US special operations forces have seen a five-fold increase in budget and a doubling of personnel since 2001. They are now active in at least 81 countries. They operate in secret, with little scrutiny. Is this a good thing?
US special operations forces have seen a five-fold increase in budget and a doubling of personnel since 2001. They are now active in at least 81 countries. They operate in secret, with little scrutiny. Is this a good thing?
US special operations forces have seen a five-fold increase in budget and a doubling of personnel since 2001. They are now active in at least 81 countries. They operate in secret, with little scrutiny. Is this a good thing?
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
Today with me is Daniel McAdams who is the Executive Director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
He's also the co-host of this program.
Daniel, welcome to our program again.
Thank you.
Good to be good.
I have a little subject I wanted to go over with you today.
It was a little hint of what's going on, you know, in ZERO Hedge, and they were quoting the WALL Street Journal, and I feel certain that these numbers are worth looking at and maybe a lot worse than they report, because what they have reported here is the almost exponential growth of the special forces and that we are now in 81 countries.
And, as usual, as our attacks on civil liberties here at home got much worse after 9-11, so did this problem.
We decided that we would go.
But he claims and I believe him if not more that we're in 81 country with special forces and I know this is a subject that over the years as we worked together you had paid special attention to this because it is so sinister.
It is and you know it's grown exponentially during the Obama administration.
Of course you know President Bush was the first to really ramp up special forces after 9-11 which proved a great excuse to do it.
But looking at the numbers just between 2001 and 2014 the special ops budget went from $2.1 billion to $10 billion in 2014.
The number of personnel that are engaged in special ops rose from 35,000 to 70,000 people as of last year.
That is huge growth and much of it took place under the Obama administration.
And you know, when I was voting in Congress I don't recall and you probably can check me out on this there was never a line special ops budget so many billion dollars.
You know that's all buried in there, it's secretive and who knows it could be a lot more.
There is an admission that they do get money from the ARMY and the NAVY, from these other budgets, and I think they get it from foreign aid too, because you know you send money over into these countries in the Middle East and it's all fungible and it can come in and you say well, you're gonna pay this.
So I think the problem is much bigger.
But this principle is so bad.
You know, sometimes we get criticized for sounding alarm.
Well, why are we going in there?
You're only sending 150 people in there going to be advisors, sending the advisors to Ukraine.
But the escalation is is the big problem.
You know, the very first time this happened, special forces really evolved after World War II and Eisenhower was the one that really institutionalized it by using it in Vietnam just advisors, and guess what that happened there?
You know we ended up losing 60,000 people and many, many wounded.
So I think that this issue of escalation is something that we should pay a lot of attention to, and there's a great advantage to the president to using special forces rather than using the regular army because, first of all, they are, they're secret, they're under the radar screen, they're not accountable, but also there's the image of these, these brave guys going in and breaking the rules and getting things done.
That's not a bureaucracy.
There are no armshell, armchair generals involved, so there's a real psychological advantage to him doing it but, as you pointed out, they often send these, these troops, into hotspots and what happens ends up being worse.
I was just looking before the show starting in 2010, the president sent special ops into Yemen to train the forces there to to to, to train their special forces.
And look at Yemen today.
In 2009, there was special ops were given an order by the administration allowing them to to do intelligence collection inside Iran.
Well, that is the big problem, keeping up with it, and it is escalated.
But a lot of people like to use this like they use and justify sanctions or drones.
This isn't real war, and it'll go unnoticed.
And this is just a few people, and we're giving advice.
But you know what?
The people in these countries know exactly what's going on.
I think it raises every bit as much resentment as anything else.
But do we have much of a contest to be the king of special ops?
Do you think the Chinese are outclassing us?
Are the Russians?
Maybe the Iranians are outdoing us on special ops.
That's the most interesting part when you pull yourself back and think about this.
We're the only country in the world that thinks they have the right to do this, to put their forces actively engaged in 81 countries doing secret things in whose name the people have no idea what they are.
You know, Americans have no idea what are being done.
No other country in the world does this.
So what gives the U.S. the idea that they should?
And they do other things other than just trying to kill people and overthrow governments.
They go in to get a lot of information.
