WHAT I THINK........LEW ROCKWELL

One of the most thrilling memories of the 2012 campaign was the sight of those huge crowds who came out to see Ron. His competitors, meanwhile, couldn’t fill half a Starbucks. When I worked as Ron’s chief of staff in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I could only dream of such a day.

Now what was it that attracted all these people to Ron Paul? He didn’t offer his followers a spot on the federal gravy train. He didn’t pass some phony bill. In fact, he didn’t do any of the things we associate with politicians. What his supporters love about him has nothing to do with politics at all.

Ron is the anti-politician. He tells unfashionable truths, educates rather than flatters the public, and stands up for principle even when the whole world is arrayed against him.

Some people say, "I love Ron Paul, except for his foreign policy." But that foreign policy reflects the best and most heroic part of who Ron Paul is. Peace is the linchpin of the Paulian program, not an extraneous or dispensable adjunct to it. He would never and could never abandon it.

Here was the issue Ron could have avoided had he cared only for personal advancement.

But he refused. No matter how many times he’s been urged to keep his mouth shut about war and empire, these have remained the centerpieces of his speeches and interviews.

Of course, Ron Paul deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. In a just world, he would also win the Medal of Freedom, and all the honors for which a man in his position is eligible.

But history is littered with forgotten politicians who earned piles of awards handed out by other politicians. What matters to Ron more than all the honors and ceremonies in the world is all of you, and your commitment to the immortal ideas he has championed all his life.

It’s Ron’s truth-telling and his urge to educate the public that should inspire us as we carry on into the future.
It isn’t a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state’s goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government’s propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They’ll fasten the chains to their own ankles.

H.L. Mencken once said that the state doesn’t just want to make you obey. It tries to make you want to obey. And that’s one thing the government schools do very well.

A long-forgotten political thinker, Etienne de la Boetie, wondered why people would ever tolerate an oppressive regime. After all, the people who are governed vastly outnumber the small minority doing the governing. So the people governed could put a stop to it all if only they had the will to do so. And yet they rarely do.

De la Boetie concluded that the only way any regime could survive was if the public consented to it. That consent could range all the way from enthusiastic support to stoic resignation. But if that consent were ever to vanish, a regime’s days would be numbered.

And that’s why education – real education – is such a threat to any regime. If the state loses its grip over your mind, it loses the key to its very survival.

The state is beginning to lose that grip. Traditional media, which have carried water for the government since time began, it seems, are threatened by independent voices on the Internet. I don’t think anyone under 25 even reads a newspaper.

The media and the political class joined forces to try to make sure you never found out about Ron Paul. When that proved impossible, they smeared him, and told you no one could want to go hear Ron when they could hear Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney instead.

All this backfired. The more they panicked about Ron, the more drawn to him people were. They wanted to know what it was that the Establishment was so eager to keep them from hearing.

Ours is the most radical challenge to the state ever posed. We aren’t trying to make the state more efficient, or show how it can take in more revenue, or change its pattern of wealth redistribution. We’re not saying that this subsidy is better than that one, or that this kind of tax would make the system run more smoothly than that one. We reject the existing system root and branch.

And we don’t oppose the state’s wars because they’ll be counterproductive or overextend the state’s forces. We oppose them because mass murder based on lies can never be morally acceptable.

So we don’t beg for scraps from the imperial table, and we don’t seek a seat at that table. We want to knock the table over.

We have much work to do. Countless Americans have been persuaded that it’s in their interest to be looted and ordered around by a ruling elite that in fact cares nothing for their welfare and seeks only to increase its power and wealth at their expense.

The most lethal and anti-social institution in history has gotten away with describing itself as the very source of civilization. From the moment they set foot in the government’s schools, Americans learn that the state is there to rescue them from poverty, unsafe medicines, and rainy days, to provide economic stimulus when the economy is poor, and to keep them secure against shadowy figures everywhere. This view is reinforced, in turn, by the broadcast and print media.

