Foreign Policy

[TrueLight]

Ron Paul with others on Larry King Live   4/1/09
Ron Paul "This Is Not What America Is All About!" pt.1   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QOrswe9Y44
Ron Paul "This Is Not What America Is All About!" pt.2   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcrm_awaO0E

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Ron Paul on the Ed Show  5/1/09

"...we spend 75 billion dollars trying to get intelligence and then when somebody comes with a hot lead, we can't even handle it. Even with all this effort we're missing the whole point, is we don't ask the question, why are they so angry and if it is what i say, because we're there, all this effort will be for nought. We have to think about: is our presence in the Middle East worth anything to us?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnJt_h44-00

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interesting...
Is Ron Paul Really An Anti-Semite or the only one with the balls to tell us the truth!?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0yOa7FrgUg

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Ron Paul on Haiti, Yemen, body scanners, fed

Ron Paul : "US wants obedient servants of the state." 14th 1st 2010

"The greatest threat to a government is people who think for themselves, believes US Congressman Ron Paul.

If you condition people to everyday, all day, depend on the government to do their thinking for them they will become more obedient.

Paul said the billions of dollars spent by the American government on intelligence could not prevent the recent terror attempt in US skies.

I think the responsibility has fallen on the $75 billion bureaucracy that has 16 agencies that cannot co-ordinate their work, he said. Airlines should be responsible for who gets on their planes, he added.

According to the congressman, all the efforts of the US government to introduce new technical systems for airport passenger control, such as body scanners, are just to make us obedient servants of the state, to teach us that they are in charge of us and to tell us what to do, that we are robots and are supposed to obey them.

Its not that individuals are perfect, its just that governments are always imperfect, they always make mistakes and when they do they are very painful and they hurt each and every one of us.

Paul said that America has made an amazing shift away from traditional values while even former communist regimes are moving in the direction of a free market.

[The economy] should be micromanaged by the people, by the consumer. In the free market the consumer is king, Paul said. But in the US, as in most countries in the world today, it is being micromanaged by the central government and central banks.

Speaking about the earthquake in Haiti, Paul said, just handing out money to Haiti is not going to solve their problems.

According to the outspoken politician, the best thing the US could do for Haiti in the long term would be to introduce the country to sound economic policies so that they would not suffer from poverty.

Commenting on the situation in Yemen, Paul said that the US is looking for another war and that it is a disastrous continuation of the foreign policy of George Bush."

dumbbel33


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRLwCfDLnu4

[TrueLight]

Wayne Madesen talks about Obama seeking power to assassinate "US Citizens" they label as a terrorist and Yemen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbAKrITJFY

Ron Paul also talks about this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC33zNMARgg

5/2/10 Ron Paul on Fox Business' America's Nightly Scoreboard w/ David Asmantalks about the necessity of the department of Homeland Security
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiF_35rFQj8

[TrueLight]

Bombs Away: Conservatives Embrace War
By Doug Bandow
Published 02/10/10

"Leading Democrats and Republicans alike agree on the need for action against Iran. At least some liberal Democrats seem reluctant to use military force; in contrast, many conservative Republicans are eager to start bombing. While the latter say they oppose Big Government, these days they spend much of their time proposing new wars.

Conservatives once resisted the imperial tendencies of government. The Founders opposed creating a standing army. Even when the nation went to war -- against Great Britain, Mexico, and Spain in the 19th century, for instance -- Washington quickly demobilized afterward. Conservatives recognized the threat to individual liberty and budget economy posed by an imperial foreign policy.

The Right opposed Woodrow Wilson, who pushed the U.S. into the murderous slugfest of World War I to satisfy his own messianic pretensions. Conservatives led the fight against Franklin Delano Roosevelt's surreptitious campaign to take the U.S. into war against Germany while promising the American people that their husbands and sons would not be sent to die on foreign battlefields. Conservatives then were reluctant warriors who insisted on following the Constitution.

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower refused to expand the Korean War to the Chinese mainland: he settled for compromise rather than risk triggering World War III. And it was Eisenhower who both warned of the malign influence of the military-industrial complex and insisted that congressional approval was necessary to go to war. He may have been the last president to take the latter provision of the Constitution seriously.

Ronald Reagan belied his cowboy reputation, using the military only sparingly and modestly, intervening in Lebanon -- which even he later implicitly acknowledged to be a mistake -- invading Grenada, and bombing Libya. George H.W. Bush invaded Panama and attacked Iraq, but sharply limited U.S. objectives in the latter. Many Republicans were generally unenthused when President Bill Clinton turned American foreign policy into social work. Yet most GOP leaders, like 1996 presidential nominee Sen. Robert Dole, supported the Clinton administration's bombing of Serbia, a campaign based on hypocritical humanitarian claims and no recognizable security objectives.

Then President George W. Bush launched grand nation-building crusades in both Afghanistan and Iraq; in justifying the latter he sounded like he was channeling liberal Woodrow Wilson. The administration also intervened to stage regime change in Haiti. The president, along with his officials and conservative allies, threatened military action against Iran, North Korea, and Syria. The administration apparently even considered intervening militarily against nuclear-armed Russia in Georgia -- another conflict with no relevance to American security.

After sanctimoniously triggering a disastrous conflict which has killed at least 100,000, and perhaps many more, in Iraq, leading conservatives advocate doing the same to Iran. Republican Presidential nominee John McCain gaily sang what he termed the old Beach Boys' classic "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" when asked about the issue. Today the Right takes for granted America's unilateral right to unleash death and destruction upon whatever people in whatever nation for whatever reason. Like Iraq, Iran has neither attacked nor threatened America. "Bombs away!" appears to be the new conservative mantra. Lest some on the Right be uncomfortable with the results of the Iraqi war, the hawks say: Don't worry, be happy. This time everything will work out. This time America will be received with love.

Moreover, argues Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, Barack Obama would benefit politically as well. The president, writes Pipes, "needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations." So President Obama should send in the bombers over Tehran.

But President Obama should be skeptical of the argument that war with Iran would be win-win for America and his presidency.

First, war advocates say bombing would end Iran's threat to the U.S. What threat is that, however? Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons. It isn't even certain that Tehran is developing weapons. War enthusiasts who confidently claimed that Iraq possessed a fearsome nuclear capability now ridicule the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran had halted its program. However, the latter conclusion, though controversial, was supported by evidence -- far better evidence than that indicating Baghdad possessed nuclear weapons. There are good reasons to be suspicious of Iran's intentions, especially after the revelation of the uranium-enrichment plant near the holy city of Qum. But hard evidence of a weapons program remains elusive. Some analysts suspect that Iran desires to establish a "turn-key" capability, like that presently possessed by Japan, rather than an arsenal. Even assuming the worst intent, Tehran appears to remain far away from actually building nuclear weapons, let alone deploying deliverable nuclear weapons.

Even possessing the latter wouldn't be enough to endanger the U.S. Some analysts worry about the impact of an electromagnetic pulse attack more than a traditional nuclear strike. But in either case Washington could effectively wipe Iran off of the map as retaliation. The authoritarian regime in Tehran appears to be evil, not suicidal. It surely is undesirable that Iran develop a nuclear weapon, just as it was undesirable that Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China built nuclear weapons. That is, however, very different from saying that America would be at risk.

Second, Pipes worries that the Iranians "might deploy these weapons in the [Middle East], leading to massive death and destruction." Deploy them against whom? While many Arab states are understandably uneasy about the prospect of a more powerful regime in Tehran, Israel is the only nation which publicly worries about being attacked. And it is the only nation most U.S. policy-makers worry about being attacked. Yet Israel has upwards of 150 nuclear weapons. The reason Israel developed nuclear weapons was to deter aggression by countries such as Iran. The Tehran government would have to be suicidal to attack Israel. Again, the fact that current Iranian leaders are malevolent doesn't mean they are crazy.

Obviously, it would ease minds in Washington and throughout the Middle East if Iran was prevented from developing nuclear weapons. But then, minds also would have been eased if the Soviet Union, China, India, and Pakistan had never developed nukes. Some minds in the Middle East likely feel the same way about Israel. That doesn't mean preventive war would have been a better response than wary accommodation in these cases, however. Loosing the bombers would not be the slam-dunk that most conservative crusaders seem to assume. Not all Iranian nuclear facilities may be identified and known works are dispersed and underground. The result of a U.S. strike, then, might only be to delay rather than forestall an Iranian weapon -- at most a modest benefit not worth war.

