One of the problems both with conservative and liberal thinking is that they envision America’s strengths as infinite reserves. Unfortunately and sadly, neither are true.

Take the conservatives, for example: They’re big on the military. “We can whip anyone, anywhere!” they cry. “It’s just a matter of time and willpower!” If we lost somewhere, it’s because we lost heart. And we can invade anyone we darned well feel like if they get uppity.

Unfortunately, the idea that our military is all-powerful just isn’t true… And our enemies know it. One of the reasons I was opposed to the invasion of Iraq was because I didn’t like the idea of fighting two wars at the same time (anybody remember Afghanistan?), and I was afraid that locking our military forces down would paralyze us if someone else needed to be taken care of.

Unfortunately, Iran is smart enough to know that we’re stuck in Iraq for the time being — which is why they’re so blatant about going nuclear these days. By committing to Iraq, we’ve sapped the necessary strength to deal with other threats (and those who argue that invading Iraq was a good thing to save lives rarely discuss how the Iraqi commitment has probably cost us the ability to intervene in Darfur, where there are a lot more lives being lost than Saddam ever killed).

Bush projects an image that we are the world’s policemen. And that’s fine, except “policemen” has the reassuring sound of a large maintained force that can arrest several hundred men at a shot. Unfortunately, we’re more like the world’s security guard, on patrol in a gigantic department store; while we’re busy handcuffing one perp in the lingerie department, there are several other departments that are going to go untended.

In a situation like that, there is going to be crime. And when we take an hour to do the paperwork on some scuzzball, the other criminals will know it and take action. It could be that by stopping one reasonably bad crime, even worse crimes occur while we’re busy elsewhere. The question then becomes, What crimes are worth going after?

Alas, the conservative line of thought rarely allows for questioning as to whether Iraq was the right target at the right time. We have a big military force, and the only reason we’re not doing better in Iraq right now is because America doesn’t support the troops enough (and not that armies throughout history have had a series of resounding defeats when facing dedicated, native populations who engage in guerilla warfare), and that’s that.

I should add that there’s no question that we could annihilate the Iraqi people. We have atomic bombs, for God’s sake. But annihilating a nation is a very different thing from defeating a nation, where you theoretically leave enough native folks left over to run the place once you leave.

Our military is a tool. It’s a gigantic tool, the biggest and most effective tool in history. What we have is stunningly potent. But even John Holmes couldn’t fuck everyone at once.

That is the conservative fallacy — we can fight anyone, anywhere, anytime. The liberal fallacy is that we can feed anyone, anywhere, anytime. If anyone is starving, the line of thought goes, it’s because we’re too fat and secure in what we do. We could feed the world, except that we’re greedy bastards who lack the will.

We are greedy bastards, of course. But that’s not why people are starving.

If it was just a question of growing food, you’d probably have a pretty good argument going. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of effort to ship cans of stuff over to the nation of your choice. But it’s not just a question of giving free stuff to people.

The problem is the governments.

It’s a not-nice thing to say, but a lot of the reasons why innocent civilians are starving is because they live under the rule of incompetent and/or power-crazy governments who steal everything they can lay their hands on, ruin the economy with stupid and corrupt moves, and quash the spreading of actual news and facts.

We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the years to try to fix poverty and starvation, and the problem is not much better than it was when we began because these governments suck.

The question then arises of “How do you fix a broken government?” We’ve tried sanctions; doesn’t work. The sanctions never actually hurt the men at top who you want to drive out, because they take all the best stuff that manages to make it in, and it actually helps keep them in power because they can then spread propaganda to the people saying, “Your lives are bad because America is starving you.” (And remember, these guys don’t have Internet access to see what’s really happening.)

We’ve tried handouts; they don’t work well, either, because again, the guys at the top skim off a horrendous amount of it. And the charitable organizations aren’t universally efficient at converting dollars to actual aid.

The remaining option? Invasion. Topple the existing government. And not only is that not an option thanks to the absence of infinite military power, it’d almost certainly go over like a lead balloon given the traditional liberal abhorrence of using the army unless Hitler’s knocking on your door.

And even if we did give free food to the world, that would be another problem. The conservatives believe in infinite military power, but the liberals believe in infinite economic power. If we found a way to ship food straight to everyone who needed it, you know what would happen?

They’d live.

That sounds great, and it would be great, except that once they lived they’d begin to multiply. The free food and shelter and goods that we gave them would make them safe, and suddenly they would have big happy families… Which we would also have to support. Eventually, the population would grow to the point where we’d be spending so much of our money helping other people, who wouldn’t actually be contributing to our economy, that we’d begin to suffer. Eventually, we would stretch too much and collapse under the burden of trying to help everyone.

I’m not saying that we couldn’t stand to help more, of course — the current conservative philosophy of near-unalloyed Darwinism is a little too harsh (even as, ironically we’re probably doing more to help people overseas than we are to help the poor here at home). We could be doing a lot more than we are right now, and frankly I’d like to see us at least get to the point where we’re sagging at the edges trying to help people. But just like we can’t invade everyone, we can’t save everyone; the economy isn’t some miracle engine that provides infinite dollars for everyone who needs it.

Christ said that the poor will always be with us, and as usual He had a point.

No matter how powerful America gets, there will always be asses that need to be kicked and mouths that need to be fed. That’s the shame of living in a world with limited resources. But it’s the truth.

(Tell me I'm full of it)