Are You Tired of Being the World's Policeman?

[yellowwoodII]

Well, my blood pressure is up again now that tensions between the U. S. and Russia are escalating.

Seems like it happens every other week that some part of the world needs out attention--and our money--and our blood.

Of course, the top 1 percent never seems to be involved unless they are invested in some military business. It's always the middle class and those below the middle class who are sending their children into danger on behalf of some cause or another.

It's depressing.

[L0oniX]

1. I resent the taxes I pay being used for their war games.

[Go Vols]

2. +1

[whatchamacallit]

3. So tired

Especially because it's always more about our "interests" than peace. Fucking sick of Empire.

[Aristus]

4. I'm not an isolationist by any stretch, but shit!

Can we get rid of the 800 military bases world-wide?

[RKP5637]

5. One can be sure some in the MIC are cranking the numbers on profitability scenarios! n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Seeing as how our "protection" of countries is like the Mafia's "protection" of businesses...

you bet I am.

[whatchamacallit]

7. +1 n/t

[okaawhatever]

8. The common mistake I think we all make is assuming if we weren't the "world's policeman" that the

world would be the same or better. How do we know that? If we didn't patrol the shipping lanes and keep commerce going who would? Would the results be the same? If we didn't have agreements in place to protect smaller countries, or treaties like NATO would everyone spend more money on arms and the military? If so, would they use them?
It's easy to say that things would be better if we weren't the world's policeman but we have to give a serious thought to who would take that role and how it would turn out.

Perhaps we should ask the question, "Who should be the world's police and what would that look like? How could we make it better?"

[yellowwoodII]

10. Who Is the "We" Kemosabe?

" If we didn't patrol the shipping lanes and keep commerce going who would?"
No offense, but who are the "we" you reference?

I think that we could all just look at our children and ask just which ones we're willing to sacrifice.
Puts it all in a different light.
"Better" is my children, all alive.

I still like the United Nations although they can't do it all.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. The 'we' would be the same people as the 'our' referred to, in your own OP

Did you expect anyone to say "who is the 'we', Kemosabe" to your OP?

[Bluenorthwest]

14. Thank you, that was really bugging me as I read.

[okaawhatever]

12. Well, the "we" is the United States. If you mean who is the "we" in terms of individual members

of the armed forces I would say my family. My grandfather, CSM US Army WWII, Korea, Vietnam x 3, My father USAF 22 yrs Vietnam, Grenada My brother in law,30 yrs US Army and USAR Iraq, Afghanistan.
While I don't want anyone to die in conflict, and i'm aware of the suffering that causes, we're naive to think that no one will be hurt if we don't go to war. We want to protect our children, I guess the question is how is the world the best place for them? It's not as simple as if we don't go to war the world will stay the same and everything will be better.
Clearly the situation in Iraq wasn't worthy of invasion, but there's a consequence to not doing something just as there are consequences to taking action. I'm saying that we should consider the cost of use the military and the cost of not using it. IMHO It's the only way we'll
lessen our dependence on military action.

[malaise]

26. Grenada was worthy of an invasion?

Surely you jest.

[sabrina 1]

34. What was the purpose of Vietnam where we lost over 50,000 lives and they fought back

because that's what people do when there are foreign troops in their country. How many might have been hurt if we had minded our own business compared to the untold numbers of Vietnamese who were hurt due to our intervention? And what was accomplished that couldn't have been without that terrible war?

Grenada? I don't think that requires an explanation as to why it was not necessary.

Iraq was one big war crime leaving a nation and its people devastated, over one million dead who surely would have been alive were we not there.

Afghanistan, in the eighties and now, what have we accomplished for all the death and destruction?

War is a Racket said one our most decorated war heroes. Lots of people profit hugely from war. Maybe if we took the money out of it, we'd have far fewer of them. But when you build the humongous war machine we have, you have to use it to justify all that money.

I wish we could spend some of that money here. We might have saved the lives of 44,000 American citizens a year since 9/11 who died because they could not afford HC. To me that IS the definition of National Security. The rest appears to be about profit for a small segment of the population and not much else.

