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We Started With Afghanistan
by James Glaser April 5, 2010 
That's right, Afghanistan was the start of our, or if you prefer, George Bush's War on Terrorism, and then if you think back, we next sent troops to the Philippines, then Iraq. Now we have a new President. We still have George Bush's wars, but every new President likes to put his mark on American foreign policy, and Barack Obama is no different. So today we have troops fighting in new countries. I know they don't get a lot of media coverage, but Columbia and Pakistan now have American troops. In Pakistan, American troops have lost their lives. I don't know if they are there fighting for the Pakistanis' freedom or to bring democracy to that country. Right now, before we can even get our troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, oh, or Columbia or Japan, Germany, Korea or any of the hundred plus other countries we have troops in, President Obama is opening a new front in Africa. Published on Friday, April 2, 2010 by Inter Press Service
by Daniel Volman Now, that doesn't sound so bad does it? It is only a thousand troops, and they will be hanging out in Europe, unless something happens on the continent of Africa. Of course things do change....
It's kind of funny how things change in just a few months, from December to March. From keeping a thousand troops in Europe to sending Special Forces troops into Africa, but heck we have been doing that all along, so it really isn't that big of a deal now is it? Many voters, thought that by electing Barack Obama we would have a change in foreign policy. Of course it seems that a lot of voters think that with every new election, and why, I don't know, because the America of the last 70 years has been surprisingly consistent in the fact that we have been in almost a perpetual state of war. It matters little who the President is or what Party he belongs to. We now have troops in over one hundred countries. Did you know we have almost a thousand troops in Portugal? How about the 10,000 we have in Italy? Then there are the 10,00 in Great Britain, 57,000 in Germany, 33,000 in Japan, and 27,000 in South Korea. Think about this. We have about 50,000 troops in Europe right now, but it is so important that we keep them there, that we have to add an additional 1,000 troops in case something happens in Africa. I don't get it. Why could we have not just designated 1,000 of those troops already there to be the rapid deployment force? That would have saved us a lot of money. Oh I get it. Somebody is making billions of dollars supplying our troops in every one of these countries. So we want more troops over there. How would you like to have the contract to supply all the bedding for the troops in Germany? Just the bedding, nothing else. How about the food contract or better yet, the liquor contract for the officers, non-com, and enlisted clubs on base? Presidents like to make a name for themselves with the wars they fight. The Military Industrial Complex likes to make the profits from those wars and from the cost of keeping hundreds of thousands of troops all around the globe. Some rich American families are on their third generation of supplying our foreign bases. Economics 101 would teach us that if companies want to grow, they need new customers. President Obama, like every president before him, is expanding the customer base for our defense industry, and he is doing it the same way every other president did—he is starting new wars. |
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