{"id":1497450,"date":"2024-10-21T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1497450"},"modified":"2024-10-21T01:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T05:00:00","slug":"ten-lessons-on-us-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/ten-lessons-on-us-foreign-policy\/1497450\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Lessons On US Foreign Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten Lessons On US Foreign Policy<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Rhesa Browning via The Mises Institute,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Enough Already<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Scott Horton is a must-read for anyone who wants to know the truth about US foreign policy in the Middle East for the last 35 years.\u00a0Horton starts his expos\u00e9 with the 9\/11 tragedy, and then details all the terror wars up until today. Among all the facts and figures, Horton teaches ten important lessons.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Each chapter focuses on a specific country, but these lessons are woven throughout each.<\/p>\n

Lesson 1\u2014The US is Not Loyal to Its Allies<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cIf you want to know who America\u2019s next enemy is, look at who we are funding right now.\u201d\u2014Dave Smith<\/p>\n

I used to think this statement was an oversimplification, but it is deadly accurate.\u00a0Our government routinely makes allies only to turn around and attack them years later. One clear example is what would become al Qaeda.\u00a0In the 1980s, the US armed Afghan resistance fighters to oppose Russia in Afghanistan.\u00a0After 9\/11, al Qaeda became the archenemy of the US.\u00a0Then, about ten years later, they started arming them\u00a0again<\/em>\u00a0to fight in Iraq and in Syria.<\/p>\n

In Afghanistan, the US supported the Taliban during the Clinton administration.\u00a0Then multiple presidents fought a 20-year war against them only to give full control of Afghanistan back to the Taliban in 2021.<\/p>\n

The US followed the same pattern with Iraq.\u00a0The US armed them against Iran during the 1980s. They supported Hussein all the way to Iraq War I in 1990.\u00a0Then they bombed and sanctioned the country until they captured him in 2003 and had him executed.<\/p>\n

Lesson 2\u2014The US Prolongs Wars<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Without US involvement in the Middle East, both sides in a conflict would be similar in strength and have less resources to continue.\u00a0In the Yemen War, the US sends arms to Saudi Arabia, who then sends them to their allies in Yemen to fight the Houthis, even though the Houthis \u201cwon\u201d years ago. Take the US out of the equation and the Saudi\u2019s allies wouldn\u2019t be able to continue the war.<\/p>\n

The same thing happened in Somalia when the US armed Ethiopian forces to invade. Continued US support incentivized the Ethiopian groups to continue fighting after it started. Outside the Middle East, this lesson played out the exact same way in the Ukraine-Russia war.\u00a0Plus, the US stopped peace negotiations between Zelensky and Putin through their proxy Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n

Lesson 3\u2014The US Justifies Starting Wars with Nonsense<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The best example is Iraq War II. One of the main intellectual justifications for attacking Iraq in 2003 was a\u00a0white paper<\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cA Clean Break,\u201d written by David Wurmser.\u00a0In it he dreams that if the US military would overthrow Iraq\u2019s Baathist Party, they could set up a government and form close allies in the region. He then imagined that Syria and Lebanon would prefer to follow a US puppet regime in Iraq over Iran, and that the new Shia Iraqi government would unite more closely with the US than Iran.\u00a0However, they were never going to prefer a secular Western government over fellow Muslims.\u00a0Contrary to Wurmser\u2019s mythology, Iraq immediately allied with Iran and the rest of the Shia world instead of the US.<\/p>\n

We also all know about the false accusations the Bush Administration made to garner support for Iraq War II. They fabricated stories about Iraq having chemical and biological weapons, and about Hussein collaborating with al Qaeda.<\/p>\n

Lesson 4\u2014The US Causes the Problems They Claim to Prevent<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The clearest example of this is Libya in 2011.\u00a0The US government justified their intervention saying that, without it, Muammar Gadhafi would massacre his own civilians in response to al Qaeda-aligned rebels opposing his rule. However, US involvement in the conflict caused civilian massacres instead of preventing them.\u00a0The US-backed rebels terrorized civilians wherever they gained control and instituted a new slave system.<\/p>\n

Lesson 5\u2014The US-Led Terror Wars Don\u2019t Defend America<\/strong><\/h2>\n

After 9\/11, the Taliban offered to help the US capture Osama Bin Laden.\u00a0Instead of working with the Taliban to avenge the lives of dead Americans, they attacked Afghanistan to conquer the country and install a Western-style government.\u00a0It demonstrated the purpose was to build an empire, not to defend America.<\/p>\n

