Partly because of our strategic location and partly because of our large population and strong defense, their are no real dangers concerning a conventional attack on this country.
Yes we were attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and terrorists have attacked specific targets, but the idea that someone could invade and occupy this country is not really a danger.
Our troops are engaged worldwide in "Peacekeeping" roles that are sometimes open hostilities. We have significant forces in Europe, and Asia to serve as a first line of defense and to guarantee the safety of certain countries from potential enemies.
These arrangements primarily started after the world war or during the cold war. Our involvement in the middle east is a bit more recent and was to prevent a dictator from grabbing certain oil supplies, although we called it protecting an ally (sort of) from a brutal dictator.
The dictator was deposed and in his place we have a fairly unfriendly regime and increase terrorism that we have been combating. Our involvement in the middle east in complex and since we seem to have enough of our own oil now, why are we still there?
The argument is that we have to combat terrorism before the terrorists attack us here. It seems thought that our presence creates more terrorists than we can kill. We have killed quite a few but unfortunately its hard to avoid some collateral damage as we do it, so we kill some innocent people which leads to new terrorists.
Now the best cycle.
We spend a lot of money on defense and I'm certainly in favor of defending this country. I have some trouble seeing how our national interests are being served in some of these actions.
The bible tells us to beat our swords into plowshares. Don't see much of that going on.
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