U.S. Military Interventionism

From it's conception to it's ongoing practice, preventive warfare has become one of the most prominent parts of U.S. policy discussion and debate. Intellectuals, news hosts, and politicians alike find it a grotesque and evil strategy and see the consequence of allowing such mindset to corrupt the men and women of our government. Even the average U.S. citizen stand adamantly against this policy along side some of our most intellectual minds. One of the most recent, and most known examples of this policy being acted on is the National Security Strategy of 2002. The strategy acted heavily on the idea of preventive warfare in the sense of Iraq having "nothing more than the intent and ability to develop [WMD]," as written in Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival. He continues, "Virtually any country has the potential and ability to produce WMD, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. Hence the refined version of the grand strategy effectively grants Washington the right of arbitrary aggression."{1} This presents the seriously falling standards in the cause for U.S. aggression, and puts into light the U.S. as an aggressor. Preventive warfare, being the base of interventionist foreign policy, is important to understand as an imperial strategy " an unconstitutional, unwanted strategy. U.S. intervention, overall, is unwanted, unwarranted, unhelpful, and destructive to both the nation being invaded, and the U.S. Itself. This destruction ranges wide throughout the world, from the U.S. economy and conditions at home, to the humanitarian aspect as we invade peoples homes, kill them and their family and friends. Interventionism has given birth to an immorality that even ISIS has used to gain recruitment. In the words of Ron Paul, "What if we finally decide that " contracting [torture] out to a third world nation is just as evil?"{2} This should be the starting point of rationality, and understanding that this statement had been said in a speech calling for non-interventionism, in a nation where we've seen interventionism escalate at an expeditious rate to acts of torture, the inevitable conclusion that an interventionist, imperialistic in nature, foreign policy births evils. Evils as extreme as torture, to the inevitable consequence of 4,802 civilian casualties, and the deaths of more than 5000 of our men and women in uniform. Torture and unwarranted killings are not the actions of a just government. The U.S. has already made these actions, however, despite these inevitabilities having been pointed out by history. And so we are forced to see the consequences of these actions (such as a failing infrastructure and a failing economy) as pertaining specifically to the U.S. 55% of our discretionary spending goes to the military.{3} Only 5% goes toward healthcare, and a mere 6% toward education; miniscule in comparison. This money could go toward your health care, making sure a loved one is able to survive being sick, making sure you aren't in agony when you break your arm, making sure we can simply afford our health care. That more than half of this money goes to the military is not a choice, but a need under an interventionist foreign policy. How do we try to make up for this destruction of an entire chunk of our free market " of our economy? Despite our efforts to destroy our only saving grace, spending $7.6 billion on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, the booming opium industry has only grown. Why is this good for us? Before the U.S. got involved, Al Qaeda operatives would force farmers to grow opium, then those operatives would come along and sell that opium (turned heroin) on the black market. Now comes along the U.S. and we offer protection to the Opium farmers; the farmers continue to grow and sell their product; now the U.S. takes a little bit of the Opium and puts it into our pharmaceuticals.{4} There's still a problem though: we can't use our discretionary spending to support what we're gaining, and we aren't gaining enough to make up for the loss in finance. On top of all of this, every implication points us in the direction of imperialist values, from being the aggressor, to claiming gains through force. The only real difference is, instead of outright claiming the land as ours, we place an embassy and call it "international relations." We've still invaded the nation, gone to war, placed officials in key areas as we remain in the area, steal the land's resources, and never gain the "consent of the governed."{5} Even when the times did not call for deception in this policy, it had become unsustainable, and the U.S. is already on the path of unsustainablility " the path of all imperial nations before it. Not only is this strategy evil in it's very nature, it's been unconstitutional since the very founding of this nation. {1}https://7chan.org... {2} {3}https://www.nationalpriorities.org... {4}http://www.sigar.mil... {5} http://www.constitution.org...