An American bombing run also would reinforce the message sent by the attacks on Serbia and Iraq: only the speedy and secret acquisition of nuclear weapons can protect other states from unilateral U.S. military action. Tehran probably would redouble its effort; the already de minimis chance of North Korea abandoning its program would shrink still further.

Ironically, even a democratic Iran might choose to develop nuclear weapons. America's long-time ally, the Shah, began Iran's nuclear program before the Islamic Revolution. Any Iranian government might like the assurance of a weapons capability if not actual weapons.

Moreover, if the U.S. strikes Tehran, all bets would be off on a democratic revolution in Iran. The situation in Tehran appears to be explosive and the regime looks unstable. But how the Iranian public would respond to a U.S. attack, despite the growing popular estrangement from the government, is unclear. Certainly the regime would use any strike as an excuse to justify a further crackdown on the opposition. Despite dissatisfaction among the public and internal conflicts among the ruling elite, the regime might benefit from a "rally around the flag" effect. Nor would war be costless for the U.S. Retaliation would be certain. The degree of Tehran's reach and potential for harm are disputed, but Iran is larger and more populous than Iraq. Iran might launch terrorist attacks against the U.S. and encourage proxy forces in the occupied territories and Lebanon to strike at Israel.

U.S. troops in Iraq would be especially vulnerable to attack by Iranian agents as well as Iraqi citizens sympathetic to their co-religionists next door. Tehran might not be able to close the Persian Gulf, but it could disrupt oil shipments and push up insurance rates. Washington's gaggle of authoritarian Islamic allies -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States -- could find themselves under popular assault from populations angered by yet another U.S. government attack on a Muslim nation. Political tremors even could reach already unstable Pakistan. Overall, it would not be as easy to end as start war with Iran.

A bombing run by Washington also would reinforce the meme that animates many terrorists, that the U.S. is at war with Islam. While U.S. officials debate how to improve Washington's PR efforts abroad, the substance of American foreign policy continues to send a far more dramatic and powerful message. Although U.S. foreign policy does not justify attacks on civilians, U.S. policymakers must consider all of the consequences of their decisions.

The substantive arguments for striking Iran are dubious enough. Worse is Pipes' contention that war would be good presidential politics. He points out, correctly, that opinion polls show popular support for military action. Moreover, he figures "Americans will presumably rally around the flag, sending that number much higher." This is no argument for war, however. Presidents should not mete out death and destruction to boost their poll ratings.

Pipes also underestimates the political downsides of war. He writes: "Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush's meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama's feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline health care, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, and make the netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon."

In fact, the Bush experience demonstrates that popular support for war can be temporary at best. Conservatives swoon all too easily at the sight of blood, since so few of the hawkish elites advocating promiscuous war-making actually serve in the military and risk their own lives. They leave that to the brave men and women who actually join the armed services. Independents and liberals usually are less impressed with aggressive war-making. Anyway, George Bush quickly turned the public against a war incompetently waged based on false premises resulting in disastrous consequences. Perhaps Iran would be a quick victory, resulting in regime change and democratic triumph, with statues of Barack Obama sprouting across ancient Persia. But then, Iraq was supposed to be a cakewalk, yielding a pro-American government willing to host U.S. troops and join the Bush administration in enforcing U.S. dictates elsewhere in the region. Something went wrong along the way. Counting on votes from a successful war against Iran might result in a trip to the unemployment line for President Obama in 2012.

There are no good solutions in Iran. The world will be a better place if Iran becomes democratic and abandons any nuclear weapons program. But initiating war likely would inhibit reform in Iran while making the world a more dangerous place. The disastrous experience of Iraq should teach us many lessons, the most important of which is that war always should be a last resort. That standard is no where close to being met in Iran."
Doug Bandow
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=599

[TrueLight]

Friday, Feb 19, 2010 07:20 EST
Terrorism: the most meaningless and manipulated word
By Glenn Greenwald
(updated below)

"Yesterday, Joseph Stack deliberately flew an airplane into a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas, in order to advance the political grievances he outlined in a perfectly cogent suicide-manifesto.  Stack's worldview contained elements of the tea party's anti-government anger along with substantial populist complaints generally associated with "the Left" (rage over bailouts, the suffering of America's poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants).  All of that was accompanied by an argument as to why violence was justified (indeed necessary) to protest those injustices:


I remember reading about the stock market crash before the "great" depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn't it ironic how far we've come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn't have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it's "business-as-usual" . . . . Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.


Despite all that, The New York Times' Brian Stelter documents the deep reluctance of cable news chatterers and government officials to label the incident an act of "terrorism," even though -- as Dave Neiwert ably documents -- it perfectly fits, indeed is a classic illustration of, every official definition of that term.  The issue isn't whether Stack's grievances are real or his responses just; it is that the act unquestionably comports with the official definition.  But as NBC's Pete Williams said of the official insistence that this was not an act of Terrorism:  there are "a couple of reasons to say that . . . One is he’s an American citizen."  Fox News' Megan Kelley asked Catherine Herridge about these denials:  "I take it that they mean terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to?," to which Herridge replied: "they mean terrorism in that capital T way."

All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon.  The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity.  It has really come to mean:  "a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies."  That's why all of this confusion and doubt arose yesterday over whether a person who perpetrated a classic act of Terrorism should, in fact, be called a Terrorist:  he's not a Muslim and isn't acting on behalf of standard Muslim grievances against the U.S. or Israel, and thus does not fit the "definition."  One might concede that perhaps there's some technical sense in which term might apply to Stack, but as Fox News emphasized:  it's not "terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to . . . terrorism in that capital T way."  We all know who commits terrorism in "that capital T way," and it's not people named Joseph Stack.

Contrast the collective hesitance to call Stack a Terrorist with the extremely dubious circumstances under which that term is reflexively applied to Muslims.  If a Muslim attacks a military base preparing to deploy soldiers to a war zone, that person is a Terrorist.  If an American Muslim argues that violence against the U.S. (particularly when aimed at military targets) is justified due to American violence aimed at the Muslim world, that person is a Terrorist who deserves assassination.  And if the U.S. military invades a Muslim country, Muslims who live in the invaded and occupied country and who fight back against the invading American army -- by attacking nothing but military targets -- are also Terrorists.  Indeed, large numbers of detainees at Guantanamo were accused of being Terrorists for nothing more than attacking members of an invading foreign army in their country, including 14-year-old Mohamed Jawad, who spent many years in Guantanamo, accused (almost certainly falsely) of throwing a grenade at two American troops in Afghanistan who were part of an invading force in that country.  Obviously, plots targeting civilians for death -- the 9/11 attacks and attempts to blow up civilian aircraft -- are pure terrorism, but a huge portion of the acts committed by Muslims that receive that label are not.

In sum:  a Muslim who attacks military targets, including in war zones or even in their own countries that have been invaded by a foreign army, are Terrorists.  A non-Muslim who flies an airplane into a government building in pursuit of a political agenda is not, or at least is not a Real Terrorist with a capital T -- not the kind who should be tortured and thrown in a cage with no charges and assassinated with no due process.  Nor are Christians who stand outside abortion clinics and murder doctors and clinic workers.  Nor are acts undertaken by us or our favored allies designed to kill large numbers of civilians or which will recklessly cause such deaths as a means of terrorizing the population into desired behavioral change -- the Glorious Shock and Awe campaign and the pummeling of Gaza.  Except as a means for demonizing Muslims, the word is used so inconsistently and manipulatively that it is impoverished of any discernible meaning.

All of this would be an interesting though not terribly important semantic matter if not for the fact that the term Terrorist plays a central role in our political debates.  It is the all-justifying term for anything the U.S. Government does.  Invasions, torture, due-process-free detentions, military commissions, drone attacks, warrantless surveillance, obsessive secrecy, and even assassinations of American citizens are all justified by the claim that it's only being done to "Terrorists," who, by definition, have no rights.  Even worse, one becomes a "Terrorist" not through any judicial adjudication or other formal process, but solely by virtue of the untested, unchecked say-so of the Executive Branch.  The President decrees someone to be a Terrorist and that's the end of that:   uncritical followers of both political parties immediately justify anything done to the person on the ground that he's a Terrorist (by which they actually mean:  he's been accused of being one, though that distinction -- between presidential accusations and proof -- is not one they recognize).

