American Empire Exposed
It’s Time to Stop “Supporting Our Troops”
With the
115 year old tradition of the annual Army-Navy football classic on
Saturday, the so called “America’s game” and “rivalry for the ages” is now once
again upon us. This occasion never fails to pay reverent homage to America’s so
called “cream of the crop” elitist military academies and always from the president to
celebrities Americans give tribute to our armed forces. At this time we hear
that familiar patriotic mantra “support our troops” mindlessly repeated. So it
seems appropriate now to take a cold hard look to examine what it actually
means to “support our troops.”
As both a
West Point graduate and critic of the American Empire,
to me the “support our
troops” sentiment has long outworn its propagandized
welcome. US Empire has been using that contrite expression to brainwash
Americans and justify its wars and violence for far too long. It sprang up
during this last decade’s protracted war losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never
was it ever heard during the Vietnam War when our
combat veterans returned home feeling defeated and suffering from
untreated PTSD symptoms, shunned by a nation that had bitterly turned
against them and their war, particularly by their own peer group. Fast
forward to four decades and three war defeats later, and our government is
still sending Americans off to fight and die in Afghanistan (9800 currently) and Iraq (3500 with another 100 on the way),
and now inSyria (50 just proposed with more on the
way while war-hawk Bobbsy twins McCain and Graham are calling for 20,000 more
troops in Syria). But this century's wars we keep hearing red, white and
blue, flag waving Americans urging us to “support our troops.”
Over the
long haul, supporting our troops has resulted in the United States being the
most warring, aggressive nation on earth, bar none. As we’re about to enter
2016, our ultraviolent country will be killing other human beings somewhere on
this planet for 223 out of the last 240 total years the US has been in
existence. That’s 93% of our time as a nation-turned-Empire we’ve been
destroying human life. That’s certainly nothing to be proud of. Yet it’s “our
troops” who’ve been the murdering culprit. No compassionate, rational person
could possibly place blindly obedient support behind such rampantly wanton
disregard and contempt for fellow human life.
Another
fact that Americans can’t be proud of is knowing that the most warring nation
on earth just since World War II alone has murdered up to 30 million
people around the globe with an estimated 90% of them being civilians. Having
initiated 201 out of the total of 240 armed conflicts from the end of WWII
to 2001, it then follows that between those years the US Empire of Chaos and
Destruction has murdered 27 million innocent people whose lives have tragically
been cut short through no fault of their own for simply living in the wrong
place at the wrong time belonging to the wrong ethnic nationality targeted by
America’s full spectrum dominance and global superpower hegemony. And that was
before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And what
does it take to be targeted as a US foreign enemy? Any
country whose leaders choose to support their own citizens’ well-being,
independence and quality of life over US Empire’s fascist transnational
corporate interests is attacked economically through sanctions and embargos,
politically through propaganda lies and threats, or militarily though unnatural disasters/weather warfare, occupied invasions
involving long term bloody conflict or acts of terrorism, coups and assassinations. Just ask
Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Panama, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen,
Somalia, Sudan, Congo North Korea, Donbas, Palestine or Russia just to name
more than a dozen.
People
around the world have been victimized for well over a century by American
Empire’s willful rape and pillage of their lands in the name of stolen natural
resources and inhumane forced slave labor, and those are the nations whose
puppet dictators willingly succumbed and acquiesced to US demands and
pressures. In fact in the tradition of the British Empire, North America’s
entire domestic and foreign history has been made of genocidal killing, enslaving, stealing and subjugating
other darker-skinned races into death and submission. Given this context with
the bigger picture perspective, “supporting our troops” is really supporting
mass murder around the world. So bearing that sobering, grim reality in mind,
it’s time for Americans to cease and desist with their jingoistic rah-rah that
only adds insult to injury to the rest of the victimized world.
In 2008 the US spent more money every 5 seconds to wage an
immoral, unlawful war in Iraq than the average working American earned all year
long. 80% of America’s taxes are earmarked towards funding the annual Pentagon
budget to wage war around the world. When that kind of war investment
misappropriating US citizenry’s hard-earned tax dollars places such lopsided
priority over the well-being of its own people, with over a decade of wearing down an overextended military forced
into fighting three, four and even five consecutive combat tours on two
simultaneous warfronts, it also overburdened and decimated America’s middle class. And now
for the first time in nearly a half century, the US middle class is no longer a majority in the
United States. A large chunk of it died when sinking into an expanding lower
class of impoverished, poverty-stricken Americans barely making ends meet.
