Going Back to War

Written By Briton Ryle

Posted June 18, 2014

It seems there is a fair amount of enthusiasm in Congress and important media outlets for the U.S. going back to war.

Senator John McCain says the situation in Iraq “has turned into one of the most serious threats to American security in recent history.”

He continued, “You’re going to see the same thing in Afghanistan if we don’t leave a residual force behind.”

McCain says that not leaving troops behind in Iraq to help keep the peace was a “colossal failure of American security policy.”

I guess Mr. McCain has forgotten that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki wouldn’t agree to the conditions that might have kept an American force in Iraq.

I guess Mr. McCain forgets that the American people are tired of war and that, because America is democracy, this counts for something.

Yesterday, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said:

“The administration must act quickly to provide assistance to the [Nouri al] Maliki government before every gain made by U.S. and allied troops is lost, and before [ISIS] expands its sanctuary — from which it can eventually threaten the United States.”

I ask: what gains did we make in Iraq? And what do we actually stand to lose — other than more American soldiers — in a country with which we should never have been militarily involved in the first place?

Maybe he’s talking about the 3.5 million barrels of Iraqi oil that hits the market every day.

Iraq was a disaster from the minute the first American soldier stepped on the burning sand. We never found the WMDs that were the justification for that ill-fated war to begin with.

Maybe Saddam really did ship them to Syria for hiding, where they were subsequently used by Assad on his own people. So I guess we should have sent troops there, too…

And we should have had forces on the ground in Libya when that country was collapsing, too, like the warmongers wanted. And in Egypt. And perhaps a force in Ukraine as well…

I’m not sure where the idea that the United States is the world’s police force began. But it’s time it stopped. As a country, we have problems of our own that need attention…

The job market here is so bad that millions of Americans have simply given up the search for a paycheck.

Politics has become so corrupted by corporate campaign contributions that the average American is “disenchanted with a U.S. economic system that many believe is stacked against them,” according to a WSJ/NBC poll.

And I guess it is. After all, our politicians vote privately to put state pension funds in the hands of hedge fund wolves so they can be bled dry with outrageous fees. And after the fat cats have padded their bank accounts and the pension funds run low, these same politicians argue that workers don’t deserve pensions in the first place.

No wonder the gap between super-rich and poor is the widest it’s ever been. No wonder so many people get food stamps. Our surplus — what has made America great — is being pilfered by the greedy and squandered on idiotic wars.

And they want to send more American men and women anywhere in the world there’s a problem.

It’s just embarrassing…

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote this recently:

”The weakness with any democratic foreign policy is the problem of motivation. How do you get the electorate to support the constant burden of defending the liberal system?”

So, to Brooks, when a Pew Research Center poll shows that 53% of Americans say the U.S. “should mind its own business internationally,” it doesn’t mean the voice of the people should be heard — it means we need convincing. We need to be compelled like medieval peasants to go fight the king’s war.

To the elite, we are just not sophisticated enough to weigh the facts and make the right decision. To them, we need to have the world and its myriad problems sliced neatly on a plate and spoon-fed to us so we can digest the deeper meaning.

I don’t know who this ISIS group is. But they have risen to prominence quickly. They raised cash by selling Syrian artifacts they stole. They seized an oil field and sold it back to Assad. And the first move they make when they move into a city is to loot the banks.

This isn’t some ragtag bunch of religious fanatics. They are on a different mission, and they now have over $1 billion. If I had to guess, I’d say they have backing from a wealthy government and maybe even some military special forces in the ranks.

This ISIS activity in Iraq is a calculated move in a game the U.S. should not be playing. We can’t win. And we probably don’t even know the rules. Though, of course, our political elite will think they do…

The American elite seems to have forgotten this: you have to make your own way. You have to decide what kind of person you want to be and what kind of country you want to have. No country has ever been successful when outside powers make decisions for it.

And God knows, we have tried. We put the Shah of Iran in power. We backed Saddam. We backed Suharto, Pinochet, and countless other strongmen who were supposed to keep the peace.

They didn’t. Because they weren’t there by the will of the people.

Americans fought the Revolutionary War to create the country we wanted. And less than 100 years later, we had our own Civil War.

It’s high time we let the people of Iraq and the rest of the world fight for what they really want.

Until next time,

Until next time,

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Briton Ryle

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A 21-year veteran of the newsletter business, Briton Ryle is the editor of The Wealth Advisory income stock newsletter, with a focus on top-quality dividend growth stocks and REITs. Briton also manages the Real Income Trader advisory service, where his readers take regular cash payouts using a low-risk covered call option strategy. He is also the managing editor of the Wealth Daily e-letter. To learn more about Briton, click here.

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