Why is it always the conservative position to support any war?  We conservatives are supposed to believe in fiscal responsibility but we throw that belief out the window when it comes to any foreign conflict, no matter how foolish.

Take Vietnam. In 2008 inflation-adjusted dollars, Vietnam cost the U.S. $686 billion. More importantly, the war cost us 58,260 service members killed in action with another 1,724 missing and 303,644 wounded.

A complete waste of lives and money.

Our leaders foolishly thought that Vietnam was a strategic domino in the Soviet Union’s grand scheme, but it turned out the conflict was a civil war and Vietnam’s communists posed no threat to our national security.  Yet, even today, my fellow conservatives complain that we didn’t fight to win, without questioning whether we should have fought in the first place.

We now see the same attitude with Iraq: Why didn’t conservatives question the reasons for fighting the war?  We removed the greatest obstacle to Iran in the region (Saddam).  Is it the U.S.’s job to plant democracy around the world?  In Pat Buchanan’s book, “Where the right went wrong,” he points out that many of the great empires throughout history – Roman, British, Ottoman – crumbled because they overcommited their resources by trying to impose their form of government around the world.

Shouldn’t this be a theme that conservatives should champion the next time one of our leaders tries to drag us into a conflict that doesn’t impact our national security?