Impeachment & Intervention: Where American Foreign Policy Goes Wrong

To any ordinary American citizen, it’s well known that government spending is spiraling out of control. The U.S. budget deficit now exceeds $23 trillion — with $1.109 trillion being added to the deficit in the fiscal year of 2019, and another $1.103 trillion projected to be added in 2020. Recently, on December 20th of last year, President Donald Trump signed into existence the huge 2,300-page general bill that includes two spending packages that approximate to $1.4 trillion. The bill received mostly bipartisan support and was lauded as a compromise on both sides.

The American government should continue to stand strong with its allies and be an advocate of human rights, but they need to reevaluate the ways in which they do that. The U.S. needs to look at and approach international issues from a cost-benefit perspective. It’s time for a change in the establishment. There are valid questions to be asked about how, where, and why foreign aid is appropriated. These are questions of accountability. The status quo in the American government has gone on long enough, unimpeded, serving foreign interests with little benefit to the American public. The U.S. involvement in Ukraine and Afghanistan are just two instances at different scales that demonstrate this reality seen around the world. President Trump needs to critically assess foreign aid distribution, orient and repurpose the aid to specific points of interest that directly help the U.S.; imagine how much could be accomplished with respect to healthcare, education, and infrastructure if the U.S. started investing in itself more. Moreover, the U.S. would be better equipped to address more pertinent national security problems such as securing the border. President Trump would be addressing policy issues for the left, right, and everybody in between by confronting topics that are owned by his political opponents running for the Democratic nomination. If Trump wants to help solidify his chances at reelection, he should take a firmer stance in his “America First” policy and start putting America first.

To any ordinary American citizen, it’s well known that government spending is spiraling out of control. The U.S. budget deficit now exceeds $23 trillion — with $1.109 trillion being added to the deficit in the fiscal year of 2019, and another $1.103 trillion projected to be added in 2020. Recently, on December 20th of last year, President Donald Trump signed into existence the huge 2,300-page general bill that includes two spending packages that approximate to $1.4 trillion. The bill received mostly bipartisan support and was lauded as a compromise on both sides.

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Senator Ted Cruz, who is an open critic of the bill, said, “This is why Washington is corrupt. This is an example of a government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists.” This is the unfortunate reality Americans are faced with when it comes to the spending of taxpayer dollars, at home and abroad. In an age where every topic is politicized and party lines are drawn, there is little resistance to multiplying the national debt. While there is mostly bipartisan agreement in Congress for enlarging the deficit, it’s quite the contrary when it comes to impeachment.

The hyper-partisan impeachment of President Trump is an ongoing matter. Both, the right and left have eagerly worked to spin the story to fit their narrative. Republicans say that it’s just another attempt by the left at overturning the 2016 election and/or undermining the upcoming 2020 election; Democrats allege that the President abused his power and tried to use foreign aid as leverage to coerce the newly elected Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate corruption linked to the Biden family. Whether you like Trump’s politics or not, what’s notable is that Democrats “have failed to allege a violation of established law, i.e. a ‘crime’ or ‘misdemeanor.’ Such an allegation has been present in every other impeachment in history, but not here.”

Nonetheless, foreign aid to Ukraine is at the core of the issue. Specifically, the aid amounted to $391 million of military and medical equipment to assist in their deadlocked civil war that started in 2014 with pro-Russian separatists. Since that time, the U.S. has handed over $1.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine overall. Instead of funding war, the U.S. should be actively promoting diplomacy. To what advantage, to the U.S. or its citizens, is sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine to help fight yet another proxy war? Absolutely none. Career politicians and academics on the left and right will say otherwise. In reference to the conflict, Stanford Professor Pamela Karlan told the House Intelligence Committee during impeachment hearings that intervening in Ukraine was vital, “so they fight the Russians there and we don’t have to fight them here.” Karlan’s logic is not only absurd, it’s dangerous with consideration to what she is suggesting. There is absolutely no evidence to back up her claim that implies Russia would eventually invade the U.S. if they didn’t arm the Ukrainians. This is the new era of McCarthyism. An era in which everything that has gone wrong or could possibly go wrong is blamed on Russia. And, if you disagree — well, you’re a Russian asset and do Putin’s bidding. This kind of manipulative narrative not only validates but fuels American interventionist foreign policy around the world. The U.S. involvement in Ukraine is just a small sample size of this truth. If you want to see the true ramifications of this type of foreign policy initiative, and the rabbit hole it sends the American taxpayer down, look no further than the Middle East.

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Within the aforementioned omnibus bill, $4.2 billion is appropriated for the Afghan Security Forces Fund. That’s correct. The U.S. is sending $4.2 billion to Afghanistan to continue its seemingly endless endeavor in the Middle East. In recent years, there have been serious concerns regarding U.S. foreign aid to Afghanistan. Furthermore, this news is shocking bearing in mind the release of the Afghanistan Papers, which lay out in detail how senior U.S. officials knowingly misled the public to make it seem as if reasonable progress was being made in the region. The report bluntly states that over the years they “failed to tell the truth about the war,” “making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” Critical statements from Ret. U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn provoked the extensive investigation that uncovered what many feared to be true. This is not the first time the American public has been fed lies from its government, abetted by the mainstream media, in order to mask the true intent of the war on terror. What is the real reason the U.S. is still to this day in Afghanistan? No one can be sure, but remarkably, opium production has skyrocketed since the U.S. arrived. What is now the longest armed conflict in U.S. history, spanning almost 19 years, there is still no end in sight. How much money has to be spent, and how many lives have to be lost before it’s all said and done with? The U.S. military occupation in Afghanistan is the prime example of foreign policy interventionism gone terribly wrong.

The American government should continue to stand strong with its allies and be an advocate of human rights, but they need to reevaluate the ways in which they do that. The U.S. needs to look at and approach international issues from a cost-benefit perspective. It’s time for a change in the establishment. There are valid questions to be asked about how, where, and why foreign aid is appropriated. These are questions of accountability. The status quo in the American government has gone on long enough, unimpeded, serving foreign interests with little benefit to the American public. The U.S. involvement in Ukraine and Afghanistan are just two instances at different scales that demonstrate this reality seen around the world. President Trump needs to critically assess foreign aid distribution, orient and repurpose the aid to specific points of interest that directly help the U.S.; imagine how much could be accomplished with respect to healthcare, education, and infrastructure if the U.S. started investing in itself more. Moreover, the U.S. would be better equipped to address more pertinent national security problems such as securing the border. President Trump would be addressing policy issues for the left, right, and everybody in between by confronting topics that are owned by his political opponents running for the Democratic nomination. If Trump wants to help solidify his chances at reelection, he should take a firmer stance in his “America First” policy and start putting America first.