If we're really going to vest virtually unlimited power in the Government to do anything it wants to people they call "Terrorists," we ought at least to have a common understanding of what the term means.  But there is none.  It's just become a malleable, all-justifying term to allow the U.S. Government carte blanche to do whatever it wants to Muslims it does not like or who do not like it (i.e., The Terrorists).  It's really more of a hypnotic mantra than an actual word:  its mere utterance causes the nation blindly to cheer on whatever is done against the Muslims who are so labeled.

 

UPDATE:  I want to add one point:  the immediate official and media reaction was to avoid, even deny, the term "terrorist" because the perpetrator of the violence wasn't Muslim.  But if Stack's manifesto begins to attract serious attention, I think it's likely the term Terrorist will be decisively applied to him in order to discredit what he wrote.  His message is a sharply anti-establishment and populist grievance of the type that transcends ideological and partisan divisions -- the complaints which Stack passionately voices are found as common threads in the tea party movement and among citizens on both the Left and on the Right -- and thus tend to be the type which the establishment (which benefits from high levels of partisan distractions and divisions) finds most threatening and in need of demonization. Nothing is more effective at demonizing something than slapping the Terrorist label onto it."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/19/terrorism/index.html
Glenn Greenwald








Wilson's War
By George C. Leef
Published 02/20/10

"Although most conventional liberal historians, blinded by their adulation for politicians who embrace "progressive" causes, continue to regard Woodrow Wilson highly, a few others have issued highly negative opinions about our 28th president.

For example, historian Walter Karp, in his 1979 book, The Politics of War, writes,

Wilson simply could not afford to think realistically about his "association of nations." For the burdens he was willing to inflict upon an unwilling America only a transcendent goal unsullied by the skeptical judgment of practical statecraft could possibly serve as adequate justification. In order to become a "great statesman," Wilson had, of necessity, to forfeit every quality that makes a statesman great. Self-deception, self-elation, and self-regard were the chief ingredients of Wilson's celebrated "idealism." In Wilson's War, the nonliberal and unconventional historian Jim Powell buttresses Karp's assessment, regarding Wilson as the worst of our presidents for having so blindly pursued a belligerent policy calculated to involve the United States in the European bloodbath of World War I. The book not only exposes the utter foolishness of Wilson's moves — in clear opposition to the desires of most of the American population — to bring the United States into the war against Germany, but also makes it clear that the horrors of World War II would probably have been averted had it not been for Wilson's intervention. Political meddlers have brought untold misery upon mankind, and after reading Wilson's War it is easy to make the case that Woodrow Wilson must be listed among the greatest malefactors in history.

Powell begins by setting the historical scene. (Given the lack of knowledge about the past among most people, that's a crucial task.) He surveys the century from the end of the Napoleonic wars to the outbreak of World War I, with the purpose of informing the reader about the enormous benefits people around the world derived from the conditions of free trade and free enterprise that largely prevailed during that period.

Living standards rose dramatically, with the strongest gains in the nations that most closely approached true laissez-faire conditions — the United States and Britain. Powell also wants to make sure that the reader understands what brought that era of relative peace and prosperity to an end, namely the rise of socialist and nationalist ideology in the latter part of the 19th century. Just reading the book's opening chapter would be a stupendous educational boon for most people. Even if readers learned nothing else, they would do well to remember these sentences:

Maintaining a separation of the economy and the state would have prevented politicians from turning business competition into political and military conflicts. There wouldn't have been nasty trade wars and empire building, contributing to paranoia and the arms race. If governments had let people live their lives as freely on one side of a border as the other, there wouldn't have been much political support for war. The "Great War" broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914. Wilson initially kept the United States neutral in the conflict, since few Americans thought there was any reason to spend their blood and money in the latest eruption of militarism across the Atlantic. He had, however, shown his interventionist predisposition by dispatching American forces to Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, and in the years 1914—1916, his insistence on meddling in Mexican affairs led to pointless, bloody conflict.

Feeling that it was his place to improve the government of Mexico, he ordered the U.S. Atlantic Fleet to the Mexican Gulf Coast in April 1914 following a minor incident. Marines were sent in to occupy Veracruz. Soldiers on both sides were killed and matters were becoming so tense that ambassadors from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile offered to mediate a settlement to the absurd dispute, a dispute that wouldn't have occurred except for Wilson's messianic view of himself. At the conference to resolve the dispute, he demanded "an orderly and righteous government in Mexico." It was a taste of things to come.


Bent on intervention

Once war broke out in Europe, Wilson paid lip service to American neutrality but took positions that were designed to assist the British and French. Most significantly, he supported Britain's naval blockade against neutral shipping of nonmilitary cargo to Germany. Britain intended to starve the Germans into surrender, but the blockade was a clear violation of international law. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan vigorously argued that the United States needed to stand up for the rights of neutrals and oppose the blockade. Wilson ignored him.

Wilson also refused to issue a warning to Americans traveling in the war zone, asserting a spurious right for citizens of neutrals to go wherever they pleased. During the conflict with Mexico, he had issued a warning to Americans in Mexico that they remained there at their own risk, but he wanted to provoke conflict with Germany and calculated that a few American casualties would give him a casus belli. Bryan again protested to Wilson, writing, "I cannot help feeling that it would be a sacrifice of the interests of all the people to allow one man acting purely for himself and his own interests to involve the entire nation in difficulty when he had ample warning of the risks which he has assumed." As usual, Wilson didn't bother to respond to an argument against a course he was determined to take.

In 1916, Wilson used the famous Zimmerman telegram for all it was worth in an effort to inflame public opinion against Germany. In a telegram from the German foreign minister to the Mexican government, which the British intercepted and decoded, the German government said that if the United States and Germany went to war, Germany would assist Mexico in regaining the territory it had lost to the United States in 1848.

Powell observes that the telegram was much ado about nothing, since, even if Germany and America declared war on each other, there was absolutely no way for the Germans either to attack the United States or to assist the Mexicans. Nevertheless, Wilson and his pro-war allies used the incident to whip up anti-German sentiment with ridiculous depictions of vicious "Huns" slaughtering American women and children.

By April 1917, Wilson thought he had sufficient support in the country for a declaration of war. He delivered a speech to Congress that was full of lofty rhetoric, such as the famous line about making the world "safe for democracy." Powell comments acidly,

He didn't explain how this was to be done by allying with the British Empire, which had colonies around the world; with France, which had colonies in Africa and Asia; and with Russia, which was ruled by a czar. Wilson had done everything he could to bring the United States into the war. Why? So he could crush Germany and then bring about a new world order. Just as he had demanded a "righteous" government in Mexico, he envisioned a "righteous" remaking of Europe once the war was over. He was eager to sacrifice American lives so that he could play what he called "the noblest part."


Consequences of World War I

American troops did prove to be decisive on the Western front, where Germany, France, and Britain were at the point of exhaustion after four years of incessant killing. More than 117,000 Americans were killed in the fighting, lives expended for no reason other than the grandiose dreams of their president.

While the military commanders proved to be competent, Wilson proved to be a bungler of the first magnitude in diplomacy during and after the war. One blunder was his insistence that Russia remain in the war after the overthrow of the tsarist government early in 1917. The democratic government that had replaced the monarchy probably would have survived if it had bowed out of the fighting immediately. Russia had suffered horrendous casualties and its creaking, pre-capitalist economy could not deliver either guns or butter.

Everyone was sick of the war, but Wilson wanted Russia to stay active in the battle against the undemocratic allies Germany and Austria-Hungary. He accomplished that through bribery. American officials informed the new Russian leadership that massive loans ($325 million) would be forthcoming from the United States, provided that Russia continued fighting. (Too bad that the Constitution gives the president power to lend money to foreign governments. Oh wait — it actually doesn't. Too bad that presidents so often ignore the document they're sworn to uphold!) So, to get the desperately needed money, the Russian government launched one last offensive. It was mauled with heavy casualties.

That military disaster sowed the seeds of the destruction of the democratic government. Powell argues convincingly that Lenin would have had virtually no chance of establishing his communist dictatorship if the democratic government hadn't thrown away much of its support by continuing in the war. Wilson had no idea about the conditions in Russia and his blind insistence that everything possible had to be done to crush Germany and Austria militarily set the stage for the later communist takeover in Russia in 1917. But for his meddling, the world would probably have been spared the 70-year horror of Soviet communism.

