Last week the US House of Representatives called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to appear before a select committee looking into the attack on a US facility in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. The attack left four Americans dead, including US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.
As might be expected, however, the “Benghazi Committee” hearings have proven not much more than a means for each party to grandstand for political points.
In fact, I would call these Congressional hearings “too much, too late.”
Four years after the US-led overthrow of the Libyan government – which left the country a wasteland controlled by competing Islamist gangs and militias – the committee wants to know whether Hillary Clinton had enough guards at the facility in Benghazi on the night of the attack? The most important thing to look into about Libya is Hillary Clinton’s e-mails or management style while Secretary of State?
Why no House Committee hearing before President Obama launched his war on Libya? Why no vote on whether to authorize the use of force? Why no hearing after the President violated the Constitution by sending the military into Libya with UN authorization rather than Congressional authorization? There are Constitutional tools available to Congress when a president takes the country to war without a declaration or authorization. At the time, President Obama claimed he did not need authorization from Congress because the US was not engaged in “hostilities.” It didn’t pass the laugh test, but Congress did next to nothing about it.
When the Obama Administration decided to attack Libya, I joined Rep. Dennis Kucinich and others in attempt to force a vote on the president’s war. I introduced my own legislation warning the administration that, “the President is required to obtain in advance specific statutory authorization for the use of United States Armed Forces in response to civil unrest in Libya.”
We even initiated a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia asking the courts to rule on whether the president broke the law in attacking Libya.
Unfortunately we got nowhere with our efforts. When it looked like we had the votes to pass a resolution introduced by Rep. Kucinich to invoke War Powers Resolution requirements on the president for the use of force in Libya, Speaker Boehner cancelled the vote.
Why were there no hearings at the time to discuss this very important Constitutional matter? Because the leadership of both parties wanted the war. Both parties -- with few exceptions -- agree with the ideology of US interventionism worldwide.
Secretary Clinton defended the State Department’s handling of security at the Benghazi facility by pointing out that there are plenty of diplomatic posts in war zones and that danger in these circumstances is to be expected. However she never mentioned why Benghazi remained a “war zone” a year after the US had “liberated” Libya from Gaddafi.
Why was Libya still a war zone? Because the US intervention left Libya in far worse shape than it was under Gaddafi. We don’t need to endorse Gaddafi to recognize that today’s Libya, controlled by al-Qaeda and ISIS militias, is far worse off – and more of a threat to the US – than it was before the bombs started falling.
The problem is the ideology of interventionism, not the management of a particular intervention. Interventionism has a terrible track record, from 1953 in Iran, to Vietnam, to 2003 in Iraq, to 2011 in Libya and Syria. A real Congressional hearing should focus on the crimes and mistakes of the interventionists!
Saturday
WHAT I THINK........TOM DiLORENZO
On October 10 the online History News Network expressed its disapproval (yet again) of a statement that Ron Paul made several years ago regarding the American “Civil War.” In a television interview Ron Paul expressed disagreement with the new, politically-correct legend that slavery was the one and only cause of the Civil War. The long-simmering conflict over states’ rights versus consolidation and nationalism was the main problem, he said. So theHistory News Network highlighted an article by one Dale Schlundt, an adjunct professor at Northwest Vista College, on “Why People Like Ron Paul Falsely Believe Slavery Wasn’t the Cause of the Civil War.” Schlundt is very upset that someone with such a large audience and who allegedly “did not study the Civil War in depth” would say such a thing. He says that he starts each semester of his history class with a video of Ron Paul’s television interview on the subject, and then spends considerable class time belly-aching about it.
Of course, the reason why “people like Ron Paul” believe that there were multiple causes of the “Civil War,” as with all other wars in human history, is that they have studied the subject in depth, unlike Dale Schlundt, and do not rely simply on the latest politically-correct platitudes. For example, they are familiar with the book, The Causes of the Civil War by Kenneth Stampp, a former president of the American Historical Association. This widely-useduniversity-level textbook discusses dozens of causes of the war, which is why the title of the book includes the word “Causes,” not “Cause.” Dale Schlundt is apparently oblivious to this scholarship.
