A Short Note of the Syrian Bombings

President Trump bombed a Syrian airbase last week.

I have to admit, I was pretty angry when I first heard about it.  I’m not a fan of Assad but as far as dictators go, he appears to be competent and allows Christians to worship in a majority Muslim country.

But I’ve found out lately that the bombing had no casualties and that the airfield is still in use.  Contrast this kind of strike with President Obama who regularly supported ISIS rebels in Syria by bombing targets and actually killing people.

I don’t like what happened.  But I’m not worried that we are going to war with Russia over it.

Also when it comes to foreign policy, most people are playing chess and just because something happens in one area doesn’t mean that the action was isolated.

If you don’t understand what I mean, then consider why China and the US are deploying forces to North Korea.

Instead of Syria or Russia that is.

Sympathy for the French Jihadists

Ah, the foolishness of youth:

Letters from French jihadists home to their parents have revealed the misery, boredom and fear suffered by Islamist recruits as the gloss fades from their big adventure.

In a series of letters seen by Le Figaro newspaper, some of the 376 French currently fighting in Syria have begged for advice on how to return. Others have complained that, rather than participating in a noble battle, they have been acting as jihadi dogsbodies.

"I've basically done nothing except hand out clothes and food," wrote one, who wants to return from Aleppo. "I also help clean weapons and transport dead bodies from the front. Winter's arrived here. It's begun to get really hard."

Another writes: "I'm fed up. They make me do the washing up."

One Frenchman whined that he wanted to come home because he was missing the comforts of life in France.

"I'm fed up. My iPod doesn't work any more here. I have to come back."

A third wrote fearfully: "They want to send me to the front, but I don't know how to fight."

Others were concerned, more prosaically, about the nationality of their baby, which was born in Syria and so not recognized by the French state.

If the French government has any common sense, these men will be not allowed to return, no matter what political pressure is placed on them.

These men wanted to go on a grand adventure of murdering women and children for following the wrong religion and found that they were nothing more than personal assistants to the real fighters.  And they are complaining about that.  And they are concerned about their children not being French citizens.

These bastards are nothing more than parasites.  They left the comforts of Western civilization to fight for a bunch of murderous thugs.

Of course, if these were Americans, the Obama administration would probably let them all back in the US and give them a lifetime supply of Halal meals.

Because feelbad.

Ebola for Everyone

Now we’ve come to find out that a nurse who was treating the Ebola man in Dallas has come down with the disease herself, along with her boyfriend.  All this in spite of the fact that she was wearing hazmat protection.

So now we need to panic, right?

Perhaps.

On the other hand, there were 70 people treating this man at the time and only one person got infected among them (so far).  If Ebola had mutated, then there would be a few dozen infected already.  Well, that may not be true considering the incubation period can last up to three weeks.

Still though, the evidence so far indicates that the nurse mishandled her protective gear, or someone else’s.  That is unfortunate.

I’ve heard Chris Brown say that Ebola is a form of population control.  While I do believe that the global elites (such as British royalty, multinational business owners, and Western politicians in top positions of power) do desire a sizable reduction in humanity, they would come up with something more effective than Ebola.  Like forced birth control and sterilization.

I will say too that the US government response has been baffling to say the least.  Somehow denying visas to people in the afflicted countries would spread the disease more?  Yet it is also illegal to import most foreign animals into the US, right?

As of right now, the most likely scenario is that the Ebola virus will be a distant memory by this time next year and any mention of it will be the Republicans’ fault.  Or Bush’s fault.  Whichever scapegoat will be need by this Presidential administration.

By the way, did anyone catch the latest episode of The Walking Dead?  I thought they were going to be playing up the drama in Terminus for three episodes.  Glad they took care of it sooner.

Ebola Immigrates

So now that Ebola has made landfall in the US without government supervision and caused the death of one person with dozens of people potentially infected, I think it is high time we re-evaluate our immigration policies as a nation.  I know, here we go again, that racist is going to insist on keeping all the minorities out while letting their children starve.

Yes, I am well aware of the Social Justice Warrior/Progressive/Liberal/Communist arguments for open immigration from third-world hellholes.  You are a racist if you reject mass immigration because those people are people with darker skin.  It has nothing to do with subverting traditional American values like individuality and liberty.  It has nothing to do with the replacement of the American dream with savage tribalism, which we witness growing every day.

Look, there is no point in playing the race card with regards to immigration anymore.  We now have a deadly and horrifying disease brought over by the foolish immigration policies of the United States government.  Diseases tend to not be racist, last I checked.

