How Does US Foreign Policy Benefit Americans?

[Ethereal]

In what way does US foreign policy benefit Americans as a whole? The only example I can think of is our naval power being used to protect our maritime rights in international waters, but that is a tradition dating back to the presidencies of Adams and Jefferson. In terms of modern foreign policy, I can see no obvious benefits. I see a great deal of costs, both in terms of lost liberty, high taxes, and mountains of debt, but what have Americans gotten in return for their massive investment? Nothing as far as I can tell. Instead, US foreign policy seems to serve the interests of elites at the expense of ordinary Americans. What else can explain the wars in Vietnam or Iraq, for example? Both were nothing short of disasters for the American people, but for the elites, those wars were a veritable orgy of profits and power.

The limp-wristed, America-hating, peacenik, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned Americans against the undue influence of what he called "the military-industrial complex" in his last address to the country. And before him, Marine General and two-time medal of honor winner, Smedley Butler, told Americans that "war is a racket". And even before that, James Madison said the means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. And yet some Americans seem oblivious to the dangers posed by this military-industrial complex. Indeed, some do not even acknowledge its existence. Instead, they are content to continue spending outrageous amounts of money on a foreign policy regime that produces no discernible return on the investment.

[Ransom]

I didn't know our Supreme Allied Commander in WWII and then President Eisenhower hated America. Reckon we do learn something everyday.

It's just a matter of not knowing. Of not having the benefit of an education that we see banter such as "only example I can think of" or "I can see no obvious benefits."

Let's see if we can walk Ethereal through this, hold his hand, guide him if you will. Ethereal......put the 'I Hate America sign' down for just a second. Thanks. Let's not be so broad and pick a single 'military industrial complex' corporation and 'racket' on that for a while. I'll choose one knee deep in military industry, one that pays mountains of taxes, one that also provides a 'benefit' to Americans, one that is central to our foreign policies and military power and then discuss. Agreed?

I choose Boeing.

[Admiral Ackbar]

Etheral. I want to be clear. You propose the USN be drawn back for coastal defense of the US only? Lets play that out a bit. What would you think the results of that would be if that happened. I am pretty sure I know what would happen. To be concise the first thing that happens is World Wide Economic Depression, Famine and Conflict..but I will let you tell me what your crystal ball sees.

[MMC]

National Interests shapes Foreign Policy. Obvious trade is Foreign Policy and benefits society as a whole.

Yeah not having good relations with others countries is a whole lot of nothing. Traveling, people doing business in other countries. States doing business with other countries. That is more of the nothing you were thinking about. Of course in reality many call those benefits.

[Dr. Who]

Excerpt from Age of Folly - America Abandons Its Democracy - by Lewis H. Lapham

"By 1990, America was showing vivid signs of the disease. President Ronald Reagan’s dancing onto the White House stage in 1981 foretold the second coming of an American Gilded Age more selfish than the first; greed was good, money the hero with a thousand faces, the notion of such a thing as democratic self-government slipping from the mind of an electorate asking of its rulers what the rich ask of their servants—comfort us, be good to us, tell us what to do.

Democracy degrading into plutocracy was the work in progress when the unlooked-for collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 confronted the prosperous bourgeois statesmen in Washington with a problem undreamed of in their philosophy: What to do without the Russians. For half a century, as long as anybody inside Washington’s Beltway bubble could remember, the Evil Soviet Empire—stupendous enemy, world class and operatic, menace for all seasons—had furnished nine American presidents with a just and noble raison d’etat, fattened America’s gross domestic product on the seed of profligate defense spending, smothered the mutterings of American political dissent with the fear of nuclear annihilation.

