As the short discussion in class indicated, the reason America might wage so many wars on an international stage is in order to maintain constant conflict in an effort to minimize the rights of citizens. According to Share America, a website ran by the US Department of State, "An important lesson of American history is that the United States tends to restrict civil liberties excessively in times of war. In some sense, this is understandable, because war breeds fear and fear breeds repression. But as a self-governing society that aspires to respect the liberties of all people, the United States must strive to discipline itself and to respect individual freedom even in time of war" Perhaps the appropriate question is: is the current conflicts that America has across the world causing an internal suppression of rights?
"The American Conservative" is self described as a main Street conservatism source. In the "who we are section", they talk about how they adhere closely to their instructional maxim: "principles over party... Founded by eminent conservatives who were appalled by sins, follies, and deceptions of neoconservatism: by the disastrous war in Iraq and compulsive meddling around the globe; by disrespect for the Bill of Rights; by the Washington-knows-best philosophy manifested in such centralizing laws as the No Child Left Behind Act; and by a “too big to fail” bias that privileged Wall Street over the small independent businesses, farms, and cooperative ventures that are the soul of the American economy. "
I read a few articles from both sources concerning foreign conflict, and gathered the following observations. Both of the articles I read from the American Conservative concerning foreign relations/ war had a antiwar sentiment. The first one was about the potential of the US engaging in conflict over Taiwan. The general idea was that the US involvement with Taiwan just wouldn't be worth it from a logical standpoint. For example, the article stated, "The pandemic will ultimately add as much as $16 trillion in debt, which already exceeds 100 percent of GDP. With the baby boomer generation continuing to retire, the latter number, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is likely to hit 200 percent by 2050. These numbers do not even count the Biden administration’s spending plans for everything from infrastructure to education, health care, and more. Are Americans prepared to spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars annually—it costs far more to project military force than to deter its use, especially halfway around the world against a serious power—to effectively support just Taiwan (Emphasis added)"? The second article I read was entitled, "Twenty Years Of The War On Terror" and discussed how despite trillions of dollars spent, a "permanent and expanding war bureaucracy on our shores", nearly a million civilian casualties, tens of millions of people displaced,, "entire regions of the globe destabilized", and in spite of all of this, the article claims that the American people are no safer than they were September 10th, 2001.
From what I gathered from "Antiwar.com", there is also an antiwar sentiment (big suprise, right?), but the articles I read didn't mention the rights of individual. The article I read from Antiwar was about US/Japanese relations and how there is some animosity towards China right now. The author believed that the US's commitment to Japan could end peace in the Asian pacific. The core intention of the US is to maintain its hegemony and contain China’s development through violating international laws and rules"
I know very little about politics, but provided with the little I do know, and what I have observed from these websites, my conclusion is that the reason antiwar voices are not mainstream news is because foreign conflict seems to be a bipartisan belief. Both democrats and republicans have seemingly engaged in endless foreign conflicts. Although I imagine President Trump was viewed favorably by these sources considering that, "Trump is the first president in decades who did not commit the nation to new overseas military campaigns. He shared with President Obama an aversion to such adventures, but Obama launched an Afghan troop surge (2009), an intervention in Libya (2011), a return of forces to Iraq (2014), and a U.S. military role in the Syrian civil war (2014). Trump preferred to use other instruments such as economic sanctions in dealing with threats—even when they were close to home, as in the case of Venezuela, or a danger to regional peace, as in the case of Iran. He thus bought the U.S. military four years of relative peace in which to rebuild from endless wars." (Forbes).
As far as wars being a means of suppressing rights, I will have to do deeper research on that question. On the surface, challenges arise... like how does one even measure rights to begin with? As I was writing this I was sitting with my father who remarked, "I don't feel like my rights have been suppressed". As far as my life goes, when I look at the constitution, and I look at what I am allowed to do, it appears that my rights are not being suppressed.
For people to lay claim that their rights are being suppressed specifically because of war, I would like for them to 1) point to the exact sentence in the constitution that guarantees them the right/ freedom that they are not receiving and 2) to go a step further, prove to me that it is because of foreign conflicts and not for some other reason. If you can do that, and prove it is happening on a larger stage, then I will believe fully the claim that our current day foreign conflict is causing a reduction of rights. This isn't to say that I believe our foreign conflicts are justified, I think they are robing the pockets of the tax payer, the burden is fully on the hard working men and women of America. But of course, that is a whole other issue, and financially robbing your citizens is, unfortunately, not unconstitutional.
Image Sources:
https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1673840/president-donald-trump.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EyzpQWdU8AM506W.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/619luWVm9CL._SL1024_.jpg
Sources:
https://share.america.gov/civil-liberties-wartime/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/about-us/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/should-we-go-to-war-for-taiwan/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/twenty-years-of-the-war-on-terror/
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