But there is more than just Ebola coming over.  There is already the spreading of a mysterious repository illness among children which can probably be attributed to the influx of abandoned central American illegal immigrate children.  In an act to promote diversity, the President’s administration spread these children all over the country.  And now this disease has spread all over the country.  This isn’t a coincidence.

This has been building up for some time.  The CDC already has a highly aggressive vaccine schedule, largely due in part to the resurgence of many diseases that were not a threat a few decades ago.  The influx of people from countries where they were not vaccinated could easily be attributed to this but is never stated publicly by our government overlords.

Ebola itself is hard to contract really.  So long as you don’t get into contact with an infected person’s fluids (like blood, urine, saliva, or semen), you should be fine.  On top of that, so long as you regularly bath, you greatly increase your chances of contracting it, among dozens of other nasty diseases.

My suggestion is that we close down the borders, reject all visas from countries that harbor hostile diseases or hostile people, and place US military on the borders of both Mexico and Canada ASAP.  We tell the Mexican government that any attacks on the border directed at our military will be regarded as an act of war from the Mexican government (it happens much more often than is reported).

These are extreme measures.  I know that.  But things have gotten out of hand as of late and they are not going to get better by less extreme measures.  I would love to provide everyone in the world with the opportunities that the US has (and still has to a degree).  At the same time, the people coming here are bringing their diseases, their anti-American ideas, and their tribes.

This does not bode well for a nation and it is looking like secession will be the order of the day in my own lifetime.  But that is probably the only other solution that will resolve the current crisis.

The War That Never Ends

President Obama is set to lay out a plan to fight the rising tide of Islamic terror groups tonight.  Already we have anti-Democrat pundits criticizing the speech before he gives it, as is the nature of politics.  Make no mistake, I’m not going to be too impressed by anything the President does (or doesn’t do) but not for the reasons that Republicans and their shills have.

Let us not forget that the ISIS terrorists are a group of Syrian rebels who were armed and funded by the US government to overthrow Assad.  We have pictures of Senator John McCain sitting with ISIS leaders when he went to meet with those rebels last year.

The truth is, all of the death and misery caused by ISIS is also the fault of the United States government.  My guess is that various intelligence agencies felt that the Syrian rebels would make good assets in the future should they gain their own country.  And the ISIS group went rogue on American intelligence interests.

The fact is, these are bunch of rag-tag, bloodthirsty posers who are jacked up on drugs and ravaging Iraq because they lost the war in Syria.  I am not downplaying the threat they pose to the good people of that region, but this is what happens when you try to play the Nation Game.

If anyone argues that the Middle East is better off now than before intervention from the Western nations, they are naïve at best.  What we are witnessing is the rise of the third wave of radical Islam.  Our response must not be invasion, but decimation followed by containment.  The US government needs to stop giving weapons and training to foreign Muslims as many of them could easily turn around and use such things against us, as has been proven time and time again.

It is high time that Americans consider that the sacrifices our military made and has made in the past was not worth it.  That our young soldiers died for nothing.  And that there is nothing that can be done to make any of those sacrifices mean something.

So whatever President Obama says tonight will probably largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.  It is meant as a distraction to keep Americans looking overseas instead of within our country and seeing the crazed maniacs who run things for who they really are.

Israel is NOT Our Ally; Neither is Palestine

As a Ron Paul supporter in the past, I’ve been accused of being anti-Semitic.  This is because of Ron Paul’s foreign policy of non-intervention and because many mainstream conservatives resented it.  It was the only way they could attack Ron Paul’s foreign policy views as reason and rationality in such matters were lost on them.

I bring this up because what I am about to say will probably get more accusations thrown my way from the same conservatives.

Israel is not our ally.

I know I just got a bunch of people’s panties in a bunch when they read what I’ve written, but it is the undeniable truth.  We have no treaty, no formal agreement with Israel.  At best we have some vague, implied agreements with them.  But we have never come into any kind of official agreement to be Israel’s ally.

We are allied with Turkey, however, which is increasingly becoming more and more anti-Israel as the radicals take over their government.  Of course, to remove an alliance with them might mean the end of NATO as we know it.

The Palestinians are not our ally either.  They don’t even have a formally recognized state as far as I can tell.  They celebrated the death of Americans on 9/11.  I have no love for such a people who celebrate murder in such a way.

So where does that leave the US?

Well, logically it would mean that the US should remain neutral in this Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  It would mean that Americans should pay no attention to anti-Israeli or pro-Israeli propaganda and the same would apply to Palestine.

