Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Military Money Pit
BROODING OVER the deficit is Washington's civil religion, and as the budget gap exploded over the last two years, we've witnessed a revival. From the Tea Party to the White House, the deficit is a driving concern. Fear of adding to it has thwarted Democratic efforts at another stimulus. Anger over it could determine who controls Congress. No force in politics is more powerful.
So it's odd that the largest category of discretionary spending has largely escaped scrutiny: military spending. In January, when President Obama proposed a three-year freeze in discretionary spending, he pointedly exempted the military. Last week, a bipartisan group of legislators and policy experts asked an important question: Why?
The group, The Sustainable Defense Task Force, encompasses the political spectrum - from Barney Frank, on the left, to Ron Paul, on the right - along with a host of military reformers. They share a belief that unrestrained military spending is a danger to the budget, and to the country. And they make a persuasive case that we can spend less without sacrificing security.
Today, the United States spends more on its military than during the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union no longer poses a threat, yet we continue to spend huge sums protecting countries in Europe and Asia. This defense subsidy allows Europeans to provide a level of social welfare far in excess of what the United States offers its citizens. If Germany, France, and Britain bore more of their own defense costs, US tax dollars could go elsewhere, or nowhere.
Overpriced, underperforming weapons systems are a hardy Washington perennial also ripe for the cutting. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and the V-22 Osprey - all identified as potential cost savings in the task force report - have been targeted by reformers for years. No less a hawk than Dick Cheney has pronounced the V-22 "a turkey.'' That we continue paying for these weapons makes even less sense now that terrorists, not communists, are the enemy.
This sorry state of affairs persists mainly for two reasons. Presidents rarely confront it: Republicans like to spend money on the military, and Democrats are afraid not to. "For years,'' Frank said, "the major obstacle to a Democrat winning the presidency was being seen as soft on defense. That's why Mike Dukakis put on that helmet and got in a tank.''
The other reason is that Congress tends to think about boondoggle weapons systems in the context of jobs, not deficits. Killing a turkey is viewed as eliminating a major employer. (Last month, Frank voted over the objections of the defense secretary to fund a duplicate F-35 engine built in Lynn, but says he'd kill the fighter altogether if it came to a vote.) So we still buy useless weapons, over the protests of reformers and defense officials.
That kind of backward thinking could start to change. Bringing the deficit under control is a zero-sum game. Eventually, we'll have to raise taxes and cut spending. As budget pressure grows, the nearly $1 trillion in military cuts proposed by the task force could look appealing. One way of getting this done is through the president's Deficit Reduction Commission, which will recommend a package of cuts to Congress in December for an up-or-down vote. The Sustainable Defense Task Force is lobbying the commission to do what Obama wouldn't: consider military cuts, and in the context of the entire federal budget. Members like Frank and Paul say they'll vote against any package that doesn't, and encourage congressional colleagues to do likewise.
Obama speaks often about overcoming old ways of thinking, but he chooses his fights carefully. He's ducked this one for now. But it's hard to see why he'd maintain the Democrats' defensive crouch, especially when military spending cuts would achieve two things he holds dear. First, it would demonstrate that he's serious about deficit cutting, which might free him and his party from their political stricture. Second, it would give him an opportunity to cooperate with Republicans, and not just moderates, but true deficit hawks like Paul. Targeting wasteful military spending - like, say, those subsidies to the French - might even channel Tea Party anger over government spending toward a productive purpose.
Joshua Green is senior editor of The Atlantic. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
33 Comments so far
Show AllWhat did everyone expect from Status QuObama?
Where were all the Obamatrons when it was pointed out that Obama has been pro-war every step of his political career and constantly and consistently spoke in the highest of terms when discussing the "exceptional nature" of The American Project.
Well the fawning Obama groupies had their ears plugged like petulant children who could not stand to hear any naysaying (truth) about their idol. Lo and behold every single aspect of this hideous Obama Inc. marketing scam had been presaged by those of us who did the research. It wasn't a matter of a crystal ball it was simply a matter of basic critical thinking skills and doing the homework absent the adolescent emotional attachment to an abusive messiah.
What did you expect?
As an aside the fact that the author offers as propaganda the fact that the Us political spectrum "ranges" from frank to Paul shows indeed how narrow is the political spectrum within the U.S. Politburo.
And no "terrorists" are not the "Enemy" they are the manufactured bogeyman.
And no these weapons are not even intended to protect countries in Europe and Asia they are intended to profit big business in The Homeland.