If the public has been bamboozled, as Murray Rothbard would say, it is up to us to do the de-bamboozling. We need to tear the benign mask off the state.

That is the task before you, before all of us, here today.

Begin with yourself. Learn everything you can about a free society. Read the greats, like Frederic Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. As you delve into the literature of liberty, share what you’re reading and learning. Start a blog. Create a YouTube channel. Organize a reading group. But whatever you do, learn, spread what you’re learning, and never stop.

If it is through propaganda that people thoughtlessly accept the claims of the state, then it is through education that people must be brought to their senses.

With its kept media on the wane, it is going to be more and more difficult for the state to make its claims stick, to persuade people to keep accepting its lies and propaganda.

You’ve heard it said that the pen is mightier than the sword. Think of the sword as the state. Think of the pen as all of you, each in your own way, spreading the ideas of liberty.

Remember that insight of Etienne de la Boetie: all government rests on public consent, and as soon as the public withdraws that consent, any regime is doomed.

This is why they fear Ron, it’s why they fear you, and it’s why, despite the horrors we read about every day, we may dare to look to the future with hope.

TRAVELING AND COMPUTERS

I AM CURRENTLY TRAVELING AND HAVING COMPUTER PROBLEMS........BEAR WITH ME.

LEGALIZE COMPETING CURRENCIES

I recently held a hearing in my congressional subcommittee on the subject of competing currencies.  This is an issue of enormous importance, but unfortunately few Americans understand how the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department impose a strict monopoly on money in America.  This monopoly is maintained using federal counterfeiting laws, which is a bit rich.  If any organization is guilty of counterfeiting dollars, it is our own Treasury.  But those who dare to challenge federal legal tender laws by circulating competing currencies-- at least physical currencies-- risk going to prison. Like all government created monopolies, the federal monopoly on money results in substandard product in the form of our ever-depreciating dollars.  Yet governments have always sought to monopolize the issuance of money, either directly or through the creation of central banks. The expanding role of the Federal Reserve in the 20th century enabled our federal government to grow wildly larger than would have been possible otherwise.  Our Fed, like all central banks, encourages deficits by effectively monetizing Treasury debt.  But the price we pay is the terrible and ongoing debasement of our money.  Allowing individuals and business to use alternate currencies, especially currencies backed by gold and silver, would expose the whole rotten system because the marketplace would prefer such alternate currencies unless and until the Fed suddenly imposed radical discipline on its dollar inflation. Sadly, Americans are far less free than many others around the world when it comes to protecting themselves against the rapidly depreciating US dollar.  Mexican workers can set up accounts denominated in ounces of silver and take tax-free delivery of that silver whenever they want.  In Singapore and other Asian countries, individuals can set up bank accounts denominated in gold and silver.  Debit cards can be linked to gold and silver accounts so that customers can use gold and silver to make point of sale transactions, a service which is only available to non-Americans. The obvious solution is to legalize monetary freedom and allow the circulation of parallel and competing currencies.  There is no reason why Americans should not be able to transact, save, and invest using the currency of their choosing.  They should be free to use gold, silver, or other currencies with no legal restrictions or punitive taxation standing in the way.  Restoring the monetary system envisioned by the Constitution is the only way to ensure the economic security of the American people.   After all, if our monetary system is fundamentally sound-- and the Federal Reserve indeed stabilizes the dollar as its apologists claim--then why fear competition?  Why do we accept that centralized, monopoly control over our money is compatible with a supposedly free-market economy?  In a free market, the government’s fiat dollar should compete with alternate currencies for the benefit of American consumers, savers, and investors. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained, sound money is an instrument that protects our civil liberties against despotic government. Our current monetary system is indeed despotic, and the surest way to correct things simply is to legalize competing currencies.

