Previously by Jim Panyard: Taxpayers vs. Tax-Eaters
"And now, this breaking news…American government employees and members of the U.S. military in Cartagena, Colombia have been using the services of native born prostitutes."
WOW!!! Oh, the horror, the scandal.
At this writing, three U.S. Secret Service members have been canned and blowhard politicians are promising more will be punished.
I am certain no one has undertaken an objective study, but I would venture to say U.S. government employees have for decades been the single largest and most identifiable group using foreign born prostitutes. No other nation has as big a military presence around the globe as the United States and the military is certainly the largest user of these services. Ask any veteran who has served abroad.
The self righteous prigs in Sodom on the Potomac are also saying the prostitutes "may" have been "exposed" to classified information, which makes the situation even more severe. Was it a secret President Obama was going to be visiting Cartagena?
Who knows what the fornicators themselves were "exposed" to? If they contracted a sexually transmitted disease will they still be covered by their tax paid health care or workers' compensation insurance?
Laudably, there has been no news report that American taxpayers paid for the sexual misadventures of the Secret Service personnel or the military who accompanied them. Apparently, they picked up their own tabs with the taxpayer dollars representing their personal income.
Many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea (the Pacific Ocean, that is), I served at a top secret military installation with about 1,000 other Army and Air Force personnel. Aside from providing maintenance to the station, the biggest income center for the locals had to be the prostitution and black market industries. This is true of nearly every military installation around the globe, whether it is for intelligence gathering, placating or killing the natives or simply providing a landing strip for aircraft.
The term "Ugly American" was created by Americans, mostly in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic, stationed overseas drinking themselves into stupors, degrading the natives and having paid sexual relations with the local girls. The natives frowned on these activities, of course, but the money was too good to pass up.
The maltreatment of conquered or co-opted nations is as old as the history of wars and empires. The occupying forces have forever taken advantage of the natives and prostitution is as much a part of empire building as creating supply lines.
Some wag once irreverently referred to the U.S. Marine Corps as "underpaid, oversexed teenage killers." This could be said for all military occupiers and their civilian and military superiors.
If you take hundreds of young men and make them part of an occupying force thousands of miles from home, whether in a combat zone or not, the inevitable happens.
It is not an aberration as the current news from government officials suggests any more than finding a deer in the woods is an oddity.
Ask the call girls in D.C.