And if these weapons were "useful" would the author be okay with the grotesque spending of the U.S Military slaughterhouse? It seems so.
There is so much wrong with this article.
=======================
Every four years, many Americans are fooled into investing their hopes in an electoral process that does not deserve their trust. These voters are led by the dominant (so-called "mainstream") corporate media and the broader U.S. political culture and thought-control system to hope that a savior can be installed in the White House - someone who will raise wages, roll back war and militarism, provide universal and adequate health care, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, produce high-paying jobs, fix the environmental crisis, reduce inequality, guarantee economic security, and generally make daily life more livable.
The dreams are regularly drowned in the icy waters of historical and political "reality." In the actuality of American politics and policy, the officially "electable" candidates are vetted in advance by what Laurence Shoup calls "the hidden primary of the ruling class." By prior Establishment selection, all of the "viable" presidential contenders are closely tied to corporate and military-imperial power in numerous and interrelated ways. They run safely within the narrow ideological and policy parameters set by those who rule behind the scenes to make sure that the rich and privileged continue to be the leading beneficiaries of the American system.
"All of the 'viable' presidential contenders are closely tied to corporate and military-imperial power in numerous and interrelated ways."
In its presidential as in its other elections, U.S. "democracy" is "at best" a "guided one; at its worst it is a corrupt farce, amounting to manipulation, consistent with the larger population projects of propaganda in a controlled and trivialized electoral process. It is an illusion," Shoup claims - correctly in my opinion - "that real change can ever come from electing a different ruling class-sponsored candidate." (Laurence H. Shoup, "The Presidential Election 2008," Z Magazine, February 2008).
- Paul Street
=======
Pinball...
This guy sucks. He hasn't done anything.
But things sure were messed up.
But he hasn't done anything to fix anything. He made it worse.
But McCain would have been even worse than that and think about Palin.
Worse than Afghanistan, Geitner, Rahm, No Prosecutions (the List...)?
But think of the Teabaggers... and Rush. We have to stick together.
Yeah... Well look at this piece of shit Health Care Plan
Shut up. You keep talking like that and we are gonna be screwed again.
We already are screwed again.
mcoyote
Yeah, you got it right. We, the fools that voted for O, got it wrong. Gloat as you frequently do. But there was another reason to vote for Obama: he was BLACK. Not white, black. Do you understand how important that fact is in this racist country of ours?
He turned out to be a flimflam man. Turned out to be worse than we all imagined. But at least his election showed the power of demographics that have been regularly flushed down the toilet in this country.
Wish you could come up with something better than arrogance in your posts. So, you are angry. So are we all. How about writing something new for a change rather than whipping the same old donkey?
drosera you got it all wrong.
I am not gloating one bit. As I said all along my hope was that I would be wrong about all of this and we would get the following...
Of course hope was never the issue it was knowledge.
And you are also wrong that Obama was a flimflam man. He was quite candid about who he was and had the record that was easily accessed by anyone who would have taken even a half hour to do the research.
As for Obama being black this presented an even more hypocritical position for many and in particular for the white liberal. The first thing to keep in mind was that the Bush administration was the most "diverse" in history and all this talk about "the end of racism" in the context of our current political situation should have been an enormous red flag.
Plenty of people have been writing for years, particularly some black writers on the real Left, about the dangers of Obama, Corey Booker and so forth. Adolph Reed pegged Obama in the 90's and Glenn Ford, Bruce Dixon, Juan Santos and many others wrote article after article about the duplicitous nature of Obama and his "blackness."
Obama himself had supported racist institutions throughout his political career. This is true of too many of the black bourgeoisie to list here. So what does it mean when folks support a black man in a position of power when that very man supports racist policies and institutions? What does it mean when those very same folks lend their support in the name of combating racism? The contradictions and hypocrisies are blinding.
It has been explained for decades how the black movement was actually undercut by the likes of Obama and how the election of these types of black leaders, in the name of diversity, would in fact be a giant step backwards for black folk.
The deeper problem here is that even in your post you show no contrition and certainly show little that indicates you are actually doing anything to "hold your man to the fire" and let's remember you do hold some responsibility for putting this war criminal in office. You have tacitly condoned his acts by electing the man.
As one who spent hours in the streets, making booklets, attending Obama lovefests in order to give information (not opinion) as to the who real Obama and his advisers were during the election spectacle I have zero respect for all of you who should have known better as you thought of yourselves as "smart" people but actually were in large part openly hostile towards real information about this man and this system that you so ignorantly embrace(d).
