Team America: World Police!

June 25, 2012 By 17 Comments

HT: A Conservative Blog for Peace

Also:

And all so that we can have the freedom to have Nurse Bloomberg tell us what we can eat, so that the President can force us to pay for contraceptives or have our Church crushed by lawsuits, and so that we can be groped at the airport, threatened with shotguns and handcuffed by the police for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, watch middle class incomes flatline and degrade, and watch our troops grow exhausted with endless over-extension. On the bright side, a vanishingly small minority of fantastically rich people are making money hand over fist and are looking forward to our next war for… liberty. Yeah. That’s it! That’s the ticket! Liberty.

Oh, speaking of which, here’s the next move by our corporate State entity in the ongoing March of Freedom that is Millennial America, here’s Napalitano on Big Brother’s all-seeing eye in the sky and Eric Peters on the state’s plan to turn your car into a mobile cage and a tool for spying on you–and punishing you if you step out of line.

Above all, read that last link and ask yourself “Was it *this* Soviet surveillance state of corporate and state control that generations of American gave their blood, sweat, toil, and tears to give us?” Because that is what we are about to get. And all while the authors of that suffocating tyranny are busy ginning up more wars for “freedom” abroad and telling us those wars are protecting our liberty here at home.

Don’t be a sucker for this stuff anymore.

HT: Caelum et Terra

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , 17 Comments
  • Mark S (not for Shea)

    If this isn’t the definition of “empire,” I don’t know what is. And that’s not a good thing, since history teaches us that empires tend to have very messy collapses.

    • http://stevenadunn.wordpress.com Steven Dunn

      And quick ones, too. Pray for a safe collapse.

    • ivan_the_mad

      Just remember, Ron Paul is a total loon for calling attention to this. So is anyone else, like that loon Kucinich, or that loon Nader, or those loony libertarians, or those loony Socialism-lite Catholics with their “Distributism”. :O Wait a minute … Shea calls attention to this … therefore … Shea is a loon! He should rename his blog to “In League with Loons”.

      • Ted Seeber

        Maybe it’s a good thing that I was unable to actually vote for Santorum. I did vote for Kucinich in the Democratic Primary 4 years ago. And in both cases, I’ll be voting third party, if I can find an acceptable candidate (major problem- my beliefs recently flip-flopped to align with the Bishops on immigration. Now I have to find a pro-refugee, pro-child, pro-family, pro-poor Consistent Ethic of Life Candidate……Got any suggestions, cause I’ve got bupkis. Maybe I’ll vote for Mickey Mouse).

  • Ted Seeber

    Just saw an article in the paper this morning that said due to a Boeing Subsidiary, Oregon and Washington in the Gorge may see increased drone “tests”, and that we should welcome our vast overlords for providing new jobs (500 new jobs in an area of both states that seems permanently stuck at 20% unemployment) in drone development. I think that’s called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

  • John

    Graph is not adjusted for inflation. I’m pretty sure $500billion went further, bought more stuff than $500 billion today.

    So factoring in inflation, we’re spending less as a % of the budget and GDP than we did in 1950.

    Point two: yeah so? By maintaining a massive and globally dispursed, forward deployed military we accomplish two things: a) we make our forces less vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike via ICBMs and b) human nature involves laziness….if someone else provides security, the freeloaders will cease that activity. So… the US aegis in Europe precludes a new rise of EU military adventurism… and our Naval presence guaranteeing the shipping lanes likewise precluded a rise of anyone else’s navy (the bedrock of over-horizon power projection). This means no one has the ability to float an invasion fleet to our shores… if/when we pull out of Europe/the world, our absence will touch off regional and global arms races as others fill the void. Maybe this doesn’t matter. But once that starts happening it won’t stop until we either surrender or fight another world war.

