Through the years our government has found many reasons to send our troops overseas and we are now [...]]]> After reading about President Obama’s strategy for conducting the war in Afghanistan I began wondering why we were even there. After all, George Washington warned us in his Farewell Address to “avoid foreign entanglements”. We have ignored his words.

Through the years our government has found many reasons to send our troops overseas and we are now continuing with President Bush’s “preventative war strategy to contain rogue states”. Is this really a war on terrorism, or something else? We have built an empire and it continues to grow every year. Don’t you think it causes resentment overseas? Consider how you’d feel about a Chinese military base here.  The Pentagon currently owns or rents 716 overseas bases in 38 countries and has another 4,863 bases in the United States and its territories. In just one country, Germany, we have 18 air and army bases. http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/bsr/BSR2009Baseline.pdf

Also, consider the fact that we spend more on our military than does the entire rest of the world combined – over $600 billion per year. This is big business, as a matter of fact, too big to fail. As our war machine grows so does the need for new wars and the new reasons to justify them. Although it may take years for the public to be properly conditioned for the next war, there will always be another. We are now being conditioned for military action in Iran and Yemen. The obvious bungling of our intelligence in the near-catastrophic Detroit plane incident at Christmas makes you wonder. Are our intelligence agencies really that stupid or is there a method behind this madness?

“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.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — James Madison, Political Observations, 1795