My extensive experience informs me that most of the folks who wrapped themselves in the Obama cloak are rather imbued with personality politics and easily waft from one candidate to the next based more on their narcissism than any real grounding of political economy and historical reality.
And what I have seen is that most of these folks now have disappeared into doing their self-absorbed "own thing", "tired of politics", as they have become "disappointed" that Obama isn't who he thought he would be. But of course he is exactly who he has always been.
Perhaps you wish to be coddled. Someone else may help you on that.
So you voted for Obama out of white liberal guilt? I did not vote for Obama because I noted his voting record in the Senate and because during the campaign he advocated a large expansion of the use of drones over Afghanistan and Pakistan. I admit, I ALMOST voted for him out of white liberal guilt myself, but then logic took over. I wasted a vote on Ralph Nader instead. I just couldn't bring myself to vote for the lesser of two evils, because evil is evil.
Vote for Obama out of white, liberal guilt? No, not at all. If he got elected, he would become a role model for millions of minority kids. That was my thinking. Before they were locked in a racist prison partly built by themselves: they accepted the premise they were inferior in certain ways. The election changed that. And I do not apologize for voting for the man.
He was a flimflam man. Look at his campaign speeches, particularly those about constitutional rights. He flipped 180 degrees from his professed point of view. Look at healthcare--he claimed often that he would support a robust public option. Look at labor issues--he hasn't done a damn thing to make it easier for workers to unionize. He turned out to be a good talker and that's it.
Obama isn't evil. He is misinformed and weak. That seems to be a pattern with US presidents.
mcoyote, drosera and others:
some good points raised here, my cynical take is:
How can we pretend that we have democratic choice and accountability in the first place? We are presented with only D/R candidates who are "viable" (have the corporate big-money support to buy the election). In my view Democracy Inc. is controlled by the MSM and Corporate money. The illusion of choice has fooled many people.
Even the last general election, where supposedly huge numbers of new voters were added to the rolls, barely over 50% of eligible voters bothered to register and vote. Thus 25% or less can determine outcomes.
This does not seem like "democracy" to me.
One whips the mad donkey who is currently pulling the cart in the wrong direction, now its Obomber.
And Mcoyote is deft with his whip.
Does America bankrupt itself with military spending? Apparently yes. Killing the country with excessive military spending designed to protect it makes no sense. American's are paying too great a price. Politicians are too weak to reverse military spending. So once again the answers lie within our grasp. Stop buying new products from national corporations. That weakens corporate support for military spending and creates shortages in federal funds. Pol's will attempt to cut social spending so the call to cut military spending must be greatly ratcheted up.
Boycott Harley-Davidson, builders of bomb casings.
Joshua Green funny like he still writes for the Onion!!!
"terrorists, not communists, are the enemy"
what terrorists is he talking about? The taliban trying to expel a foreign invader? The guy who set off firecrackers in the back seat of his car in Times Square?
How about Zionist terrorists? There are effective ways of dealing with them which don't involve expensive weapons systems.
- what terrorists is he talking about? -
future terrorists, of course
Once again: Public Law 107-40
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to PREVENT ANY FUTURE ACTS OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM...
"an authorization that continues to this day." (Pres. Obama speech 12/01/09)
America is trapped in an insane war against future terrorism.
It's been 9 years already - there is no victory, there is no exit strategy unless we confront the insanity of this law.
Continuing to ignore this law will continue the insanity.
Once again: Public Law 107-40, the Authorization to Use Military Force, or the AUMF, also known as the Authorization to Unilaterally Murder Foreigners.
Just click on the link below for a January piece on CD that shows a pie chart for 2009 US tax allocation -- the overwhelming share going to "defense".
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/26-2
We have right now 11 Carrier Naval battle groups operational! To fight what enemy? We didn't have that many battle groups in WW2! China has almost NO navy and the Russian Navy is a shadow of the once mighty Soviet Fleet since too much military spending broke the back of that once mighty Empire. Were going bust but our gutless president and his fawning sycophants will do nothing to stop this waste. Instead, they all valiantly cut the unemployed and the poor off to balance the budget.
I would suggest a check on Chinas navy, it may surprise you.
This merely the continuance of the policies of Harry S Truman at the close of WW11. Economists made the claim that the second world war took the USA out of the depression and Truman adopted that theory whole heartedly.
