A Call to Action.

When I wrote those words the morning President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, I was thinking of how we could influence our friends and allies, not our enemies. Those words were later echoed in the president's White House rose garden speech, as I noted here.

Sadly though, they were just words in the president's mouth.

Today, he again links America's foreign policy with that of one of our allies:

I think we always have to guard against mission creep. So let me repeat what I’ve said in the past: American combat troops are not going to be fighting in Iraq again. We do not have the ability to simply solve this problem by sending in tens of thousands of troops and committing the kinds of blood and treasure that has already been expended in Iraq. Ultimately, this is something that is going to have to be solved by the Iraqis.

It is in our national security interests not to see an all-out civil war inside of Iraq, not just for humanitarian reasons, but because that ultimately can be destabilizing throughout the region, and in addition to having strong allies there that we are committed to protecting, obviously, issues like energy and global energy markets continues to be important.

I think we need to have an honest conversation about the extent of America's willingness to protect Israel from her neighbors.

I think if the president, way back when he won his prize, could have more forcefully leaned on ... Israel to control her extremists (the settlers who simply continue to build on contested lands, often with government permits) then perhaps America might have more a reputation as a true playmaker, instead of as a rigged referee continually acting in the interests of one of our "strong allies".

Eventually, if not already, Americans will tire of continually being told that rooting out terrorists anywhere in the world is in our national security interests. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan ... everything we touch, directly or indirectly, turns to chaos.

Our troops, and our weaponry, is the best in the world at destroying, we've seen that. It's the rebuilding that we're on the hook for, and admittedly the general population here at home doesn't know the enemy players from the allied.

More and more, we're going to see honest comments like those that came from the president today: our national security, more and more, involves protections and commitments in a region where America's own interests are waning: imagine what that money could do elsewhere, here at home, or in building up governments and future allies in developing nations.

Israel is in a bad place, with the governments imploding around her. Some might say, this is the case of reaping the consequences of the actions she has sown, over the years.

Just as, in coming days, Americans will look back at our early 21st century military follies, and perhaps better understand why we are no longer viewed as the greatest generations whose wars saved the world and promoted peace. We are reaping what we've sown, and even those honest enough to offer up apologies now must understand, you can't erase and do-over the destruction now, and wish a competent replacement government into being. It's not that easy, in reality.

You can't influence your enemies, necessarily, through strong words and encouragements, but we might have had a chance to help Israel understand that military might alone will not secure her borders.

Americans, in days to come, will listen to the peoples of the next generation, who know something of massacres that have occured since the Holocaust. The younger Americans will indeed listen to libertarian politicians like Rand Paul, and less to lobbyists who've purchased our politicians.

We can hype the threat to us here at home:

We also have an interest in making sure that we don’t have a safe haven that continues to grow for ISIL and other extremist jihadist groups who could use that as a base of operations for planning and targeting ourselves, our personnel overseas and eventually the homeland. And you know, if they accumulate more money, they accumulate more ammunition, more military capability, larger numbers, that poses great dangers not just to allies of ours like Jordan, which is very close by, but it also poses, you know, a great danger, potentially, to Europe and ultimately the United States.

as the president did today, but as the fears here at home lessen, it'll be a tougher sell. Declining standards of living, less opportunities for the non-elite, the influx of undocumented Americans with no citizenship rights... these are the problems the next president will face.

While President Obama is busy cleaning up after the past administration, and mouthing many promises to keep, the resources we should be investing for targeting America's troubles are being ignored. That will not hold forever.

IT's not isolationism, nor is it disloyalty, to believe that if you want to be a strong player on the world stage, you have to have the backing of your own people. You have to meet their needs firsts, before you "protect" the interests of "strong allies".

If we don't address our own internal failings, and soon, history will continue to be written by the victors. Only the prize won't be symbolic and the words merely mouthed.