Saudi soldiers stand at attention in front of tanks during a visit by Deputy Defence Minister Prince Khaled bin Sultan (unseen) at Al-Khoba on January 27, 2010.

It’s a little sad, really.

Before, it seemed it took a direct attack on our own soil to make us lose our shit, sacrifice our freedoms and ideals, and charge into a messy war we don’t understand with our patented monumental hubris.

Remember how the Iraqis were going to greet us as liberators? How they were going to pay for the brief war with Iraqi oil? How, in the end, the courage and sacrifice of our military was betrayed by the incompetence of the civilian war planners and occupation authority?

Obama is such a disappointment in so many ways, but he’s correct to let our friends in Europe and the Middle East, supply most of the troops and do much of the ground fighting.

We, of course, will probably have to supply much of the arsenal. The Military-Industrial Complex must be fed, after all. But it’s ridiculous to travel across the world to protect wishy-washy so-called allies to whom we’ve already supplied billions of dollars worth of American armaments. Now they want our blood again.

I would certainly support the French. I might even even support the Russians, to an extent. They are at least willing to put skin in the game. Will they put many boots on the ground? Probably not. They both seem to be planning long range, targeted attacks in response to the rage of their citizens and, they hope, to teach ISIS not to screw with them.

Considering the recent Russian and French military history of ill fated attempts to crush Muslim uprisings, it’s easy to understand their reluctance to invade.

If only some of us could learn from OUR sad history.

But it is Syria and its neighbors who are facing the real existential threat. Why do Muslims need us to protect them from their own medieval co-religionists? If they won’t fight for their own homelands, why should we?

So where are the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Pakistanis and the Turks? They are all threatened by ISIS but seem to be keeping their heads down while awaiting those ever faithful “crusaders” and “infidels” to rush to their rescue.

And why not? It’s always worked for them before.

You know, it’s not unmanly for the US to be “just” a helper. Some people need to re-learn how to defend themselves, much as they previously learned to wait for those suckers in the US to show up and fight their battles for them.

We can help. We have instruction books for all the billions of dollars in equipment we’ve sent them over the years, many with color photos and illustrations! We know how to find targets and surgically (kind of) eliminate them. We can mentor; we can even send in a few trainers. But, in my opinion, that’s about all we should do.

To our overvalued, unreliable and demanding allies in the Middle East, it’s time to dig out those big boy pants that the US taxpayer bought you and man up. Now you have to put them on, load the guns and go find the bad guys. That’s the hard part.

At this point, I would consider throwing in with the Kurds, or even the Iranians. At least we know that they will fight ISIS to the death.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” – A. Einstein