A precious asset, the Communist ogre in the totalitarian snow, and in 1990 sorely missed. Absent the Cold War with the Russians, how then defend, honor, and protect the cash flow of the nation’s military–industrial complex pumping air and iron into the conspicuous consumptions of the American dream? The government had on hand a war machine marvelous to behold and expensive to maintain—gun platforms of every conceivable caliber and throw-weight, aircraft, tanks, and naval vessels at all points of every compass, guidance systems endowed with the wisdom of angels and armed with the judgments of doom. But other than as a means of changing lead into gold, who could say what the thing was supposed to do? Where was the tactical or strategic objective, and to what end the patriotic call to arms?

In search of dramatic significance, President George H. W. Bush in 1991 sent the gunboats, the cameras, and the flags to the Persian Gulf; his historically illiterate adjutants at the Pentagon (among them Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell), drafted a Defense Strategy for the 1990s appointing America Keeper of World Peace. As subsequently published in 1993, the policy paper envisioned an invincible military establishment capable of waging, simultaneously, major wars on two continents, while at the same time attending to the minor nuisances of terrorists here and there in the slums of the Middle East and bandits in the mountains of Afghanistan and the jungles of Colombia. The claim to the crown of world empire set forth the doctrines of “Forward Deterrence,” “Anticipatory Self-Defense,” and “Preemptive Strike,” informed the lesser nations of the earth of their inferior and subsidiary status. Let any failed or upstart state even begin to think of challenging American supremacy, and America reserved the right to strangle the impudence at birth, bomb the peasants or the palace, block the flow of sympathy and bank credit, change the sheets in the brothels and the information ministries.

During the decade of the 1990s, the Pentagon’s pitch for unlimited subsidy gathered the force of an obligation to rule and save the world. President Bill Clinton seconded the motion, approved and carried by a clear majority of the nation’s self-glorifying media—conservative and neoconservative, liberal and neoliberal, literary and academic. How could it be otherwise? The Soviets had lost the Cold War, their weapons gone to rust, their economy in ruins, the statues of V. I. Lenin reduced to scrap. History was at an end, America “the single model of human progress.” The American way was the only way, and if not America bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus, who else to lift the burden once borne on the back of Imperial Rome?"

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2898-lewis-lapham-trump-is-an-exemplary-embodiment-of-our-age-of-folly

[MMC]

Here is another version.


By the turn of the 20th century, the United States had become a minor imperial power, fighting a war with Spain for Cuba and the Philippines and annexing Hawaii and several other territories. World War I engaged the United States in European affairs, but after the war, a wave of isolationist feeling swept the country. Refusing membership in the League of Nations, America turned inward once again. Absorbed by the prosperity of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s, America let its military strength erode. It was not prepared for war when the Japanese struck the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in late 1941.


Emerging from World War II as the most powerful economic power on Earth, the United States changed its foreign policy dramatically. It took the lead in founding the United Nations. It invested billions of dollars through the Marshall Plan to help strengthen war-devastated European democracies. It created a system of alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).


Central to America’s foreign policy in the post-war period was the containment of the Soviet Union and communism. During the Cold War, the United States and its allies competed with the Soviet Union and its allies militarily, economically, and ideologically. Both sides created massive military forces and huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Although the two superpowers never went to war, the policy of containment led the United States into the bloody Korean and Vietnam wars.



The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union, economically exhausted from competing with the West, disintegrated. This left the United States the only remaining superpower in a world no longer ruled by the logic of containing the Soviet Union.


Through time, various constitutional principles and values have shaped American foreign policy. American foreign policy has favored the self-determination of nations for independence. Based on our commitment to constitutional government, we often favor and support nations that practice democracy. These principles, however, sometimes have conflicted with the goals of national security, economics, or the realities of international politics. In certain cases, America has supported dictatorial governments or intervened to curtail popular political movements.


Making and Carrying Out Foreign PolicyAmerica’s foreign policy today covers a wide range of functions and issues. It includes establishing and maintaining diplomatic relations with other countries and international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization of American States. It includes peacekeeping functions such as working with allies to assure regional and international security and arms-control efforts. It covers a range of international economic issues including trade, travel, and business. It involves foreign aid and disaster relief. As a superpower, the United States has also taken a leadership role in peacemaking around the globe by trying to negotiate treaties and agreements to end regional conflicts. Also, as a world leader, the United States has a longstanding role in trying to address international economic and environmental problems.


