(This is literally the only sign of protest I have seen from the left about any war since Obama took office. Of course they couldn’t resist keeping Bush in the mix. Matt Walsh wrote a brilliant piece this week that you should check out on the absence of the anti-war left.)

Last fall, not long after Libya, we discussed Syria in my genocide class. The instructor wanted to know if there was anyone in the class who would not have done what Obama did (bombing Libya) if they were the one in office. I was the only one who raised my hand. Of course everyone wanted to know why. I said “Why Libya and not Syria?” “Well, there’s no proof yet that Syria is a genocidal action it’s just a civil war at this point.” I said “There’s not proof that anything at all was going to happen in Libya. Obama called Khadafi’s bluff. And he did it illegally.” I said “Where do we draw the line on intervention?”

Ever since the United States became a country we’ve been expected to step in and police the rest of the world. Everyone hates us for it, while at the same time demanding that we take action. Here we have France rabble rousing, shaking their ridiculous fist demanding we DO SOMETHING, and as soon as we say, “Well, OK, let’s take a look at the situation,” they suddenly back up and wave their hands proclaiming, “Just leave us out of it!” Useless, but what can you expect from France?

And then we waffle on it – like Clinton and Bosnia, (and this was eerily echoed in Obama’s remarks on Syria in the spring, and I commented at the time, btw, but only in my kitchen), and the “Well we just need more proof. We’ll step in IF … We have a red line drawn, blah blah.” I mean it was practically verbatim. Almost as if, dun dun duuuuuun! they had a playbook!

The United States is in the throes of years of sustained record unemployment levels. We’re still in Afghanistan. We’re under constant and total surveillance by our own government. Our civil liberties are under siege in a war perpetrated not only by our government, but by a hefty percentage of our citizenry. We’re being force fed a health care bill that we neither want nor have the ability to pay for. Clean up your own house, Mr. President, before you go about tidying others’.

We cannot and should not continue to police the globe. Do I find it heartbreaking that these children and innocent civilians are being slaughtered? Absolutely. Would I like to be able to be the big damn hero and swoop in and save the day? Hell yes. Has that EVER ended well for us? Maybe once, in WWII. And even there, even after we were the big damn heroes, it cost us millions upon millions of dollars because we helped those countries rebuild. We didn’t have to. We probably shouldn’t have, but we did.

For any president to arbitrarily choose which countries we’ll ride to the rescue of, and further, to do it without the consent of Congress, is a pompous and dictatorial move and should not be condoned.

We either stop intervening altogether, or we intervene at every single glimmer of a possible genocidal action by a sovereign nation. But to continue to enter blindly into these wars without a second thought to the consequences our own country and our own people will suffer is inexcusable. No war is small.

What would I do if I were president? I wouldn’t go to war in Syria. I also would never have given money and weapons to Syrian rebels. The same rebels who turned out to be Al Qaeda. (Remember Al Qaeda? The same terrorist organization that slaughtered nearly 3,000 innocents on American soil? The ones Obama assures us we don’t have to worry about any more? Apparently we don’t have to worry about them as long as we keep funding their terror.) But I wouldn’t just passively sit and refuse intervention. I would actually bring all our troops home to retire or patrol our borders. I would stop all foreign aid pending thorough review. Especially and particularly aid to the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups. The globe would be cut off. No more police force, no more billions in free cash, no more weapons. Nothing. We are one of the youngest countries on this planet. The rest of you fools ought to be old enough to take care of your own problems by now. And you can have the UN too. Now there’s a money wasting, hideous waste of decades for you. What a joke. Abolish the bastards!

There are times when the United States can and should go to war. Those times are in response to a direct threat or attack to our country. Even in those instances Congress, and only Congress makes the decision. Not the president. Syria is not our war and we should not make it so.