We live in a time that will almost certainly be remembered in history. Revolutions are sweeping across the middle east, a region of the world that has known nothing but repressive dictatorships over the last century or so.
The United States has always had a complicated relationship with this region of the world.
One of the first bold international acts of America was to take revenge upon the Barbary States of Morocco and Algiers for routinely capturing American merchant ships and demanding ransoms for the sailor's lives. The young U.S. Navy took the fight to the enemy, attacking the actual cities where the pirates made their home base (This is where the 'Shores of Tripoli' line came from in the famous military song).
That was in the old days when the United States followed a humble foreign policy which restricted us to protecting our own interests and fighting only those battles that represented a direct threat to the nation's interest and avoiding 'entangling alliances'.
We're now bombing Libya for the second time in our history and although it's certainly a noble cause, it would be prudent to evaluate the extent we're willing to further enter into the affairs of the middle east which are the very definition of entangling alliances.
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