SECRET TROOP DEPLOYMENTS—NOT A WAY TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT

Many years ago, (@ 1989) while conducting a field archeology course abroad on a tiny Greek Island—one of the smaller, least-touristed  Cyclades—I stumbled upon a US Military installation.  Climbing an isolated  wooded hill near the center of the tiny island I was startled to encounter  a sturdy Cyclone fence, topped by barbed wire blocking my way to the top.  I thought it might be a Greek government military site.  But the fence was festooned with red and white signs blaring “No Photographs” in English and Greek.   Walking a little further along the razor wired boundary fence, I was shocked to find—not the blue and white flag of the Hellenes but the Stars and Stripes!  The  banner was on a staff poking up from  the top of a small square  building with no windows, painted in military olive drab.  The familiar flag fluttered gently in the breeze wafting up from the Aegean Sea.  A muddy military Jeep with  “USA”  stenciled on its hood was parked outside.  I slunk off down the hill seeing no one and wondering why our nation would have a presence in the this seemingly insignificant Greek island.  Many years later I learned that site  was only one of the smallest of the estimated 800-900 US bases posted overseas in about two hundred different nations.

Just this last week we all learned to our surprise of our military presence in the tiny, land-locked west African nation of Niger.  There sadly five of our brave Green Beret  troops were killed in an ambush.  Why were they there?  What were they doing?  Why were they killed?  What enemy do we have there?  All questions that no one in government seems able to answer.

After some complaints from the Senate...where no one among the “illustrious 100” knew of our troop deployment to Niger...we learned that President Obama sent them there in the latter part of his second term.  We now know there are at least 800 troops stationed there.  They are supposedly there “to gather information on Al Qaida or ISiS.”  But there is no certainty on that either.  It seems to me that the function of gathering information would be better served by a swarthy, bearded, sandal wearing US citizen turned Niger spy—not a squad of heavily armed Green Berets.  (Unless—as in Vietnam—we sent our squads of troops to act as targets for enemy fire).

Based on 2014 figures it costs about $2,000,000 per year to deploy one trooper overseas.  Today’s costs may even be higher.  But using those figures 800 troops deployed in Niger is costing taxpayers $1,600,000,000...or $1.6 billion annually.

That is a significant sum of money even for our bloated military spending practices.  Think of what could be done for the nation’s infrastructure and jobs problems if we were to decide to ignore Niger and concentrate on building up our own nation.  Like perhaps that idea of “making America Great Again”..

By shunting vast sums of money into trumped up (no pun) foreign threats...we are shunting our wealth into a rat hole...making our nation a muscle bound giant in military might but a puny third world weakling when it comes to factors that actually make us a great nation.  Our infrastructure is crumbling, our schools are no longer up to standards, our borders are porous...our middle class is being hollowed out and our economy is stuttering.

Secretly deploying troops into regions of the world where they become targets of every diverse and assorted enemy is bad for them, bad for our economy and counter to the principles upon which this nation was founded .  Before expensive forces are deployed —where their very presence may incite counter attacks  and often counter-productive creeping expansion of their mission—we must have a national debate.  We must debate whether the nation’s citizens want to funnel a good half of our national wealth every year into military adventures—or instead to forego this adventurism and put much of that money into rebuilding and maintain the very economic machinery which ultimately supports that military—our businesses and our middle class.

Secret troop deployments are very much the wrong way to proceed to make America great again!