Before I go any further I want to state that I am antiwar (this is for those that may be visiting for the first time) and I have been since 1970….I do not support these petty wars of expansion and make no mistake that is exactly what it is.
The title is a question that has been asked of Americans…..Are you willing to die for other countries?
Now the answer is in….
A July poll shows that a majority of the American public does not support sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan or Ukraine, sentiment that lines up with findings from other recent surveys on these heated subjects, which suggests that Americans appear to be warming to restraint and non-interventionism in international affairs.
Indeed, another poll, conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in February found that a majority of Americans (56%) do not believe that the United States should pick a side in Israel’s war on Gaza. And a more recent survey from Council this month found that just four in ten support the United States sending troops to defend Israel if attacked by its neighbors.
Similarly, Americans’ suspicions of foreign intervention were uncovered in a recent YouGov poll, which found that 79% said that they only support intervention if the U.S. were directly threatened (that number significantly dropped to 49% if an ally were attacked). In the same study, the only recent war that a majority of Americans viewed as justified was World War II.
Despite these findings, Washington continues to push forward with fanning the flames of war around the world, whether being slow to work toward peace settlements in Ukraine and Gaza, stoking conflict with China, or throwing gargantuan amounts of money, unnecessarily, at the Pentagon and thus, the weapons industry.
“The general through line of the polling data is there is a disconnect between official U.S foreign policy and the preferred policies of the American people,” Tucker Kass, spokesman at Defense Priorities which conducted the July survey, told Responsible Statecraft concerning their findings. “The policy coming out of D.C. is interventionist but the American people, at least based on the answers we received, support a more judicious, more discerning policy that would frankly be wiser than current policy.”
The Defense Priorities poll also found that just 22% of those surveyed support the United States defending Ukraine. Forty-six percent opposed while 32% were neutral. Thirty percent said they support America militarily defending Taiwan against China, while 37% opposed and 33% were neutral. Additionally, a plurality of Americans surveyed, 44%, agreed that avoiding war with China is more important than Taiwan’s autonomy.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/america-polling-interventionism/
Please don’t get me wrong….yes the US has the right to defend itself when attacked….but we do not have the right to finance every little mash up on the horizon.
That is money wasted.
So I am glad to see that Americans are starting to see the folly of intervention….but sadly that does not make a difference for us peasants do not have the monetary clout to make our wishes into reality.
The Congress, who is suppose to be the sole entity to intervene and is a corrupt entity that will do what the money tells them to do.
And that is the truth of it.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
I’m not sorry thst I agree with your post.
Thanx for that….good to know that I am not alone. chuq
Sorry for the typo. It’s mind exploding how we find or print dollars to fund other countries WARS.
GW even raided Social Security at one point….think about this the War Department gets almost a trillion dollars as their budget….how much good could be done for this country with half that amount? chuq
Glad to hear people are waking up to the reality. When the last government suggested reintroducing the draft here, it cost them tens of thousands of votes and helped them lose the election. People might well fight to defend their own homes, but will not do the same for Taiwan or Ukraine.
Best wishes, Pete.
I am against the Draft but if we keep finding wars to fight something will need to be done….ending all this crappy war stuff would go a long way. chuq
I understand that Harris is a hawk on war, expansion, and foreign policy. She has the same neocon opinions as Biden and the group that controls him and our policy of expanding our influence through power, support of war, and wars. If she gets elected it appears wars and our support of wars and intervention in affairs of other countries will continue. Then, on the other hand us Trump. Trump is anti war and his foreign policy agrees with the polls. But then he is rude, nasty, offensive, impolite, and may be mentally unraveling. Not much of a choice.
Her slogan “new way forward’ is rubbish….same path as Biden….Trump is just too tariff happy for me….as you say not much choice. chuq
We need to get as isolationist as we can possibly get and we need to stick our head in the sand about all the foreign things that can involve us one of these days—let’s all get some ostrich feathers and wear them proudly.
That is crap! What happens in some mud hole will not involve us other than paying for the exercise of war. chuq
Monroe Doctrine needs to rise again.
That is the excuse we use every time we do something in the western hemisphere….it has never gone away. chuq
so you can suggest a more workable alternative? What would it be?
Learn new techniques that do not involve killing anyone around you….but that is too easy….far better to drop a bomb and play like it is for self-defense. chuq
What made you enlist, chuq?
I was a month away from the draft so I joined up because college was not going well at the time….you want me to say I did it for god and country….well I did it for myself. chuq
Oddly, I was the exact same. After a year in college I got tired of school.. the deferment evaporated, I got a low number in the 1970 draft, so I enlisted in USAF to stay away from the Army, and get a tech career, rather than learn to carry a gun and kill people. Pretty much it was all about me as well. Yet, somewhere in the background of my impetuous young mind there was an inkling of a seeming “greater good” in serving like my dad did in WW2… and the historical significance (I was a history nut) of being in the war of my generation. Pure fate kept me from Southeast Asia… and part of me feels badly I didn’t go. In the end.. war is war and people die and some people take it all back home and try to live a life. I will always salute you for that, chuq.
Yet.. in regards to your post… I have to think that even the most fervent patriot serves, not to die or in the hope of dying, but to survive having defended the country when called to do so. But the young do the fighting because they are young and cocky. By time we get old enough to know better… we’re too old to even think of being old and cocky. But the older guys seem to have little problem sending the younger guys to risk their lives. The beat goes on… which I think is to your point.
I wanted to go into intel field which I got and after AIT I went to Vietnam where I was assigned to a LRRP company when not in the field I was an analyst…..
I think these days people are starting to question the ‘protect the country’ meme…..they see that most of the entanglements do into involve a threat and have decide it is time to call crap on it. chuq
No question, chuq. Every damn war/conflict, save maybe WW1 and 2, were not needed. All mission creep.
I think WW1 was a mission creep…..chuq