09 October 2023 – Today is Monday, the 9th of October, 2023 and as I write this, it is 14:00 CDT. I just found out about the ongoing engagements in the Gaza Strip perpetrated by Israeli forces a few days ago and I just know that the United States is going to throw money Israel’s way just like they did with Ukraine in February of 2022. Back before World War II, the United States rarely was involved in wars outside of North America. There were exceptions like the Barbary Wars and World War I, but those never required America to mobilise its entire industry to beat back a continental threat aside from the Great War. The difference between the first and second World Wars however, were the Soviets and a rise in communism after World War II. And the CIA. After World War II, the fear of communism and the domino effect terrified US officials in all levels that the United States never de-mobilised and the military-industrial complex only grew.
Not even five years passed since Victory in Asia Day, the surrender of the Japanese Empire, that we were back in Asia. It was such a short time period between the two wars that at the beginning of the Korean War, U.S. Infantry units were using the same M1-Garands and M4 Shermans used at the end of the World War II. This was the first of many, many proxy wars between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. where both superpowers provided equipment, personnel, and funding to the side fighting that they wanted to win. After so many of these wars left dozens of countries in ruin across the globe, most of which have not recovered, the Soviet Union collapsed on the 26th of December, 1991 and the United States was left as the sole superpower and they became a lot more direct in their wars and their policy since. There was already a taste of this before 1991, with the Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Iran, and so on, but this did not stop. The Gulf War and the Yugoslav Wars in the twentieth century, and Afghanistan and the wider War on Terror in the twenty-first century. These wars largely allowed the United States to establish their policies in any area being attacked with little global response or resistance.
With this newfound power, the United States continues to increase its military budget every passing year and finds allies to send aid to, justified or not. Since we have become the all-powerful, the total state of the world has gone straight downhill with little chance of ever climbing back up in our lifetimes. Between the Civil War and U.S. global hegemony, countries that the average American did not know about and definitely did not care about were not their top concern and whoever was fighting who did not matter, as long as their livelihoods were unaffected like the threats the British posed in 1776 and 1812. This all changed during the Cold War when unrealistic threats of communism were shoved so far down their throats that it came out the other end, and it was the only thing Americans could think of. Most Americans became paranoid that a communist could infiltrate head offices at their employer and make them lose their careers or that the Russians could send nukes and missiles that would destroy them, their families, their houses, their friends and loved ones, their hometowns, and every other thing they held dear to them in less than fifteen minutes. This made a lot of Americans in this time period anti-communist and anti-Russia and that the only opposition left was the United States. This fostered an idea of America being the greatest country in the world and it was one of the last remaining bastions of freedom against tyranny in its crusade against communism. This idea almost left the minds of Americans between 1991 and 2001, then 9/11 happened. Conspiracy or not, this made Americans same hatred they had against communism change to a hatred of terrorism.
For twenty years, America was the police state of the world again and more and more money was pulled from other budgets and put toward the military and foreign aid budgets in a day-in-age where the money comes from tax-payers who mostly did not know and not care about other countries. Then as they became more and more aware, and the United States was almost completely uninvolved in foreign affairs after pulling out troops from Afghanistan, public opinion made a large shift again. This time, three major, divisive factions were formed when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. Those that were in support of Ukraine and sending federal aid, those who did not care or did not want any action taken, and those in support of Russia. Just to clarify, being against one stance does not make you immediately part of any others. But so many hundreds of billions of dollars are being sent to Ukraine and soon to be sent to Israel that nothing continues to be done about the national debt, currently well over $30 trillion USD, and programmes like Social Security and the education system could be using the near $1 trillion USD “defense” budget. As a public high school student myself, I see first-hand everyday outlying issues of mismanagement and underfunding of the education system that is too common across the entire United States that goes neglected by Senators and Representatives because there is too much money to be made in war. If the United States and its public would vote for people and policies of isolationism, we could turn around and solve our own problems instead of worsening everyone else’s just so a few thousand people can have just a few extra dollars in their pocket to use on God knows what.
WRONG!