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Title: Come Home, America: Stop Policing the Globe and Put an End to Wars-Without-End
Source:
Government Slaves
URL Source: https://governmentslaves.news/2020/ ... ut-an-end-to-wars-without-end/
Published: Jan 9, 2020
Author: John Whitehead
Post Date: 2020-01-09 13:16:10 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 1290
Comments: 2
It’s time to bring our troops home. Bring them home from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany, South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. Bring them home from Niger, Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia. That’s not what’s going to happen, of course. The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.” Don’t fall for the propaganda, though: America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world. The reach of America’s military empire includes close to 800 bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.” This is how a military empire occupies the globe. Already, American military servicepeople are being deployed to far-flung places in the Middle East and elsewhere in anticipation of the war drums being sounded over Iran. This Iran crisis, salivated over by the neocons since prior to the Iraq War and manufactured by war hawks who want to jumpstart the next world war, has been a long time coming. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton: they all have done their part to ensure that the military industrial complex can continue to get rich at taxpayer expense. Take President Trump, for instance. Despite numerous campaign promises to stop America’s “endless wars,” once elected, Trump has done a complete about-face, deploying greater numbers of troops to the Middle East, ramping up the war rhetoric, and padding the pockets of defense contractors. Indeed, Trump is even refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in the face of a request from the Iraqi government for us to leave. Obama was no different: he also pledged—if elected—to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce America’s oversized, and overly costly, military footprint in the world. Of course, that didn’t happen. Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and now Iran) aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt. War spending is bankrupting America. Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone. That needs to change. The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds. The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback. The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. military drone strike will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people. The war hawks’ militarization of America is also blowback. James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.” We are seeing this play out before our eyes. The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls. Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling. At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts: The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire. This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We failed to heed his warning. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there’s not much time left before we reach the zero hour. It’s time to stop policing the globe, end these wars-without-end, and bring the troops home before it’s too late.
Poster Comment: Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton: they all have done their part to ensure that the military industrial complex can continue to get rich at taxpayer expense. Take President Trump, for instance. Despite numerous campaign promises to stop America’s “endless wars,” once elected, Trump has done a complete about-face, deploying greater numbers of troops to the Middle East, ramping up the war rhetoric, and padding the pockets of defense contractors. Indeed, Trump is even refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in the face of a request from the Iraqi government for us to leave.
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
And if we didn't they'd shut down, driving up the price of oil and benefiting domestic producers. Then the author would complain that the U.S. in in bed with American big oil and would call for the U.S. to assist other countries in oil production to drive down the price.
We learned on December 7, 1941, that pulling up the drawbridge and keeping out of the rest of the world doesn't protect us at all - that, indeed, while we play ostrich, the threats get wor play ostrich, the threats get worse and worse, and then they reach out to kill us. So we didn't pull bac us. So we didn't pull back after World War II, and were there to prevent the Soviets from conquering the wor Soviets from conquering the world. The Soviets fell, and the Muslims have gone on a rampage against us, while the Chinese are aggressively pres Chinese are aggressively pressing against the sea boundaries of our allies. So, what should the US pull back from? Resisting the Islamists? So they can put Israel under siege and put Israel under siege and blow up our allies at will. From Asia? So the Chinese can simply bulldoze Chinese can simply bulldoze their smaller neighbors? No. And no. We've built a world alliance system that encompasses 177 of the world's 195 countries. It has kept countries. It has kept the peace, and allowed us, and all of our allies, to grow to unprecedented w grow to unprecedented wealth. Nothing like we have built has ever existed before. And we're not before. And we're not going to simply throw it away to placate the atavism of that portion of America that portion of Americans who didn't learn the lesson of Pearl Harbor. play ostrich, the threats get worse and worse, and then they reach out to kill us. S us. us. S us. So we didn't pull back after World War II, and were there to prevent the Soviets Soviets Soviets Soviets from conquering the world. The Soviets fell, and the Muslims have gone on a rampage against us, while the Chines Chines Chines Chinese are aggressively pressing against the sea boundaries of our allies. So, what should the US pull back from? Resisting the Islamists? So they can put put I put put Israel under siege and blow up our allies at will. From Asia? So the Chin Chinese can simply bulldoze their smaller neighbors? No. And no. We've built a world alliance system that encompasses 177 of the world's 195 countries. It has kept the peace, and allowed us, and all of our allies, to grow to unprecedented wealth. Nothing like we have built has ever existed before. And we're not going to simply throw it away to placate the atavism of that portion of Americans who didn't learn the lesson of Pearl Harbor.
In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.
#2. To: Deckard (#0)
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