He sparked the Cold War in order to ensure ongoing Military Spending. This has continued through virtually every Presidency with both Democrat and Republican supporting "robust foreign policy".
Eisenhowers farewell address notwithstanding, he too supported this policy as President.
This 60 years plus of uneeded Military spending has totally transformed the US economy. It is now RELIANT on GOVERNMENT spending to "create jobs" and has chosen the worst possible area to target for "Government Spending". Investments in education, health care , infrastructure and the like create wealth through the lifetime of the investment. Investment in B1's, Aircraft carrier groups and Nuclear submarines are a drain on wealth.
The CIA's fact book and the World Bank estimate that the entire world spends around $1.5 trillion per year on weapons and war, and the U.S. alone is responsible for roughly half of that figure. As former president Dwight Eisenhower noted over fifty years ago:
"This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Healthcare not warfare.
I always love the comments that claim Obama is "Black". He's just as much "White" as he is black, but I guess ‘mixed race’ or ‘mulatto’ doesn't sound very nice? I personally don't care if a president has twenty-four different ethnic compositions rolled up into one ("He's our first aboriginal, Chinese, European, Indo-African president!" would be something to really brag about!), but to label someone a particular 'race' simply because he or she has one parent of that race, stinks of racism.
As for military spending, it is obvious from a military strategists point of view that America doesn't even require one tenth of its current military budget unless of course it continues to chase its imperial ambitions. Even without any military at all, America would be in no danger of a foreign power invading. 300 million privately registered guns alone would surely deter any foreign leader from thinking that an invasion of the U.S. would be feasible.
Despite no threats from any foreign state, the U.S. continues to seemingly prepare for a global conflagration at any moment. The response of the public though is that at least 70% of Americans believe that we don't spend too much on the military. This is a testament of the success of corporate America, along with its compliant media arm, at convincing Americans to "be afraid" while taxing the poor and middle class into financial ruin to supposedly save us. Until most American realize that the military is nothing more than an excuse to fatten up the coffers of corporate America through the public trough, nothing will change.
The U.S. tried somewhat to rid itself of the MIC in the early '90s; remember the " peace dividend ", anyone ? But the high tech economic bubble popped and so we were left with turning to a slower " green " movement and a remodel of our economy or back to the old tried and true war economy. For an added bonus they tossed in a housing bubble and deregulation of Wall Street and banking. The economy is crumbling because, as a country, we have simply run out of innovation, growth and a vision of our collective future. Most Americans simply don't care about a community in the true sense of that word. Our community of interest is wealth and material prosperity, period. People who actually care about how we conduct ourselves in the world are viewed by most as peculiar and odd. Since 9/11 the majority of Americans embrace the " kill or be killed " of rabid militarism. This mentality leaked, like a blown oil well, into our economic, political and social structure. What was unacceptable politically 30 years ago is now the soup of the day, so to speak. It has long been known that defense spending was a bad investment in our future prosperity but using the military to conquer and acquire other countries wealth, well, not so much. Corporations make business decisions to expand and cut costs based on the premise that the U.S. military will back their play with overwhelming force if necessary. Most Americans are sitting at a poker table, forced to play with a marked deck, and knowing the dealer has all the guns. This is what is destroying our economy: we are being asked to decide who gets shot first rather than asking for a much less crooked game. The powers that be are counting on us to kill each other by the persuasive power of false choices and rigged contests. They know it will save them a lot of messy cleanup. So far the powerful's plans are working out quite nicely. In 3 or 4 more years we'll see if they've succeeded. It should be quite a spectacle: like zombies eating the flesh of other zombies. All I want are the movie rights and the option of first refusal.
Here in NY-20 a recently retired US Army colonel, Chris Gibson, is running for congress pledging to "lower taxes and balance the budget by cutting spending and maintaining a strong national defense." Unfortunately, Democratic incumbent Scott Murphy will not point out that Col. Gibson is a retired employee of the government agency that consumes 44% of the national budget. Nor will Mr. Murphy be able to challenge the assumption Gibson makes when he tells the voters that his employment in Iraq and elsewhere was, in his words, devoted to "protecting our cherished way of life."
So, voters in this Republican-leaning district will witness a debate in which the single largest issue is off limits for both parties. And in the other 434 congressional districts, I suspect that the same charade will take place in coming months.