In forming U.S. foreign policy, the president relies on advice from the National Security Council. This group is made up of the vice-president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the nation’s highest military adviser).


The public also plays a role in influencing foreign policy. Advocacy groups for foreign countries often try to influence Congress and the president about issues. Business associations lobby the government about international economic and trade issues. Groups and individuals with strong views on certain foreign policy issues, especially military intervention, often organize protests or other political actions to influence decisions. …..snip~


http://www.crf-usa.org/war-in-iraq/foreign-policy.html

[Admiral Ackbar]

Excerpt from Age of Folly - America Abandons Its Democracy - by Lewis H. Lapham

"By 1990, America was showing vivid signs of the disease. President Ronald Reagan’s dancing onto the White House stage in 1981 foretold the second coming of an American Gilded Age more selfish than the first; greed was good, money the hero with a thousand faces, the notion of such a thing as democratic self-government slipping from the mind of an electorate asking of its rulers what the rich ask of their servants—comfort us, be good to us, tell us what to do.

Democracy degrading into plutocracy was the work in progress when the unlooked-for collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 confronted the prosperous bourgeois statesmen in Washington with a problem undreamed of in their philosophy: What to do without the Russians. For half a century, as long as anybody inside Washington’s Beltway bubble could remember, the Evil Soviet Empire—stupendous enemy, world class and operatic, menace for all seasons—had furnished nine American presidents with a just and noble raison d’etat, fattened America’s gross domestic product on the seed of profligate defense spending, smothered the mutterings of American political dissent with the fear of nuclear annihilation.

A precious asset, the Communist ogre in the totalitarian snow, and in 1990 sorely missed. Absent the Cold War with the Russians, how then defend, honor, and protect the cash flow of the nation’s military–industrial complex pumping air and iron into the conspicuous consumptions of the American dream? The government had on hand a war machine marvelous to behold and expensive to maintain—gun platforms of every conceivable caliber and throw-weight, aircraft, tanks, and naval vessels at all points of every compass, guidance systems endowed with the wisdom of angels and armed with the judgments of doom. But other than as a means of changing lead into gold, who could say what the thing was supposed to do? Where was the tactical or strategic objective, and to what end the patriotic call to arms?

In search of dramatic significance, President George H. W. Bush in 1991 sent the gunboats, the cameras, and the flags to the Persian Gulf; his historically illiterate adjutants at the Pentagon (among them Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell), drafted a Defense Strategy for the 1990s appointing America Keeper of World Peace. As subsequently published in 1993, the policy paper envisioned an invincible military establishment capable of waging, simultaneously, major wars on two continents, while at the same time attending to the minor nuisances of terrorists here and there in the slums of the Middle East and bandits in the mountains of Afghanistan and the jungles of Colombia. The claim to the crown of world empire set forth the doctrines of “Forward Deterrence,” “Anticipatory Self-Defense,” and “Preemptive Strike,” informed the lesser nations of the earth of their inferior and subsidiary status. Let any failed or upstart state even begin to think of challenging American supremacy, and America reserved the right to strangle the impudence at birth, bomb the peasants or the palace, block the flow of sympathy and bank credit, change the sheets in the brothels and the information ministries.

During the decade of the 1990s, the Pentagon’s pitch for unlimited subsidy gathered the force of an obligation to rule and save the world. President Bill Clinton seconded the motion, approved and carried by a clear majority of the nation’s self-glorifying media—conservative and neoconservative, liberal and neoliberal, literary and academic. How could it be otherwise? The Soviets had lost the Cold War, their weapons gone to rust, their economy in ruins, the statues of V. I. Lenin reduced to scrap. History was at an end, America “the single model of human progress.” The American way was the only way, and if not America bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus, who else to lift the burden once borne on the back of Imperial Rome?"

