Categories
Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies

An Inconvenient Empire

“Don’t look to the United States for hope. Our values make us sympathetic to your plight, and, when it’s convenient, we might officially express that sympathy. But we make policy to serve our interests, which are not related to our values. So, if you happen to be in the way of our forging relationships with your oppressors that could serve our security and economic interests … You’re on your own.”

That’s Senator John McCain’s New York Times op-​ed mockery of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who recently told State Department employees that conditioning our foreign policy “on someone adopting our values … creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.”

In his op-​ed, entitled “Why We Must Support Human Rights,” McCain recounted the hope it gave him to know America would not abandon him as a prisoner of war during Vietnam. But, of course, Tillerson wasn’t suggesting the U.S. abandon POWs. 

McCain highlighted dissidents throughout the world, urging the U.S. to speak out for them, to provide “hope … a powerful defense against oppression.” 

No fan of President Trump*, the senator is playing up the praise Trump has awkwardly offered despots, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Chinese leaders behind the Tiananmen Square massacre and recently North Korea’s Kim Jong-​un. Still, recent successes in freeing Americans and others from the grasp of tyrants in Egypt, Iran and China suggest some degree of caring by Tillerson, Trump and Co.

The inconvenient truth? American foreign policy has long pursued certain political and economic interests at the expense of extolling human rights. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Intercept: “The list of U.S.-supported tyrants is too long to count.…” 

Hypocrisy alone won’t change that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Very early in the presidential campaign, Trump needled the senator and reacted to McCain being called a war hero, by echoing a four-​lettered Chris Rock routine: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, okay. I hate to tell you.” 

In 1967, McCain was shot down over Hanoi, North Vietnam, on his 23rd bombing mission of the war. He broke both arms and one leg and nearly drowned after parachuting into a lake. Denied medical treatment by the North Vietnamese, McCain spent the next five and a half years as a POW, some of it at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison, where he was tortured.


Printable PDF

 

Categories
meme national politics & policies responsibility

Trump’s Empire?

The next president will take office as this year’s $544 billion deficit pushes up the U. S. national debt to nearly $20 trillion … which is chicken feed compared to nearly $127 trillion in unfunded liabilities racked up by our entitlement state.

And, on top of that, add our outrageous world policeman fees.

The Washington Post reports that, “thanks to various treaties and deals set up since 1945, the U.S. government might be legally obligated to defend countries containing 25 percent of the world’s population.”

And boy, has America, World Policeman, been active!  The U. S. military is well into a second decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, engaged in ongoing armed conflict in Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, and with ISIS and its terror, not seemingly degraded at all but growing.

No wonder, then, that the iconoclastic Donald J. Trump questioned — at a Washington Post editorial board meeting, just before the Brussels terrorist attacks — the wisdom of U.S. commitments to NATO, South Korea and Japan.

“NATO was set up when we were a richer country,” Trump explained. “We’re not a rich country. We’re borrowing, we’re borrowing all of this money. We’re borrowing money from China.…”

So why subsidize wealthy countries? “Well, if you look at Germany … Saudi Arabia … Japan … South Korea — I mean we spend billions of dollars on Saudi Arabia, and they have nothing but money.”

Lest I get my hopes up too high, it seems unlikely that Trump would change actual policy, but simply make “a much different deal with them, and it would be a much better deal.”

Here’s an even better deal, as our third president, Thomas Jefferson, articulated: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations. Entangling alliances with none.”

It’s quite affordable.

This is Common Sense, I’m Paul Jacob.


Printable PDF

Donald Trump, Thomas Jefferson, empire, entangling alliances, meme

 


Common Sense Needs Your Help!

Also, please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar  (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money. Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!