WHAT I THINK........JEREMY HAMMOND

Matt Johnson really dislikes Ron Paul. Under the headline “The Rest of the World: Ron Paul Revelations” at PoliticalFiber.com, he writes:

Last Wednesday, my editor published a disheartening reminder on this website: Ron Paul isn’t going away.

After I choked down some aspirin and gathered my wits, I realized there were two ways to look at the matter. In one sense, it’s a dismal reminder of how frivolous American politics can be. Though some of his supporters fancy themselves “revolutionaries,” Ron Paul is one of the most reactionary candidates in recent history, and he should be consigned to obscurity as soon as possible. On the other hand, his continued relevance has gifted me with the opportunity to write this article without being impertinent. Ron Paul’s legions of defenders may regret their inflexibility in the coming years, but it’s starting to seem unlikely. Self-satisfaction and wishful thinking are stubborn bedfellows.

Apparently, just the idea of even thinking about Ron Paul gives Matt Johnson a headache. What could cause such vitriolic enmity towards Ron Paul? Well, he is “reactionary”, for starters. What does Matt mean by that? The word is defined “relating to, marked by, or favoring reaction; especially: ultraconservative in politics”. Well, the first part of that hardly applies, inasmuch as it has become almost cliché by now to point out the fact that he has been unusually and remarkably consistent in his positions on the issues for his decades of public service. But what about “ultraconservative”? Does that word apply to Dr. Paul? It means “beyond in space: on the other side”, “beyond the range or limits of: transcending”, “beyond what is ordinary, proper, or moderate: excessively: extremely”. So what Matt Johnson is really trying to say is that Ron Paul’s views and his positions are extreme, outside of the standard framework for discussion, and his arguments against the status quo and current political establishment outside of the limited range of acceptable criticism and dissent.

And he has a point there. But is that a bad thing? Isn’t that rather what the U.S. needs? Shouldn’t dissent from the status quo be considered a good thing? Matt Johnson doesn’t think so. He thinks if Ron Paul had been president instead of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama that the world would be much worse off for it. To prove what a horrible president Ron Paul would have been, he simply invents a hypothetical alternative reality based on his own simple perceptions of what Ron Paul’s political views are and what U.S. foreign policy is:

Here’s a glimpse of Congressman Paul’s ideal world: Osama Bin Laden would still be alive and the CIA would be dead. The United States would no longer be a member of NATO or the United Nations. Federal foreign aid for the victims of disasters such as the Asian, Haitian and Japanese earthquakes would be rescinded (even AIDS prevention programs in Africa would get the doctor’s axe). The Iranian nuclear weapons program would be given an idiotic American blessing. Iraq would still be privately held by a band of murders and sadists known as the Ba’ath Party, and they’d have Kuwait under their bloody thumbs. Yugoslavia would have been ethnically “cleansed” and absorbed by Greater Serbia. American aircraft would not have protected innocent civilians in Libya. And our present conversation about Syria would be reduced to a series of sighs and shoulder shrugs.

It’s very possibly true that if a Ron Paul had been president all these years that Osama bin Laden might still be alive. Ron Paul certainly would not violate international law and the sovereignty of other nations by sending combat helicopters into their airspace and putting a team of commandos on their soil. Ron Paul recognizes that acts of terrorism are crimes to be properly dealt with through law enforcement, such as the cooperative efforts with the Pakistani government that led to the arrest of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But this all misses the point, because if Ron Paul had been president, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened in the first place. If Ron Paul had been president in place of Carter and Reagan, the U.S. wouldn’t have funded, trained, and armed the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and encouraged the creation of al-Qaeda in the first place (bin Laden’s Maktab al-Khidamat, the precursor organization to al-Qaeda, operated alongside the CIA out of Peshawar, Pakistan). The U.S. wouldn’t have had military bases on Saudi soil. The U.S. wouldn’t have been supporting Israel’s violations of international law and oppression of the Palestinians for all these years. The U.S. would not have had a policy of criminal sanctions against Iraq that killed over a million Iraqis, including half a million children. So, yeah, Osama bin Laden might still be alive, it is true – but so would the 3,000 Americans who died on September 11, 2001.

