Bankrupt in more than one way

Regardless what you think of the messenger, the message is on target:

...during a White House briefing by National Security Council aide John Brennan, Helen Thomas asked a follow-up question to which we almost never hear an answer:

Why is al-Qaida at war with us? What is its motivation? ...

To Osama, we started the war. Muslims, the ulema, must fight because America, with her "brutal crusade occupation of the (Arabian) Peninsula" and support for "the Jews' petty state" and "occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there" was waging war upon the Islamic world.

Terrorism, the direct killing of civilians for political ends, is al-Qaida's unconventional tactic, but its war aims are quite conventional.

Al-Qaida is fighting a religious war against apostates and pagans in their midst, a civil war against collaborators of the Crusaders and an anti-colonial war to drive us out of the Dar al-Islam. On Sept. 11, they were over here — because we are over there.

In fact, we're just about everywhere. Consider: we are the only nation that has divided the entire world into geographic units and assigned responsibility for each to a military commander. We are the only nation with troops stationed in scores of foreign nations. And our 'defense budget' represents roughly 40 percent of all military expenditures on the planet.

With all that poking around, how do we expect not to get drawn into every Hatfield-McCoy feud on the face of the earth? What's worse, we've largely squandered our moral capital in a quixotic post-Cold-War attempt to remake the world in our own image. The world noticed... and didn't care for the effort.

Once, we used to lead and persuade by example. We'd better hope the rest of the world doesn't mimic our choices of the last few years.