Half the respondents in a recent survey say they either break even or make less
than their cost of living expenses. As an oligarchy the US
federal government no longer acts in the best interests of its citizens.
But
considering the costs of war to victim nations where since 2003 the US has
killed over a million people in Iraq alone, this figure released from a study earlier this year is
admittedly a conservative estimate. The study concludes that up to two million
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been killed by America’s wars. These
colossal crimes against humanity constitute supporting the US federal
government as well as its military troops a moral crime. America’s complete and
utter destruction of the world’s second and third largest oil producers in Iraq
and Libya, turning them into failed states because their one time US allied
leaders moved away from the US petrodollar is unconscionable, yet that’s the
tragic outcome of blindly supporting our troops. More than any other single
country, the US today is responsible for allowing ISIS to make billions in profit from stolen oil from Iraq and Syria financing the
biggest terrorist group on the planet. And US partners-in-crime Turkey and Israel are the two biggest buyers of
terrorist oil. So in effect supporting our troops is also supporting both
crimes against humanity as well as worldwide terrorism.
Supporting
our troops has contributed to the world becoming far more armed and dangerous today than at any
prior time in our recorded human history. Our nation is also responsible for spearheading
the biggest arms race in history where it’s not just the US
Empire spending so many billions on weapons of mass destruction but due to
Empire aggression it has forced Russia and China to answer by also
significantly increasing their military spending. A dozen years ago the US defense
budget nearly equaled the rest of the world combined. But
during this century’s two protracted US wars plus smaller secret ones around
the world, America’s military expenditures have soared to $682 billion in 2012 from $417.4 in 2003. The exponential
rise of American aggression likewise has pressured the unilaterally declared US
enemies Russia and China to significantly increase their military spending as
well. The US has gone from spending near half (46%) of the world’s military
amount in 2003 to just 35% in 2014due to
Russia and China dramatically expanding their military budgets. In fact
following America’s lead, both the world’s annual arms sales as well as its
military budgets have exponentially skyrocketed amongst dozens of countries all
seemingly gearing up for “the big one.” Not surprisingly, at 31% the US is also the biggest arms dealer on the
planet followed by Russia’s 27% with China accounting for 5% during the period
from 2010-2014 that totaled a 16% increase from arms sold from 2005-2009.
Events and
developments have escalated tensions and confrontations between the US and
Russia and China in recent weeks. With the US backing NATO member Turkey recklessly shooting down a
Russian fighter jet resulting in a Russian rescue helicopter also brought down
last month, in addition to the probable ISIS bomb taking down the Russian airliner killing all 224 onboard a month and a
half ago, the US Navy destroyer skirting inside the twelve nautical
mile range of built up Chinese islands in the South China Sea, the United
States and the West appear to be baiting Putin and the East into World War III. And with nuclear powers going
directly head-to-head in Syria, Ukraine and Asia, self-annihilation of the
human race becomes a very real and grave risk culminating after a quarter
century of US Empire belligerently operating as the sole global superpower
and "global village" bully.
Out of
nearly 200 countries no other nation on earth has more than a few military
bases outside its own country except the United States. In contrast to the rest
of the world, the US sends 1.5 million military occupiers on active duty to over a thousand military installations on every
continent throughout the globe. Just this week the Pentagon announced a worldwide
expansion of military bases without specifying a total number
under the auspices of secrecy. West Africa, East Africa and Afghanistan are
slotted for full scale bases. Meanwhile US Special Forces that covertly operate
by stealth surprise often at night in guerilla-type, fast strike operations are
busily secretly committing acts of terror in over 135 nations globally,
that’s about 75% of the all world’s nations.
Let’s look
at the way our federal government supports our troops. After sending over 6800 US soldiers (along with 7000 civilian
contractors) to their early graves fighting in America’s two longest running
wars in the nation’s history, leaving one million wounded personnel filing VA
claims ranging from life threatening physical injuries to emotionally crippling
PTSD traumas and scars, the feds have betrayed our patriots serving our country
by treasonously targeting all returning combat veterans as the biggest enemy threat on American soil. Indeed
veterans, gun owners and dissidents are deemed to pose a greater danger
than even the feds' own created terrorist monster ISIS that
Obama's open border policy facilitates easy access to establishing terrorist
cells inside America.
