US military bases globally (by PatriotMyke, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License)
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo describes the Trump administration’s plan for peace between Israel and Palestinian Arabs as “unexecutable.” President Trump says Pompeo “may be right.”
Good! As addiction counselors say, the first step is admitting you have a problem. With addiction, the way out is not “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” It’s admitting that the thing you’re addicted to will never solve your problems and giving up that thing.
The United States suffers from a long-term addiction, since at least the end of World War 2, to trying to run the world.
That addiction has cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars.
It’s cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of citizens of other countries.
It’s empowered evil regimes to suppress human rights both at home and abroad.
And it has never, ever “worked” in the sense of bringing about lasting peace, any more than booze saves marriages or methamphetamine repairs mental anguish.
In fact, just like booze or methamphetamine, the US addiction to world “leadership” wrecks the lives of everyone around the addict too. Which means that if the US gets its act together, everyone else, not just Americans, will be better off.
Here’s a four-step peace plan that addresses the roots of the problem instead of just unsuccessfully trying to treat the symptoms:
First, the US should shut down its military bases on foreign soil and withdraw its troops from the foreign countries they’re currently operating in.
Second, the US should end economic sanctions on, and extend full diplomatic recognition and trade privileges to, all the countries it’s currently bullying.
Third, the US should end all foreign aid, especially military aid.
Fourth and finally, the US should dramatically decrease its so-called “defense” budget to levels consistent with actual defense.
Cold turkey withdrawal may be out of the question, but the US can and should wean itself off the damaging drug of foreign interventionism.
Let the Arabs and Israelis settle their own hash. Quit taking sides between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Stop pretending North Korea is or ever has been a threat to the United States. Step back and let Venezuelans, Syrians, and Libyans decide who’s going to run Venezuela, Syria, and Libya.
It won’t be easy, but it’s not complicated either. The US can continue drinking itself to death on the poison of foreign meddling, or not. Not is better.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. He lives and works in north central Florida.
Thank you for this excellent and much-needed article. The U.S. polices the world not just for hegemony but also, of course, to steal other countries’ oil and other resources on behalf of U.S. corporations. Since the CIA was created, that agency has instigated wars and coups to overthrow democratically elected leaders. If the U.S. is to cure our war addiction, we have to confront the CIA’s role. President Harry S. Truman helped create the CIA and later expressed regret it had veered from the role he intended. In an article that appeared in The Washington Post, December 22, 1963, Truman said; “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.”
In 1953, the CIA hired mobs and bribed soldiers and police to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran. The agency helped reinstate the monarchy and placed Shah Reza Pahlevi, who then gave U. S. companies more than 40 percent ownership of Iran’s oil fields. Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the CIA agent who came up with the idea for the coup was later named vice president of Gulf Oil.
In 1954, the CIA overthrew Guatemala’s popular democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz, an admirer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Fewer than 3 percent of landowners owned 70 percent of the land in Guatemala, so Arbenz nationalized over a million and a half acres and turned it over to the peasants. Because a U. S. firm, United Fruit Company, had owned much of that land the CIA sent mercenaries in from Honduras to try to overthrow Arbenz.
The CIA then bombed the capital using U. S. planes and pilots, forced Arbenz to flee, and replaced him with a U. S. puppet dictator who took the land back from the peasants and returned it to United Fruit Company.
These scenarios have been repeated continuously over the decades. The U.S. doesn’t so much instigate war and act as world policeman as it commits violent robbery around the globe and acts as world pirate. The CIA has helped foment most U.S. wars, always to profit our corporations including the military industry. Our political leaders, whose role should be to scrutinize this corruption, are instead more or less in league with the pirates. It’s up to the citizenry and the few public figures with integrity to take a closer look at our addiction to war.
Camp Hovey is part of Army military base of United States which is located in South Korea .It stands in 4000 acres of land forty one miles away from the City of Seoul.