    Point three: I suspect we’re facing global economic collapse due to the creation of debt faster than the growth of GDP to service much less pay that debt off…. what this means practically is a global depression and loss of 50% or more of actual Federal, state, local government spending – anything that up till now required us borrowing to achieve. This means the world will undergo de-militarization by sheer mathematics. So everyone will get their smaller military. But will we get a world of peace and love? No. We’ll get a world of war.

    Point 4: so what’s the plan? Ranting about the evil GOP/DNC is satisfying but doesn’t change anything. Not voting for anyone in November will do what? Send a message? to whom? Moral persuasion is not likely to work with either wing of the ruling class. So what’s the plan?

    I humbly submit the plan for believers ought to be to scale back our expectations – to focus on personal and local survival/seed corn. Holiness of life and love/network with neighbors. If the global economic system collapses and/or Federal spending is slashed by even 30% we could see dark months of socio-political upheaval. Blaming politicians or past military spending won’t change the circumstances of darkened cities, riots and generalized lawlessness. But a local, tight knit community of believers who don’t abuse others and control their little corner of civilization and Gospel values might stand a chance of preserving some seed corn.

    • http://disputations.blogspot.com Tom K.

      Felix typo! A “globally dispursed… military” is expensive.

    • Andy, Bad Person

      Graph is not adjusted for inflation.

      The graph is clearly labeled “Billions of constant Fiscal Year 2005 dollars.” It doesn’t have to be adjusted for inflation.

    • http://mondayevening.wordpress.com/ Marcel

      “Point 4: so what’s the plan?”

      First, everywhere they say “Yankee go home,” we leave. Second, we leave Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Step three? That’s someone else’s problem.

      • http://confederatepapist.blogspot.com/ Confederate Papist

        I’ll start:

        YANKEE GO HOME! Get out of Dixie for starters.

        Deo Vindice!!

    • Ted Seeber

      I would hope so, force multipliers being what they are. A $50,000 drone is a hell of a lot easier to replace than a $50,000 soldier. That’s the good side of the drone war.

  • Jack

    1st the Car think: I’m not a constitutional scholor but there seems soooooo many way in which it contravines the constitution.

    2ndly wake up and smell the tonic, bloomburg is as conservative as adolf hitler

    3rdly, coming from a Country that is a proud ally of the US; why on earth do you have to have bases in Germany? the germans are soooo into self flagilation that the idea of them gearing up to drive down the champs ellysie in tanks is laughable, and at least 3 members of the North Atlantic treaty possess nuclear weapons. The idea of the Red Army taking a stroll through Eestern Europe (a good number now members of NATO) to rebuild the iron curtain exists only in the fantisies of Ex-KGB types after a couple dozen bottles of Vodka (Russia’s relationship with the bottle is still terriable).

  • John

    The current situation (weak Germany, weaker Russia) is the direct effect of the US having had bases in Germany since 1946 – had we pulled out as we did in 1918, the power vaccuum would have led to a Soviet take-over of Europe. Once the USSR collapsed, so too collapsed their huge military.

    So why didn’t we just call it quits and dismantle NATO too in 1991? I don’t know. Maybe no one believed the USSR was gone for good.

    With Poland now in NATO and the eastern bloc entering the EU zone (which is soon to collapse), it’s highly unlikely the Russians will be rolling into Berlin or Paris in the near future. So maybe we will pull our troops out of Europe.

    But none of the above changes the fundamental reason why the USA has maintained such a global presence since 1950 a) ICBMs and b) power vaccum geo-politics….. if we pull all forces back to CONUS, we’ll need to bulk up in Switzerland level civil defense measures/fallout shelters or risk nuclear blackmail (because, see at the same time our nuclear warhead facilities have been closed so we have at most 20 more years of fissile materials left before half-lives of components mean we’ll need to undergo massive unilateral disarmament… so MAD won’t save us forever.) if/when we cut the size of our Navy, we’ll necessarily need to pull out of oceans all together -meaning China and others will necessarily begin patrolling in our absence….