“People like Ron Paul” are also aware of the fact Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. Congress very clearly stated that ending slavery was not the purpose of the war. The U.S. Congress, which was almost totally comprised of Northerners in July of 1861, issued its “War Aims Resolution” that stated:
That this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions of the States [meaning slavery], but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union.
In his first inaugural address Lincoln assured the world that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” He then quoted the Republican Party Platform of 1860, which also pledged the Party’s everlasting support of Southern slavery: “Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions [i.e., slavery] according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend . . .” Dale Schlundt is also apparently oblivious to the words of Lincoln’s first inaugural address, unlike “people like Ron Paul.”
Also in his first inaugural address, near the end, Lincoln expressed the strongest support for the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which had just passed the Northern-controlled House and Senate, which stated that “No Amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof [i.e., slavery], including that of persons held to labor or service [i.e., slaves] by the laws of said State.” Ohio, Maryland, and Illinois ratified the Corwin Amendment before the war broke out.
In the same speech in which Lincoln advocated the enshrinement of slavery explicitly in the Constitution, he threatened “invasion” and “bloodshed” (his exact words) in any state that refused to collect the new Morrill Tariff, which more than doubled the rate of federal taxation just two days earlier in legislation signed by President James Buchanan. “There will be no invasion of any state,” he said, as long as they pay up. They did not, so Lincoln did what he threatened to do and waged total war on his own country over tax collection.
In his article Schlundt does not say that Lincoln waged war on his own citizens to free the slaves; he says that the sole cause of the war was the dispute over the extension of slavery into the new territories. Lincoln and the Republican Party were indeed opposed to that, citing two reasons: 1) They wanted to preserve the territories as the exclusive domain of “free white labor” to use Lincoln’s exact words; and 2) to reduce the congressional representation of the Democratic Party, since at that time every five slaves counted as three persons in the census for the purpose of determining how many congressional representatives each state would have. Even so, the salient point here is that by seceding from the union the Southern states abandoned any possibility of bringing slaves into the territories of the now-foreign government of the United States. So Dale Schlundt’s slavery-as-the-sole-cause-of-the-Civil-War theory comes down to this: The South wanted to bring slaves into the new territories, so their strategy to achieve that goal was to secede, after which it would have been impossible to bring slaves into the U.S. government’s territories. This, he says, is what should be taught to college students about the war, not the words and actions of Lincoln and the rest of the U.S. government at the time.
Nor should students be exposed to the letter that Lincoln wrote to newspaperman Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, on August 22, 1862, stating that “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
“People like Ron Paul” also know that, early in the war, when two of Lincoln’s military commanders unilaterally issued local emancipation proclamations Lincoln rescinded them and reprimanded the commanders. They know that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to “rebel territory,” where the U.S. government had no ability whatsoever to free anyone, while explicitly exempting parts of the South such as much of Louisiana, where the U.S. Army was in control. The slave states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and West Virginia, all a part of the Northern Union, were also exempted.
“People like Ron Paul” also know that Lincoln called the Emancipation Proclamation a “war measure” that he hoped would lead to slave insurrections, although it did not, and that it would have become void had the war ended at that time. People like Dale Schlundt, on the other hand, are either ignorant of these plain historical facts, or they dishonestly hide them from their students.
“People like Ron Paul” also understand that secession does not necessitate war. The issue of why the Southern states seceded is entirely separate from the question of why there was a war. Lincoln himself was very clear on why there was a war: By his actions he proved that his war aim was to destroy the voluntary union of the founding fathers and replace it with a coerced, Soviet-style union held together by mass murder, mayhem, the bombing and burning of entire cities, the rape, pillage, and plunder of the civilian population, and everlasting threats of doing the same should any state in the future contemplate leaving Lincoln’s “mystical” union.
When people like Ron Paul cite the decades-long conflict over states’ rights versus nationalism as a cause of the war, they are saying that the Southern states, like the New England Federalists before them, believed that the union was voluntary and that they had a right of freedom of association and of secession. The Republican Party, on the other hand, insisted that the union was never voluntary, and was a one-way venus flytrap from which no state, and no citizen, could ever escape for any reason. Lincoln’s regime “proved” its theory of the union to be “correct” at the cost of as many as 850,000 dead Americans according to the latest research.