It’s possible that if a Ron Paul had been president for all these decades that the U.S. would no longer be a member of NATO. But why should we presume that would be a negative thing? Matt Johnson doesn’t bother to actually present an argument for why we need NATO or for why NATO is a positive force in the world, what with its frequent wars and illegal bombing campaigns, such as in Libya (more on that momentarily). Or take the illegal bombing of Kosovo in 1999, which was characterized in the West as a “humanitarian intervention”, despite the fact that it resulted in an escalation of the “cleansing” and other atrocities on the ground in the former Yugoslavia and a higher civilian death toll in its first three weeks than had occurred during the three months prior, when the “humanitarian catastrophe” had occurred that had served as a pretext for the bombing. U.S.-NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark afterward announced that it had been “entirely predictable” that the bombing had resulted in an escalation of violence on the ground. This action also led to the formation of a new doctrine of “illegal but legitimate” warfare – “illegal” because it was neither an act of self-defense against armed aggression by the U.S. or its NATO allies nor authorized by the U.N. Security Council (the only two conditions under which the use of force is permissible under international law), but nevertheless “legitimate”, by definition, since Washington makes its own rules and holds itself to a different standard than the rest of the world.

It’s also true that Ron Paul doesn’t think the U.S. should be involved in the U.N. But, again, why should we assume that it would be a bad thing for the U.S. or the rest of the world if the U.S. was not there to use its veto power in the Security Council, for instance, to defend Israel from censure for its war crimes and other violations of international law (e.g., vetoing an uncontroversial resolution condemning Israel for its illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, blocking the implementation of the recommendations of the U.N. fact-finding mission into Israel’s 22-day full-scale military assault on the civilian infrastructure [an implementation of its “Dahiyah Doctrine”, so named after a Beirut neighborhood Israel flattened during its 2006 invasion of Lebanon] of the defenseless Gaza Strip in ’08-’09, etc.)? Why would it be a bad thing if the U.S. could no longer use its position at the U.N. to bully other nations into marching in step with orders from Washington? How would it not be a good thing if the U.S. could no longer cite U.N. resolutions interpreted unilaterally to justify its use of force, such as in the wars for regime change in Iraq (another “illegal but legitimate” war; contrary to some attempts to claim such, Resolution 1441 did not authorize the use of force) and in Libya (also “illegal but legitimate”; Resolution 1973 authorized a no-fly zone to protect civilians, a mandate that the U.S./NATO immediately announced it would exceed by supporting the rebels and to continue bombing until there was regime change, all in violation of the U.N. Charter and the very resolution under which its operations were ostensibly carried out). When the U.S. has a Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, who has taken an oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution, but who declares that the Executive branch doesn’t need Congressional authorization for war, that the president may get such authorization to order young American men and women into harm’s way from the U.N. (he told the Senate that in making the decision to go to war, the administration would first “seek international permission” and then “come to the Congress and inform you” and “determine whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress”; emphasis added), would it really be so bad to have a president who would immediately fire this person and replace him with someone who respected the Constitution and upheld his oath of office? The Obama administration, of course, did not get a Congressional declaration of war for its war on Libya, which action was thus also a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Matt Johnson talks about U.S. foreign aid and how horrible it would be to cut it. He certainly has an innocent understanding of what U.S. foreign aid is all about. He completely ignores the billions in military aid to countries that engage in violations of international law and human rights abuses, such as the $3 billion given annually to Israel, the $1.3 billion given to the military establishment in Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, etc. He doesn’t want to talk about how U.S. aid and support for Israeli policies sustains the oppression and killing of Palestinians, or how all the people who suffer at the hands of their own brutal governments, autocracies propped up by the U.S. government, would benefit if the U.S. stopped supporting their oppression. He doesn’t want to talk about how foreign aid is given with strings attached requiring that money to be circulated right back to the U.S., such that it often serves effectively as a taxpayer subsidy for various U.S. industries, like the military/security industrial complex. He doesn’t want to talk about how this aid is effectively used to bribe nations to get in line, the money flowing to obedient client regimes and being instantly cut off to any foreign sovereign nation that dares to defy Washington, even to U.N. bodies like the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, which the U.S. cut funding to for voting to admit Palestine as a member). He doesn’t want to talk about how if Americans didn’t have their money taken from them by force by the government, they would be all that much more able to show the world how generous a people they are by making private, voluntary, tax-exempt donations to disaster relief programs. Nope, Matt Johnson doesn’t want to talk about any of these things. These are all “reactionary” observations to be made, well outside of the acceptable limits for debate. If the U.S. cut foreign aid, people in Africa wouldn’t get medical care. That’s all anyone needs to know about the matter, in Matt Johnson’s view.

