The headlines in the British press over the past week have been fixated on President Obama’s upcoming decision on Afghanistan. What should he do – send more troops or look for an honorable way to get out? Perhaps President Obama should turn to the words of a former president – John Quincy Adams – for counsel. J.Q.A. had this to say about American entanglement in foreign affairs: ‘…she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy…She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom…She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit….’