Monday
DEBT CEILING DEBATE: DON'T MENTION WARFARE/WELLFARE STATE by RON PAUL
The US Treasury’s recent announcement that the government will reach the debt ceiling on November 3 means Congress will soon be debating raising the government’s borrowing limit again. Any delay in, or opposition to, raising the debt ceiling will inevitably be met with hand-wringing over Congress’ alleged irresponsibility. But the real irresponsible act would be for Congress to raise the debt ceiling.
Cutting up its credit card is the only way to make Congress reduce spending. Anyone who doubts this should listen to the bipartisan whining over how sequestration has so drastically reduced spending that there is literally nothing left to cut. But, according to the Heritage Foundation, sequestration has only reduced spending from $3.6 trillion to $3.5 trillion. Only in DC would a less than one percent spending reduction be considered a draconian cut.
Defense hawks have found a way around sequestration by shoving billions of dollars into the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account. OCO spending is classified as “emergency” spending so it does not count against the spending limits, even when OCO is used for items that do not fit any reasonable definition of emergency.
Yet, even using OCO to boost military spending by as much as $80 billion does not satisfy the military-industrial complex’s ravenous appetite for taxpayer dollars.
During the majority of my time in Congress, debt ceiling increases were routinely approved. In fact, congressional rules once allowed the House of Representatives to increase the debt ceiling without a vote or even a debate! Congress’ need to appear to respond to growing concerns over federal spending has forced it to end the practice of rubber-stamping debt ceiling increases.
Continuously increasing spending will lead to rising inflation as the Federal Reserve tries to monetize the ever-increasing debt. This will eventually lead to a serious economic crisis. When the crisis occurs, Congress will have no choice but to cut spending. The question is not if, but when and under what circumstances, spending will be cut.
The only alternative for cutting spending in response to economic crisis involves Congress gradually unwinding the welfare state in a manner that does not harm those dependent on federal programs. Congress will not even consider doing this until enough people have embraced the ideas of liberty to force the politicians to reconsider the proper role of government.
Those who accept the premises of the welfare statists are incapable of making principled arguments against welfare and entitlement programs. Thus, they can only quibble over spending levels or how to more efficiently manage the federal bureaucracy. While fiscal conservatives may gain some minor victories with this approach, their failure to challenge the welfare state’s morality or effectiveness dooms any effort to seriously curtail welfare state spending.
Similarly, one cannot favor both serious reductions in the military budget and an aggressive foreign policy. So-called cheap hawks may achieve some reforms in the Pentagon’s budget. They many even succeed in killing a few wasteful weapons projects. However, their unwillingness to oppose a foreign policy of perpetual war means they will always cave in to the war hawks’ demands for ever-higher military budgets.
Those who understand the dangers from continuing on our current path should support efforts to stop Congress from raising the debt ceiling. However, supporters of liberty will not win the political battle over government spending on welfare and warfare until we win the intellectual battle over the role of government. Those of us who know the truth must do all we can to spread the ideas of liberty.
Cutting up its credit card is the only way to make Congress reduce spending. Anyone who doubts this should listen to the bipartisan whining over how sequestration has so drastically reduced spending that there is literally nothing left to cut. But, according to the Heritage Foundation, sequestration has only reduced spending from $3.6 trillion to $3.5 trillion. Only in DC would a less than one percent spending reduction be considered a draconian cut.
Defense hawks have found a way around sequestration by shoving billions of dollars into the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account. OCO spending is classified as “emergency” spending so it does not count against the spending limits, even when OCO is used for items that do not fit any reasonable definition of emergency.
Yet, even using OCO to boost military spending by as much as $80 billion does not satisfy the military-industrial complex’s ravenous appetite for taxpayer dollars.
During the majority of my time in Congress, debt ceiling increases were routinely approved. In fact, congressional rules once allowed the House of Representatives to increase the debt ceiling without a vote or even a debate! Congress’ need to appear to respond to growing concerns over federal spending has forced it to end the practice of rubber-stamping debt ceiling increases.
