"US Defense Secretary Mark Esper confirmed on Wednesday that troops would be pulled and relocated from Germany. The move is set to be the largest shake-up of troops in Germany since the Cold War... [Esper said that] Germany was a 'rich country' and that it 'can and should pay more for its defense.'" armynow.net/us-troops-germany-nato-relocate-withdraw/
This is not new. The forty-fifth president had already put the US military up for sale. As Commander-in-Chief, the 45th President of the United States announced the withdrawal of American forces from Syria at the end of 2018. He had not notified the military, or anyone else, of this sudden decision. The troops did not immediately depart Syria, lock, stock and barrel. But the significance of the announcement was clear to those with reason to understand it. In explaining that America's allies were not paying enough for the American soldiers to be "fighting their wars for them," the President was announcing that henceforth, the American military was for hire. The Volunteer Army became the Mercenary Army, in one brief moment of Presidential twittery.
Considering the number of private contractors protecting the troops in war zones, and their much higher pay scale, this might seem like a distinction without a difference. And it should surprise nobody that the American military is reduced to training fighters for the highly-paid and completely unaccountable corporate armies. General Butler ("War is a Racket") explained long ago that the Army had long been the military arm of the corporations that extracted fossil fuels, minerals, bananas, and that pillar of triangular trade, cane sugar from Central America and the Caribbean.
Wait. Protecting the troops? Yes. That's what we were told those contractors are doing over there. What the troops are doing, is protecting American business interests, aka "our vital interests." That's why Cuba. That's why Nicaragua. That's why Honduras. That's why Venezuela. And so on, and so on, and on and on.
Nothing new.
"Following Orders" was rejected as a Nazi defense at the Nuremberg Trials. U.S. military personnel are required by law to refuse illegal orders. They are sworn to protect the Constitution from enemies "foreign and domestic". Mercenaries are bound by law to whatever is in their contracts. Whomever is paying them calls the shots.
This is why it's such a terrible idea to "run the government like a business." Governments are not businesses, they are supposed to provide for their citizens' general welfare, keep the roads and other public utilities open -- the Postal Service is part of that, it is not an "enterprise," it is not required to turn a profit. It is a Service, and one that all but defines the core functions of good government.
But if the people forget this simple principle, Fascism is the inevitable result. The interests of business will supersede the interests of the people, even down to "life, liberty, and..."
We're already there. We already sold out, we just don't like the deal we made.
What will be required of a contract military? What will happen when those contract killers return from the world's oil fields, if the president wishes the election postponed, rigged, botched, or simply canceled, as the administration has made abundantly clear is their plan? They are not sworn to defend against "foreign and domestic" enemies of the Constitution. They have been tested in war zones across the world, under contract to the likes of Eric Prince, brother of the Secretary of Education, and have already seen people pardoned by the forty-fifth President of the United States after being convicted of bloody atrocities.
This is not even a "well regulated militia." It's a private army, not a public service, and nobody is going to accost them on the street and say "Thank you for your service." It will do the bidding of its bosses, in the grand tradition of organized crime since, I don't know, the Sumerian Empire.
The collapse that's already happening is not getting much attention, except from the people it falls on. The rest of us are speaking and writing like there's a tomorrow, and it will look like yesterday.
