The Iraq Withdrawal: The Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

Just short of nine years, our involvement in Iraq this time, lasted longer than WWII, The Civil War and our American Revolution. Billions of dollars were spent, thousands of US lives were lost and the goals of the conflict and it’s eventual outcome remain unclear. So it has been announced that the US is leaving Iraq.

And the American War Machine is Pissed!

With the loss of Iraq, there is less justification for new armaments and facilities, less catered War Rooms, less opportunity for advancement and less travel. No more junkets paid for by Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed. The budget is sure to get cut. We'll lose all the chics who dig a man in uniform! What’s a war monger to do?

War has always been a growth industry in America. Since before I was born, we went from Korea to the Vietnam “Conflict” (to 1975), supporting the Contras in Nicaragua from 1977 to 1984, Invasions of Grenada (1983) Panama (1989) the first Persian Gulf War (1990-91), Haiti (1994-95) Kosovo (1999), etc. And through most of this the Cold War was running until 1991 and now with the War on Terror (2001-?) which involves our even longer stay in Afghanistan. Then there is our incredibly wasteful War on Drugs (1984 to Infinity). I know I'm leaving things out but I've only allowed myself one paragraph for war chronicles so to just paraphrase:

Guns, guns, guns!

But now, for the first time in a long time, one of our true growth industries has to cut back. Oh, the Sean Hannity of it!

And it wasn’t even because we really wanted to. No, no, this was not our government's first choice.

President Obama, for all his initial inexperience in “foreign relations” has really embraced his roll as Commander in Chief. So much so he has totally set aside his avowed campaign pledge of bringing our men and women home after he was elected and in fact started a few more fights for good measure. But the president was unable to secure a guarantee from the Iraqi Parliament that our troops would continue to be protected from prosecution for war crimes in the international courts. This and only this has served as the impetus for the United States to finally withdraw our troops from the country. Can you believe it? 

As a Libertarian, I have always been disappointed that so called Conservatives have a propensity to back military initiatives and odd constitutional amendments like the silly “Anti-flag Burning Amendment” but it’s the Progressives in government that really tend to expand on that mentality with a sort of “ I didn’t start it but I’ll finish it” military fervor. For me, it just reinforces my belief that Republicans and Democrats are just part of the same government syndicate. I haven’t seen much difference between that war monger, free spender GW Bush and that war monger, free spender Barack Obama other than one ran a baseball team for awhile and the other has never held a real job.

The remarkable thing is that none of this almost constant warfare has served to make this nation a safer place to live. Our “foreign entanglements” have put us more and more in harm’s way and have not only drained our resources but has fostered animosity to the point that our malls, city centers and schools have become the soft targets of a growing discontent with our ever expanding interventions. One can blame Hollywood for it’s exportation of cinematic depravity but having Syrian troops shoot cans of CS gas with the “Made in Jamestown, PA USA” label on them into houses with women and children living there sends a different message. It says “We sold the people who want to kill you this poison.” Enough said.

So at any rate, we can cheer that our troops are coming home or rather we can rejoice because we get to see them again before they are reassigned to some other altercation we’re cooking up.

I here Uganda is the next “Boom Town”.

Obama Completes Overthrow of North African Fiefdom

For whatever the motivation for ignoring the war powers act and by bypassing the US Congress, the United States autocracy has overthrown a smaller autocrat in Muammar Ghadafi, a man who died as cruelly as people who live like him are meant to.

But this conflict was not about him or his demise. It was about the erosion of the US Constitutional government and the rise of a US imperial dictatorship.

During the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, the American people grew weary of years of intense warfare without the declaration of war. The US Congress, fearing an erosion of power, passed the War Powers Act in 1973 that compelled the Presidency to notify Congress within 24 hours of ordering troops to repel attacks against the United States and limiting their activation to 60 days with an additional 30 days for withdrawal. The War Powers Act went into law over President Richard Nixon’s veto.

