LEFT OF THE RIGHT: Time To Face The Ugly Truth… We’ Are Today’s “Evil Empire”

May 06, 2010 01:43 PM EDT

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With nearly 370,000 of our soldiers deployed in over 150 countries throughout the world, no other term but’ empire can describe what the United States looks like to the rest of Earth’s residents. And their opinion of that empire is not very high. Almost from the day we won the Revolutionary War we’ve been busy “intervening” all over the place.

I Googled “history of American military deployment” and found that going all the way back to the beginning of the 19^th century, hardly a month has gone by without some kind of American military action somewhere on our planet. And that action could be for something as trivial as insulting an American diplomat. We’re not talking about economic sanctions either. In those early days an insult to An American diplomat or military officer would be answered by a dozen U.S. Navy ships showing up in your harbor. Followed by a few hundred marines landing and setting fire to a town or two as “punishment.”

After reviewing our countries behavior in regards to how we’ve used our military. I’ve had to conclude we’ve been acting like a school yard bully since the beginning. Here’s an example. I doubt you could find an American who would not agree that defeating Japan’s aggression in WWII was a righteous thing. But did you know that the method we used to get Japan to open itself to trade and relations in the 19^th century was by sending a good portion of our Navy and pretty much telling them “do it or else?” It’s no wonder there’s so much animosity towards the United States around the world.

In the 20^th century we added insult to injury by adopting the practice of never leaving. Going back to WWII, we’ve left troops in virtually every country we’ve fought in. We’re told that these deployments are necessary to ensure our national security. Really? Everyone raise your hands if you believe Germany or Japan is planning to attack the United States. Or maybe some one thinks Great Britain is planning to reclaim the colonies because we’ve got nearly 10 thousand deployed there. Why???

There is simply no justification for these deployments and the effect is so negative they’ve only resulted in making us less safe. Ever since the 1950’s we’ve been in possession of a trump card that made the deployment of troops in foreign countries anachronistic. That trump card has been and is today our fleet of nuclear submarines. Any sovereign nation knows a blatant attack on the U.S. would result in their complete annihilation.

The reason these troop deployments have made us less safe is because it is one of the biggest motivations for terrorists. Sadly though, instead of learning that lesson and beginning to reverse the mistake, our attempt to use our military to address terrorism has been kind of like sending a blind man with a baseball bat into a china shop to kill a fly. Look at the evidence… 9 years and 2 wars later and attempts to attack us keep coming. Thankfully our Homeland Security people under both Bush and Obama and some pure dumb luck has prevented another tragedy on our home soil so far.

When you combine the economic and human cost of dealing with terrorism with the fact that maintaining this world wide military empire is bankrupting our nation. It becomes evident how imperative it is that it is time to bring our troops home. We simply can longer afford to be the world’s baby sitter. And dealing with terrorism I believe would be better left to the cops. Besides, maybe folks will start to like us when we stop hanging out in their yards carrying machine guns.

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