Powell also demonstrates that the shorter-lived but equally destructive phenomenon of Nazism (socialism with the added toxin of nationalism) would have been avoided if Wilson had kept the United States out of the war. The likely outcome of a negotiated peace between the combatants — and by 1917, both sides were quietly moving in that direction — would have been some minor and essentially meaningless territorial adjustments, just as in previous European wars.

The decisive military defeat of Germany, however, made possible the vindictive Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Wilson evidently thought that he would be able to achieve his vision of a democratic world free from warfare. Instead, the Treaty, with its harsh terms, led to seething discontent in Germany and virtually guaranteed the rise of a demagogic leader. Adolf Hitler filled that role perfectly. Even though Woodrow Wilson was long dead, we might well conclude that World War II was actually his war.

When governments interfere in the conflicts of other nations, we should expect undesirable and even perverse consequences. Thanks to Jim Powell for driving that point home so forcefully with his account of Wilson's intervention into World War I."
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=629
George C. Leef

[TrueLight]

Fixing What's Wrong in Washington... in Afghanistan
By Tom Engelhardt
Published 02/23/10


Explain Something to Me
Fixing What's Wrong in Washington... in Afghanistan

"Explain something to me.

In recent months, unless you were insensate, you couldn't help running across someone talking, writing, speaking, or pontificating about how busted government is in the United States.  State governments are increasingly broke and getting broker.  The federal government, while running up the red ink, is, as just about everyone declares, "paralyzed" and so incapable of acting intelligently on just about anything.

Only the other day, no less a personage than Vice President Biden assured the co-anchor of the CBS Early Show, "Washington, right now, is broken." Indiana Senator Evan Bayh used the very same word, broken, when he announced recently that he would not run for reelection and, in response to his decision, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz typically commented, "The system has been largely dysfunctional for nearly two decades, and everybody knows it." Voters seem to agree.  Two words, "polarization" and "gridlock" -- or hyperbolic cousins like "paralyzing hyperpartisanship" -- dominate the news when the media describes that dysfunctionalism.  Foreign observers have been similarly struck, hence a spate of pieces like the one in the British magazine the Economist headlined, "America's Democracy, A Study in Paralysis."

Washington's incapacity to govern now evidently seems to ever more Americans at the root of many looming problems.  As the New York Times summed up one of them in a recent headline: "Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds Fear of a Debt Crisis." When President Obama leaves the confines of Washington for the campaign trail, he promptly attacks congressional "gridlock" and the "slash and burn politics" that have left the nation's capital tied in knots.

And he has an obvious point since, when he had a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, congressional Democrats and the White House still couldn't get their act together and pass health-care reform, not even after a year of discussion, debate, and favors trading, not even as the train wreck of the Massachusetts election barreled toward them. These days the Democrats may not even be a party, which means their staggering Senate majority has really been a majority of next to nothing.

The Republicans, who ran us into this ditch in the Bush years, are now perfectly happy to be the party of "no" -- and the polls seem to show that it's a fruitful strategy for the 2010 election.  Meanwhile, special interests rule Washington and lobbying is king.  As if to catch the spirit of this new reality, the president recently offered his vote of support to the sort of Wall Street CEOs who took Americans to the cleaners in the great economic meltdown of 2008 and are once again raking in the millions, while few have faith that change or improvement of any kind is in our future.  Good governance, in other words, no longer seems part of the American tool kit and way of life.    

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars, the U.S. military is promoting "good governance" with all its might.  In a major campaign in the modest-sized city of Marja (a place next to no one had heard of two weeks ago) in Taliban-controlled Helmand Province, Afghanistan, it's placing a bet on its ability to "restore the credibility" of President Hamid Karzai's government.  In the process, it plans to unfurl a functioning city administration where none existed.  According to its commanding general, Stanley McChrystal, as soon as the U.S. Army and the Marines, along with British troops and Afghan forces, have driven the Taliban out of town, he's prepared to roll out an Afghan "government in a box," including police, courts, and local services.

The U.S. military is intent, according to the Wall Street Journal, on "delivering a new administration and millions of dollars in aid to a place where government employees didn't dare set foot a week ago."  Slated to be the future "mayor" of Marja, Haji Zahir, a businessman who spent 15 years in Germany, is, according to press reports, living on a U.S. Marine base in the province until, one day soon, the American military can install him in an "abandoned government building" or simple "a clump of ruins" in that city.

He is, we're told, to arrive with four U.S. civilian advisors, two from the State Department and two from the U.S. Agency for International Development, described (in the typically patronizing language of American press reports) as his "mentors."  They are to help him govern, and especially dole out the millions of dollars that the U.S. military has available to "reconstruct" Marja.  Road-building projects are to be launched, schools refurbished, and a new clinic built, all to win Pashtun "hearts and minds."  As soon as the fighting abates, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has suggested, the post-military emphasis will be on "economic development," with an influx of "military and civilian workers" who will "show a better way of life" to the town's inhabitants.    

So explain something to me: Why does the military of a country convinced it's becoming ungovernable think itself so capable of making another ungovernable country governable?  What's the military's skill set here?  What lore, what body of political knowledge, are they drawing on?  Who do they think they represent, the Philadelphia of 1776 or the Washington of 2010, and if the latter, why should Americans be considered the globe's leading experts in good government anymore?  And while we're at it, fill me in on one other thing: Just what has convinced American officials in Afghanistan and the nation's capital that they have the special ability to teach, prod, wheedle, bribe, or force Afghans to embark on good governance in their country if we can't do it in Washington or Sacramento?

Explain something else to me: Why are our military and civilian leaders so confident that, after nine years of occupying the world's leading narco-state, nine years of reconstruction boondoggles and military failure, they suddenly have the key, the formula, to solve the Afghan mess?  Why do leading officials suddenly believe they can make Afghan President Hamid Karzai into "a Winston Churchill who can rally his people," as one unnamed official told Matthew Rosenberg and Peter Spiegel of the Wall Street Journal -- and all of this only months after Karzai, returned to office in a wildly fraudulent presidential election, overseeing a government riddled with corruption and drug money, and honeycombed with warlords sporting derelict reputations, was considered a discredited figure in Washington?  And why do they think they can turn a man known mockingly as the "mayor" or "president" of Kabul (because his government has so little influence outside the capital) into a political force in southern Afghanistan?

And someone tell me: Just who picked the name Operation Moshtarak for the campaign in Marja?  Why am I not convinced that it was an Afghan?  Though news accounts say that the word means "togetherness" in Dari, why do I think that a better translation might be "crushing embrace"?  What could "togetherness" really mean when, according to the Wall Street Journal, to make the final decision to launch the operation, already long announced, General McChrystal "stepped into his armored car for the short drive... to the presidential palace," and reportedly roused President Karzai from a nap for "a novel moment."  Karzai agreed, of course, supposedly adding, "No one has ever asked me to decide before."

This is a black comedy of "governance."  So is the fact that, from the highest administration officials and military men to those in the field, everyone speaks, evidently without the slightest self-consciousness, about putting an "Afghan face" on the Marja campaign.  The phrase is revelatory and oddly blunt. As an image, there's really only one way to understand it (not that the Americans involved would ever stop to do so). After all, what does it mean to "put a face" on something that assumedly already has a face? In this case, it has to mean putting an Afghan mask over what we know to be the actual "face" of the Afghan War, which is American.

National Security Adviser James Jones, for instance, spoke of the Marja campaign having "'a much bigger Afghan face,' with two Afghans for every one U.S. soldier involved."  And this way of thinking is so common that news reports regularly use the phrase, as in a recent Associated Press story: "Military officials say they are learning from past mistakes. The offensive is designed with an 'Afghan face.'"

And here's something else I'd like explained to me: Why does the U.S. press, at present so fierce about the lack of both "togetherness" and decent governance in Washington, report this sort of thing without comment, even though it reflects the deepest American contempt for putative "allies"? Why, for instance, can those same Wall Street Journal reporters write without blinking:  "Western officials also are bringing Afghan cabinet members into strategy discussions, allowing them to select the officials who will run Marjah once it is cleared of Taliban, and pushing them before the cameras to emphasize the participation of Afghan troops in the offensive"?  Allow?  Push?  Is this what we mean by "togetherness"?  

Try to imagine all this in reverse -- an Afghan general motoring over to the White House to wake up the president and ask whether an operation, already announced and ready to roll, can leave the starting gate?  But why go on?

Just explain this to me: Why are the representatives of Washington, civilian and military, always so tone deaf when it comes to other peoples and other cultures?  Why is it so hard for them to imagine what it might be like to be in someone else's shoes (or boots or sandals)?  Why do they always arrive not just convinced that they have identified the right problems and are asking the right questions, but that they, and only they, have the right answers, when at home they seem to have none at all?