Continuously increasing spending will lead to rising inflation as the Federal Reserve tries to monetize the ever-increasing debt. This will eventually lead to a serious economic crisis. When the crisis occurs, Congress will have no choice but to cut spending. The question is not if, but when and under what circumstances, spending will be cut.
The only alternative for cutting spending in response to economic crisis involves Congress gradually unwinding the welfare state in a manner that does not harm those dependent on federal programs. Congress will not even consider doing this until enough people have embraced the ideas of liberty to force the politicians to reconsider the proper role of government.
Those who accept the premises of the welfare statists are incapable of making principled arguments against welfare and entitlement programs. Thus, they can only quibble over spending levels or how to more efficiently manage the federal bureaucracy. While fiscal conservatives may gain some minor victories with this approach, their failure to challenge the welfare state’s morality or effectiveness dooms any effort to seriously curtail welfare state spending.
Similarly, one cannot favor both serious reductions in the military budget and an aggressive foreign policy. So-called cheap hawks may achieve some reforms in the Pentagon’s budget. They many even succeed in killing a few wasteful weapons projects. However, their unwillingness to oppose a foreign policy of perpetual war means they will always cave in to the war hawks’ demands for ever-higher military budgets.
Those who understand the dangers from continuing on our current path should support efforts to stop Congress from raising the debt ceiling. However, supporters of liberty will not win the political battle over government spending on welfare and warfare until we win the intellectual battle over the role of government. Those of us who know the truth must do all we can to spread the ideas of liberty.
Saturday
Wednesday
WHAT I THINK........ MAX McNAB
I recently had the honor of interviewing Dr. Ron Paul. He was kind enough to speak with me about the last days of the American empire and the situation with Russia and Syria. It was a pleasure to shake Dr. Paul’s hand. No one in the last century has done more to advance the cause of liberty than this former Texas congressman.
For decades Paul has stood against the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve, a banking entity which can only be called evil. He’s been a lone voice of sanity in a wilderness of political madness. While clowns on the left worship the welfare state and jokers on the right bow down to the warfare state, Ron Paul upholds the principles of freedom. His work educating and mobilizing a new generation has led to a renaissance in the understanding of liberty. He is the rarest of all things: a truly honorable politician.
I spoke with Dr. Paul backstage before he delivered his keynote address for the Free Market Institute’s fall Public Speaker Series. The FMI is located at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The institute is dedicated to researching and expounding the virtues of free markets. They’ve earned a reputation for promoting excellent scholarship and encouraging rigorous debate. FMI Director Benjamin Powell hosts the TV program Free To Exchange which focusses on economic and political issues. The FMI should be thanked for their educational efforts and for presenting Dr. Paul’s speech on the topic of “Markets versus Government: The Importance of Freedom.” To help support the institute, please visit here.
When I mentioned to Dr. Paul that I’d written articles for LewRockwell.com, the No. 1 libertarian website, his reaction was enthusiastic. “Oh, very good,” he said.
My first question dealt with the fate of America suffering the consequences of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking. “Do you think hyperinflation and the collapse of the dollar is inevitable at this point?” I asked.
“Well, theoretically it doesn’t have to be inevitable,” Paul said. “I mean, we could wise up, cut spending, start paying down the debt. The odds of that happening from my experience in Washington are probably less than one in a million.” (laughs) “So I would say, no, it’s going to end with a crack-up boom. There’ll be runaway inflation. The debt and the malinvestment, in order to get the economy going again, has to be liquidated. Which the politicians don’t want to do because they can’t stand the effort to do it, because somebody has to get cut off. If they did it systemically they’d have to cut down on food stamps.”
Dr. Paul’s tone became incredulous: “Can you believe they’d cut down on the military-industrial complex?”
I laughed.