[okaawhatever]

38. I'm not saying there is a valid justification for Vietnam or Iraq, but your assumption that none of

those people would have died without our being there is equally naive. A million people didn't die in Iraq because of us. Not even close. A million people died during the Saddam Hussein years. More than that likely. The pictures we took at Abu Ghraib are nothing compared to the prison cleansings that happened under Hussein. Remember when they had overcrowding and then they would hang people twenty at a time? Sometimes they would take prisoners through the streets and try to sell their freedom to their families. They'd take car titles, family land and so forth. None of those people lived long in spite of the efforts. No, at the rate people were dying under Hussein there was a net gain during the occupation. Sorry, it doesn't justify the occupation, but the facts are hard to ignore. More people died under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein than died between 2003-2009. The numbers from the World Health Organization, United Nations, Iraqi body Count Project, Iraqi Human Rights Ministry and the Classified War Logs agree.

[mythology]

37. Strange that nobody even tried to answer your question

For example, what happened when we did nothing in Rwanda? Bad things happened. When we didn't intervene on the ground in the break up of the former Yugoslavia, bad things happened. Doing nothing doesn't actually make the world inherently better.

[Lasher]

9. Is grits groceries?

Is the Pope Catholic? So sick of it.

[calimary]

13. Thoroughly.

Sick and tired.

[stevenleser]

15. Interesting that this is the focus of some during Russias unprovoked war of aggression.

I don't want us to be militarily involved either, and I don't think we will.

But the focus should be the folks who are engaging in the war crime. I protested the Iraq war because I considered it an unprovoked war of aggression. Russia gets the same treatment.

[JoeyT]

24. We object to war crimes again?

Some weeks we're fine with them, others we're not. Some days we're the ones doing them, some days we insist anyone committing a war crime is a horrible person to be hunted down. I can never keep up.

If war crimes are an issue, let the UN decide and we can support them. The country that blows up weddings at random (But they're not Christian and poor, so it's cool!) probably shouldn't be yelling about war crimes too loudly.

[stevenleser]

27. That line of reasoning does not work with individual citizens. I am not the government or the Bush

administration. I protested Iraq and torture. You can't come at me as if I supported those war crimes and now all of a sudden object to this one.

[JoeyT]

29. I meant our government objecting to them.

We oppose them, sure, but what we think rarely steers policy.

[stevenleser]

31. But the OP was about what we as individuals think as was my response.

I will remark in my show this week how what GWB did hampers our governments response to this.

[Aerows]

16. When corporations, oligarchs and the surveillance

industry (it's a farce to call it security) shit stir in every country around the globe, including our own, somebody has to create "solutions" to the problems that were created deliberately to advance some financial interest. That's what I'm truly sick of.

[malaise]

28. You and Cleita nailed it

I'm amazed that so many people buy this BS propaganda over and over.

[Cleita]

17. I don't really see it that way. I see it as using our military and young people

as cannon fodder to protect our global business interests in the world. There have been some of the worst genocides going on i other continents, but since they have nothing we want, there is no interest in helping out.

[Demeter]

18. And the US and EU are in there, meddling with all their might

If we are lucky, it will be a Cold War.

I'm not feeling particularly lucky, based on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Obama's drone stats. I am expecting a hot war. Very hot. And very soon.

[Cleita]

20. There has been talk that many of the conditions that started WW1 are

present here. If that's true other nations will go to war before we do.

[Demeter]

21. With our funding, intelligence support, propaganda, etc

We saw that drill in Bosnia, etc.

[liberal_at_heart]

23. 99% of the time that is what starts wars, protecting nations' business interests.

[Cleita]

32. Or wanting to plunder their natural resources. eom

[seabeyond]

19. ya. nt

[Demeter]

22. Not policemen, stormtroopers!

and I am sick of it.

[usa liberal]

25. as long as we spend more on the military than the most of the rest of the world combined

yeah it kind of makes us so just by the virtue of potential of inaction lol

[Octafish]

30. Why, yes! Yes, I am.

Yes. I. Am.

Here's where the War Party comes from:

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

[jsr]

33. Take care of our own first.

[JackRiddler]

35. And like many policmen, also the leading gangster.

The power elite is always involved, by the way. They make the policy.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

39. immensely tired, sick and broke.

[Corruption Inc]

40. The world's corrupt cops is more like it

We only go to "war" for profit, whether it is direct or indirect. In reality, the world's policeman shouldn't have torture camps either. We are the world's invaders for profit, not the policemen.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

41. Yeah. I have flat feet from walking the beat. Wait.

What am I talking about? I outsourced that job to my government which, on balance, has been a force for global justice and aspirations of free people even if Vietnam, Iraq, and other military adventures do fall on the other side of the ledger.