Thinking about this, I wonder what kind of "face" should be put on global governance in Washington?

[Note on further reading:  The single best piece I've seen suggesting answers to some of the questions raised above is Andrew Bacevich's "Government-in-a-box in Marja," in last week's Los Angeles Times.  As ever, I recommend that, on war and peace subjects across the Middle East, Central, and South Asia, you check out Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog (never to be missed),Antiwar.com (an invaluable daily resource), and the War in Context website, which I've always relied on and which now exists in a new, more focused iteration.  (It has been riveting lately as it follows the spreading scandal surrounding the assassination in Dubai of a senior Hamas military commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.)]"

Tom Engelhardt
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=632

[TrueLight]

Australians' passports stolen for Dubai hit: Smith

By online political correspondent Emma Rodgers, staff

Updated Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:16am AEDT

"Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says three Australians whose passports were allegedly used by suspected Mossad assassins in Dubai appear to have been the victims of identity fraud.

Dubai police have named 15 new suspects in the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was found dead in his hotel room last month in what police say was almost certainly an Israeli hit.

Police say three of the suspects travelled to the emirate on Australian passports in the names of Adam Marcus Korman, Joshua Daniel Bruce and Nicole Sandra McCabe.

Speaking after meeting the Israeli ambassador in Canberra today, Mr Smith said the Australian Federal Police would conduct a full investigation into how the passports had been copied or altered.

"At this stage Australian officials have no information to suggest the three Australian passport holders were involved in any way other than as victims of passport or identity fraud," Mr Smith said.

"The Australian Government condemns in the strongest possible terms the misuse and the abuse of Australian passports."

Mr Smith said he also told ambassador Yuval Rotem that the Australian Government expected Israeli officials to cooperate "fully and transparently" with the AFP's investigation.

Earlier Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he was determined to "get to the bottom" of the case.

He told AM that officials had been working on the case through the night and pledged the Government would "not let the matter rest" and that Australia "will not be silent on the matter".

"If Australian passports are being used or forged by any state, let alone for the purpose of assassination, this is of the deepest concern and we are getting to the bottom of this now," he said.

"We will not leave a single stone unturned."

Asked what action the Government may take against Israel, Mr Rudd replied: "Let us establish the facts first."

The three Australians named will be contacted by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

"This is not just a deep concern for the Australian Government, it must be therefore the deepest concern to any individual associated with this as well," Mr Rudd said.


'Simply unbelievable'

Mr Korman, 34, is Australian-born but lives in Tel Aviv where he sells musical instruments.

In an interview with Israeli media he has denied any involvement and says he is the victim of identity theft.

AM tried to contact him, along with a Bruce Daniel who lives near Haifa in Israel's north, but neither was answering the phone.

But Mr Korman has told Israel's biggest newspaper Yediot Aharonot that he is shocked over what has happened.

"It's identity theft. Simply unbelievable," he is quoted as saying.

"It's a violation of human rights to do such a thing. I have travelled all over the world but never visited Dubai or the United Arab Emirates."

Mr Korman also told the paper he was perplexed as to how he could fly to Australia again now that he is considered an international suspect.

"I have been frightened and shocked since receiving the news," he reportedly said.

AM has confirmed that Australian Nicole Sandra McCabe also lives in Israel.

When contacted this morning, her family in Australia said they had no knowledge of her name being linked to the Dubai investigation.

Dubai police have released new information about the movements of the 26 suspects before and after the assassination.

All had apparently travelled to Dubai from one of six European cities or Hong Kong, and each left the country to various destinations, including Hong Kong and Iran, before returning to Europe where they apparently abandoned the fraudulent passports.

Many had also used credit cards issued by the same US bank.

Police also released new vision from the hotel's security cameras showing the man named as Mr Bruce with one of the French suspects inside the hotel.

The Israeli foreign minister has said there is no proof his country carried out the killing."

By online political correspondent Emma Rodgers, staff, ABC news
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/25/2829656.htm

[TrueLight]

The War on Terror Is Anti-Conservative
By Philip Giraldi
Published 02/26/10

Why Real Conservatives Oppose the War on Terror

[This speech was part of a panel sponsored by the Future of Freedom Foundation, Campaign for Liberty and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance (LOLA) held on February 20th at the 2010 CPAC. The panel presentation was titled "Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terror."]

"Benjamin Franklin once observed that those who would trade their liberties for security will wind up losing both. James Madison stated that no nation can preserve freedom in the midst of perpetual warfare. Few can question that America's Founding Fathers epitomize true conservatism. There is something seriously wrong in America today precisely because the elites from both political parties have forgotten about Franklin and Madison and ignored their wise counsel.

No one should doubt that ill-conceived security measures and the greatly exaggerated fear of terrorism have driven much of both foreign and domestic policy since 9/11 -- it was undeniably a horrific experience for this nation, but it did not threaten the survival of the American Republic. Its perpetrators and their heirs do not do so today. Only we Americans can do that and we are doing so by overreacting to the danger and compromising our own liberties.

Conservatives should be the voice of reason. They should demand commensurate and realistic responses to genuine foreign and domestic threats rather than overkill, more bureaucracy, and lots of unneeded government pork. The government's creation of a no-fly list with one million names and a terrorist suspects list with nearly half a million entries exemplify that damage that has already been done. If there were even one per cent that many people in the US actually threatening terrorist acts there would be waves of bombings in the streets. That that has not taken place tells you that both the lists and the process used to compile them are essentially bogus.

The expression war on terror is meaningless. Terror is a tactic, it is not a foreign government or political movement. To use the expression a "terrorist group" is equally misleading as the groups which come in all shapes sizes and colors are essentially political and have frequently clearly defined political objectives even if they use terrorism to advance their agenda. In most cases, the groups we call terrorists seek to take over the government of the countries where they operate, replacing groups not dissimilar to themselves who are currently in charge.

Why is what we call something important, whether we use the expression "terrorist" or not? It is important because how you name and define something shapes how you think about it and how you respond to it. It frames the narrative. Instead of bumper sticker definitions, we should instead be asking whether international groups that use terror genuinely threaten either the United States or any vital national interest. If we were to undertake such an analysis, we would quickly learn that frequently the terrorist label is misleading.

The exploitation of fear of terrorism by those in government has led to wars that did not have to be fought. Fear has been the key to the door for expansion of government and government powers and the people in charge in Washington have seized the opportunity. It has also eroded the liberties that have defined us as a nation. To cite only one example, the position taken by the Obama Administration in early February that it is all right to assassinate American citizens overseas based on secret information, violates principles of due process and deprives every citizen of the constitutional right to defend himself before a jury consisting of his peers.

While government expanded, and because bureaucrats view the world in terms of institutions and power, America's leaders looked at the terrorism tactic and drew all the wrong conclusions, namely that those we call terrorists hated the United States for no rational reason and that there was a military solution that could be imposed to make the terrorists go away. The Washington elite confused America's ability to field a large army with something we call policy, in this case foreign policy, not understanding that using the military is a failure of foreign policy, not an alternative to it. The same officials and politicians also created a vast and ineffective homeland security bureaucracy, the domestic equivalent of an interventionist foreign policy, that has stripped many Americans of their fundamental liberties here at home. Predictably, the international situation has become even more unstable as a result of the enormous expansion of the security state. When meddling in the affairs of others began to produce bad results, the solution was more meddling, most recently in Somalia and Yemen, never looking at intervention itself as a possibly source of the instability and the terrorism.

Some of the numbers behind what has happened should appall every true conservative. The United States now spends nearly one trillion dollars every year on the military, homeland security, and intelligence. Much of the money is borrowed from China. If one assumes that there are something like 5,000 active terrorists in the world, and there are likely less than that, it works out to something like $200 million per terrorist per year every year. Fear of terrorism drives growth in government and has led to involvement in multiple little wars and some bigger ones as well as subsequent exercises in nation building, all of which have been unconstitutional, and none of which have turned out well. The so-called global war on terror, now referred to as overseas contingency operations, is without end and without limits, and has made the US hated and feared in most of the world, not respected. It has even made American citizens potential targets of their own government without any recourse to the protections afforded by the constitution.