And nowhere in this law can I see the term “boots on the ground” that President Obama has invoked when choosing to ignore Congress when it called on the Obama regime to comply with the law. Never mind that the United States was in no imminent danger which is outlined in the law but that’s what the cover of NATO is for. NATO is the mask the United States wears when it goes out into the world to strike a foreign foe or for a foreign friend.

But such flouting of the War Powers Act is not without precedent. President Clinton also ignored the deadline when he chose to distract from his troubles here at home by intervention in the Kosovo conflict, bringing victory to the Muslim insurgency there. Kosovo is still destabilized decades later.

And here we have Libya. With their revolt complete, they can now ease into a life of peace and tranquility. Nobody believes this will happen. The Libyan people will now usher in a new Cuban Heal to be ground under. Yes, another moderate Muslim country dethroned to welcome in a new hard line caliphate. Way to go!

But the world is put on notice. The United States will pick and choose who shall stay and who shall go. Our Presidents can now assassinate a head of state of a sovereign nation at their choosing. President Bush did it, Obama has followed suite and who will stop us? Not the US Congress and certainly not the European Union because they’re in on it too. Germany, France and England are best positioned to take advantage of restoring the Libyan oil industry, bless their charitable hearts.

The irony of the Nobel Peace prize winning president ordering and then openly celebrating the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Ghadafi while overseeing two sustained wars while starting two more should be enough to make those thousands of Bush era anti-war Demonstrators march on Washington, right?

The silence is deafening. Where is Cindy Sheehan now? How about Jesse Jackson? Sean Penn? Maxine Waters? Jane Fonda? Tim Robbins? Susan Sarandon? How about blue-collar millionaire Bruce Springsteen? They were all prominent anti-war protesters marching on Washington just 4 short years ago. “Bring them home!” they chanted and held Cindy Sheehan, a woman who’s son was killed in Iraq, up as an example of a mother’s sorrow. But GW was a Republican war monger. Now we have a Democrat war monger, big difference. A bigger bunch of hypocrites has never existed. How can these people of “principle” even look themselves in the mirror.

Three years after the election, the wars rage on and have even expanded. And all we can do as US citizens is PAY for it. We pay with our labor and we pay with our children. We have no voice in our government and the rule of law in this country has broken down to invite certain chaos. Or a takeover. 

Dictatorship: A ruler who is unconstrained by law. A ruler with Imperious or overbearing power.  

So for all those people who are celebrating the death of another dictator, for the United States, the shoe now fits and if you think those guys were bad…

A Nuclear Iran and Libertarian Thought...

The media thinks they run the country.

But I'm here to tell you that they don’t. How do I know? Because Ron Paul came very close to winning the Iowa Straw Poll despite the constant onslaught by media wags on the Left and the Right that he is “too radical” in his beliefs. That he is too “out there” what ever that means.

Yet Ron Paul came within 152 votes of winning the poll and turning the political establishment on its ear. Too bad for that but his views are worth noting.

A nuclear Iran: Yes, Iran with the bomb is an unpleasant thought. But what are we willing to do to prevent such a thing? Invade Iran? Bomb them into the “stone age?” It’s a nation of 73 Million people, something that seems to have been lost in the debate. It’s been talked about but it’s merely just saber rattling.  We aren’t going to do anything of the kind.

Sooner or later Iran will get the bomb. Every other nation in the region already has it. And only Iran is going to be responsible for the consequences if they ever attempt to use it. The bomb has a very sobering effect on a country. They have protection but they also raise their profile as a target. Witness Pakistan and India. Both have had the bomb for ages and have been in conflicts but neither has the stomach for what may happen if one side should use it.

It can not be disputed that it was the United States who shielded, armed and supported the brutal Shah of Iran in the oppression of his people. It therefore could not be called surprise when the Shah was overthrown and the radical Islamic movement that had fomented under his regime came to power and immediately denounced the U.S. This was the fruit of the seeds sewn by the foreign entanglements that has passed for foreign policy of the United States over the last 50 years. Libertarians see this. This isn’t a radical idea that this practice should end. This will save not only the United States but the world a lot of misery in the long run. 

