george washington warned against ''entangaling foreign alliances. he said we should stay out of the quarrells of other nations. before world war 2, we mostly followed that sage advice. but now, in 2009 the united states is an overstreched empire with 820 military bases in 139 countries. us military leaders seem to think it's god's wish for us to be in every nation on earth. we have NATO, the north atlantic treaty orginazation which should have beed disbanded after the cold war. it serves no useful purpose. but it's hard for the imperial goverment to give up the empire. we have enough problems of our own. wedon't need to be going overses looking for dragons to slay. those geniuses george w. bush and john mccain wanted te bring the former soviet republicsof georgia and ukraine into NATO. america would then be under legal binding to defend these countries against russia, a brillant move. fortunately they failed because america doesn't have the military strenght to defend georgia and ukraine. we have 33,000 american troops in south korea as a ''tripwire'' for war. south korea is an advanced industrial nation with almost 50 million people. it's time to get out and let them defend themselves, as we should also do with germany and japan. america's armed forces should soley defend america. leaders all over the world know american officials love to play the role of modern day roman emperors. many of them save defense dollars and let uncle samdefend them. it's time to come home. messing around in other nations' affairs has produced nothing but war and terrorism.