It would mean that the US government should tell the Israeli government that they can do whatever they want to resolve this conflict and the US will not step in their way, provided they do not attack any of our allies without coming to the US first.

As for the many Christian Zionists who want to keep their favorite tourism spots in the Middle East protected know this: while God made a special covenant with Israel and continues it to this day, He did not do so with the United States.  We are under no obligation to help them.  If God truly is with the Jews, He will provide the means to protect them.

But do not forget that the primary purpose of the Israelites has been done.  His Son Jesus came from their line of kings and redeemed all of mankind before Him.  So while they are a people set aside by God, those who reject Jesus essentially reject God as well.  Have nothing to do with the disobedient Jews.

Ultimately, we should keep a level head in all this and let the conflict play out.  We should not get involved in any way, except maybe to facilitate negotiations.  Anything more is foolish and morally wrong.

On Iraq

So apparently Iraq is being overrun by Islamists right now.  Already, the judge who condemned Saddam Hussein to death has been captured and executed.  Of course, if people had paid attention to the court proceedings, the judge’s death would be justified as Hussein was not given a proper court proceeding.

In any case, it looks like the Iraqi people are by and large celebrating their liberation from an oppressive puppet government set up by the United States.  But here are a few observations I have regarding the situation:

• I read a headline of troops lamenting that their fellow soldiers died for nothing.  Sadly, this was the case from day one.  The entire Iraq War was initiated based on bad intelligence and outright lies.  Even if Saddam was stockpiling weapons, what business was it of ours?  Iraq was a sovereign nation and the US has no justification for bringing war to that nation.
• The Iraq War was illegal.  You see, under the constitution, Congress has to declare war in order for the President to send troops anywhere.  So the very act of a soldier stepping foot on a sovereign nation for the purposes of war was unconstitutional and illegal.  Justice demands the lives of everyone who orchestrated and carried out this war.  Murder is punishable by death after all.
• What is happening right now is the natural consequence of what happens when you don’t properly colonize a nation and fail to understand the origins of civilization.  Some of the most misguided fools are in power right now and have the most influence in the world right now.  They are ideologues who believe that civilization is created through democracy and corporatism, failing to see that those very things are bringing down Western civilization.
• The ISIS invaders, who were originally referred to as an extension of Al-Qaeda, are supported and funded by the United States government.  They came out of Syria.  The Syrian government managed to maintain their hold on their country in spite of US support of the rebels.  As far as I can tell, the ISIS troops are not Syrian military, but Syrian rebels, probably looking to escape Syrian justice.  Ergo, ISIS is composed of US-backed Syrian rebels.
• The Iraqi government was already Islam-based.  If anything, the ISIS movement promises a more “pure” version of the government they already have.  They will fail to live up to that once they do take power, but the point is they are doing exactly what the Taliban did in Afghanistan.  They are promising a Muslim Utopia.  And Utopias do not exist and never will.
• Don’t worry about oil.  To date, I don’t believe that Iraqi oil has made its way to the US, given the skyrocketing prices.  What is probably happening is corporate interests are threatening to raise prices in the face of losing what oil fields they do own.  In any case, there are no oil interests for the US to protect because the oil doesn’t belong to the US or anyone outside of Iraq.  And if ISIS takes over, they will have to trade with the US because human greed often trump religious fanaticism.

I honestly don’t care about the outcome.  And normally I would be outraged over the persecuted Christians there, but I’m disgusted with them as well.  Increasingly it is becoming obvious that Christians will need to beat the plowshares into swords and fight against the ever-expanding wickedness in the world today.

If ISIS wins, what is the worst thing that will happen?  It will be a symbolic victory at best.  Iraq is a broken country right now.  The only reason that the USGov cares about this is because it makes them look back.  And making the USGov look bad is usually lethal.

Iran Hype

Top headline of the day is that President Obama has relaxed sanctions on Iran.  Secretly.

I’m not all up I in arms about it because, quite honestly, I don’t believe Iran is a threat to the world.  Or the Middle East.  In fact, I think it is only a threat to women who are raped in that nation.  And while I do not condone the stoning of women because they have been forcibly violated, at the same time my own country has its share of problems for me to give two shits about another one.

The problem with the anti-Iran sentiment we see in Israel and within the Zionist elements in the United States is that they have unrealistic and irrational opinions when it comes to Iran.  Iran has demonstrated considerable restraint in the face of the United States trying to provoke them into attacking US military.