    It’s the old ‘what do you do with a tiger’s tail? You don’t like being there, but you dare not let go”.

    • Jack

      John you miss my point.

      Until 1991 there was a good reason for keeping US bases in Germany i.e. that the other side of checkpoint Charlie stood an army whose pollitical leaders were (halfway) serious about the prospect of invading the rest of Europe in order to turn it into yet more ‘workers paradises’. My point was that collectively the German people are so hell bent on beating themselves up over what Hitler did that the very idea of war is almost anathama to them.

      Also as far as Europe is concerned the collective conventional forces of Non US Nato troops are more than a match for anything that Russia might throw at us and two of those countries (UK and France) have stratigic Nulcear Weapons.

      As far as the Pacific is concerned; well that your own backyard and far be it from me to tell you what to do there; All I was trying to say is that based on my own VERY limited knowledge, the people who decide WHERE American troops are based seem to be thinking in terms of the 1980′s, not the 2010′s.

      • Ted Seeber

        Germany has recently (well, a decade ago, but when you’re talking the history of the last century, that’s pretty recent) morphed from being front line bases to way-behind-the-front hospitals. In the war on terror, it’s the safe country comparable to what the midwest United States was in 1942.

  • John

    I agree guys. But the reason why NATO and the Russian army is nowhere near the threat to each other (or us!) that they were in the past is due to the American presence…. so do we leave and thus provoke a power vaccum that someone will fill…. or do we stay and thus guarantee that a future Muslim EU won’t flood into the zone and acquire not just the industry but the military acumen to use it for further conquests? It’s a tough question. But garrisoning some troops is cheaper than fighting major wars every 20 years or so.

    With respect to Asia… the US also has an inherited constellation of bases from the Cold War. Same problem: do we pull out, leaving a power vaccuum that will provoke all those nations to fill with their own military might….or do we stay put, garrisoning the Indian and Pacific oceans at great cost but less cost than a future war?

    Japan for example has all the means of producing nuclear warheads and ICBMs – but they don’t have the pieces assembled because of our nuclear umbrella and bases in Korea, Okinawa and Guam… since our presence guarantees their safety from China, they haven’t had to invest/field their own strategic deterrance (which means one less nuclear power for the world to worry about).

    If/when we pull out of the region, South Korea and Japan will both go nuclear for their own sovereignty/protection against China. Austrailia and New Zealand will follow suit (and who would blame them since demographically/militarily they’re vulnerable so would have the same national interest in having a nuclear insurance plan against Chinese invasion.)

    So while we might save trillions by pulling all forces back to CONUS…. the predictable results would be a global arms race and vast expansion of nuclear weapons….. with the increased risk of nuclear war.
    Again, it’s not a nice situation to be in but those calling for unilateral military disarmament/change in policy seem to assume that we’re the only actor on the world stage and that in our absence there wouldn’t be any wars or militarism or hegemonic moves by others.

  • Jack

    John

    With all due respect you talk as if the only thing that is preventing Europe from turning into a wirlpool of blood is a US Millitary Presence; as I said before whilst I am thankfull to my transatlantic cousains for their defence of democracy during the cold war, the fact is that the European members of NATO are more than capable of defending themselves against the (theoretical) threat of Russia’s conventional forces withdrawring US troops from Europe will not trigger WW3.

    As for the Pacific, I seriously doubt that China (a country which is experiencing MASSIVE internal disturbences) is planning on invading anywhere anytime soon, sure they like to sabar rattle (who doesn’t) but lets face it they have a crap NAVY and the US has a strong millitary relationship with Anglo speaking countries in the pacific via the ANZUS pact and it would be an incrediably DUMB thing of them to do.

    Now the South Korean millitary (contra some reports) is actually quite decent, and as the US (along with most of the UN) is currently still technically at war with North Korea I’m not advocating that the US remove its troops from the 38th Parallel.

    The flaw in your arguments John is that seem think that the US is the Sine Qua Non of global security.