It happens so often you wonder whether it is due to total ineptness or a deliberate policy to undermine our efforts overseas. It’s most likely a result of corruption and unintended consequences, combined with a foreign policy that makes it impossible to determine who are our friends are and who are our enemies. One would think that so many failures in arming others to do our bidding in our effort to control an empire would awaken our leaders and the American people and prompt policy changes.
A recent headline in Mother Jones read: “US Weapons Have A Nasty Habit of Going AWOL.” The report was about $500 million worth of military equipment that is unaccounted for in Yemen. Just as in so many other places, our policy of provoking civil strife in Yemen has been a complete failure. At one time it was announced that there was a great victory in a war being won with drones assisting groups that claimed to be on our side in the Yemen Civil War. As usual, we could have expected that these weapons would end up in the hands of the militants not on the side of United States and would never be accounted for.
There are numerous examples of how our foreign intervention backfires and actually helps the enemy. Just recently a headline announced: “CIA cash sometimes refills al-Qaeda coffers.” This was a story of our government helping pay ransom to al-Qaeda for the release an Afghan diplomat. However this was a measly $5 million so it was not considered a big deal. Another headline just recently announced that, “Iraqi army downs two UK planes carrying weapons for ISIL.” The Iraqi army is supposed to be on our side, and many people believe the UK is also on our side as well. One thing for sure the American taxpayer pays for all this nonsense.
Building weapons and seeing them end up in the hands of the enemy is almost a routine event and one should expect it to continue to happen under the circumstances of the chaos in the Middle East. This represents a cost to the American taxpayer and is obviously a major contributing factor in what will be the ultimate failure of our plan to remake the Middle East. This is bad enough, and the only people who seem to benefit from it are those who are earning profits in the military-industrial complex. But there is something every bit as bad as our weapons ending up in the hands of the jihadists and being used against us. That is, the fact that our presence there, our weapons, and our bombs, are the best recruiting tool for getting individuals to join the fight against America’s presence in so many conflicts around the world.
If our leaders cannot understand the arguments against our current policies based on the Constitutional and moral principles, they ought to at least be willing to pay attention to the impracticality of a policy that almost always seems to backfire, is always very expensive, and is always detrimental to our national defense.
Someday out of necessity we will be forced to consider a policy that the Founders advocated. Friendship with all nations, peace, commerce, and avoidance of all entangling alliances while staying out of the internal affairs of other nations. Unless something miraculous happens, I fear that this will not be accomplished until we are forced to come to our knees in the midst of a colossal bankruptcy.
“The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”
Thomas Jefferson
This is not seeing the forest for the trees, in light of Rumsfeld’s press conference on 9/10/01 announcing the news that the Pentagon couldn’t account for $2.3 Trillion in spending.
Let’s face it, we’re in the weapons export business and that taxpayer is paying for BOTH sides of these conflicts we’re creating. One of the objectives must be to “feed the beast”. It’s plain as day to me, how ’bout you?