February 04, 2011
Neocons claim we need Israel and a military presence in the Middle East to ensure a constant oil supply. I don”t understand that. Why would bombing the gas station make gasoline cheaper? We”ve spent over a trillion on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, but oil keeps getting more expensive. We aren”t bombing Canada or Mexico, yet they”re our #1 and #2 oil suppliers. Let’s try this kooky experiment in the Middle East. Call me a hippie, but I think war is bad.
Vietnam is seen as our worst military cock-up, but weren”t they all a waste of time? What good did funding Nicaragua’s “Freedom Fighters” do us? Were the Balkans any of our business? Even the American Revolution seems like a waste. In Canada they just bored the British to death and gained independence without so much as a bruised rib. Thatcher was praised for sending troops to defend the Falklands, but the dinner tab was $1.19 billion to “save” a population of barely 3,000. If she gave them each $400,000 to move, she”d have spent the same amount and saved nearly 1,000 lives.
How about we use our money to buy oil and coffee and bananas from people who are nice to us, and we leave everyone else to evolve on their own time”and on their own dime? We can pay every Israeli citizen a million dollars to shit or get off the pot and never mention them again. They can stay and fight or leave. If anyone criticizes us for it we”ll just say, “They”re all millionaires!”
We”ve tried appeasing the jihadists to various degrees all over the world, and it only helps Islam thrive and multiplies the Hate Quotient exponentially. Europeans and Canadians do everything short of fellating Islam and receive nothing but vitriol in return. There’s no guarantee that withdrawing troops will help America’s position, but it sure is cheaper.
Last year’s defense budget was $663 billion. Foreign aid is only $51.7 billion, and, depending on which source you trust, aid to Israel is either a tiny fraction of that or way more than the total. Social Security is our real looming threat and we should focus on slashing that, too, but maybe it’s time to leave the world out of it. McGowan and Steyn may be right and Buchanan and the Pauls may be wrong, but the way it’s going now isn”t working.
Oh yeah, and we”re broke.
