Sunday, December 23, 2018

Military Foreign Aid


We are pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan. Trump challenged the Arab countries to take responsibility for the region. We need to reduce military foreign aid and it’s time to leave these countries.

Syria is left to the government of Syria under Assad and the Russians. Syria is an oil producing country and is a close Russian ally. Russia can help Syria rebuild their oil production capability. ISIS has been defeated in Syria and it’s time to leave. There are too many cooks in the Syrian kitchen and we need to let Russia have a free hand to work with Assad to end the civil war and rebuild.

Afghanistan is left to the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban. They need to work out their differences by themselves.  The Taliban is not likely to end their poppy growing for their opium, morphine, codeine or heroin businesses. We need to end our 17 year military foreign aid to Afghanistan.

We continue to maintain a significant US military presence in Japan (53,660), South Korea (26,045) and Germany (35,369).

The US military is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world, with approximately 170,000 of its active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories

There is pushback coming from US federal government “internationalists“. This includes hawks” and “cold warriors” who believe your taxes need to be spent micromanaging all other countries. “American Interests” needs to be limited to keeping the shipping lanes open and dealing with threats to the US and its holdings.

We need to increase our defense spending to maintain, rebuild and upgrade our equipment, but we do not need to send our military to babysit other countries. We spent $30 trillion on military foreign aid since 1960 and have nothing to show for it.

We are advertising our increase in the DOD budget to alert our enemies to back off.  But we need to avoid expensive engagements.  Our defense expenses are high. We need to solve the cyber problems and catch up on technology.

Year -  Military     Veterans  Foreign Aid  Total
2017 – $598.7B   $178B      $45.3B      $823B
2018 -  $664.7B   $180.4B   $49B         $894B
2019 -  $668.6B   $199.6B   $63.3B      $951.5B
2020 -  $932.4B   $212.4B   $44B         $988.8B


Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

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