“That’s the big food stamp,” Paul continued. “It’s not gonna happen. They’re going to keep doing this. You’d have to revamp the Federal Reserve—they’re not willing to do that. So that’s not gonna happen. It’ll end and I think it’s starting right now because this last recession from ’08—’09, we really haven’t recovered from that. The other times over the years, we’ve been off the gold standard totally since ’71, we’d have ups and downs, but now it’s just down steady and the unemployment is much worse than they tell us. So I think that eventually what’ll happen is it’ll be forced into such a condition where there’s inflation, nothing’s working, that they will have to do something. And they’ll have to do a couple things… Hopefully I can energize young people, a new generation, to say that the role of government has to be different than this. You can’t run a welfare state and you shouldn’t be in all these wars. Andthey have to decide what the role should be. And whether or not the government should just be there to protect liberty or is it supposed to regulate your life and regulate the economy and police the world? If they want that they’ll just change dictators and it’ll be miserable. But I’m hopeful that—I see signs, you know, because of what’s happening on the internet and different places, I see positive signs, but it’s not gonna be easy.”
“So with all the things happening now,” I said, “the Russians taking out CIA-armed terrorists in Syria, the US bombing a hospital in Afghanistan, it’s looking more and more like Russia is no longer the Evil Empire. Would you agree with that?”
“Well, I think when you look at whether it’s Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Ukraine, we have instigated. Yes, there’s a war going on and a lot of people would like to say, well, it’s all Russia’s fault, because they’re in there now defending an ally. But you know, four years ago we declared war on them. We declared war on people when we put sanctions on Russia and Ukraine. But we declared war when we said ‘Assad has to go.’ If you look at it from the Russian viewpoint, they’re acting in their own self-interest. But to say that it’s all Russia’s fault is a bunch of baloney. They are reacting and they have a self-interest. To me, defending a base in Syria, a naval base, is sort of like what America might do if somebody messed around with Guantanamo.”
My next question concerned something John Lennon also wondered about: I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. If anybody can put on paper what… the American government and the Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing.
“I look at what we’re doing with Russia,” I said, “and I have to ask, do you think our leaders are just insane? Do they want World War III, or do they have some agenda I don’t understand?”
“I wish I could fully understand it,” Paul said. “Because it seems so idiotic. You wonder why do they do it. I struggled a long time with this idea that Roosevelt knew and maneuvered us into World War II. I said, it’s not possible. Nobody could be that evil, look at the results. Then over the years, there was so much evidence that he knew what was coming on. He probably got to the point where he thought he was doing the right thing because he had to get—the people never want the war, you know. Never do. He had to maneuver and manipulate, so therefore he needed a Pearl Harbor event because it was so important that we go and get Hitler. Of course, prompting the bombing of Pearl Harbor was not exactly the fastest way to go after Hitler. No, I think they see there’s some danger, but they do it because they claim… In their minds they probably deceive themselves to the point where they believe it. Others, though, they’re just a bunch of ruthless thugs who want to run the world.”
When Paul spoke the words ruthless thugs, you could feel the force of his righteous anger emanating from deep inside.
“There’s, I’m sure, a few of those,” he continued. “But I think the people who go along, they do it out of ignorance. You know, the people have to go along. If the people and the members of Congress didn’t go along, these presidents couldn’t do this. But they listen to the propaganda and unfortunately they have so much power and control.”
* * *
Later, during his stirring keynote speech, Dr. Paul spoke about the anger and resentment in the country for the Wall Street bailouts. He also noted the importance of making a distinction between true capitalist ventures and the crony capitalism dragging the nation down.
“It’s frequently said, well, the rich have too much. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Which is sort of true—but sometimes there’s a collusion and a cooperation between the very poor getting a lot of welfare and the very wealthy who are able to use the system. And it’s the middle class who gets squeezed. It’s the middle class who gets punished. So if we care about the middle class… the only way we can solve the problem… is to make sure the majority of the people of society understand what freedom is all about and why the free market should be relied upon.”
(applause from the audience)
“There’s another thing going on which we should sort out—because I frequently say the rich get richer and they have all the benefits and they have the benefit of the inflation and the government and the military-industrial complex gets to make a lot of money building weapons we don’t use. And yet, there’s a lot of people in the very wealthy class that earned their money. They gave us a good product and we made them rich because we bought theproduct. They deserve credit for this, they shouldn’t be punished for it. So there’s a difference between earning money by satisfying consumers and the consumers vote them this money by spending it on their items, versus those who get wealthy who know how to manipulate the system, can get the loans, easy loans and all the investments they need, and use eminent domain and whatever. That is not what free markets are all about. Free markets aren’t very complicated. I see a free market and what it does in society as a moral issue rather than an economic issue… And that is based on the principle that you have a right to your life, you have a right to your liberty, and you should have a right to do what you want with the fruits of your labor.”
