Enemy of peace and goodwill

The U.S. is up to its eyeballs in war as 2017 draws to a close

For America, “peace on earth, goodwill toward men” in 2017 has become “war on earth, nastiness to people.”

The words of the Christmas season, with carols, church and the Christian promise that the anniversary of the coming of the Babe means a new fresh start for the world and people, have become an irony, on reflection, in the face of the current world.

The United States is the world’s largest arms salesman. America’s defense budget is as high as the total of the defense budgets of the next seven countries in the world on the list. The U.S. defense budget just keeps growing, in spite of efforts in the past to control it. The Pentagon does not do audits, and it is estimated that one in five “defense” dollars is wasted.

America is currently at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. These wars are endless, and, to a one, pointless in terms of real American interests, unless one would like to think that government taxpayer expenditures in the defense industry and on the deployment of U.S. forces overseas are essential to the U.S. economy. If that is true, it is a tragically sad commentary on America at this point in its history.

We aren’t winning, and we can’t win any of these wars. Afghanistan is the oldest, beginning in 2001, and is the most impossible in its prospects for success, if that state could be defined after more than 16 years there. There is the Taliban, the Islamic State, an election-averse government, advanced poverty and extreme corruption, based in part on deeply ingrained tribalism. Current U.S. theory is that Afghan government forces will eventually become sufficiently numerous and well-trained to avoid a natural Taliban takeover. Nobody believes that.

Iraq, where we have been fighting since 1990 and which we invaded in great force on false premises in 2003, will enjoy what appears to be endless American military involvement. Part of the problem is that in both Iraq and Syria, continuing a phenomenon begun during the first Iraq war, America has come to use Kurdish forces as supplements and substitutes for U.S. forces. Through that military relationship, some of America, partly for financial reasons, has also signed on to the Kurds’ aspirations to have their own state. The really difficult part is that Kurds live not only in northern Iraq, but also in Iran, Syria and Turkey, none of whose governments is sympathetic to Kurdish aspirations.

The situation in Libya, where we first intervened in 2011, is also close to hopeless. Three governments claim power. The one America backs, installed under United Nations auspices, has the least power of the three. The one with the best prospects, that of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, is installed firmly only in the east of Libya, in Cyrenaica, whereas the other two are based in western Libya, in the former capital, Tripoli.

U.S. military involvement in Somalia, which first started in 1992, then stopped in 1994, then resumed as the Somali Shabab became a more credible organization, continues to grow, serving as a justification for the growth of the U.S. Africa Command, which now has a base, thousands of troops, drones and attack aircraft in bordering Djibouti, the former French Somaliland. Somalia is of no interest to the United States in strategic terms.

The Syria war is, in effect, over, but we still have troops there. The Bashar Assad government is not going to fall soon, if ever. The alleged Islamic State capital, Raqqa, has fallen to U.S., Kurdish and other forces. There is, in essence, no reason for U.S. involvement now, if there ever was. The American president has promised U.S. troop withdrawal. We haven’t seen it yet, and disengagement will be hard to see, if it ever occurs.

The Yemen war is probably the most disgusting example of U.S. military involvement in a foreign country at the moment. Yemen is very poor and currently beset not only with a large cholera epidemic but also with the threat of famine for millions of people. The United States has troops there and also helps the Saudis rain bombs on Yemen, in the name of supporting the Saudis in their Sunni vs. Shiite conflict with Iran and because we sell the Saudis the planes and the bombs they use to level Yemen and kill Yemenis.

So where is the United States and where are Americans in the “peace on earth” we actually probably want as a people on this Christmas 2017? We are, instead, up to our eyeballs in wars, killing people around the world, almost entirely without good reason, apart from the money that can be made from American war-making. Meanwhile, one in five American children is hungry. There are so many American children needing foster care that some are sleeping in government foster-care offices. That latter phenomenon is partly due to the fact that no one has stopped the pharmaceutical industry from flooding the market with opioids. In the meantime, the president attacks the FBI to try to distract it from investigating his electoral and perhaps financial involvement with the Russians.

War-wise, in 2018, keep your eye on Iran, North Korea and Ukraine, to whose breathtakingly corrupt government we are now going to start providing arms with which to confront Russia. Peace on earth? Goodwill toward men? We are the world’s biggest enemy of both.