American Empire

I love my country; I love it so much that after the next semester of college I plan on joining the Air Force and serving for at least four years. But this country, as it is at this moment in time, is heading towards a ruin which could be avoided if we only took out heads out of the sand and looked around. No, I’m not one of those doomsdayers who think the world will fall because us darn kids are listening to hard rock and wearing baggy pants, I’m not going to start making predictions based on revelations on when the horsemen of the apocalypse are going to kill everyone; what I will say is that this country is digging its own grave every day.

The problem with America I’ll speak out against today is what I call the “American Empire.” In the days of Columbus and again pre WWI the European powers (and the US for a short period of time) sought to spread their influence around the world b building for themselves empires, conquering colonies in order to enrich themselves and prove their superiority over those “lesser” then they. The sun was said to never set on the British Empire because its possessions stretched all across the world.

But empires are nothing new. Ever since ancient times ruthless kings have fought for and built empires; Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, etc, for as long as civilization has existed empires have as well. Today we have the American Empire, and it is as large and powerful as any empire to ever exist. Today this new empire stretches across the entire globe, with military basis in over 50 different countries with 730 active military basis around the world. Take a look at this map to see what I mean, http://www.ppu.org.uk/pm/usbases.html. I’m with Ron Paul on this one; we need to end this silly notion of building and trying to maintain an empire outside our shores with needless military installations which in many situations only manage to increase hatred for America overseas which results in terrorist attacks such as 9/11. Lets face reality, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t able to gain an army of supporters through ideology alone, one of his main selling points was the US presence in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim holy land, the most sacred country in all of Islam. It’s called blowback, when a nation like ours imposes itself on other countries that creates resentment which ultimately threatens our national security. Example, lets examine Iran. Why do they hate us? Well many would have you believe that they hate us for our freedom, for our way of life and such, but is that really a reason to fear and hate us? Personally I think Iran has much more pressing reasons for seeking nukes and being all around anti American. Back in the 50’s Iran was ruled by a democratically elected government, run through the consent of the governed. Unfortunately this Iranian government wasn’t too friendly to the US, so what did we do? We overthrew this democratic government and replaced it with a pro western dictatorship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat. And we wonder why Iran hates us.

Even now we have troops on both boarders of Iran, battleships off their coast, and a candidate for president who seems to be leaning pro war. Given the fact that we aren’t even considering attacking North Korea for the weapons they already have and are considering war with Iran for weapons they might sometime get, wouldn’t the Iranian governments best interest be to build a nuclear weapon as soon as possible? Its not a hatred of the west and a desire to destroy us that motivates Iran, it’s a desire to self preserve in the face of possible, maybe even likely, US military force.

The problems we face today in terms of everyone hating us, even our allies, are the result of this empire building policy. As you saw in the map we have troops all over the Middle East, encircling it in a wall of firepower. Some may see this as a good thing, as we can hit enemies any time we want; I on the other hand see it as a bad thing as we wouldn’t have nearly as many enemies if we’d left the Middle East alone to begin with. Do we not realize that every time we support one group of people over another that group we’re giving weapons to will eventually turn on us? During the soviet invasion of Afghanistan we supplied the Taliban and Osama with weapons to fight to soviets with. During the Iran Iraq war we supplied Iraq with weapons to fight Iran. When we interfere in the affairs of other nations we’re the ones who ultimately lose.

So I say lets end it. Close the military basis around the world and bring home our troops. Why do we have troops in Europe anymore anyway? What possible purpose do those troops serve? They were once used to deter a possible soviet invasion, but now their simply a drain on our economy. Close them, along with the basis in Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Korea. In fact, let’s close them all. And let’s not interfere with the affairs of other nations anymore. No more secretly planning to overthrow a government, no more sending troops to police the world, no more playing one nation against the other. Its time we take care of our own nation without having to worry about the rest of the world all the time.