Randy's October 12 Roundup

Open letter to Rep. Neugebauer:

I have read your October 12 Roundup and have taken your Spending Survey.

You are moving in the right direction to control federal spending but don't have sufficient allies. You need to cross party lines and coordinate with people who have similar opinions on government spending. Start with the Blue Dog Democrats.

With respect to military activities in Afghanistan, I don't believe in fighting half wars at half strength. My first preference is to bail out of Afghanistan. We have no business trying to "save" people who don't want to be saved. When the Russians were in Afghanistan, they least had a major point, which was to pull it into the Soviet bloc. They learned that was a difficult fight and pulled out, even though they had an incentive to win. We learned in Vietnam that if there is not sufficient US public support to "save the world for democracy", the minimal troops we send there with their hands tied behind their backs, are scheduled for slaughter.

The idea of controlling terrorists on their home ground, so that they not perform their terrorist activities here, has some merit. However, no one seems to believe that the Taliban is planning terrorist activities in the US. If Al Qaeda has terrorist training camps in the area, they can likely be identified by aerial reconnaissance, and we can bomb the bejeebers out of them, without setting foot on the ground.

With respect to Pakistani atomic weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, we will have little control over that no matter what we do. Afghan and Pakistani neighbors, such as Russia and Iran have the capability and incentive to control that development. Let's leave it to them, while we concentrate on maintaining and refining our own atomic weapon capability. Similarly, the nations of the EU have a stake. Let us give them an opportunity for an independent show of force.

Let us recognize that the US is rapidly sinking as a world leader for two reasons; loss of financial power and misguided attempts to do good in the world. When the UK gave up its so-called "colonialism", the African countries, which it left, reverted to shambles and the UK itself fell into semi-oblivion.