What’s wrong here?: 750+ foreign bases and 20+ foreign wars
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We’re everywhere. We’re everywhere. Everywhere especially where a valuable natural resource is to be had or “protected.” With at least 750 foreign bases large and small, and actively fighting in person or by proxy with troops or drones, the amount of the American budget spent on killing people or trying to monopolize the world’s oil and strategic minerals, is impoverishing the Third World and keeping Americans from having the nice things people elsewhere in the First World enjoy. Such as free or affordable healthcare and education.
Afghanistan, Iraq, maybe Libya. If you asked the average American where the United States has been at war in the past two decades, you would likely get this short list. But this list is wrong — off by at least 17 countries in which the United States has engaged in armed conflict through ground forces, proxy forces, or air strikes.
For members of the public, the full extent of U.S. war-making is unknown. Investigative journalists and human rights advocates have cobbled together a rough picture of where the military has used force, but they rely on sources whose information is often incomplete, belated, or speculative. There is only so much one can learn about the United States’ military footprint from trawling Purple Heart ceremonies, speaking with retired military personnel, and monitoring social media for reports of civilian harm.
Congress’s understanding of U.S. war-making is often no better than the public record. (source: Brennan Center for Justice: Secret War)
Unseen, Those nations, especially in Europe, have all those gimmies precisely because they are under the umbrella of U.S. Defense. if they had to provide their own defense, there would be some serious reshuffling of cards. Look, if U.S. Citizens were free to take what has been taken from them for what Al Gore called the “Lock-Box”–which now is just a box of IOUs–then invest it in an S & P mixed fund of both growth and blue-chips stocks, as well as precious metals for an inflation hedge, all U.S. Citizens would have good retirements without taxing anyone for what you deem a “fair share.”. People wouldn’t have such mutual funds if Social Security was really good.
Who are we protecting Europe from? Russia, who is being routed by lowly Ukraine? Russia, which has only the 11th largest economy in the world, behind Germany, Italy, France, and even Canada, and just barely ahead of Brazil (which I think still qualifies as a Third World country)?
European countries make some of the best military hardware in the world. Lowly Sweden sank an American carrier in war games. And it’s not like Russia is the only nuclear power in the area. The UK and France are nuclear powers as well. Also, clearly, European troops are far better trainee and motivated than their Russian counterparts.
Your argument is old, tired, and basically silly.
There is no doubt that post-WW2, US billionaires and corporate boards wanted to create a global free market for goods and labor and pushed our govt. to squash any differing systems by all means possible. So yes, it’s not just the military doing the dirty work; the intelligence agencies cause political instability, and our state/commerce departments exert financial/sanction blackmailing.
What would be the alternative? Do you sit around and just let totalitarian dictators rise and do what they do. We tried that once.
So, we let own their oil and other resources and choose their own destinies without our interference and the world will fall apart, so we’ve got to be control freaks.
Hey, wait! Your cure doesn’t sound that far off the disease. It’s been estimated that if one totaled up all the deaths we’ve caused directly or indirectly since WW2, the United States has almost certainly equaled and probably has exceeded the death toll of the Holocaust. Hitler just did it more efficiently.
We have become the monster we are supposedly fighting.
Some smart people said everything is relative and it’s hard to tell the forest for the trees. Let’s assume the USSR succeeded and outlasted the West. Would that have been a good thing?
We started out as a country that treated human beings as beasts of burden and yet you seem to think we eventually overcame that legacy to be able to wisely run the entire world to the benefit of all mankind whether they want us to or not, even if that means participating in genocidal wars and shoving our ways down the throats of others. If we can become such a blessing to mankind, why not Russia or China or some other country eventually?
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