Bruce Giudici
Amid the hand-wringing over the failure of the American 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan, never is there an acknowledgment that repeated failure has become the hallmark of US military actions since the victory in World War II.
While our leaders claim that the objective of US intervention is to help our allies achieve “democracy,” this objective is undermined once the US partners with unpopular corrupt leaders. After years of intervention, the endgame is where we leave millions of US collaborators in mortal danger as reactionary forces mobilize to overthrow the US invader.
With US intervention, never is there an effort to economically support the low-income population – only to bomb their villages, control their roadways, while keeping existing economic relationships intact so that “American interests” can thrive once the country is pacified. It is important for us to realize that this is what our military is asked to do when we enter into foreign conflict.
Name the country of conflict and judge the result: Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala. All failures.
Who won – and who lost? What did our military accomplish? And how much do we increasingly spend after each step of this failure? Seven hundred fifty thousand million dollars ($750 billion) are currently spent annually on the “Defense” budget alone (the highest discretionary part of the Federal budget), funding which cannot pass an audit all other governmental agencies must comply with. What other branch of government can continue to thrive with such a dismal record? When other welfare programs misspend even a tiny fraction of this military largess, Congressional hearings are convened and funding threatened.
It is time for us to re-assess how completely militarized our dysfunctional foreign policy has become and to establish foreign relations with true offers of assistance to oppressed people in need. The first step is to disregard how such action is profitable to American interests – this is the step that has undermined every foreign intervention for over 70 years. Maybe offering significant amounts of COVID vaccine to nations in dire need would be a good first step.
Of course, there will be defenders of the way we handle foreign affairs. In truth, any objective analysis of US foreign policy over the past 70 years will come to the conclusion that it has been an expensive failure – both in lives and money – and that success will only derive from a significant move away from military solutions to human problems.