On election day, the Ace of Spades website posted a picture of two Iraqi women, with purple-stained fingers showing they had voted in an election.

It was a “Get Out The Vote” message, noting that whatever hardships or inconveniences YOU may experience by voting, “These women literally risked their lives to vote”.

My first reaction to that was, “And THE ONE can hardly wait to sell them out”.

One of my biggest worries about Obama is that his rhetoric on Iraq, and rumored comments about Israel, show an almost casual willingness to sell out allies when convenient.

A commenter on another blog asked, “Who appointed us to be their guardians? Why is it America’s job to make sure they are safe?”

I feel the answer is we’d rather not have the entire world as a nuclear-armed camp, based on the idea that the more countries with these things, the greater the chance that some will eventually be used.

Our alliances with these countries are not out of the goodness of our heart, but for our own best interests. Sell one out, and you can bet the others will sure take notice.

That commenter seemed to be saying, “To hell with them; let them take care of themselves!”

Well, the problem there is they might do exactly that, and we might be less than thrilled with the results.

If countries under threat (Taiwan, maybe South Korea, even Japan) feel reason to believe that our word is no longer any good, they’ll almost certainly feel the need for self-sufficiency in nuclear arms as the only real deterrent to someone like China. And note, those countries ALL have the necessary economic, industrial and technical wherewithal to go nuclear. All they need do is make the decision.

Others, in the Middle East will want them to deter Iran. How about Saudi Arabia and Egypt? Maybe Libya decides that abandoning their efforts was a mistake. THOSE countries may lack the technology, but they can certainly afford to finance it.

It could just go on and on.

THAT, I feel, would be a very likely consequence of us deciding to just disengage ourselves from these countries.

We’ve tried successfully, and for a long time, to convince others that they did not need them, because WE would provide the protection of a nuclear umbrella.

When they decide we cannot be relied on, the whole thing unravels.

If that commenter gets his wish, and they DO take care of themselves, it could get real interesting for us as well.

Seeing that we also reside on the same planet, I think it almost impossible we would remain unaffected.

So, standing up for our allies is not merely a nice thing to do; it makes the hardest kind of common sense.

Simply put, we protect others in order to protect ourselves.

Abandoning them, selling them out, would be an unbelievably short-sighted (as in STUPID) thing to do, and would hurt us more in the long run. No one would trust an agreement with us; and why should they, given such a record?

Instead of being worth anything, our word would only be noise.

And that would be tragic, because WE set its’ value, by our actions.