Matt then comes to the subject of Iran, stupidly suggesting that Ron Paul would give Iran an American “blessing” to develop nuclear weapons, a ridiculous strawman argument which just goes to show that either he has never actually listened to what Ron Paul has had to say about the matter or he just doesn’t care to be honest with his readers (take your pick). What he is really referring to is the fact that Ron Paul has argued that the U.S. should not use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Gasp! What an outrage! What heresy! But it’s too inconvenient for Matt Johnson to point out other relevant facts about what Ron Paul has said about it, such as that he wouldn’t want to see Iran get nuclear weapons, but that Iran has a right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT) to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, that there isn’t any evidence Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and that a military attack on the country would only serve to incentivize Iran to actually try to develop nukes to deter further such attacks – just as Saddam Hussein made the decision to move his nuclear program “underground”, so to speak, after Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor, which had been under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision and inspections regime and in compliance with Iraq’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT). (A legitimate criticism could be made of Ron Paul because he supported this illegal attack by Israel on the mistaken belief that it was an act of self-defense, but pointing that out would be contrary to Matt Johnson’s purpose, so it is just as well he leaves well enough alone in that regard.) Never mind these inconvenient truths, all you need to know is that if Ron Paul was president, the Iranian nuclear weapons program the U.S. intelligence community continues to assess does not currently exist “would be given an idiotic American blessing”.

Moving right along, if Ron Paul had been president instead of George W. Bush, there wouldn’t have been a war on Iraq! Saddam Hussein would still be in power! Gasp! The horror! Except that if a Ron Paul had been president instead of Reagan, the U.S. wouldn’t have supported Saddam Hussein in the first place. If a Ron Paul had been president instead of George H. W. Bush, he wouldn’t have encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up to overthrow their dictator with the promise of U.S. military backing only to then stand idly by and watch the regime use helicopter gunships to slaughter those who responded to this call. If a Ron Paul had been president instead of Bill Clinton, the U.S. wouldn’t have given Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait in the first place and wouldn’t have then strengthened Saddam’s regime by implementing draconian sanctions that killed Iraqi civilians and made the Iraqi people dependent on the regime for survival. If Ron Paul had been president instead of George W. Bush, the U.S. would not have waged a war in violation of the U.S. Constitution and international law and would not have destroyed and inflicted sociocide upon Iraq; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in the war would still be alive, the country would not have been torn asunder with sectarian violence, and al Qaeda would not now have a presence in the country. But never mind all of this. Such facts are irrelevant! Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein would still be alive, and that is all you need to know about what the world would be like if a Ron Paul had been president, in Matt Johnson’s calculation.