So what is the answer to a nuclear Iran? Are we to engineer another change in the country and put in place another benevolent dictator? Hardly likely given that we've already have been fighting wars on three fronts, one for almost ten years now. In fact we've been involved in armed conflicts in that region of the world since 1979 and given our complicity with the Shah, much longer. And we wonder why would Iran want the bomb?

When Ron Paul says to the nation that he wants to close the more than 700 military bases around the world and bring our men and women home, he speaks to a nation weary of constant warfare.

Yes, this is why Ron Paul is considered a radical. The amount of money invested in such a world wide military structure is staggering yet would be viewed as obsolete in a Ron Paul Whitehouse. Make no mistake, we will still need a well armed and well trained cutting edge military but to protect us here at home and not to act like mercenaries for commercial interests abroad. To the military establishment and their Republican enablers, this is radical thinking. But my question to them would be this: " Has the last 50 years of warfare brought us any closer to peace and are we as a nation any safer?" I think you know the answer to that.

Libertarians know what Ron Paul is talking about because to them it’s clear. It’s only radical to the ones who want to stick with and double down on policies that have only proven to be failures and the longer this goes on, the worse it’s going to get. Our country is on shaky pins.

If the United States as a Republic is to endure, the change will need to come from how we think and how we look at the world as a whole, not what a panel or political party or focus group says is so. There is another way.

London Riots Coming to Your Town...

Ok perhaps the killing of local London neighborhood gangster in a shoot-out with police sparked the London riots but it can't be pointed to as the real reason for what has come to pass since. This is nothing less than class warfare. But who are these people and who are they after?

These are the generations of welfare classes striking out at the "rich". And who are the rich? To them the rich are shop owners, small business owners and essentially anybody who goes to work at a job. You may be saying that this doesn't sound like rich people to you and you would be right. But to the people who for 40 years have been given a "stipend" to live on and who took the short money to not make anything of themselves, they are rich people. People who are living fulfilling lives, albeit days filled with responsibilities. Like work for instance. They could have taken the short money, this is England after all and the Dole is a revered institution there, but they didn't. Instead they opened shops, sold goods, opened a cleaners, a shoe repair or a consignment shop. They are now the targets. Why? Because they obviously believe they are better than the ones who don't work. The ones who for generations have had their ambitions breed out of them. 

Does any of this sound familiar? Is there a parallel to be drawn here between what's happening in London and what will happen here? The welfare class in the U.S. is larger and perhaps even more ingrained on society that it is in England. These people now believe it is their right to have this money, money earned by someone else and what we are seeing in London is what happens when that money runs out. No longer can the country afford to keep these people quiet. So they"re coming for it.

Don't know about you but I can't afford to go rioting. They won't give me a day off at the place I work so I'm not available. This is why none of the middle class "rich" people I know are on the streets right now and it isn't likely in the future either unless of course some mob burns down their place of work but even then they will just go look for another job and that's a full time job these days too so still, no time to go riot.

But this idle class we as a society have created has plenty of time to riot. They're not going anywhere so why not? Oh, we have been so compassionate that we've created a "safety net" for people who are "underprivileged", victims of society at large and their prejudices and greed. But we have done them no favors have we? They take the short money, become nothing and hate us for it. This is the nature of humans in this situation. And not there are more and more of them. Too many mouths to feed by the people upon whose backs the burden has been placed. And now they're reached the inevitable breaking point. There is no more to give.

And all over the United States there lurks the same spectre. With a President and a regime that has no qualms whatsoever about using class warfare as a weapon and playing on racial imbalances to further their grab for power, we can look forward to our own cities, some already dead zones, become the fire pits of the bought-off children of the entitlement age. No matter what you give them, they will want more.

So to summarize who these people are, they are the Visigoths. Home grown, fast food fed and government nurtured Visigoths and the people they are after are us, our families and all that we have built with our efforts.