“A lot of time when I talk about free markets people say, Oh, you’re an anarchist—there’d be no regulations and everybody would run roughshod.”
At this remark, a pair of happy anarchists somewhere in the audience cheered.
“Well, who’s running roughshod over us right now?” Paul asked. “It’s those rich people, the bankers and big government. They’re the ones running roughshod over the middle class. But no, it’s not true that there’s no regulation in a free market… there are some rules. And the basic rules are how we apply ourselves in our neighborhood. In our neighborhoods, as bad as things are, in almost every American city, maybe not the inner city, but in most American cities, we still recognize that we can’t go into our neighbor’s house… If we need a car, we can’t take our neighbor’s car. So we know what the rules are. You can’t steal. And if you make promises in contract, you have to fulfill them. But in the system that we have, when the crisis came, the people who were benefitting didn’t get punished. So in the free market you have bankruptcy laws and they’re legitimate because they’re necessary… But this whole argument, Oh, too big to fail, so we have to take care of them—all they’re doing is taking care of Wall Street. This is the reason conservatives and libertarians get into trouble. Because they might make a blanket defense of everything that seems to be in the market. But there’s a lot of things in the market that aren’t the market. It’s a rigged market and that makes a big difference.”
Monday
POLITICIANS EXPLOIT SCHOOL SHOOOTING WHILE IGNORING BOMBING VICTIMS by RON PAUL
Following the recent Oregon school shooting, many politicians rushed to the microphones to call for new gun control laws. President Obama even called on gun control supporters to “politicize” the shooting, while some members of Congress worked to establish a special commission on gun violence.
The reaction to the shooting stands in stark contrast to the reaction to the US military’s bombing of an Afghanistan hospital run by the international humanitarian (and Nobel Peace Prize winning) group Doctors Without Borders.
Our Nobel Peace Prize winning president did apologize to his fellow Nobel laureate for the bombing. However, President Obama has not “politicized” this tragedy by using it to justify ending military involvement in Afghanistan. No one in Congress is pushing for a special commission to examine the human costs of US militarism, and the mainstream media has largely ignored Doctors Without Borders’ accusation that the bombing constitutes a war crime.
The reason for the different reactions to these two events is that politicians prefer to focus on events they can “politicize” to increase government power. In contrast, politicians ignore incidents that raise uncomfortable questions about US foreign policy.
If the political and media elites were really interested in preventing future mass shootings, they would repeal the federal “gun-free” schools law, for example. By letting shooters know that their intended victims are defenseless, the gun-free schools law turns schoolchildren into easy targets.
Even some who oppose gun control are using the shooting to justify expanding federal power instead of trying to repeal unconstitutional laws. Some opponents of new gun control laws say Congress should expand the federal role in identifying, tracking, and treating those with “mental health problems.” This ignores the fact that many shooters were using psychotropic drugs prescribed by a mental health professional when they committed the horrible acts. Furthermore, creating a system to identify and track anyone with a “mental health problem” could deny respect for individuals’ Second Amendment and other rights because they perhaps once sought counseling for depression while going through a divorce or coping with a loved one’s passing.
While our political and media elites are eager to debate how much liberty people must sacrifice for safety, they are desperate to avoid debating the morality of our foreign policy. To admit that the US military sometimes commits immoral acts is to admit that the US government is not an unalloyed force for good. Even many proponents of our recent wars support using the US military for “humanitarian” purposes. Thus they are as reluctant as the neoconservatives to question the fundamental goodness of US foreign policy.
Anyone who raises constitutional or moral objections to the US use of drones, bombs, indefinite detention, and torture risks being attacked as anti-American and soft on terrorism. The smear of “terrorist apologist” is also hurled at those who dare suggest that it is our interventionist foreign policy, not a hatred of freedom, that causes people in other countries to dislike the United States. Which is a more logical explanation for why someone would resent America — a family member killed in a drone attack launched by the US military or rage over our abundance of liberty?