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2898-lewis-lapham-trump-is-an-exemplary-embodiment-of-our-age-of-folly

Yeah that certainly is the view from the Maoist Left Good job parroting that Comrade

[Mini Me]

In what way does US foreign policy benefit Americans as a whole? The only example I can think of is our naval power being used to protect our maritime rights in international waters, but that is a tradition dating back to the presidencies of Adams and Jefferson. In terms of modern foreign policy, I can see no obvious benefits. I see a great deal of costs, both in terms of lost liberty, high taxes, and mountains of debt, but what have Americans gotten in return for their massive investment? Nothing as far as I can tell. Instead, US foreign policy seems to serve the interests of elites at the expense of ordinary Americans. What else can explain the wars in Vietnam or Iraq, for example? Both were nothing short of disasters for the American people, but for the elites, those wars were a veritable orgy of profits and power.

The limp-wristed, America-hating, peacenik, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned Americans against the undue influence of what he called "the military-industrial complex" in his last address to the country. And before him, Marine General and two-time medal of honor winner, Smedley Butler, told Americans that "war is a racket". And even before that, James Madison said the means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. And yet some Americans seem oblivious to the dangers posed by this military-industrial complex. Indeed, some do not even acknowledge its existence. Instead, they are content to continue spending outrageous amounts of money on a foreign policy regime that produces no discernible return on the investment.
The whole "Cold War" against the Soviets was a plot to enrich war profiteers!

There was no real threat of Communism to take over the world! Made up BS fear propaganda for the Sheeple!

[Dr. Who]

Yeah that certainly is the view from the Maoist Left Good job parroting that Comrade
There was nothing Maoist about that excerpt. It was merely describing America's transformation into an oligarchy.

"Oligarchies bear an unhappy resemblance to cheese. Sooner or later they turn rancid in the sun. Wealth accumulates, men decay, and a band of brothers that once might have aspired to forming a wise and just government acquires the texture of what Aristotle likened to that of the “prosperous fool”—a class of men so besotted by their faith in money “that they therefore imagine there is nothing it cannot buy.” Afflicted with the illness diagnosed by the Greeks as pleonexia, the unbridled appetite for more—more laurel wreaths and naval victories, more banquets, dancing girls, and mirrors—the fatted calves forget why sovereign nations go to war or how it comes to pass that money doesn’t grow on trees."
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2898-lewis-lapham-trump-is-an-exemplary-embodiment-of-our-age-of-folly

[The Xl]

It benefits those who stand to gain power, fame, and wealth from it. Nothing more and no one else.

[Sergeant Gleed]

In what way does US foreign policy benefit Americans as a whole? The only example I can think of is our naval power being used to protect our maritime rights in international waters, but that is a tradition dating back to the presidencies of Adams and Jefferson. In terms of modern foreign policy, I can see no obvious benefits. I see a great deal of costs, both in terms of lost liberty, high taxes, and mountains of debt, but what have Americans gotten in return for their massive investment? Nothing as far as I can tell. Instead, US foreign policy seems to serve the interests of elites at the expense of ordinary Americans. What else can explain the wars in Vietnam or Iraq, for example? Both were nothing short of disasters for the American people, but for the elites, those wars were a veritable orgy of profits and power.

The limp-wristed, America-hating, peacenik, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned Americans against the undue influence of what he called "the military-industrial complex" in his last address to the country. And before him, Marine General and two-time medal of honor winner, Smedley Butler, told Americans that "war is a racket". And even before that, James Madison said the means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. And yet some Americans seem oblivious to the dangers posed by this military-industrial complex. Indeed, some do not even acknowledge its existence. Instead, they are content to continue spending outrageous amounts of money on a foreign policy regime that produces no discernible return on the investment.

You mean like using tariffs to force our trading enemies to become our trading partners?

That's a bit of winning the Rodents are terrified of. We do too much winning and the Rodents won't be able to steal any more elections.

[Mini Me]

You mean like using tariffs to force our trading enemies to become our trading partners?