The USGov is the aggressor.  USGov navel ships have violated sovereign Iranian waters.  USGov sanctions are acts of war.  The USGov has staged an attempted assassination on a Saudi ambassador to the USGov.

There have been other things.  And through it all, the Iranian government has kept from bombing civilian targets in the United States.

Israel, on the other hand, has been known to destroy USGov navel ships in the past.  Benjamin Netanyahu has been spouting nonsense about a nuclear Iran since the early 1990s, much like Al Gore has been warning us about global warming being eminent in 10 years for over 20 years now.  And yet, I have yet to see verifiable proof that Iran is going nuclear.

I don’t trust the USGov to verify it for me either.  They have been caught lying about such things in the past (see Iraq).

So while this is a step in the right direction for foreign policy, I question it because I am wondering if the sanctions being removed came at a cost to Iran.  More than likely, President Obama got a good deal out of it.

Because when you’re the head of the world’s largest military force and have the authority to use it without popular support, you can extort any nation out of any business interest.

Libertarians and the Open Borders Fallacy

Libertarians, in general, have a problem when it comes to their advocacy of open borders. Often times, I think that most libertarians believe economics to be the only legitimate form of science and their irrational advocacy of open borders (and free trade) highlights this.

To start, libertarians are staunch defenders of property rights. This is all well and good, except they forget that any government body has property as well. While the anarchist wing will suggest that the State is illegitimate (I mostly agree), they forget that any immigration reform where open borders is made a policy by a State entity will not further the cause of liberty.

This is largely because the immigrants come from countries with different values and different perspectives on the role of government in our lives. Latin America especially has long histories of dictatorships and corrupt democracies that make even our current state of affairs look tame in comparison. To top that off, many of them do not share the same values of liberty and freedom that libertarians believe and this is only further exasperated by the fact that they do not speak English naturally.

The fact that immigrants won't have the same values on liberty and freedom will also serve as a greater frustration when you consider that they or their children will be allowed to vote. This has happened in the past. When German immigrants came to the United States in the 1800s, the idea of government being essential to a child's education and in enforcing morality became much more rampant, for example.

Another problem is that they make the mistake of calling borders "imaginary lines" created by government. Really? So the property line for your land is an imaginary line as well? What you need to understand is that all property that is labeled as "public property" is really just government property. In other words, it is property that is owned by the State and that they are the ones who manage it. And in a representative democracy such as ours, the collective will of the people should dictate how that property is managed. As such, creating an open borders situation is really like having an open property line on your own yard.

The truth is, open borders is not a good policy to advocate right now, especially if your ultimate goal is the elimination or downsizing of government. This is because if the such a thing were to happen, then open borders happens naturally. As it stands right now, between the labor regulations and the welfare state, having immigrants pouring into our country is suicidal and does not spread liberty, but constricts it.

The Constitution Goes Out of Style

It looks like the principles of the United States Constitution, and thus the principles of liberty and limited government, are now considered to be taboo in the newly emerging governments of the world:

In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

When I read this I was reminded of the Canadian television show Kevin Spencer in a scene where Kevin’s father, Percy, confronts a border guard at the US-Canadian border.  When the border guard gives reverence to the US Constitution in order to justify his search of contraband, Percy retorts, “So what?  It’s just a fucking piece of paper.  It’s not like you guys actually follow it.”   Percy Spencer, by the way, was a character who embodied everything that could go wrong with a person, being perpetually on welfare when he wasn’t in prison, constantly smoking and drinking, and always cheating on his wife whenever he could.  And let’s not forget about his IQ, which was probably in the legal range for being retarded.  So if a legally retarded moocher from Canada can grasp this fundamental truth, so can you.

Indeed, that is the attitude of the entire Federal government and the entire spectrum of the political groups, from the Left to the Right.  They revere the United States Constitution but only the parts they like.  When it comes to limiting government in ways in which they do not like, often times people will flat out ignore it.  And there are always politicians who have no problem ignoring the US Constitution in order to meet the demand of the dumb masses.

So what does the rest of the world have to do with the fact that nobody here adheres the the constitutional principles of limited government?  Well, for starters, if we are supposed to be an example of freedom and representative democracy, we’re doing a bad job.  We’re like all those wonderful sports athletes who are caught cheating on their wives.  We constantly lecture the rest of the world on the principles of liberty and freedom but when they come through our airports, they are groped by thugs in uniform, they are constantly monitored by law enforcement via GPS devices and data stream monitoring, and they see that we love bombing the ever-loving Hell out of foreign nations for no real good reason.

