Letter to the editor

Here's a letter the I emailed today to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on June 18, 2014.

In the movie, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," Doris Day sings the popular song, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)." This is an adage the United States could employ with advantage in its policy in the Middle East, Africa and throughout the world. Our several international military interventions (with troops, drones, money and weapons) in the last three decades have invariably produced dire results.

Indeed, the eruptions of violence in the countries where we've meddled or invaded, as most recently evident in Ukraine and Iraq – as tragic as they are for the residents of those nations – merely support the conclusion that our foreign policy, which relies almost entirely on force and sanctions, is uniformly an abject failure. It's not "isolationist" to demand that the U.S. desist from such policies and actions. Instead – in the off-chance it matters to American politicians – it's common sense.