That's a bit of winning the Rodents are terrified of. We do too much winning and the Rodents won't be able to steal any more elections.
Yeah, look who won the election!Its only Rethugs that steal elections, son!

[Captdon]

Etheral is going to run that horse into the ground. He doesn't get into details much for obvious reasons. He can try chewing on these as an example.

Since WWII we have been a superpower. We have used that power to :

1. Save Europe from economic collapse wit the Marshal Plan.

2. We saved Europe from turning to the Communists with that Plan.

3. We more or less forced the Brits, the French and other colonist to turn those countries free.

4. We stood for the free world against the USSR.

5. We became the world's bank.

6. We disarmed Japan and kept them that way.

7. We have made it possible for the Isaeli's to keep their freedom.

8. We weaned Egypt and Jordan away from the Soviet and now, Russian government.

9. We have kept the Straits of Hormuz open.

10. We were instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa.


11. We brought China out of the past.


America isn't perfect but it is better than anyone else.

[Captdon]

You mean like using tariffs to force our trading enemies to become our trading partners?

That's a bit of winning the Rodents are terrified of. We do too much winning and the Rodents won't be able to steal any more elections.

"War is a racket." We were attacked to start WWII and Germany declared war on us and, damn it, we fought them. Yea, FDR was running a racket.

Odd how this thread is almost a carbon copy of all his threads. Odd.

[MMC]

Yeah, look who won the election!Its only Rethugs that steal elections, son!



Tell that to Bernie Sanders.

[Ethereal]

You propose the USN be drawn back for coastal defense of the US only?

No.

[countryboy]

"War is a racket." We were attacked to start WWII and Germany declared war on us and, damn it, we fought them. Yea, FDR was running a racket.

Odd how this thread is almost a carbon copy of all his threads. Odd.

You can't reason with the Hate America First® crowd.

[Ransom]

Excerpt from Age of Folly - America Abandons Its Democracy - by Lewis H. Lapham

"By 1990, America was showing vivid signs of the disease. President Ronald Reagan’s dancing onto the White House stage in 1981 foretold the second coming of an American Gilded Age more selfish than the first; greed was good, money the hero with a thousand faces, the notion of such a thing as democratic self-government slipping from the mind of an electorate asking of its rulers what the rich ask of their servants—comfort us, be good to us, tell us what to do.

Democracy degrading into plutocracy was the work in progress when the unlooked-for collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 confronted the prosperous bourgeois statesmen in Washington with a problem undreamed of in their philosophy: What to do without the Russians. For half a century, as long as anybody inside Washington’s Beltway bubble could remember, the Evil Soviet Empire—stupendous enemy, world class and operatic, menace for all seasons—had furnished nine American presidents with a just and noble raison d’etat, fattened America’s gross domestic product on the seed of profligate defense spending, smothered the mutterings of American political dissent with the fear of nuclear annihilation.

A precious asset, the Communist ogre in the totalitarian snow, and in 1990 sorely missed. Absent the Cold War with the Russians, how then defend, honor, and protect the cash flow of the nation’s military–industrial complex pumping air and iron into the conspicuous consumptions of the American dream? The government had on hand a war machine marvelous to behold and expensive to maintain—gun platforms of every conceivable caliber and throw-weight, aircraft, tanks, and naval vessels at all points of every compass, guidance systems endowed with the wisdom of angels and armed with the judgments of doom. But other than as a means of changing lead into gold, who could say what the thing was supposed to do? Where was the tactical or strategic objective, and to what end the patriotic call to arms?