Valatius, if you get the chance and want to have a real laugh, ask the retired Army Colonel Gibson EXACTLY what it was HE DID over in Iraq that directly protected our cherished way of life, watch, and laugh your ass off as he stares stupidly at you with his mouth open. The best you are likely to get is a bunch of mumbling about weapons of mass destruction and bringing liberty to the Iraqi people. After he regurgitates his preformed psychobabble, ask him again, EXACTLY what it was HE DID over in Iraq that directly protected our cherished way of life. Cue the crickets! After that, remind him, that one of the stated reasons that President George W. Bush offered up was because, Saddam tried to kill his Pa.
Not exactly the type of reason I'd want to go to war over!
Why should ANY U.S. President disobey his/her Corporate Lords and cut military spending when the main function of that spending is to protect and expand the Corporatist-Militarist U.S. Empire which is the main responsibility for the Corporatist-Militarist President? (What? You thought it was protecting and defending the Constitution? Get real!)
Why do you think the years' old story of mineral riches in Afghanistan was released by the corporatist NY Times this week, just when it's becoming more and more obvious that the Afghan disaster is a huge failure? Meanwhile, the U.S. plans to build even more "installations" [bases] in the nations of Central Asia close to Russia, China, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and India. Why do you think there is civil war in Kyrgyzstan right now, a few months after their government reversed course and took more money from the U.S. in exchange for allowing the U.S. Manas airbase to stay there?
Why do you think no real action has been taken against BP for its Gulf disaster? BP is the main supplier of Pentagon fuel for its ships, tanks, and planes.
The Pentagon runs the White House, and the Corporations run the Pentagon. Get used to it.
Stop expecting a servant of the system to change the system.
If anyone ever changes it, it will have to be us.
The 2006 film Why We Fight had a very effective scene which showed congress person after congress person getting up on the House floor and stating why his or her state must be given more funds in order to prop up and perpetuate the U.S. war machine. Kucinich is about the only politician I know who has criticized the obscene military budget while his colleagues continue to feed off that militaristic trough.
Pardon this tangent, but I think it's relevant:
It may not constitute a "buried lede", but I painfully stubbed my toe on "Barney Frank, on the left..."
IMO, Frank is a potential case study in the devolution of Amerikan Elected Misrepresentatives from public servant (however problematic) to political mogul, i.e. a technocratic executive operating an individual franchise in a para-corporate service delivery system.
Barney Frank used to be a mere politician; in this "before" picture, Frank was a shrewd, no-nonsense horse-trader but projected at least some capacity for genuinely and aggressively supporting civil rights and also respecting his constituency of ordinary, unprivileged citizens.
As an out gay politician, he obviously was especially esteemed and boosted by gay rights activists-- these were indeed credentials for a "leftist" Amerikan politician.
But "left" has become "left behind"; now Frank is a powerful Legislative-Collective hive-mind businessman, a soulless clone of the fictional Ebenezer Scrooge before his Christmas redemption. Frank has morphed into an elite "insider's insider", for whom doing deals is an end in and of itself. His famously barbed and scathing tongue is as likely to be directed at principled activists as his political opponents du jour, and his acerbic recommendation to his former consituency is that they volunteer to be assimilated.
"The only thing those GLBT activists are going to 'pressure' is the grass!" he characteristically quipped in response to news of a planned gay rights demonstration in DC. What a knee-slapper! What a guy! Ol' Barn sure knows how to play the Fool Killer! Woo-HOO!
Later, confronted with the comment, Frank tartly explained in his peremptory, imperious manner that first of all, the legislation was well in hand (tucked into the abominable Defense Appropriations Act), so there wasn't even any windmill to tilt against! (I paraphrase, in the spirit of Frank's own game.)
And even if there WAS something to protest ABOUT, milling around on the Mall wasn't accomplishing a damned thing. The ONLY way to make political change is to Work Within the System-- find or create sympathetic candidates and join their campaigns, etc.
Certainly, they should stop wasting his and their time by clumsily screeching for utopian achievements that are utterly Unrealistic.
Frank probably really believes that he was just givin' his peeps a little Tough Love. Given the Borg-like Establishment Collective, or Combine, social activism is irrelevant. Whether one is an Elected Misrepresentative, a corporate executive, or a corporate media Beltway infotainwhore, it's become boilerplate that Raging Against the Machine Doesn't Work because Things Don't Work That Way. Why can't these clowns SEE that?
This is a disagreeable personal change in Frank, but also an expression of structural, institutional change. I mean, it's POSSIBLE that ol' Barn just woke up one morning to find Satan standing by his bed to make a deal; but I'm willing to believe that his mutation was more of a gradual creep into becoming a total creep.