What I found laughable about that article is their explanation of why this is occurring:

There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.

In an interview, Professor Law identified a central reason for the trend: the availability of newer, sexier and more powerful operating systems in the constitutional marketplace. “Nobody wants to copy Windows 3.1,” he said.

In a television interview during a visit to Egypt last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court seemed to agree. “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” she said. She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights.

The rights guaranteed by the American Constitution are parsimonious by international standards, and they are frozen in amber. As Sanford Levinson wrote in 2006 in “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” “the U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today.” (Yugoslavia used to hold that title, but Yugoslavia did not work out.)

So let me get this straight.  Because our Founding Fathers knew that a strong central government was essentially tyranny and therefore limited the potential for it to be modified (unless the leaders just ignore it), they made sure it was incredibly difficult to change it.

There is a reason that a system of government and the laws it enforces should be static: because if you have limited government, you have no need to change how things are done.  The whole reason for the disdain for the static nature of the Constitution has to do with the fact that the Statists, who presume to be our gods, want to be able to control every aspect of our life.  And in order to do that, you need a government that can change its directives and objectives on a whim.

The entire static nature of the Constitution speaks to its timeless support of basic liberty and human rights.  And while something more malleable may work well in other nations, I feel nothing but disdain for the people who support that in our nation.

Ultimately though, I firmly believe that the Constitution is out of style because of our lack of adherence to it and our own status as the great bully of the world, not because the Constitution is not a living, breathing document.

I Have Seen the Enemy and, Well, You Know

So apparently some Iranian scientist was assassinated by a couple of motorcyclists using a bomb with a magnet and attaching to the scientist’s car.  The Iranian scientist was working on Iran’s nuclear program, although I am not sure as to what level of influence he had in the program, and I guess that he was dangerous enough to warrant his death.

I have little doubt that the United States, Israel, and possibly Saudi Arabia had their hand in this.  Israel fears Iran with a nuclear bomb.  At least that is probably what the middle managers of the Israeli government fear.  And their fears are not without merit as there is plenty of Iranian propaganda out there where Jews are portrayed in less than appealing light.  The United States’ reason for fear stems from the 9/11 attacks and the prospect of Iran nuking a whole city.  And the Saudis may want retribution for the alleged assassination plot against their ambassador.

My advice to Iran: do nothing except prosecute the murderers under your laws.  The United States government is Hell-bent on starting a war with Iran, but they need justification.  After all, if a country with superior firepower attacks another nation without cause is usually seen as an Empire and the United States government often likes to take on hypocritical positions in their foreign policy.  They do not want to start the war, but they also want to go to war.  So they need justification.

As an American, I am appalled by my government’s actions, especially in light of the fact that we are supposed to be representing the will of the people.  But the will of the people can be manipulated by fear.  We fear a nuclear Iran, much like how Iran fears being invaded by a superpower.  However, two-thirds of the American people believe the Iraq invasion was a mistake.  Given that this is the case, there is no point in engaging in yet another war with another Muslim country, especially when we are the ones agitating them.

The murder of this scientist is nothing more than an outright act of terrorism, albeit a little sexier and cooler than what those cave dwellers came up with.  This whole incident does seem to be right out of an action movie.

In any case, I am sick and tired of my government taking the moral high ground while at the same time engaging in the very things they claim to despise.  Their mouthpieces in the media will justify it by using confusing “logic” to point out how it is different than what our enemies do.

I want to ask all the warmongers out there something: did Iran seek out alliances with North Korea, Columbia, and seek out nuclear capabilities before or after George W. Bush labeled as part of the Axis of Evil?

If a powerful nation with enough firepower to level all of your cities and eradicate your very existence places you in the category of “Axis of Evil”, do you lay back and accept the inevitable consequences of your destruction or do you build up military firepower quickly in order to either deter or be prepared for the coming attack?

Iran is acting in the same way in which any nation would act: it is seeking its own self-preservation in the face of a stronger enemy.  They may have had surrogate organizations attacking US troops in Iraq, but this may have been more the actions of a nation seeking to overtake a neighboring country that has a power vacuum, not the actions of a group of fanatics who seek a holy war with us.  Granted, it was not acceptable behavior, but let’s be honest about it rather than hype it up.

I am not denying that there is a threat from fanatical Muslim sects.  I do believe that there are plenty of fanatics out there who seek harm.  But I fail to see how engaging in a war with Iran will resolve the situation, especially since we have apparently won the Iraq War, left there, and still have to take our damn shoes off in the airport.