In search of dramatic significance, President George H. W. Bush in 1991 sent the gunboats, the cameras, and the flags to the Persian Gulf; his historically illiterate adjutants at the Pentagon (among them Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell), drafted a Defense Strategy for the 1990s appointing America Keeper of World Peace. As subsequently published in 1993, the policy paper envisioned an invincible military establishment capable of waging, simultaneously, major wars on two continents, while at the same time attending to the minor nuisances of terrorists here and there in the slums of the Middle East and bandits in the mountains of Afghanistan and the jungles of Colombia. The claim to the crown of world empire set forth the doctrines of “Forward Deterrence,” “Anticipatory Self-Defense,” and “Preemptive Strike,” informed the lesser nations of the earth of their inferior and subsidiary status. Let any failed or upstart state even begin to think of challenging American supremacy, and America reserved the right to strangle the impudence at birth, bomb the peasants or the palace, block the flow of sympathy and bank credit, change the sheets in the brothels and the information ministries.

During the decade of the 1990s, the Pentagon’s pitch for unlimited subsidy gathered the force of an obligation to rule and save the world. President Bill Clinton seconded the motion, approved and carried by a clear majority of the nation’s self-glorifying media—conservative and neoconservative, liberal and neoliberal, literary and academic. How could it be otherwise? The Soviets had lost the Cold War, their weapons gone to rust, their economy in ruins, the statues of V. I. Lenin reduced to scrap. History was at an end, America “the single model of human progress.” The American way was the only way, and if not America bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus, who else to lift the burden once borne on the back of Imperial Rome?"

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2898-lewis-lapham-trump-is-an-exemplary-embodiment-of-our-age-of-folly
So?

I believe the question was, how does our foreign policy benefit the American Citizen. You were gonna attempt an answer, yes?

[Ransom]

It benefits those who stand to gain power, fame, and wealth from it. Nothing more and no one else.
Every single American can both stand to gain or benefit...but can also stand to lose, can be given a liability.

Examples always help, rather than the broad case Ethereal tries to make, the broadsword approach you stayed right with....

Immigration. Our policies concerning foreign migrants....affects every American, can hurt some, benefit others, etc.

Certainly our foreign policies during both world wars affected every American.

[Ransom]

Seen a Hellfire missile demonstration some years back. Used as a surface to surface, Lockheed Martin also tested it fired from a helicopter. A successful test...but I was astounded by the helicopter. Who makes that my question, "The Boys at Boeing" the answer I received.

Is Boeing a military complex corporation? And then...the last time you were flown by an airline, was it a Boeing Jet?

This corporation has influenced us all....I reckon you could say, it's certainly influenced our foreign policy.....this Helicopter I saw flown at serious f'n speed.....then turns on a dime......and fires a Hellfire.....peels off to the side, fires another...and scorches off, 'US Army' painted on the side of it.

[Ransom]

Etheral is going to run that horse into the ground. He doesn't get into details much for obvious reasons. He can try chewing on these as an example.

Since WWII we have been a superpower. We have used that power to :

1. Save Europe from economic collapse wit the Marshal Plan.

2. We saved Europe from turning to the Communists with that Plan.

3. We more or less forced the Brits, the French and other colonist to turn those countries free.

4. We stood for the free world against the USSR.

5. We became the world's bank.

6. We disarmed Japan and kept them that way.

7. We have made it possible for the Isaeli's to keep their freedom.

8. We weaned Egypt and Jordan away from the Soviet and now, Russian government.

9. We have kept the Straits of Hormuz open.

10. We were instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa.


11. We brought China out of the past.


America isn't perfect but it is better than anyone else.
A great post. Allow me to add Korea. I always considered a satellite photo said all that needed to say when looking at darkness versus light. Right versus wrong. US foreign influence....and no US foreign influence.

https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.mIqSEw8MiJIsG_hJKF_WcgHaIH&w=188&h=206&c=8&rs=1&qlt=90&dpr=2&pid=3.1&rm=2 (https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=pic+of+north+and+south+korea+at+night&id=D19F66C8B43B34D0F0C576AC2AE7615B27F8A37A&FORM=IQFRBA)

[Captdon]

It doesn't matter to Etheral. We can only do bad. Even at that, he can't connect the dots. I don't even understand what it is he wants us to do.