Somebody said to a professor who's retired from special ops, they said, does this mean you're doing this spying?
And his term was, no, it's just armed anthropology.
That sounds like 1984 news speak.
Oh, no, we wouldn't spy on people.
But I cannot believe that it serves any purposes.
If you said, well, that we go into those countries to try to head things off.
Yeah, did they head things off on the problems in Syria and ISIS?
Did they head things off in the disaster of Iraq?
I mean, just go on and on.
They never, did they give us information about what happened on 9-11?
But some people think that some of this type of activity could even be done within our boundaries, which I have a little trouble with that.
I know things are pretty bad, but when they toy with these ideas and maybe have training sessions and you hear things that who knows what they're planning for, and that does concern me.
Yeah, well, you know, a lot of conspiracy people have talked about this Operation Jade Helm, which will take place in the United States.
The Special Operations Command will be operating in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.
And I think it's pretty easy to maybe make more of it than it is.
Yet, nevertheless, it seems like it might be a slippery slope.
Yeah, there's no doubt about it.
But it gives us an opportunity once again to make the case for non-intervention.
The one problem I had for winning that argument in Washington is a little bit of intervention wasn't as bad as immediately going to war and declaring war and dropping bombs.
Matter of fact, they don't do that.
They may drop bombs, but it's never on a declaration.
So I think this is the big problem, that this entices people to go in a little bit at a time.
And lo and behold, look at what happens.
And we have the Iraq, Afghanistan's a mess.
Ukraine is getting worse.
Yemen is getting worse.
And who knows what will happen in Libya?
And this is all a reflection of getting involved a little bit at a time.
But I've always found, and you've talked with a lot of our constituents, to get people really interested in this.
I think it's a lot easier to get them interested in their standard of living and why they don't have a job, which is rightfully so.
But even operations like this reflects the economics of the system.
If we're spending what they're admitting, $10, $12 billion, it's probably a lot more.
That has an economic consequence, too.
But this is boring for some people.
And hopefully, we can contribute to the discussion and let people know exactly what's going on.
Yeah, and you know, Professor Andy Basevich, who we know well, and he was a Vietnam War veteran and a very effective voice against militarism these days.
He wrote a piece in Counterpunch a couple years back, and he points out three problems with this rapid expansion of special forces.
We've covered them somewhat here.
The first is no accountability.
Nobody knows that they're there, so they have no accountability to Congress, to the American people.
The second is, and this is, I think, very important, it gives a president his own secret army.
You know, he's not subject to congressional oversight.
He has his own sort of Praetorian Guard that he can send to break things wherever he wants.
And the third is basically what you just said now: it's the tell me how this ends scenario.
So you send him in, and they do things in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Syria, in Libya.
Okay, they may be very effective at assassinating and doing these things, but how does it end?
It's so far not ended very well.
And it's not all that easy to figure out and have a clear understanding as a voting member of Congress.
What's the connection with the special forces and the CIA?
What can the CIA do?
They're probably more illegal than the Special Forces.
Morally, they're one together, and they're probably working hand in glove, I think, when they go into these areas.
But right now, it looks like the CIA makes a lot of these major military decisions on who gets bombed and who gets assassinated and which countries we're going in.
And yet, with such a poor record, the people are still, right now, if you look at what's going on in the political debate, they think you're un-American, you know, if you're not willing to go full force and kill our enemies and not realizing that we create enemies by doing that, too.
Cia's Role In Military Decisions00:01:06
I can imagine people saying to you right now, some people at least saying, well, Ron, you just don't understand.
These things are all secret.
You don't know about all their successes.
You can't know.
Well, that's true.
That's why I should know.
And we should all know.
And people die over these things.
And I keep looking and seeing, although less numbers are dying right now in military, two a day are committing suicide because of mental consequences.
And when you think, when I see the individuals who have lost limbs a lot, maybe two or three limbs and blinded and head injuries and all this, this just really bothers me.
And it's because I know it's unnecessary.
And yet they would like to put the guilt on us.
Oh, you don't support the troops.
Well, the best way to support the troops is to get the message out about non-intervention.
And as you know, and others know, that I was able to get the attention of a lot of military people that their interests are best served with less intervention.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.