And America's war against the world did not have to happen. There are real threats in the world against Americans and American interests, but military action in support of the national interest should only be a last option after every other step has been taken. And then there is the issue of blowback. Why is America the target of terrorists and suicide bombers? Surely not because it has freedoms that some view negatively. As Usama bin Laden put it, in possibly the only known joke made by a terrorist, if freedoms were the issue al-Qaeda would be attacking Sweden. Congressman Ron Paul, former CIA Bin Laden Task Force head Michael Scheurer, and numerous others have noted that America has become a target because it is involved militarily in so many countries, meddling in other people's business. As they put it, "They are over here because we are over there."

Above all, the American people should follow the money. It is fashionable to blame the Republican Party for many of our ills, but the war party in America is bipartisan. It is driven both by the lust for power and the good old fashioned profit motive. The current push to attack Iran has more Democrats behind it than Republicans and it is fully supported by a media that has been characterized as being largely liberal but which really shares the collectivist viewpoint and interests of the Washington elite. War is big business and it produces money and jobs for a lot of people, ranging from think tanks to defense contractors to congressmen and senior government officials who are looking for a nice income supplement when they retire. The American people must demand a change in that dynamic. Into the early fifties it was still possible for a traditional conservative Republican like Russell Kirk or Senator Robert Taft to object to America's growing global role without being labeled an isolationist or being ostracized by one's own political party. That changed as war became an engine driving the economy with a bit of pork sweetening the deal in every congressional district. Today, one might argue, that weapons are the only thing that the United States produces for which there is a worldwide demand. That is not only sad, it has been the undoing of the American Republic.

In short, real conservatives who believe in small government, fiscal responsibility, a rational foreign policy based on the national interest, and non-involvement in other people's quarrels should never support global wars on terror or global wars on anything. They should reject completely the insidious and absurd notion that Washington can intervene all over the world and not raise taxes to pay for the cost, handing our security over to the Chinese lenders and bankrupting our children and grandchildren. Some in Washington have already seen the folly of our present course and are speaking out. "The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." Ron Paul said that in 2008 and it should be the rallying cry for a constitutionally based foreign and defense policy that truly benefits the American people."

Philip Giraldi
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=643

[TrueLight]

Ron Paul: End the War in Afghanistan NOW! 10/3/10
Ron Paul spoke on the House floor in support of Dennis Kucinich's H. Con Res 248 which would end the war in Afghanistan and bring U.S. Armed Forces home within 30 days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuCgC_Ntut0

[TrueLight]

U.S. Government Confirms Sanctions Don't Work
By Jacob Hornberger
Published 03/12/10

"Even while employing sanctions against Iran, the U.S. government is confirming that sanctions do not work.

The Chinese government has threatened to impose sanctions on the United States if the U.S. government persists in its decision to sell weapons, including F-16s, to Taiwan. According to the New York Times, the threat was issued by a top Chinese military official, who did not specify what the sanctions would be. However, a possibility would be the wholesale dumping of U.S. government securities onto the international financial markets. Those instruments represent the enormous amounts of money that China has loaned the U.S. government to fund its enterprises in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Notwithstanding the U.S. government's steadfast insistence that its sanctions will induce Iranian government officials to submit to U.S. demands regarding its nuclear program, the U.S. government is steadfastly refusing to succumb to China's threat to impose sanctions on the United States.

Wouldn't you think that U.S. officials would want to use this opportunity to show the world that sanctions really do work? Imagine: U.S. officials could announce, "Given China's threat to impose sanctions on our country, we have decided to not go forward with our plans to sell weaponry to Taiwan." What better way to show that sanctions work than that?

But we all know that that isn't going to happen. U.S. government officials are a proud bunch. They're not about to let Chinese government officials push them around.

But what about China's ability to dump all those U.S. debt instruments onto the market. Surely U.S. officials realize that such an action could cause untold monetary havoc for the U.S. dollar and, thus, severely threaten the financial well-being of the American people.

It doesn't matter. U.S. officials would never bow to the demands of China's government, no matter how high the cost to the American citizenry.

But the obvious questions arise? Why wouldn't Iranian officials be expected to react in the same way? Why would anyone expect them to succumb to demands of U.S. officials? Aren't they just as proud as U.S. government officials are? Wouldn't they be just as willing to sacrifice the well-being of their citizenry as U.S. officials are?

The fact is that the citizenry of any country are viewed simply as pawns by both their own government and the foreign government that is imposing the sanctions.

For example, as I pointed out here, the U.S. sanctions against Iran have caused several plane crashes, killing hundreds of Iraqi citizens. Yet, that hasn't persuaded the U.S. government to lift the sanctions, just as it hasn't induced the Iranian government to bow to U.S. demands. The Iranian citizenry are considered expendable by both governments.

Recall the brutal sanctions that the U.S. government enforced against Iraq for more than 10 years. Every year, they were causing the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children from infectious illnesses, malnutrition, etc. Those deaths didn't cause Saddam Hussein to leave office, which is what the U.S. government wanted. Equally important, U.S. officials were indifferent to the deaths of all those Iraqi children. In fact, the official U.S. position was that those deaths were "worth it," the term used by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright when asked about the deaths by "Sixty Minutes."

Or consider the brutal embargo that the U.S. government has enforced against Cuba for decades. It has produced untold economic harm to the Cuban people. U.S. officials couldn't care less. They steadfastly maintain that one of these days the embargo will finally succeed in persuading Fidel Castro (and his brother) to give up power and permit a U.S.-approved ruler to be substituted in his stead. Not surprisingly, the Castro brothers have reacted to the decades-long U.S. embargo in the same way that the U.S. government is responding to China's threat to impose sanctions on the United States -- by refusing to succumb to U.S. demands no matter how much the Cuban people must suffer as a consequence.

With its refusal to bow to China's threat of sanctions, the U.S. government is confirming that sanctions simply don't work. Given the great harm the U.S. government has inflicted on foreign citizens with its own sanctions, it's time for U.S. officials to lift their sanctions against Iran, Cuba, and everyone else."

Jacob Hornberger
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=676

[TrueLight]

The Truth about Terrorism
By Jack Hunter
Published 03/13/10

Both the Left and Right make ideological excuses for terror

The Truth about Terrorism

"In a recent commentary, I called 19th century insurrectionist Denmark Vesey a "terrorist," a term I define as someone who intentionally targets civilians to advance an objective or agenda. Vesey, who planned to murder every white person in Charleston in 1822, certainly fits this description, as does President Harry Truman, who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. I made this exact same comparison in my column.

Liberals cursed my portrayal of Vesey, while thanking me for bringing up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conservatives cursed my portrayal of Truman, yet thanked me for my comments on Vesey.

Though liberals are generally thought of as bleeding hearts, I'm never surprised when they endorse terrorism. It's an easy philosophical leap for liberals, who view humanity through the lens of class, race, gender, and other collectivist identities, to justify the mass killing of people in the name of social justice or "progress."

In the early to mid-20th century, many American and European liberals were so sympathetic to socialism that they turned a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against the Soviet Union's civilian population by the Communist Party leadership. Millions died.

Modern, white, guilt-driven liberals who would never think of sacrificing their own small children for any progressive cause still champion Vesey's plans to slaughter every pale-faced child in Charleston. When defending Vesey, liberals don't think about the idea of children being murdered; they only think about black liberation. Similarly, when it came to Lenin and Stalin's Russia, liberals of the past didn't think about the genocide and famine caused by these totalitarian regimes, only the idea of the workers of the world uniting. In the name of saving humanity, the Left is always prepared to sacrifice plenty of humans.

Unfortunately, so are many of today's conservatives. The most common defense of Truman's decision to drop two atomic bombs is that it was done to "save American lives." But was it?

Wrote Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Truman: "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender..." Douglas MacArthur's consultant Norman Cousins wrote: "When I asked Gen. MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb."

Dwight Eisenhower also had a similar view. He told Newsweek in 1963 that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

Leahy also had this to say: "The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

Barbarians? Dark ages? Destroying women and children as a method of waging war? These descriptions could easily apply to Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, Leahy is describing the United States government.

Even if Leahy, MacArthur, and Eisenhower were wrong about the use of atomic weapons, describing Truman as a terrorist seems to upset conservatives most, because they subscribe to the popular narrative that the bombings were just another type of conventional warfare.

According to the thinking of mainstream conservatives, "state-sponsored terrorism" only seems to apply to Arab nations which fund terrorist individuals; state-sponsored terrorism could never be applied to a government engaging in plain, old war.

