Americans Involved in Too Many Foreign Conflicts, New Poll Finds

At The Hill, "The Hill Poll: Majority says military involved in too many places." (At Memeorandum.)

And pluralities don't think U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq has made us safer. Check the link. For the general public, it's war-weariness that explains this. But on the ideological fringes, the findings will give support to isolationist voices who deplore the forward exercise of American power.

What's interesting about about the survey is there's no mention of President Obama's deployment to Libya. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times had an outstanding piece on outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. He's been on record of late saying that the U.S. is a little tired of war, and that the military needs a break. And from the Times' piece:

Gates' concern for the troops is a key part of his legacy as he leaves office.

He has pushed the lumbering Pentagon bureaucracy to turn out new armored vehicles and other equipment to keep soldiers safer in combat and to get them treatment faster when they are wounded.

And he has become a voice of caution and even outright opposition to committing American forces to new wars. Gates publicly questioned the need to join the NATO air war in Libya, arguing that the military already was overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since then, he has sought to limit the U.S. role.

Gates emphasizes that he would not hesitate to support sending troops to another conflict if national security were threatened, and he favors only "modest" reductions in troop levels in Afghanistan in coming months. That puts him at odds with some in the Obama administration who want to bring U.S. troops out sooner.

But the longer he is in office, Gates said, the "heavier" the burden he bears when he is asked to make decisions that inevitably involve sending more American troops to their deaths.

"I've got a military that's exhausted," he said. "Let's just finish the wars we're in and keep focused on that instead of signing up for other wars of choice."

I think that's a fair statement, and it's especially noteworthy considering President Obama's amateurish and hypocritical rationale for military intervention.

War on Terror Goes On

At ABC News:

Osama bin Laden's death puts an end to a chapter that has cost the United States thousands of lives, billions of dollars and countless resources. But it's unlikely to end the U.S. war against terrorism or reduce the resources spent on such missions, though how they are allocated will likely change.

U.S. Navy SEALs killed -- in the words of President Bill Clinton -- "public enemy number one" in a top-secret, risky operation in Abbotabad, Pakistan Sunday night.

The mission itself was unlikely to have cost the U.S. military a substantial amount, experts say. It was conducted by 40 SEALs in the dead of night with four helicopters and lasted about 40 minutes. Any costs associated with the mission would come from the Department of Defense's overall operations and maintenance budget.

It's the hunt leading up to the raid that experts believe was more costly. It likely included aerial predators, unmanned surveillance aircraft, satellite imagery and other high-tech means to pin down bin Laden's location.

U.S. intelligence officials for years had been looking for a messenger close to the al Qaeda leader. They were able to track down his name in 2007 and finally spotted him in 2009. In August, they received a crucial tip that bin Laden was hiding in a mansion in Abbottabad, a city near Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

The mission that killed bin Laden was only a part of a wider effort, lasting more than a decade, to take out the man who declared in 1998 that it was every person's duty to "kill Americans wherever they are found."

More at the link.

And related, from Andrew McCarthy, "A Different Kind of Justice."