[donttread]

In what way does US foreign policy benefit Americans as a whole? The only example I can think of is our naval power being used to protect our maritime rights in international waters, but that is a tradition dating back to the presidencies of Adams and Jefferson. In terms of modern foreign policy, I can see no obvious benefits. I see a great deal of costs, both in terms of lost liberty, high taxes, and mountains of debt, but what have Americans gotten in return for their massive investment? Nothing as far as I can tell. Instead, US foreign policy seems to serve the interests of elites at the expense of ordinary Americans. What else can explain the wars in Vietnam or Iraq, for example? Both were nothing short of disasters for the American people, but for the elites, those wars were a veritable orgy of profits and power.

The limp-wristed, America-hating, peacenik, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned Americans against the undue influence of what he called "the military-industrial complex" in his last address to the country. And before him, Marine General and two-time medal of honor winner, Smedley Butler, told Americans that "war is a racket". And even before that, James Madison said the means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. And yet some Americans seem oblivious to the dangers posed by this military-industrial complex. Indeed, some do not even acknowledge its existence. Instead, they are content to continue spending outrageous amounts of money on a foreign policy regime that produces no discernible return on the investment.

Our foreign policy benefits the super rich, their megacorps and the politicians they own. Imperialism at one time might improve the overall standard of living for a whole society. Now days we just pay for our gas twice while the big wigs make deposits.

[donttread]

Etheral is going to run that horse into the ground. He doesn't get into details much for obvious reasons. He can try chewing on these as an example.

Since WWII we have been a superpower. We have used that power to :

1. Save Europe from economic collapse wit the Marshal Plan.

2. We saved Europe from turning to the Communists with that Plan.

3. We more or less forced the Brits, the French and other colonist to turn those countries free.

4. We stood for the free world against the USSR.

5. We became the world's bank.

6. We disarmed Japan and kept them that way.

7. We have made it possible for the Isaeli's to keep their freedom.

8. We weaned Egypt and Jordan away from the Soviet and now, Russian government.

9. We have kept the Straits of Hormuz open.

10. We were instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa.


11. We brought China out of the past.


America isn't perfect but it is better than anyone else.



LOL . More propaganda on your breakfast cereal? Did we part the Red sea somewhere in there? LOL

[Dr. Who]

So?

I believe the question was, how does our foreign policy benefit the American Citizen. You were gonna attempt an answer, yes?
Short answer - it doesn't and hasn't. It really benefits special interests which you would have realized if you read the link. US foreign policy has cost the nation a fortune in military expenditures that have not benefited one single citizen, but instead fueled terrorism in the ME and painted a target on the US as a focus for retribution. It has added trillions to the national debt and put America's military personnel in harm's way all to benefit the military-industrial complex and multinational oil companies as well as more than a few politicians who stood to personally financially benefit from this massive subterfuge, sold to the people under the guise of protecting their "liberty". "Liberty" has long been a trigger word for patriots to suspend scrutiny and unquestioningly buy into military adventurism and derogate anyone who dares to question the government's motives or pick at the fairly transparent web of half-truths and lies used as justification.

[jimmyz]

The same guy that helped us build intercontinental nuclear warhead tipped ballistic missiles also help build rockets that got us to the moon.

We have had no further chance of another world war for the past 73 years.

Many millions of Americans have derived a good living in the Arms Industry.

Many tyrants that would have done evil have been thrown back and or eliminated.

The Russians and Chinese are contained.

I could go on and on but won't because it is boring.

[Captdon]

Our foreign policy benefits the super rich, their megacorps and the politicians they own. Imperialism at one time might improve the overall standard of living for a whole society. Now days we just pay for our gas twice while the big wigs make deposits.

We pay for our gas twice. What are you talking about?

[Captdon]

LOL . More propaganda on your breakfast cereal? Did we part the Red sea somewhere in there? LOL

Tell me one thing I wrote that was wrong?

Etheral has a bigger following than I thought. I count two more in this thread. I hope it's not the Herd Syndrome.