Using Truman's actions as an example, conservatives seem to say that terrorism carried out by individuals is always unwarranted, but terrorism carried out by government is warranted. In fact, it isn't even "terrorism" at all. Is there any other sphere in which conservatives, quite literally, allow their government to get away with such murder?

Reveling in the excesses of government in the form of militarism hasn't always been stock conservative thinking. As late as 1959, William F. Buckley's National Review could say the following in an editorial: "The indefensibility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed."

Regardless, for the Left or Right, if the definition of terrorism is not the intentional targeting of civilians to advance an objective or agenda, then what is it? I've yet to hear a better definition.

And I don't see how that particular evil ceases to become such depending on who's doing it."

Jack Hunter
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=679









Battling the Bipartisan Consensus for War
By Doug Bandow
Published 03/13/10


"The U.S. is rarely at peace. It doesn't matter which party or which politician is in power: American military forces will be on the move, invading a Third World nation here and threatening an emerging power there.

In January 2009 Republican George W. Bush yielded to Democrat Barack Obama, and the U.S. government increased military spending and expanded the war in Afghanistan. If a Republican is elected in 2012, recent history suggests that defense outlays will grow further, as Washington attacks another nation or two.

Enthusiasm for war crosses party lines -- Robert Kagan recently wrote approvingly of the militaristic alliance between "liberal interventionist Democrats" and "hawkish internationalist Republicans" -- both groups which have never met a war they didn't want to fight. However, support for peace also is transpartisan. Such sentiments are perhaps strongest on the Democratic left, which increasingly feels disenfranchised by President Obama. A smaller contingent of libertarians, traditional conservatives, and paleo-conservatives has resisted the conservative movement's adoption of war-mongering intervention as a basic tenet.

Right and Left recently came together for a day-long conference in Washington. Participants included this writer, editors from the Nation, Progressive Review online, American Conservative, Reason, and other publications; leftish anti-war activists reaching back to the Vietnam era and a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School; Ralph Nader; a supporter of Patrick Buchanan's 1992 presidential bid; a former campaign aide to internet sensation Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and three members of the Paul-inspired group Young Americans for Liberty; representatives of several activist organizations, including Voters for Peace and Veterans for Peace; and writers, think tankers, academics, and organizers from across the political spectrum.

The moment economics, domestic policy, or election law came up, participants disagreed. But on the central issue of war and peace the group united. While war might sometimes be unavoidable -- pacifism was not on the agenda, though some of the participants might have been pacifists -- it should be a last resort, a tragic necessity to protect a free American society. While war sometimes brings out the finest and most sublime human values such as courage and honor, more often it looses the basest passions and destroys what we most hold dear. Despite today's constant celebration of all things military, Americans are best served by peace, allowing them to enjoy the pleasures and surmount the challenges of daily life.

Yet today the U.S. is one of the world's most militarized states, accounting for nearly half of the globe's military outlays. The U.S. government maintains hundreds of military installations and hundreds of thousands of troops abroad. No other country, democratic or authoritarian, comes close to matching America's aggressive military record in recent decades: nations and territories invaded or bombed include Iraq (twice), Serbia, Bosnian Serbs, Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, Panama, and Grenada. Threats have come fast and furious against North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and most recently Yemen.

It is bad enough that Washington policymakers see war as a first resort, a convenient tool for conducting social engineering abroad. They seem to treat the resulting death and destruction as incidental and unimportant, especially if concentrated on others.

Even worse, many U.S. policymakers appear to enjoy wielding military force safely out of harm's way from their Washington offices. Rather than feel reluctant at loosing the dogs of war, some American leaders, almost always ones who have never put on a military uniform let alone served in combat, joyously add new targets. "Real men go to Tehran," ran the neoconservative mantra in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, when otherwise sober analysts were filled with hubris at America's ability to remake the world at will. Never mind those who would be killed along the way.

It is this world which brought representatives from Right to Left together. Participants discussed rhetoric: criticizing "imperialism," for instance, resonates far better with the Left than the Right. But there was broad agreement on policy. Washington today has a strategy of "empire." The U.S. isn't the same as the Roman or British empires, to be sure. But American foreign and military policy could hardly be further from those one would expect from a constitutional republic with a government of limited powers intended to concentrate on protecting the safety and liberty of its citizens.

Thus, Americans need real change, not the faux variety offered by the Obama administration. The military should be configured to defend America, not client states around the globe. U.S. taxpayers should not be fleeced to subsidize wealthy allies. Washington should not use patriotic 18-year-olds to occupy Third World states, treating them like American satrapies, governed by U.S. ambassadors. Uncle Sam should stop trying to micro-manage the globe, treating every conflict or controversy as America's own, exaggerating foreign threats and inflating Washington's abilities.

The price of today's policy of empire is high. Far from being the costless adventure imagined by members of Washington's ubiquitous sofa samurai, war is the ultimate big government program, a threat to Americans' life, prosperity, and liberty.

So far the Iraqi "cakewalk" has resulted in the death of roughly 4400 Americans and 300 other coalition soldiers. Then there are tens of thousands of maimed and injured Americans, others suffering from PSD, and numerous broken families and communities. At least 100,000 and probably many more Iraqis have died. Some estimates run up to a million, a truly astonishing number. America's ivory tower warriors seem particularly unconcerned about dead foreigners. However many Iraqis died, it is treated as a small price to pay for the privilege of being liberated by Washington.

Another cost is financial. Direct military outlays this year will run over $700 billion. Iraq is ultimately likely cost $2 or $3 trillion. Washington spends more on "defense," adjusted for inflation, today than at any point during the Cold War, Korean War, and Vietnam War. The U.S. accounts for nearly half of the globe's military expenditures.

American taxpayers pay to defend prosperous and populous European states. Japan devotes about a fourth as much of its economic strength to the military as does the U.S. The NATO member which makes the most military effort is crisis-prone Greece -- in response to nominal ally Turkey. For years American taxpayers spent as much as South Koreans to defend the Republic of Korea.

Such generosity might have made sense in the aftermath of World War II, when so many Asian and European states had been ruined by war and faced Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China. No longer, however. Especially with the U.S. budget deficit expected to run nearly $1.6 trillion this year alone. Over the next decade Uncle Sam likely will rack up another $10 trillion in red ink. In effect, Washington is borrowing every penny which it is spending to defend other nations.

Liberty also suffers from a policy of empire. "War is the health of the state," intoned Randolph Bourne, and it certainly is the health of the national security state. The constitutional deformations of the Bush years were legendary, yet President Barack Obama has done little to rein in his predecessor's lawless conduct. Executive aggrandizement, government secrecy, privacy violations, military arrests and trials, and constitutional violations. The U.S. is in danger of losing its republican soul.

Of course, one could imagine a truly necessary war which would have to be fought almost irrespective of cost -- World War II, perhaps. However, while jihadist terrorists are ugly and murderous, they are a poor substitute for Adolf Hitler with armored divisions and Joseph Stalin with nuclear weapons. We aren't fighting World War III. We aren't fighting anything close to World War III.

And if we were in such a conflict, a policy of empire, of meddling around the globe, of engaging in international social engineering, would be about the most foolish strategy possible. Most of what the U.S. military does has nothing to do with American security: protecting European states threatened by no one, aiding a South Korea which vastly outranges its northern antagonist, attempting to turn decrepit Third World states into liberal democracies and Western allies.

The problem of terrorism is real, but is best met by sophisticated, targeted countermeasures rather than promiscuous blunt-force intervention. The war in Iraq has enhanced Iran's strategic position, weakened America's reputation, stretched U.S. military forces, spurred terrorist recruitment, and confirmed the radical terrorist narrative. A lengthy occupation of Afghanistan and overflow combat into Pakistan risk doing much the same -- potentially for years. Expanded American intervention in Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere would have a similar effect.

Militaristic sloganeering, patriotic preening, and demagogic ranting are no substitute for making a realistic assessment both of threats and capabilities. Meeting participants agreed that pro-peace activists must seize back the patriotic mantle. Patriotism should no longer be the last refuge of the scoundrel, used to shield from scrutiny policies drafted by those personally unwilling to serve which have wreaked death and destruction abroad and increased debt and insecurity at home. And any antiwar movement should welcome those who have worn the nation's uniforms, whose courage has been misused by self-serving politicians.

