Why let a few internationally recognized borders get in the way of interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation?
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced yesterday that U.S. troops would remain in Syria indefinitely to ensure that ISIS or the internationally recognized government of Syria does not recapture areas that have been “liberated.”
With no mandate from Congress or the international community, the U.S. has unilaterally decided that it has the right to invade and occupy a sovereign country. And what is the justification for this display of American exceptionalism? Oh, just to prevent the internationally recognized government of the country from restoring order and control over its own territory.
There was a time in this country when U.S. military intervention was considered quite serious and U.S. presidents were unable to fling troops across the globe on a whim or because some neocon egghead advisor from a think tank convinced him to do so. Congress would usually want to be involved in these decisions—or at least debate them—and would not grant presidents unrestricted authority to send young men and women into harm’s way unless it was absolutely necessary.
But those days are long gone. The U.S. military supports nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 foreign countries and territories throughout the world. And that, of course, is not counting the bases and deployments that the Pentagon has chosen to keep secret.
And how does one pay for all this international meddling all over the world, especially during a time when the corporate tax rate has just been cut from 35 percent to 21 percent under Trump’s tax bill as the deficit continues to climb to unmanageable heights? Well, eventually the money to pay for these military adventures and tax cuts for corporations and millionaires has to come from somewhere, right?
Where do you think that might be? Now, if you are the least bit cynical you might think that some in Congress have their eyes on bigger game, beyond the tax cuts for their friends and corporate donors, beyond the short-term to something much bigger. Like a grandmaster chess player, they are thinking a few moves ahead, seeing opportunities that all of these tax cuts and profligate spending on military adventures will create.
As these massive tax cuts and treasury-draining military occupations break the budget and the inevitable day of reckoning arrives, expect two programs to be eyed by our Congress with all of the glee and intensity of a wolf salivating outside of a hen house.
Social Security and Medicare will inevitably be put back on the chopping block to pay for these tax cuts and military interventions under the benign description of “entitlement reform.”
So our tough-talking Congressional members, recipients of incredibly generous health and retirement benefits, will tell the rest of us that because the deficit needs to be brought under control, we need to cut corners and do away with traditional notions of retirement, which are quaint and outdated, a relic of the past when we were all dying in our 60’s. Since we are living longer these days, they will remind us, we will have to keep working until we suffer a stroke or heart attack shelving canned goods in an aisle in Wal-Mart.
This is the future that awaits us.