Those
veterans seeking help are customarily snowed under by lethal Big Pharma poison, fast
becoming addicted and even more unstable. Many are haplessly waiting and dying
on lists for medical services that often don’t come soon enough. Exposing forty
veterans who died awaiting services on invisible lists at the Phoenix VA
hospital alone triggered a major scandal last year. For several years running on
average twenty-two veterans have been killing themselves each and
every day in the United States. The overloaded Veterans Administration has been
caught grossly ill-prepared to adequately deal with the sheer enormity of the
problem with so many severely damaged ex-soldiers in dire need of long term
assistance and care. One study predicts that up to nearly a half million veterans will end up
with criminal cases in the court system.
With
nearly half (44%) of Congress millionaires and so few (19%) ever serving in uniform now, the DC warmongers
are ever-at-the-ready to send young men and women from America’s lower class
into harm’s way fighting Obama’s dirty little secret wars in multiple combat
zones around the world that the public never even hears about. Yet you’ll see
next to none of their own sons or daughters fighting in some far off war. The way
our own government has used, abused and not supported our troops is despicable.
And then a
sizeable percentage of those Americans who are so vocal in their claims of “supporting our troops,” are too frequently disingenuous.
Often hypocrites merely mouth the same banal platitudes year after year from
their ivory-towered, pretend world, living so far removed and disaffected from
actual war conditions or even knowing anyone who wears a military uniform.
Never fathoming the tragic insanity or bloody lifelong consequences that US
wars ravage on millions worldwide, permanently damaging all involved, Americans
who haven’t a clue will glibly pay lip service, “We owe so much to our soldiers
who fight to keep us safe and free.” What bubble, planet or century are they
living on or in?
Since the
inside coup of 9/11 was perpetrated, US citizens have become the murderous
neocons’ war on terror victims as well, terrorized by their own international
crime cabal government and militarized police state that’s effectively stolen
their freedom and civil liberties while the guilty treasonously continue
violating sworn oaths to uphold and protect both the Constitution and American
people. Yet too many brainwashed, dumbed down and clueless in America don’t
seem to get it. Maybe it’s because they’re bombarded 24/7 by MSM lies and disinformation that never
expose the ugliness of war as it really is. The ruling elite controls all
aspects of mass media, engaging in widespread censorship of films, television
and video games where violence and war are only glorified.
Military, CIA and FBI liaisons control every aspect of what comes out of
Hollywood these days.
But over
four decades of a volunteer army comprised of less than half of one
percent of the total US population also contributes greatly to the widening
disconnect between the 99+% civilian population and the less than 1% Americans
in uniform. The atrocities and horror that the imperialistic Empire’s killing
machine has inflicted on Third World nations half a world away may as well be
billions of miles away on another planet or galaxy. Out of sight, out of mind
goes many civilians’ insulated, tunnel version reality.
Those
currently in uniform need to be reminded that they have a sworn duty to protect
America from domestic and foreign enemies. As citizens who no longer live in a
democratic republic but now a totalitarian police state, they need to recognize
that their federal government has a diabolical agenda to enslave and eliminate fellow
Americans. Instead of criminalizing dissent, the real domestic enemy has become
the federal government and all Americans need to accept this tragic
development. Therefore, both those already in uniform as well as those ready to
sign up and allow themselves to become their crime cabal’s latest cannon fodder
in the elite’s wars need to stand up and be counted as patriots loyal to their nation and fellow citizens rather than
adhere to blind obedience to their psychopathic masters. It’s no longer okay to
support the troops when they’re misdirected into committing treason against
their own citizenry. Military personnel need to take responsibility for their
actions and do what’s right by both their Constitution as well as humanity.
2015 has
been a tumultuous year when by globalist design terrorism has expanded to all corners
of the earth, spreading death, war and destruction in its wake. Meanwhile,
feeling its economic prowess slipping away in the face of the emerging power of Eastern rivals China and
Russia, the United States government has already conceded losing its war to
retain the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The DC crime syndicate
knows its days in power are numbered. Since the psychopaths ruling the planet
are unwilling to relinquish their ruthless power of absolute control, they
realize that using their Manchurian puppet president and his overstretched US
Empire to recklessly do their dirty planetary bidding to successfully destroy
the world’s most powerful nation sending Empire into rapid freefall decline on
the way to one world government can only be achieved by igniting World War III against the Eastern powers just as
their Ponzi-rigged, house of cards, debt-based global economy implodes on
itself. So this late in the power elite’s endgame when we’re still hearing
“support the troops,” in actuality it’s time to fight for our lives in support
of humanity’s struggle for survival and good ultimately triumphing over evil.
Joachim
Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army
officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience
entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It
examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national
security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in
Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health
field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and
has a blog site at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/. Joachim
is also a regular contributor toGlobal Research, Sott.net and LewRockwell.com.
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