Returning to Libya, Matt swallows unquestioningly that the U.S. “protected innocent civilians in Libya”. In fact, the claimed pretext, that there was a virtual genocide underway, had no basis in fact and the U.S./NATO killed innocent civilians in Libya, both directly, by dropping bombs on them, and indirectly, by prolonging and escalating the conflict that analysts agree would otherwise have been over in a matter of weeks, rather than months, and by backing armed rebels including Islamic jihadists – al Qaeda being among them (do you see a pattern forming here?) – that engaged in massacres and human rights abuses of their own. Matt similarly laments how U.S. policy towards Syria “would be reduced to a series of sighs and shoulder shrugs” under a President Ron Paul – as opposed to once again intervening to escalate the violence and atrocities on the ground committed by both sides by coordinating the flow of arms and money to the armed rebels whose ranks include al Qaeda (do you see the pattern yet?) in order to implement a policy of regime change with the ultimate goal of weakening Iran’s influence and to pursue the same endgame of regime change in that country.

“These are the doctor’s orders?” Matt Johnson asks. “Ron Paul’s vision for the United States is dank, self-serving rot masquerading as ‘freedom.’” So actually upholding one’s oath to uphold, defend, and protect the Constitution is “dank, self-serving rot masquerading as ‘freedom’”. Americans should just accept that their elected official have no respect for and repeatedly violate the Constitution, apparently, in Matt Johnson’s view. So not engaging in violations of international law is “dank, self-serving rot”. Matt Johnson is also obviously an adherent to the doctrine of “illegal but legitimate” use of force, though we can probably safely presume that in his view, surely only the U.S. could decide what is “legitimate”, and illegal use of force by other nations outside of approval from Washington we must consider wrong. Insisting that the U.S. should not be spending taxpayers’ dollars propping up autocratic regimes or backing human rights abuses and violations of international law is “dank, self-serving rot”. Insisting that the U.S. should stop interfering in the affairs of other nations such as by intervening to prolong conflicts and escalate violence and siding with terrorist groups like al Qaeda is “dank, self-serving rot”, and so on. “The freedom that Ron Paul advocates is the freedom to deny the very existence of international obligations”, he asserts, with no inconsiderable hypocrisy. “It’s the freedom to abandon our allies and help our enemies.” You mean like supporting Saddam Hussein or siding with al-Qaeda, Matt? He says “It’s the freedom to permit genocide, sectarian madness, and mass suffering without even a hint of self-criticism”, he writes, but what he really means, translated into meaningful terms that bear some resemblance to the real world rather than some Orwellian fantasy, is that it’s the freedom to refuse to participate in genocide, to refuse to provoke sectarian madness, to refuse to inflict mass suffering without even a hint of self-criticism. Among Ron Paul’s most heinous sins is his agreement with the foreign policy prescription our nation’s first president, George Washington, for he “constantly reiterates the importance of avoiding ‘foreign entanglements’”. The insolence!

Matt adds:

On June 19, 2012, he gave a preposterous, incoherent speech about Syria on the House floor. In it, he makes the following assertions: 1) “Without outside interference, the strife – now characterized as a civil war – would likely be nonexistent.” And, 2) “Falsely charging the Russians with supplying military helicopters to Assad is an unnecessary provocation.” As any fool will notice, both claims are completely fallacious.

And as any fool will notice, Matt Johnson’s claims about how horrible a situation the world would be in if a Ron Paul had been president for the past several decades are completely fallacious. Matt is incapable of recognizing how the U.S. backing for the armed rebels in Syria has resulted in an escalation of the violence – for instance, how the supply of anti-tank weaponry to the rebels had the consequence of the regime deciding to for the first time employ its helicopters – just as he is incapable of recognizing the hypocrisy of the U.S. criticizing Russia for upholding contracts to perform maintenance on Syria’s old helicopters (yes, Russia did not deliver new choppers to Syria, but Syria had purchased them years ago, although Matt neglected to clarify that fact for his readers), while itself helping to arm, fund, and train the rebel forces whose ranks – in case it hasn’t already been mentioned – include members of al Qaeda. When Ron Paul points out the fact that the U.S. is so doing, he “echoes the transparent propaganda of President Bashar al-Assad”, according to Matt. Facts be damned!