The disparate reactions to the Oregon school shooting and the Afghanistan hospital bombing shows the political class is unwilling and unable to acknowledge that the US government cannot run the world, run our lives, or run the economy. Clearly, politicians will never stop expanding government and give us back our lost liberties unless and until the people demand it.
The reaction to the shooting stands in stark contrast to the reaction to the US military’s bombing of an Afghanistan hospital run by the international humanitarian (and Nobel Peace Prize winning) group Doctors Without Borders.
Our Nobel Peace Prize winning president did apologize to his fellow Nobel laureate for the bombing. However, President Obama has not “politicized” this tragedy by using it to justify ending military involvement in Afghanistan. No one in Congress is pushing for a special commission to examine the human costs of US militarism, and the mainstream media has largely ignored Doctors Without Borders’ accusation that the bombing constitutes a war crime.
The reason for the different reactions to these two events is that politicians prefer to focus on events they can “politicize” to increase government power. In contrast, politicians ignore incidents that raise uncomfortable questions about US foreign policy.
If the political and media elites were really interested in preventing future mass shootings, they would repeal the federal “gun-free” schools law, for example. By letting shooters know that their intended victims are defenseless, the gun-free schools law turns schoolchildren into easy targets.
Even some who oppose gun control are using the shooting to justify expanding federal power instead of trying to repeal unconstitutional laws. Some opponents of new gun control laws say Congress should expand the federal role in identifying, tracking, and treating those with “mental health problems.” This ignores the fact that many shooters were using psychotropic drugs prescribed by a mental health professional when they committed the horrible acts. Furthermore, creating a system to identify and track anyone with a “mental health problem” could deny respect for individuals’ Second Amendment and other rights because they perhaps once sought counseling for depression while going through a divorce or coping with a loved one’s passing.
While our political and media elites are eager to debate how much liberty people must sacrifice for safety, they are desperate to avoid debating the morality of our foreign policy. To admit that the US military sometimes commits immoral acts is to admit that the US government is not an unalloyed force for good. Even many proponents of our recent wars support using the US military for “humanitarian” purposes. Thus they are as reluctant as the neoconservatives to question the fundamental goodness of US foreign policy.
Anyone who raises constitutional or moral objections to the US use of drones, bombs, indefinite detention, and torture risks being attacked as anti-American and soft on terrorism. The smear of “terrorist apologist” is also hurled at those who dare suggest that it is our interventionist foreign policy, not a hatred of freedom, that causes people in other countries to dislike the United States. Which is a more logical explanation for why someone would resent America — a family member killed in a drone attack launched by the US military or rage over our abundance of liberty?
The disparate reactions to the Oregon school shooting and the Afghanistan hospital bombing shows the political class is unwilling and unable to acknowledge that the US government cannot run the world, run our lives, or run the economy. Clearly, politicians will never stop expanding government and give us back our lost liberties unless and until the people demand it.
Sunday
Monday
I WISH NOBODY WAS BOMBING SYRIA by RON PAUL
The US regime change policy for Syria has been a catastrophe. More than 200,000 killed and an entire country reduced to rubble at least partly because President Obama decided that “Assad has lost his legitimacy.” How is it that the president of a country 6,000 miles away has the authority to decide whether another leader belongs in office or not? What if Rouhani in Iran decided that Obama had lost his legitimacy for killing a number of American citizens by drone without charge or trial? Would we accept that?
At least three years of US efforts to train rebels to overthrow the Syrian government has produced, as General Lloyd Austin, Commander of US Central Command, testified last month, “four or five” trained and vetted “moderates” in Syria. The $500 million appropriated for this purpose has disappeared.
The neocon solution to this failure to overthrow Assad and “degrade and destroy” ISIS is to increase the bombing and lead a ground invasion of Syria. The confusing policy of fighting Assad and also fighting his enemies does not seem to bother the neocons. They want us to forget all about their recent failures in Libya and Iraq and to try the same failed strategy one more time.
