At $1 million a year, it costs us $2 billion to keep our 2,000 troops in Syria each year
Troops in the Desert
Trump doesn’t understand the mess in Syria.
He “complained at length about the amount of American money being spent in the region, which he said had produced nothing for the US in return.”
This after his “top military brass and national security team” told him it’d be “unwise” to pull out of Syria and that they couldn’t give him a timetable on when that could happen.
First of all, Trump needs to fire each and every single one of these military brass and national security team members.
It’s clear they’re members of the deep state, those that want America on a perpetual path of war so they can benefit.
You of course pay for this, with your family’s blood and treasure – it’s spilled in the sand 6,500 miles away from us.
And why is this?
As I told you over two years go, it’s simple: Syria went off the petrol-dollar in 2006 and they refuse to buy arms from American arms dealers.
Remember, the 47 American arms dealers make $235 billion a year. You think they’re going to let something like your son or daughter’s life stand in the way of those profits? I don’t, not for one second.
And it’s not just the arms dealers – our own government makes $72.8 billion a year from selling arms, a lot more than it gets in oil exports, which are about $15 billion.
This is what Trump doesn’t understand: the global elite has seen a lot produced for it via American’s Syria policy.
So when Trump makes it clear that US soldiers will be coming home from that shithole country, this is not good news for the arms dealers that were hoping to keep selling their guns and ammo to, really, both sides.
Now I guess Trump is backing off from the idea of bringing our 2,000 troops home from that 7-year, war-torn country.
What a shame, but I’m not surprised.
I have no doubt that if Trump went against the military, he’d be killed by the CIA or the NSA or the FBI…whatever deep state agency you want to pin it on.
So our troops will remain, they’ll grow larger in size, and we’ll continue to piss money away on ‘a cause’ that 99.9% of Americans do not care about.
Troops at the Border
Trump doesn’t understand the immigration mess.
States like California need lots of illegal immigrants so they’ll have someone to do their shit, low-wage jobs.
Mostly this is picking fruit and vegetables, something Americans typically don’t want to do…even if it pays more than $10 an hour.
So they welcome illegal immigrants, and supposedly there’s a huge caravan of them making their way to the border now.
Trump saw that on the old talkin’ heads shows and decided something needed to be done. So he called up the National Guard and told ‘em to get their asses down there.
Now he just has to work it out with the various governors, though California probably won’t go along.
To me, this is another issue where Trump nailed it…until he didn’t.
I like the idea of sending troops to the border…just not National Guard troops. Those folks belong back home with their families, and at their private-sector jobs.
The troops we do need at the border are the 2,000 we currently have in Syria. Get them out of that damn desert 6,500 miles away from us and get them to the deserts of the American southwest.
And while we’re at it, let’s bring home the:
- 12,000 troops we have in Kuwait
- 11,697 we have in Italy
- 3,400 we have in Bahrain
- 2,496 we have in Spain
- 1,590 we have in Turkey
- 1,243 we have in Djibouti
- 1,196 we have in Belgium
- 589 we have in Portugal
- 402 we have in Honduras
That’s over 30,000 troops right there. Surely the American taxpayer will save money if they’re in America, not in a foreign country.
Considering it costs about $1 million a year to keep a troop overseas, those 30,000 alone would cost us $30 billion a year.
Is this the best use of our nation's resources?
And don’t think for one second that I’m anathema to the idea of bringing home our 50,000 troops from Japan as well as our 40,000 troops stationed in Germany – I’m not.
In fact, I think we’re about 70 years overdue on that. The cost to the American taxpayer over that time has been immense, obscene, and downright stupid.
We’re $21 trillion in debt. When I wrote about Syria over two years ago, we had $18 trillion in debt.
We’re moving in the wrong direction here, and so is Trump.
He needs to trust his gut more, and stop listening to his deep state advisors, as well as his clueless military brass.
I say ‘clueless’ because these guys have been living on base so long that they have no idea what the real world is like, or what concerns regular Americans have.
No one is concerned about Syria. We’re concerned about paying the rent and getting enough food on the table.
Those things are hard to do with our decades-long stagnant wages, jobs without benefits, and a 1% ruling elite in this country that doesn’t give a damn and is proud to let you know it.
Conclusion
I’ve become increasingly frustrated by politics and national affairs over the past couple weeks.
The Dem-Green Party debacle here in Montana is a big part of that. The whole thing just makes me sick.
Issues on the border and our two never-ending wars (does Syria now make three?) also make me angry.
That anger turns to frustration when you realize nothing will ever change, and that frustration eventually turns to ambivalence when you realize worrying over it will just ruin your mental wellbeing.
We often say that we want to make this country, and this world, a better place…but it rarely seems that’s the case.
I don’t know what’s wrong with us, both as Americans and human beings.
We allow stupidity to reign while common sense is thrown by the wayside, and our lives never seem to improve…even after decades.
We also forget how powerful we are, and that it doesn’t take elections to unseat assholes and incompetents – the #MeTooMovement should have made that clear.
Still, it’s a money game, and nothing will ever change for the better in your life until we stop allowing rich assholes to tell us what to do.
I feel that day will never come.
Our 2018 U.S. Senate Race - our lives will never improve until we stop allowing the rich to rule us with their money
