Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead through The Rutherford Institute,

“Autocrats solely perceive one phrase: no, no, no. No you’ll not take my nation, no you’ll not take my freedom, no you’ll not take my future… A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire won’t ever be capable to ease the folks’s love of liberty. Brutality won’t ever grind down the need of the free.”

– President Biden

Oh, the hypocrisy.

To listen to President Biden discuss concerning the Russia’s aggression in opposition to Ukraine, you may think that Putin is the one dictator bent on increasing his army empire by means of the usage of occupation, aggression and oppression.

But the USA is not any higher, having spent a lot of the previous half-century policing the globe, occupying different nations, and waging countless wars.

What most Individuals fail to acknowledge is that these ongoing wars have little to do with maintaining the nation secure and all the things to do with propping up a army industrial complicated that has its sights set on world domination.

Battle has grow to be an enormous money-making enterprise, and the U.S. authorities, with its huge army empire, is one in every of its greatest consumers and sellers.

America’s half within the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine has already value taxpayers greater than $112 billion and exhibits no indicators of abating.

Clearly, it’s time for the U.S. authorities to cease policing the globe.

The U.S. army reportedly has greater than 1.3 million women and men on lively responsibility, with greater than 200,000 of them stationed abroad in practically each nation on the earth.

American troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. In Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

These numbers are possible considerably greater in line with the Pentagon’s coverage of not absolutely disclosing the place and what number of troops are deployed for the sake of “operational safety and denying the enemy any benefit.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Though few Individuals understand it, the USA possible has extra bases in overseas lands than some other folks, nation, or empire in historical past.”

Extremely, America’s army forces aren’t being deployed overseas to guard our freedoms right here at dwelling. Reasonably, they’re getting used to protect oil fields, construct overseas infrastructure and defend the monetary pursuits of the company elite. The truth is, the USA army spends about $81 billion a 12 months simply to guard oil provides around the globe.

The attain of America’s army empire consists of near 800 bases in as many as 160 nations, operated at a value of greater than $156 billion yearly. As Vine stories, “Even US army resorts and recreation areas in locations just like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a sort. Worldwide, the army runs greater than 170 golf programs.”

That is how a army empire occupies the globe.

After 20 years of propping up Afghanistan to the tune of trillions of {dollars} and 1000’s of lives misplaced, the U.S. army could have lastly been compelled out, however these troops characterize only a fraction of our army presence worldwide.

In an ongoing effort to police the globe, American army servicepeople proceed to be deployed to far-flung locations within the Center East and elsewhere.

That is how the army industrial complicated, aided and abetted by the likes of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Invoice Clinton and others, continues to get wealthy at taxpayer expense.

But whereas the rationale could hold altering for why American army forces are policing the globe, these wars overseas aren’t making America—or the remainder of the world—any safer, are definitely not making America nice once more, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

Battle spending is bankrupting America.

Though the U.S. constitutes solely 5% of the world’s inhabitants, America boasts nearly 50% of the world’s whole army expenditure, spending extra on the army than the following 19 largest spending nations mixed.

The truth is, the Pentagon spends extra on battle than all 50 states mixed spend on well being, training, welfare, and security.

The American military-industrial complicated has erected an empire unsurpassed in historical past in its breadth and scope, one devoted to conducting perpetual warfare all through the earth.

Since 2001, the U.S. authorities has spent greater than $4.7 trillion waging its countless wars.

Having been co-opted by grasping protection contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent authorities officers, America’s increasing army empire is bleeding the nation dry at a price of greater than $32 million per hour.

The truth is, the U.S. authorities has spent more cash each 5 seconds in Iraq than the common American earns in a 12 months.

Future wars and army workout routines waged across the globe are anticipated to push the full invoice upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

Discuss fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. authorities is spending cash it doesn’t have on a army empire it may’t afford.

Sadly, even when we had been to place an finish to the entire authorities’s army meddling and convey the entire troops dwelling right this moment, it could take a long time to pay down the worth of those wars and get the federal government’s collectors off our backs.

