’t for Russia and China. Remember the Korean war? We tried once and China got in the middle of it, Russia even sent covert pilots to help North Korea. With Saddam, we thought he had WMD’s, he even said he had them, but we were wrong. He bluffed and got screwed over for it. Tho he was still a evil man and deserved what he got.

As for the millions of Americans who are suffering, I fail to see how helping those who made bad mistakes is more important then helping those who never had that chance to make that bad mistake.

And while those Americans that are suffering are losing their homes, or have no insurance. Those in Darfur, have no food, have to send little girls and boys to walk miles to bring back drinkable water (as its harder to spot children), while most get raped during the trip or forced to join the militias, and if they don’t comply they get their hands, if not heads cut off.

Yea, I guess being a Isolationist country as you say would be better, let our brothers and sisters who can’t help themselves just suffer. I mean it only led to WWII last time we tried it.

As the worlds only super power it is our job to help those who are less fortunate, who cares if their American or Iranian, if their British or Chinese, were all human and live on the same planet. We need to start thinking in a international way and work together with our allies, not in a national way and pull back behind our borders. If we withdraw from these countries someone will fill the gap, Russia and China is waiting.

I guess I see millions of Americans suffering — 15 million American families are losing their homes and 46 million have no health insurance. I can’t see the wisdom of freeing people elsewhere while our own people are falling into penury and our industries are moribund. Why not take care of the Americans before we try to target all of the tyrants? I think a review of history will show that no one can subdue every enemy. No nation or empire ever has. And engaging in endless warfare and helping to induce a worldwide economic meltdown, we have lost a good deal of the most powerful weapon a nation can wield: soft power.

That said, I just disagree.

And if we were going to take out tyrants, why not go after the worst first? Was Saddam worse that Kim Jong Il? or the president of Uzbeskistan? Or even worse than Hu Jin Tao or Wen Jao Bing? Hardly.

OK. Point made. I think. Thanks for the discussion.

Daniel Russ
Civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com

Estimated U.S. oil shale reserves total an astonishing 1.5 trillion barrels of oil — or more than five times the
stated reserves of Saudi Arabia. This energy bounty is simply too large to ignore any longer, assuming that the reserves are economically viable. And yet, oil shale lies far from the radar screen of most investors.

But we here at The Daily Reckoning are on the case. Just yesterday, I caught a first-hand glimpse of a cutting-edge oil shale project spearheaded by Shell. I trekked out to a barren moonscape in Colorado to tour the facility with Shell geologists. To summarize my findings, oil shale holds tremendous promise, but the technologies that promise to unlock this promise remain somewhat experimental. But sooner or later, the oil trapped in the shale of Colorado will flow to the surface. And when it does, it will enrich investors who arrive early to the scene.

Daniel Russ
Civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com

As for Darfur, I thought that was in Africa, not the middle east. And perhaps one reason we haven’t went into Darfur is so we don’t “upset” China.

If it were as easy as you say we would be doing it. But unfortunately shale oil is dirty and hard to extract and even worse, it’s very expensive to extract.

Rather than continue in the 19th century, we should build alternative power sources and begin the vital process of weaning the US off of oil– and thusly, the need to keep invading the mideast– I mean if the Darfurians were over oil, we’d have saved them a long time ago

Daniel Russ
Civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com