Defending this country is the only thing US Defense Dept. doesn’t do. US officially became ‘world’s policeman’ via Truman Doctrine, gave US excuse to intervene globally. Neocons needed replacement for Cold War, so came up with taxpayer funded endless global war on terror and for ‘Democracy.’ If you’re a US ‘ally,’ you get freebies-Daily Bell, Wendy McElroy, 3/19/2015

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Commenter: “In 1947 we also went from having a War Department to a Defense Department when defending this country is the only thing it does not do.” quick draw mcgraw

3/19/2015, “How America became the World’s Policeman,“ The Daily Bell, Wendy McElroy, Editorial

“Conclusion”

“The Truman Doctrine was the official beginning of an aggressive ‘peacetime’ intervention during which America became the world’s policeman. ‘Friendly’ nations were often bought off by supporting cooperative but repressive leaders. 

Unfriendly ones often experienced economic sanctions and the arming of their domestic opponents.

The historian Charles Beard once commented that the best description of the foreign policy of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman is “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” which the historian Harry Elmer Barnes later used to title a book. And, yet, the Cold War was not perpetual. Arguably, it ended when the Soviet Union did. What next?

Dan Sanchez observed at the antiwar.com site (Oct. 23, 2014), “In 1990, Murray Rothbard clearly identified the earliest signs of the ultimately successful decade-long push by the neocons [the now hawkish right] to replace their dearly missed Cold War with a global, imperialist, and permanent War on Islamic fundamentalism and for ‘Democracy’.” Rothbard explained,

[I]f the Cold War died in the Communist collapse of 1989, what can…justify the policy of massive intervention by the U.S. everywhere on the globe? In short, what cloak can the Establishment now find to mask and vindicate the continuance of U.S. imperialism? With their perks and their power at stake, the Court apologists for imperialism have been quick to offer excuses and alternatives …

The new face of America’s perpetual war has some cosmetic changes. The enemy is terrorism, not communism. The goal is liberation and democracy, not containment. The battleground is arid soil, not Asian jungle. The soldiers are not drafted but volunteers or mercenaries.

But it all seems oddly the same because the fundamentals are identical. Through unending war, America has utterly deserted any commitment to neutrality abroad. And the Old Right was correct; the domestic government has become a behemoth and power is centralized in the hands of the executive.

The elimination of the neutrality rights of nations is now so complete that neutrality can be challenged even when no declaration or act of war has occurred. Merely viewing a nation as a potential ally or enemy now warrants intervention, up to and including a military presence.

In 1821, John Quincy Adams declared that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” America is now abroad. And she is the monster.”


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