The United States of America is at war in Afghanistan and Libya and has nearly 50,000 troops remaining in Iraq. We have 702 military bases in 63 countries around the world.
We’ve become the world’s policeman.
This mission comes with a hefty price tag — most importantly, in the lives of our soldiers. Secondarily, but not inconsequentially, in dollars. Last year, we spent $685 billion for our worldwide presence, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now we’re adding Libya to the bill.
So, how do we pay for all this policing?
Over the weekend, in a visit to Iraq, U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher suggested, “We would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the megadollars we have spent here in the last eight years.”
We can hope, but Sean Hannity went a misplaced step further: “We have every right to go in there [into Iraq and Kuwait] and, frankly, take all their oil and make them pay for the liberation.”
Heavens! Rescuing someone doesn’t give us the right to take others’ money or oil or anything else.
Now, were a liberated nation to choose to repay us, that’d be nice. Kuwait did actually pay more of the financial cost of the Gulf War than we did.
But face it: Policing the world is just not cost-effective. Making it pay by turning a liberation crusade into an excuse for looting? That’s not police activity.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “World Policeman on the Take?”
Amen!
Why should we be suckers for every broken government around the world? We spend lives and treasure to free and maintain ungrateful bunches of foreign jerks and get the ridged digit in return. Meanwhile at home seniors are living their last years in squalor. Roads and bridges crumble and fail, medicare is broken and the national debt has run the debt clock out of zeros.
I think we have taken our terrible guilt trip a sob story to far. After 70 years of feeding the world is, “America First” such a horrible thing?
Hey, if we’re going to be accused of being an imperial power, we may as well be guilty.
The anti-war crowds big slogan was “No Blood For Oil”. Well, we spilt our blood. So where’s our oil? If the peaceniks are right, if these wars are just for oil, where’s my 50-cent-a-gallon gas, dagnabbit?
I wonder…If we divided the amount of money we’ve spent liberating these islamic nations by the amount of oil we’ve “looted” from them, how much would that be per barrel or per gallon?
But more to your point, Mr. Jacob, what do you think is a fair wage for policemen?
Perhaps we should hire out as mercenaries, just so nobody gets confused about the whole “payment for services rendered” aspect.
Perhaps the world’s policeman should go on strike. Free nations are responsible for their own lands. If you can’t protect your own sovereignty then kindly find a protector somewhere else. We can’t afford it anymore. To the people of Afghanistan: you’ve had ten years to get your act together. BYE!
“The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
_Abe Lincoln