As investigative journalist Uri Friedman places it, for greater than 15 years now, the USA has been preventing terrorism with a bank card, “primarily bankrolling the wars with debt, within the type of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and native governments, and by nations like China and Japan.”

Battle shouldn’t be low cost, nevertheless it turns into outrageously pricey once you consider authorities incompetence, fraud, and grasping contractors. Certainly, a number one accounting agency concluded that one of many Pentagon’s largest companies “can’t account for lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ price of spending.”

Sadly, the outlook isn’t significantly better for the spending that may be tracked.

A authorities audit discovered that protection contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane components, leading to tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in overspending. Because the report famous, the American taxpayer paid:

$71 for a metallic pin that ought to value simply 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: greater than a 5,one hundred pc improve in worth. $1,678.61 for one more tiny half, additionally smaller than a dime, that would have been purchased inside DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 p.c improve. $71.01 for a straight, skinny metallic pin that DoD had available, unused by the tens of 1000’s, for 4 cents: a rise of over 177,000 p.c.

That worth gouging has grow to be an accepted type of corruption inside the American army empire is a tragic assertion on how little management “we the folks” have over our runaway authorities.

Thoughts you, this isn’t simply corrupt habits. It’s lethal, downright immoral habits.

Individuals have to this point allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a gentle eating regimen of pro-war propaganda that retains them content material to wave flags with patriotic fervor and fewer inclined to look too carefully on the mounting physique counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged nations, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in overseas lands, or the transformation of our personal homeland right into a warzone.

That should change.

The U.S. authorities shouldn’t be making the world any safer. It’s making the world extra harmful. It’s estimated that the U.S. army drops a bomb someplace on the earth each 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the USA authorities has straight contributed to the deaths of round 500,000 human beings. Each a kind of deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

The U.S. authorities shouldn’t be making America any safer. It’s exposing Americans to alarming ranges of blowback, a CIA time period referring to the unintended penalties of the U.S. authorities’s worldwide actions. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA marketing consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its army to realize energy over the worldwide economic system would end in devastating blowback.

The 9/11 assaults had been blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The tried Occasions Sq. bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a serious within the U.S. Military, was blowback.

The U.S. army’s ongoing drone strikes will, I worry, spur but extra blowback in opposition to the American folks.

The battle hawks’ militarization of America—bringing dwelling the spoils of battle (the army tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gasoline masks, ammunition, battering rams, evening imaginative and prescient binoculars, and so on.) and handing them over to native police, thereby turning America right into a battlefield—can also be blowback.

James Madison was proper: “No nation might protect its freedom within the midst of continuous warfare.” As Madison defined, “Of all of the enemies to public liberty battle is, maybe, essentially the most to be dreaded as a result of it includes and develops the germ of each different. Battle is the mum or dad of armies; from these proceed money owed and taxes… identified devices for bringing the various below the domination of the few.”

We’re seeing this play out earlier than our eyes.

The federal government is destabilizing the economic system, destroying the nationwide infrastructure by means of neglect and a scarcity of sources, and turning taxpayer {dollars} into blood cash with its countless wars, drone strikes and mounting demise tolls.

Clearly, our nationwide priorities are in determined want of an overhauling.

On the peak of its energy, even the mighty Roman Empire couldn’t stare down a collapsing economic system and a burgeoning army. Extended intervals of battle and false financial prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:

The destiny of earlier democratic empires means that such a battle is unsustainable and can be resolved in one in every of two methods. Rome tried to maintain its empire and misplaced its democracy. Britain selected to stay democratic and within the course of let go its empire. Deliberately or not, the folks of the USA already are nicely embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

That is the “unwarranted affect, whether or not sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complicated” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us greater than 50 years in the past to not let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe throughout World Battle II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven battle machine that emerged following the battle—one which, with the intention to perpetuate itself, must hold waging battle.

We didn’t heed his warning.

As I clarify in my ebook Battlefield America: The Battle on the American Individuals and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, battle is the enemy of freedom.

So long as America’s politicians proceed to contain us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and ladies, improve the probabilities of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that a lot nearer to eventual collapse, “we the folks” will discover ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.