The takeaway message is that Ron Paul is a sinner, a heretic, a blasphemer, for having dared to challenge the status quo, by insolently demanding responsibility and accountability in government, by brazenly demanding that our government obey the Constitution and international law, by irrationally insisting that the government should not take money from Americans by force and hand it over to human rights abusers overseas, by audaciously suggesting that the U.S. should not interfere in the affairs of other nations by prolonging conflicts and escalating violence on the ground, etc., etc. (And this is not even to mention his atrocious positions on domestic policies, such as the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, and how Ron Paul since at least as early as 2001 had been warning against the housing bubble and the financial crisis its collapse would precipitate, as well as warning against the policies that caused it.) Such outrageous blasphemy cannot be tolerated, and just the act of considering such heretical ideas, or even just contemplating the name “Ron Paul”, should give every decent and self-respecting American a headache and force them to choke down some aspirin to alleviate the pain from having acted against their own self-conscience and danced with the devil by actually listening to Ron Paul’s profane blasphemies against the state religion.

And once the drug has dulled their senses, Americans can forget about this wicked presidential candidate who refuses to just go away and accept being “consigned to obscurity”, and think no more of him. Americans may then be tempted to contemplate his heresies no longer, but rest more easily at night knowing that the status quo will go on and that the existing establishment will keep on doing what it does, because America’s foreign policy is good and righteous and just, and that, in the view of obedient and self-disciplined commentators like Matt Johnson, is all Americans need to know.

MOVING TOWARD WAR WITH SYRIA

Last week the House passed yet another bill placing sanctions on Iran and Syria, bringing us closer to another war in the Middle East. We are told that ever harsher sanctions finally will force the targeted nations to bend to our will.  Yet the ineffectiveness of previous sanctions teaches us nothing; in truth sanctions lead to war more than they prevent war.

Until last year, Libyan sanctions were touted as a great success story.  The regime would change its behavior. Yet NATO bombed the country anyway.

Last week we learned that President Obama signed an intelligence “finding” directing the CIA to covertly assist rebels in Syria. The administration seems determined to fight yet another war in Syria that has nothing to do with American national interests.

We already know that a similar “finding” was signed under the latest Bush administration directing US intelligence to undermine the Iranian government and promote regime change there. Neoconservatives have long demanded that we overthrow the Syrian government before moving on to war against Iran.  This bellicosity continues regardless of which party is in the White House.

In Syria we see once again we see how our interventionist policies backfire and make us less secure.  Recent news reports point to ties between the Syrian opposition and al-Qaeda (and other extremist groups).  A recent article in the Guardian, a British newspaper,
exclaimed that, “Al-Qaida turns tide for rebels in battle for eastern Syria.”  The article quotes an al-Qaeda leader in Syria saying that he meets with the main US-backed Syrian rebel organization, the Free Syrian Army, “almost every day.”  So by promoting civil war in Syria we end up fueling al-Qaeda.

According to another recent press report, German intelligence services estimate that nearly 100 terrorist attacks have been committed by al-Qaeda or related organizations in Syria over the past six months. Last month a suicide bomber in Syria killed a defense minister and several top government officials. The US government, which has been fighting a “War on Terror” for more than a decade now, refused to condemn that act of terrorism.

This raises the question of whether the US administration is supporting the same people in Syria that we have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed these same concerns earlier this year when asked whether the US has been reluctant to arm the Syrian rebels. She answered, “To whom are you delivering them? We know al-Qaida. Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting al-Qaida in Syria?”

That is a very good question.  It clearly demonstrates that the United States has no business at all being involved in the Syrian civil war. In the 1980s we supported a resistance movement in Afghanistan that later gave birth to elements of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. When will we learn our lesson and stop intervening in conflicts we don’t truly understand, conflicts that have nothing to do with American national interests?