But something dramatic happened last week. Russian president Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the United Nations criticizing the US policy of partnering with one set of extremists – al-Qaeda and its allies – to attack both ISIS and Assad. “Do you realize now what you have done?” asked Putin.
Shortly after Putin’s UN speech, he requested and was granted authority from the Russian parliament to use force in Syria in response to the Syrian government’s request for assistance against the rebels. Russian fighters and bombers began flying sorties over Syria almost immediately. In less than a week of Russian bombing, considerable damage appears to have been done to both ISIS and to al-Qaeda affiliates – some of which are considered allies by the US and were actually trained by the CIA.
It may be tempting to cheer Russian military action in Syria, as it seems ISIS is finally suffering some considerable losses. Press reports suggest large numbers of desertions in their ranks after the Russian attacks. All of a sudden what looked to be an inevitable ISIS takeover of Syria once Assad was overthrown, seems far less likely with the Russians on the scene.
But I cannot cheer the bombs, whether they are Russian bombs or US bombs or French or British bombs. I do not believe a terrorist group created by foreign intervention in the region will be solved by more foreign intervention in the region. Bombs represent a total failure of policy. They destroy a country’s economy and infrastructure.
I wish the American people would finally demand that their government end its destructive policy of trying to change any regime that does not bow to Washington’s demands. I wish Congress respected our Constitution enough to demand that the president seek a declaration of war before attacking a foreign country. I wish President Bush and his neocon advisors had never decided to overthrow the Syrian government. I wish President Obama had fired the neocons who led him from one foolish intervention to another. I wish the CIA had not trained rebels to fight alongside al-Qaeda in Syria. I wish we would reject the shrill cries of the warmongers. I wish the US media was more than just a propaganda arm of the US government.
I am not thrilled that Russia is bombing Syria. I wish nobody was bombing Syria.
At least three years of US efforts to train rebels to overthrow the Syrian government has produced, as General Lloyd Austin, Commander of US Central Command, testified last month, “four or five” trained and vetted “moderates” in Syria. The $500 million appropriated for this purpose has disappeared.
The neocon solution to this failure to overthrow Assad and “degrade and destroy” ISIS is to increase the bombing and lead a ground invasion of Syria. The confusing policy of fighting Assad and also fighting his enemies does not seem to bother the neocons. They want us to forget all about their recent failures in Libya and Iraq and to try the same failed strategy one more time.
But something dramatic happened last week. Russian president Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the United Nations criticizing the US policy of partnering with one set of extremists – al-Qaeda and its allies – to attack both ISIS and Assad. “Do you realize now what you have done?” asked Putin.
Shortly after Putin’s UN speech, he requested and was granted authority from the Russian parliament to use force in Syria in response to the Syrian government’s request for assistance against the rebels. Russian fighters and bombers began flying sorties over Syria almost immediately. In less than a week of Russian bombing, considerable damage appears to have been done to both ISIS and to al-Qaeda affiliates – some of which are considered allies by the US and were actually trained by the CIA.
It may be tempting to cheer Russian military action in Syria, as it seems ISIS is finally suffering some considerable losses. Press reports suggest large numbers of desertions in their ranks after the Russian attacks. All of a sudden what looked to be an inevitable ISIS takeover of Syria once Assad was overthrown, seems far less likely with the Russians on the scene.
But I cannot cheer the bombs, whether they are Russian bombs or US bombs or French or British bombs. I do not believe a terrorist group created by foreign intervention in the region will be solved by more foreign intervention in the region. Bombs represent a total failure of policy. They destroy a country’s economy and infrastructure.
I wish the American people would finally demand that their government end its destructive policy of trying to change any regime that does not bow to Washington’s demands. I wish Congress respected our Constitution enough to demand that the president seek a declaration of war before attacking a foreign country. I wish President Bush and his neocon advisors had never decided to overthrow the Syrian government. I wish President Obama had fired the neocons who led him from one foolish intervention to another. I wish the CIA had not trained rebels to fight alongside al-Qaeda in Syria. I wish we would reject the shrill cries of the warmongers. I wish the US media was more than just a propaganda arm of the US government.
I am not thrilled that Russia is bombing Syria. I wish nobody was bombing Syria.
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