This is not the first time that people from across the political spectrum have joined in an attempt to stop imperialist adventures. Various groups opposed the Spanish-American War and especially the brutal occupation of the Philippines. Woodrow Wilson's bloody crusade for democracy was resisted by conservatives and progressives; socialist Eugene Debs went to prison for criticizing that conflict. Left and Right even opposed Franklin Delano Roosevelt's surreptitious push for war, though the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and German declaration of war ultimately made involvement inevitable.

Indeed, mainstream American concern about international adventurism goes back to George Washington's famed farewell address warning against "foreign entanglements" and consequent "overgrown military establishments." Secretary of State John Quincy Adams warned against going abroad "in search of monsters to destroy." Future Civil War generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee expressed disquiet at America's rapacious war with Mexico even while serving their nation in that very conflict. "The commercial interests" angered war-hawk Teddy Roosevelt for opposing his campaign for war against Spain. Middle America resisted demands that the U.S. join both great European wars of the 20th century. President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office warning about the military-industrial complex.

Unfortunately, politicians have proved extraordinarily adept at rousing, at least temporarily, public support for foreign military adventures. Resisting the ivory tower warmongers will be no easier today. But those who believe in peace have no choice but to try, and try again.

Peace should be America's natural condition. Unfortunately, it will not be so as long as today's unnatural alliance of liberal and neoconservative hawks runs U.S. foreign policy. And only the American people can take back control. The future of the American people and republic is at stake."

Doug Bandow
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=689

[TrueLight]

Hitler's National Security Court
By Jacob Hornberger
Published 03/20/10


"Let's make no bones about it. Adolf Hitler, who served as chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, could easily be the inspiration for those here in the United States now calling for the creation of a special national security court for trying terrorists. After all, it was Hitler who first established a national security court, and he did it for the same reason that U.S. proponents are now calling for such a court: the concern that regular courts would fail to convict people that government officials knew were terrorists.

Hitler's national security court, which he established in 1934, was called the People's Court. It consisted of a tribunal of judges, both civilian and military. There was no trial by jury consisting of regular citizens. The most famous of the lead judges of the People's Court was a man named Roland Freisler, who presided over the now-famous trials of Hans and Sophie Scholl and the other members of the White Rose.

Hitler established the People's Court after the terrorist bombing of the German parliament building, the Reichstag. After a trial in a regularly constituted German court, many of the people charged with that terrorist act were acquitted, which, needless to say, outraged Hitler as much as it would have outraged current U.S. proponents of a national security court. After all, Hitler argued, those people who were acquitted were terrorists -- otherwise they wouldn't have been charged and prosecuted -- and, therefore, they deserved to be convicted and punished, not acquitted and released.

To ensure that terrorists and other criminals were never again acquitted, Hitler established the People's Court. Like the national security court that some Americans are now advocating for the United States, the purpose of the court was to create the appearance of justice while ensuring that terrorists and other criminals were convicted and punished.

Proceedings before the People's Court would easily serve as a model for U.S. advocates of a national security. The trial of Hans and Sophie Scholl was over in less than an hour. Criminal defense lawyers were expected to remain silent during the proceedings, and did so. Defendants were presumed guilty and treated as such. Hearsay was permitted, as was evidence acquired by torture. There was no due process of law. Confessions could be coerced out of defendants. The judges on the tribunal would berate, humiliate, convict, and then swiftly issue sentences, including the death penalty.

For a good example of how a national security court would operate here in the United States, see Part 13 and Part 14 of the great movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days .

Yes, I know what the American proponents of a national security court would say in response: Just because Hitler was the first to establish such a court doesn't necessarily mean that it is a bad thing. They would point out that Hitler's People's Court had an extremely high conviction rate, and they would claim that it kept the German people safe. Why, perhaps they might even recommend that a bust of Hitler be placed in America's national security court, much as the U.S. Social Security Administration has posted a bust of Otto von Bismarck, who was known as the Iron Chancellor of Germany, on its Social Security website.

Proponents of a U.S. national security court would also undoubtedly point out that Hitler's National Socialist regime also embraced such much-vaunted American socialist programs as public (i.e., government) schooling, social security, national health care, government-business partnerships, and a military-industrial complex. And they would remind us that Hitler's socialist autobahn system served as the inspiration for America's giant boondoggle of a public-works project known as the Interstate Highway System.

But shouldn't the fact that it was Adolf Hitler who first came up with the idea of a national security court to make sure that terrorists and other criminals were duly convicted and punished at least be enough to raise eyebrows among the American people?"

Jacob Hornberger
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=694




















The Forgotten War
By Laurence M. Vance
Published 03/22/10


"The civil war in Korea from 1950 to 1953 that the United States foolishly intervened in, and, for the first time for a major conflict, without a congressional declaration of war, is known as the Forgotten War. The number of American soldiers killed in this senseless war is over 36,000. Yet, Korea remains divided at the 38th parallel to this day just like it was before the war began. Talk about dying in vain. None of these soldiers died in defense of the United States; all of them died for the United Nations, for the foolish policies of Harry Truman, and for the failed diplomacy of World War II.

Most Americans have no idea that there are still over 24,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea (some no doubt the grandchildren of the soldiers who fought in the Korean War). Fewer still probably know anything about the war that put them there in the first place.

There is another war that, incredibly, is fast becoming a forgotten war: the war in Iraq. I lamented last year at this time that we didn't hear much about the war in Iraq anymore. Even though candidate Barack Obama pledged in 2007 that the first thing he would do if elected was bring the troops home and end the war, the war wasn't an issue in the 2008 election. And before the electoral vote was even counted, Democratic opposition to the war had evaporated.

Now, on the seventh anniversary of the unconstitutional, immoral, aggressive, unjust, unnecessary, manufactured, manipulated, and senseless war that is the war in Iraq, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has eclipsed any mention of the ongoing war in Iraq. And this in spite of the fact that there are still 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

When I wrote about the Iraq war on its third anniversary, 2,317 American soldiers had died for a lie. On the fourth anniversary, that number had risen to 3,218. On the fifth, it was up to 3,992. Last year, on the sixth anniversary of the war, the number of dead American soldiers rose to 4,259. Currently, the death toll is at 4,385, with 157 of those deaths since Obama became the new commander in chief.

But, it is said, look how the number of deaths per year has fallen. Agreed. But that is no consolation to the father, mother, wife, or child of the soldiers who died in vain and for a lie yesterday, last week, or last month.

Although combat deaths are decreasing in Iraq (but certainly not in Afghanistan), increasing among returning soldiers are suicides, PTSD, broken families, substance abuse, unemployment, horrible memories, lingering injuries, shattered dreams, acts of violence, and criminal activity. And of course, the war is still costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars a week.

But even if only one American soldier had died since last month, even if only one American soldier had died since the last anniversary of the war, even if only one American soldier had died since Obama took office, and even if only one American had died since the beginning of the war, that would still be one too many.

Only the grossly naïve still think that those fighting and dying in Iraq are doing so for our freedoms or to keep us safe from terrorism. The truth is rather that since the war on terrorism began our freedoms have steadily deteriorated and we have created more terrorists

Before the United States invaded Iraq, not one American had been killed by an Iraqi since the previous time we invaded that country. But no U.S. soldier had to die in either war against Iraq. Bringing "democracy" to Iraq, ridding the country of Saddam Hussein, and destroying Iraq's weapons of war were not worth the life of one American. They were not worth the shedding of one drop of American blood.

But that's not all. No Iraqi soldiers had to die, no Iraqi civilians had to die, and no Iraqi children had to die between the wars because of brutal U.S. sanctions.

Yet, Americans who have lamented the senseless deaths of American soldiers, not to mention the deaths of countless numbers of Iraqis, and denounced this war from the beginning are the ones who have been labeled unpatriotic, un-American, communists, and traitors. This callous disregard for human life — American and Iraqi — is appalling, and especially among those who call themselves pro-lifers.

If you love what is left of our republic and want America to be loved instead of hated, blessed instead of cursed, admired instead of despised, and emulated instead of attacked, then you should want the United States to get out of Iraq and the Middle East — and stay out. Oh, it might take years, even decades, to restore America to favor in the eyes of world, but we must start sometime if it ever has a chance of coming to pass.

Do I think U.S. troops will ever leave Iraq? I can answer that with a question: Does the United States still have troops in South Korea?"

Laurence M. Vance
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=709

[TrueLight]

i thought this was quite interesting and sad and post it here even though its not specific about foreign policy but related in some way
Israeli Army makes shirts promoting the killing of Pregnant Palestinian Women in Gaza
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBeLZll9L9U
3:45 ...wtf...