The US waged many of the subsequent wars to benefit Israel and Saudi Arabia.\u00a0The US fought Iraq War III and the Syrian War to reduce Iran\u2019s influence in the region for this purpose. Another reason the US started Iraq War II was to open land for a new pipeline from Iraq to Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the Yemen War, the Houthis were enemies of Saudi Arabia, not the US. The US still dutifully sent in weapons.<\/p>\n

Lesson 6\u2014The US Lies about Every Aspect of These Wars<\/strong><\/h2>\n

They lie about why we should stay,\u00a0they lie about status updates,\u00a0they lie about the groups they support.\u00a0In one of Scott Horton\u2019s radio commercials, he states, \u201cthey lied us into war, all of them.\u201d It applies to every aspect of these wars.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the US government showed they were willing to lie in the most insane ways. They blamed the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on an anti-Islamic video made by an Egyptian-American from Los Angeles. They even threw him in jail for almost a year based on spurious \u201cprobation violations\u201d charges. In reality, the terrorists attacked to exact revenge for secret raids against them coordinated by Obama\u2019s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan. Further, US officials were in Benghazi to transfer weapons from Libya to Syria, between radical Islamists. That led to another lie calling ISIS \u201cmoderate\u201d rebels.<\/p>\n

Lesson 7 – The US-Led Terror Wars Produce More Terrorists<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The US military interventions in the Middle East have created more terrorists.\u00a0In September 2001, al Qaeda consisted of\u00a0400 people<\/a>\u00a0hiding in eastern Afghanistan.\u00a0Scott Horton doesn\u2019t give an exact number of their numbers today (though some have\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a0at least over 20,000), but he listed al Qaeda-affiliated organizations operating all over the Middle East.\u00a0Just about every country mentioned in\u00a0Enough Already<\/em>\u00a0now has al Qaeda or Bin Ladenite-style forces in it. Ironically, al Qaeda\u2019s presence in Afghanistan is at another low point now that the Taliban is back in control.<\/p>\n

Lesson 8\u2014The US Primarily Kills Civilians\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The book throughout presents death and casualty numbers for these wars.\u00a0Based on those numbers, they roughly kill about 100 times more civilians than combatants.\u00a0During the 1990s, US bombings and sanctions killed around 500,000 Iraqi civilians.\u00a0Drone strikes in Pakistan often targeted civilians based on faulty intelligence.\u00a0Even when they hit terrorists, civilians die because the strikes hit public spaces or community gatherings. Tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians have died because of the war and the blockade resulting in mass starvation there.\u00a0US-backed al Qaeda forces killed thousands of civilians during the Libyan Civil War of 2011.\u00a0The same exact thing happened in Syria as ISIS was notorious for massacring civilians in the areas they conquered.<\/p>\n

Lesson 9\u2014The US has Lost Every War It Started in the Middle East<\/strong><\/h2>\n

They haven\u2019t \u201cwon\u201d one war in the Middle East. The war in Afghanistan ended with the US giving the country back to the Taliban.\u00a0In Yemen, the Houthis won and continue to control the main population centers.\u00a0In Mali, Somalia, and Libya, al Qaeda-affiliated groups are in power. The closest thing to a US victory is Libya since they armed al Qaeda to take out Gadhafi. In Syria, Bashar Al Assad is still in power.\u00a0Even though the US was successful in deposing Saddam Hussein, the current government is strongly allied with Iran over the US. With such a list of failures the only sensible path is to pursue peaceful interactions.<\/p>\n

Lesson 10\u2014The US Terror Wars Hurt Americans<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The wars hurt normal American citizens in several different ways.\u00a0Most directly, 7000 American soldiers have been killed with more wounded. Thousands more are suicidal and living lives of desperation because of PTSD.<\/p>\n

The factor affecting most Americans is that the US government pays for military interventions through inflation, debt, and taxation. Simply put, they are stealing from us.\u00a0As a result, it has become harder for Americans to purchase a home or build a family. This lack of economic opportunity also affects crime rates and homelessness.<\/p>\n

Last, the tools used in those foreign wars are now used on American citizens.\u00a0The most serious threats to our liberty come from the PATRIOT Act, police militarization, and the\u00a0NDAA<\/a>, which allows the government to jail citizens with no due process.\u00a0I would say that we\u2019ve had enough already.\u00a0It\u2019s time to end the war on terrorism and every other war we are supporting in the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 10\/20\/2024 – 21:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/ten-lessons-us-foreign-policy<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten Lessons On US Foreign Policy Authored by Rhesa Browning via The Mises Institute, Enough Already\u00a0by Scott Horton is a must-read for anyone who wants…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1497451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1497450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1497450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1497451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1497450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1497450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1497450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}