IMO, colleagues like John Conyers, David Obey, etc. also evidence this gradual transformation in plain sight. They all had reputations among left-leaning progressives and liberals as "one of the good guys". Those were the days!
Conventional inside-politics analysis that still perfunctorily tags Frank with the term "left" needs to be taken with a bag of rock salt. And now we return to your regular programming.
Spot on. Frank is now and always has been a moral fraud. It's only now that he drifts to the far right on Israel and the near right on bank reform that finding him agreeable becomes untenable.
Now here's a "shock and awe" posting! Great!
"The Combine" -- excellent reference!
Let's just keep spending on the bloated & totally unproductive military until the money is all gone. We won't need to worry about the soldiers returning to this country and causing the type of trouble that dispossessed professional armies are capable of, because they won't be coming home. I mean, who's going to bring them back here, the Red Chinese? This country needs to collapse, because it is the only thing that will humble us away from the arrogance that has permeated the US since WWII .....
it just amazes me to hear tea baggers and wing nuts refer to Obama as a "socialist". If only, the truth is he's closer to another republican lite than anything - and he definitely is a corporatist. What it really shows is that Glenn Beck and the people who believe the inane nonsense this clearly troubled man spouts are insane and misguided.
If there was any doubt about where Obama is along the spectrum he sealed it by excluding the obscenely bloated defense budget from the freeze -and actually that budget should not be frozen but rather slashed big time.
We could cut the defense budget in half and still be spending more than the next eight nations combined. The fact that cutting this money drain gets almost no traction in the media shows that we have a major media that is tightly controlled by rich corporations.
I'm happy to see more and more articles highlighting the blinding hypocrisy from both sides of the aisle. Let's just hope that more lawmakers wise up to what's happening (and not just the usuals like Kucinich who, for some reason, no one listens to). Where's the Tea Party on this issue?
http://www.mindwafers.com/3/post/2010/06/department-of-mediaocrity-please-give-money-for-the-war.html
I started reading this in the Boston Globe this am and couldn't even finish it. I refuse to spend time speculating about which weapons systems are the most stupid or wasteful.
As Robert Jensen said in an essay yesterday:
When we take up questions of military strategy and weapons, our task is to understand the underlying political and economic systems, name the pathologies of those systems, identify the key institutions in those systems...
This article does nothing to illuminate the systems responsible for US militarism.
Be nice if Obomber recinded his increased budget for new nuclear weapons developement.
War is the art of making people do what they wouldn't do willingly. What does it say about the worlds first and foremost independent Democracy, whose banner is Freedom, that we would have perfected war: the ultimate enslaver of independent thought?
I recently had the displeasure of hearing Oliver North give a Memorial Day speech on Patriotism. If 'Dont Tread on Me' is the hallmark of an independent and free people, and a slogan North would sign his name to in blood, why are his bootprints all over Central America? Why did he try to enslave Costa Ricans to cheap Bolivian cocaine so that he could fund the Nicaraguan contras? When, in our zeal to fight for freedom, do we enlist slavery as an ally? In the 1980's, when North was active in Central America, our 'allies', flush with munitions, money, and training we supplied (actively or by subterfuge) committed genocide on Central Americans, most of whom were unarmed. 200,000 in Guatemala, 60,000 in El Salvador, the list goes on and on. Thats the opinion of an international investigation. And, for all that, the Central Americans got an apology from Clinton. An apology.
And half a million just lost their lives in Iraq. Can we get Obama to offer them an apology? That seems to be the Democrats role in all this.
This 'free' country is armed to the teeth. Apparently, it has lost the art of persuasion, and is left with mortal threat. And in region after region, even if we don't send our military in to 'promote freedom and democracy', we send our weapons in. We send weapons into conflicted regions, usually at minimal cost, usually on the side of the 'defenders of freedom', whomever we think that is. Like the Egyptian dictator Mubarak: this dictator is a 'defender of freedom': someone call George Orwell.
Sending weapons into a conflicted region of the world is like throwing gasoline on a brush fire. No one knows that better than our own military. That's why they do it.
I'm OK with the empire thing, really. We're not that different than so many other empires, I figure. It's the way this country bends itself into a pretzel to justify that empire with the slogan 'Dont Tread on Me'. We seem completely lost on the original intent of our countries founders, as our boots hit the ground, all over the world.