The Real National Security Interest of America

Senator McCain has an explanation for U.S. involvements in the Middle East, North Africa and Africa (Syria, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mali, Libya, Yemen, Turkey, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Ethiopia and more). It’s always the same explanation. “Doing more” is essential, otherwise “Our national security interests will suffer.”

It’s a big challenge to identify “the common good”, the “public interest” or the “national security interest” because this is a concept that aggregates over the welfare of so many different people, 325 million Americans. But if I play that game and offer an opinion, it is the very opposite of McCain’s. The national security interest and the common good of Americans is not to be involved in these places in the ways he wants, not to be fomenting revolutions, not to be dropping bombs, not to be sending in military “advisers”, not to be letting the CIA engage in its schemes, not to be flying drones over their skies, not to be sending in military aid, not to be dumping agricultural products there, not to be training their military forces, not to be supplying aid to rebels, not to be hunting down so-called terrorists, not to be siding with either the governments or rebels, and not to be promoting democracy.

If I play this game, I’d say that the U.S. government’s interest should be America’s interest, and that interest is to improve America’s society, politics and economy. The U.S. government has not done that for such a long time that it no longer even knows how to do it. McCain thinks that our common good rests in deeply expanding U.S. government involvements in dozens of foreign countries. How such an indirect, tortuous, and demonstably dangerous path achieves the common good of Americans is a deep mystery. It is beyond belief that the McCains in the Senate think they can improve other countries when they cannot even identify America’s common good and take steps domestically to improve that good.

Can Senator McCain explain how the U.S. involvements in Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan have furthered the common good of Americans? Or for that matter any of the other countries mentioned above? Have they furthered the common good of those countries?

American involvements in any foreign land should be on a private basis, not a U.S. government basis. The U.S. government has repeatedly shown that its foreign involvements do not help but harm the foreign peoples and do nothing for Americans. If an American links up with a foreigner on a private basis to make an exchange of any sort, be it social, artistic, economic, scientific, personal, family, or business, he or she does so with the idea that the result will be beneficial, and so does the foreign side of the exchange. Both sides know far better what they are doing to increase their personal “goods” than does the U.S. when it clumsily attempts to create “national security”, which it cannot actually even identify. What the U.S. actually does is to act on behalf of some crony capitalists, or corporate interests, or union interests, or some government bureaucratic interests, or CIA interests, or its own political interests, or some agricultural interests. None of these further the common good of Americans. They do the very opposite.

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6:58 am on June 8, 2013