America Universalis IV

Unfortunately, it is, for some unknown reason, utterly impossible to embed Fox News video onto Blogger. As such, you're just going to have to click over to view this video the old fashioned way.
Luckily that means when you vomit, it won't be all over my blog.

If you didn't click over, I'll sum it up. Senator Marco Rubio, one of the many GOP candidates for president is unhappy about Russia's intervention in Syria. It seems that Senator Rubio would rather that it were American lives being wasted in the great Middle Eastern quagmire, And why is Senator Rubio so incensed about Russia's intervention in a war thousands of miles away from America's borders?

"It diminishes America's importance!"

I've said it before, and I'll likely say it again: the political class treats international politics like a game of Europa Universalis IV. Their goal is to outmaneuver their rivals, at any cost of money or manpower, but it's no more serious than an autumn afternoon on the gridiron. How would you like to lose your life for someone else's inflated sense of importance?

"The message they're [Russia] sending, they're actually more reliable than America under Barack Obama."

America hasn't been particularly reliable before Barack Obama either, except in creating chaos.

"But, most importantly, to replace America as the most important outside power broker in the region, and that's the purpose of these air strikes." 

"We're beginning to look like a junior partner under Barack Obama."

And again, who cares? I'll bet we're also low-ranked in international cricket and competitive Starcraft. You have to pick your battles, and who in their right mind would pick any in Araby?

"He's an anti-American thug, in the Middle East,  always acted against our national interests"

What national interests? Moreover, what nation? Bashar al-Assad is not planning to flood my home with either Mexicans or Syrians, unlike some people I could mention. This makes him less of a threat to my national interests than most of the people running for US President this year. Assad 2016?

"I don't think the choice should be between Assad or ISIS, I think they both need to go."

I feel World War II was the same way. Probably a lot of things are. You cannot simply wish the world the way it should be: there are costs for everything. Sometimes the cost is too high.

And, should America take Rubio's advice, the cost will be twice as high. Where President Putin is intervening to prop up his ally, President Bashar al-Assad, Team America World Police has the somewhat incomprehensible goal of defeating every party actually on the ground in Syria in favor of a liberal opposition that nobody has actually seen. We've actually made a foreign policy out of No True Scotsman.

Don't join the military. The American State views you as manpower, a renewable resource. You, the individual soldier, are less valuable to your leaders than some hypothetical lives over in Syria. No, not even that, less valuable than some point of abstract post-war principle that some weapons are bad and others, namely the ones that we use, though no less brutal, are not. This slavish adherence to arbitrary rules is only "principle" that has survived our newly Godless world, and its a principle that leads to senseless destruction for all who hold to it.

Of course, Rubio just plans on flooding this country with Mexicans to replace you, so for him it's a wash.