President Obama held a press conference last week to express his outrage over
reports that the Veterans Administration was routinely delaying treatment to
veterans, with some veterans even dying while on alleged secret waiting lists.
The president said that, "if these allegations prove to be true, it is dishonorable,
it is disgraceful, and I will not tolerate it, period." He vowed that, together
with Congress, he would "make sure we're doing right by our veterans across
the board."
The president is right to be upset over the mistreatment of US military veterans,
especially those who return home with so many physical and mental injuries.
Veterans should not be abused when they seek the treatment promised them when
they enlisted. But his outrage over military abuse is selective. He ignores
the most egregious abuse of the US armed forces: sending them off to fight,
become maimed, and die in endless conflicts overseas that have no connection
to US national security.
It is ironic that the same week the president condemned the alleged mistreatment
of veterans by the VA, he announced that he was sending 80 armed troops to
Chad to help look for a group of girls kidnapped by the Nigerian Islamist organization
Boko Haram. Is there any mistreatment worse than sending the US military into
a violent and unstable part of the world to conduct a search operation that
is in no way connected to the defense of the United States?
As Judge Andrew Napolitano said last week, "Feeling sorry for somebody is
not a sufficient basis for sending American men and women into harm's way."
We are naturally upset over reports that Nigerian girls have been kidnapped
by this armed Islamist organization. Unfortunately, cruel and unjust acts are
committed worldwide on a regular basis. What the media is not reporting about
this terrible situation, however, is that it was US interventionism itself
that strengthened Boko Haram, and inadvertently may have even helped the kidnappers
commit their crime.
Back in early 2012, just months after the US-ledattack on Libya overthrew
Gaddafi and plunged the country into chaos, the UN issued a report warning
about the proliferation of weapons from that bombed out country. UN investigators
found -- eight months before the attack that killed the US ambassador in Benghazi
-- that, "Some of the weapons ... could be sold to terrorist groups like al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram or other criminal organizations."
The US, NATO, and the UN are guilty of creating the unrest currently engulfing
much of northern Africa, as they all pushed lies to promote an attack on Libya
that destabilized the region. Now the president is launching an intervention
in Chad and Nigeria to solve the problems created by his own intervention in
Libya. This pattern is the same in places like Ukraine, where the US-backed
coup in February has led to chaos and unrest that leads to even more intervention,
including NATO's saber-rattling on the Russian border. Has anyone in the Administration
or Congress ever considered that interventionism itself might be the real problem?
As Americans celebrate the Memorial Day holiday, we should remember that though
the VA's alleged abuse and neglect of US veterans is scandalous, the worse
abuse comes from a president and a compliant Congress that sends the US military
to cause harm and be harmed overseas in undeclared, unnecessary, and illegal
interventions. The best way to honor the US military is to honor the Constitution,
and to keep in mind the wise advice of our Founding Fathers to avoid all foreign
interventionism.