The decision by the U.S. Government to get more involved in Yemen and Somalia in the wake of the near-air bombing over Detroit has the phrase "When you're trying to get out of a hole the first step is to stop digging" screaming in my head. If a nation is having issues with foreign policy overcommitments the last thing you want to do is continue expanding missions.

The counter-argument will be: "Well, do you just want to do nothing? What is more important than the security of the United States?" To which I would reply that forever expanding the scope of the mission is the best way to make it unachievable. When we fail for that reason, THEN what state will we find U.S. security in?

There is no doubt that Yemen and Somalia are problem areas. They have been for some time. I have brought both of them up in the past when I was discussing why our mission in Afghanistan was flawed. We are trying to bar the bad people from that nation, yet as we push them out of there they simply move to other lawless parts of Africa and Asia and again set up shop. But when I brought this point up, I was trying to convey the scope of the problem in the hopes that we would seek other ways to achieve our ends. I didn't think our own government would see the same problem and then try to deal with it by spending yet more money, and throwing our lot behind yet more bad rulers and by providing the firepower that will once again kill innocents who get in the way (and who then harbor grudges against us forever). When you are trying to get out of a hole...stop digging.

If we "cut to the chase" in this whole issue it boils down to this: There are areas of the world that are not strongly controlled by central governments. Lawless regions, separatist regions, tribal zones, places controlled by warlords or drug lords. These areas will always attract the "bad guys" as they always have. It's a place to hide out from the law. Because we want to eliminate the bad guys we are basically trying to control these lawless parts of the world. This is not possible with our level of resources.

Perhaps our government knows this and that's why they are trying to use the existing government in Yemen to do things for them (Somalia, of course, really isn't ruled by anyone that we can work with). The government in Yemen seems thrilled to have our help (and why not? The money is already pouring into Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world. The near-attack over Detroit may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to Yemen's ruler and his supporters).

The problem is that the ruler in Yemen is not popular. He is exactly the sort we used to support in the Cold War that we knew were bad guys, but they were "Our Bad Guys" and they were anti-communist. Our support of such people has reaped us a bitter harvest in the past and one would hope that we would learn rather than repeat the same errors of supporting people we should be distancing ourselves from because they are, once again "Our Bad Guys" in the War on Terror.

I also find our amazing focus on airline security somewhat simple-minded. How many terrorists has all this shoe-removing and such caught us? How many bombings have been prevented? Was it worth the costs? Don't we understand that if some guy wants to terrorize us all he has to do is walk into a crowded area of...well...anywhere with a gun or bomb or gasoline and a bic lighter and cause HUGE amounts of carnage and fear without ever having to deal with that pesky airport security? (Imagine the resulting orgy of money and effort we will then throw into militantly banning bic lighters and gasoline cannisters).

It's a Free Society. There's a million ways to kill us. We can't be protected. We can bankrupt ourselves and "de-freedomize" ourselves trying though.