No further foreign commitments

I’m responding to Putin’s recent visit to Israel and how it impacts on our current situation. Let’s put ourselves into Putin’s mind to more easily grasp his calculations.

George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the current president’s drone bombardment of Pakistan have indeed rebounded to Russia’s benefit and alienated the whole Muslim world.

The U.S. continues to waste its money and resources on wars it had no business conducting on Asiatic soil to begin with. It is to Putin’s advantage that we spend our resources to the point we’ll not properly be able to respond to threats — domestic and foreign.

However with Syria in disarray as she now is, I think, will emerge from Alawite dominance to become Sunni, maybe to counter in the Israeli’s mind the Shiite threat from Iran.

If Putin can maneuver to draw the U.S. into the Syrian mess and the Israelis maneuver the U.S. into armed attack on Iran, the Americans will be even further weakened and unable to deal financially with its joblessness, needed financial reform and other domestic issues – education, health, infrastructure.

It is ironic that Putin and Israel should be forcing us into national bankruptcy in the same way Reagan by upping the financial ante for starwars brought down the Soviet Union to where it couldn’t compete.

What America must avoid is getting further bogged down by any deeper commitments in either Syria or Iran or, heaven forbid, both. Let’s attend to our own good, our common good.

Marion J. Reis

Wheaton