War does not solve the problem, unless you completely eliminate your opposition down the last household pet.  And I doubt that the majority of people in my country are willing to go through with complete genocide.  War also does not hurt the very people we are looking to hurt either.  Instead, the common man, who generally wants to live a life without strife and conflict, is the one who gets hurt.  From the war widow to the orphan whose parents didn’t get out of the house in time, war only brings pain and misery.  That is why we should not enter into war with them so readily.

And finally, to all those neoconservatives and mainstream conservatives who agree with them on Iran: if Obama is such a liar and a deceiver, why would he stop lying when it comes to Iran?

The Facts in the Case of the Late Anwar al-Awlaki

On the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki by the United States Government:

• The policy of assassination against United States citizens was set up by a communist President.
• The United States Constitution grants citizens the right of due process which could be null and void in a warzone.
• Syria is not a warzone of the United States as we have not declared war on Syria.
• Anwar al-Awlaki is alleged to have been organizing terrorist attacks on the United States.  This information was based solely on the intelligence of the CIA, which has been wrong so many times in the past.
• Anwar al-Awlaki’s only supposed crime, besides being an anti-American bigot, was motivating the Fort Hood Shooter.  However, I have not seen any evidence that he personally told the Fort Hood shooter to do what he did, merely provided anti-American sentiment.
• Anwar al-Awlaki was murdered by a Predator drone.
• The drone apparently recognized him via facial recognition software.  What may be amusing is if al-Awlaki shows up alive later as facial recognition software is less accurate than actual eye-witness identification.  There is no software that is superior to good human common sense.  Just be aware that if you are traveling abroad and look similar to a wanted person on the government’s hit list, then you are going to be targeted and possibly killed.  Wrong place, wrong time I guess.
• Our government now has secret prisons, authorized torture, and execution without due process of American citizens.  Tyrants in other countries have done less.
• Anwar al-Awlaki was qualified to run for President as he was a natural born citizen.  Meanwhile, the man who ordered him killed has a questionable background.

And people wonder why I am anti-government…

The Ignorant (or Revisionist?) Bill O’Reilly

Bill O’Reilly demonstrates a deliberate attempt to rewrite history:

Ignorance is Strength

So it looks like Bill O’Reilly is a moron when it comes to recent history or he is deliberately trying to make us look good.  While I do not think that the 9/11 attacks were justified, the Federal government does not have its hands clean when it comes to foreign policy.  The fact is, we were occupying Muslim nations before the Iraq or Afghanistan invasions and we were routinely flying over Iraq as part of the UN Resolutions after the first Gulf War.  The various trade embargoes imposed on Iraq meant that children were not able to receive medical treatments that would have saved their lives (on a side note, trade embargoes only affect the citizens and strengthen the dictators as it gives them something to rally around).  And let us not forget the time when President Bill Clinton bombed Iraq to distract the public of his ongoing oval office blowjob scandal.

And he wonders why Ron Paul will not go on his show….

On Entangling Alliances, Israel, the Constitution, and Treaties

I’ve never given it much thought but it turns out that the nation of Israel is not an official ally of the United States.  I suppose I just assumed that they were our ally and that we had signed a treaty with them at some point in the past.  Apparently, that was a bad assumption on my part.

What do I mean by “official ally”?  Simple: we have never formalized our alliance with Israel via some kind of treaty that was signed by the President and approved by the Senate as outlined in the United States Constitution.

Sadly, we do have an ally in Turkey, who is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance.  Now, I am no expert of the NATO charter, but right now there seems to be a leader in Turkey who could initiate hostile actions against Israel.  While I do not think he will, since I believe that both diplomatic pressure from the pro-Israel State Department and threats of nuclear retaliation from Israel herself will deter him, this does perfectly describe the whole notion of entangling alliances.

If you ask me, I think we have too many military alliances in that we should have no military alliances with any foreign nation.  In fact, we should probably no economic alliances either and just permit companies to trade with foreign nations and companies as they see fit without our interference.  If foreign governments prevent it, let them do it.  It is their right as a sovereign nation, after all.

Since we have no official alliance with Israel, I am beginning to seriously question our relationship with Israel.  Given that they have enough firepower to wipe out all their enemies, should a serious war come about, I do not think it is wise for us to get involved in their conflicts anymore.  I believe we should instead become more neutral in their conflicts and merely uphold all parties involved to any agreements that are currently in effect.

On a side note, I do not believe that any treaties the United States government has signed should override any part of the United States Constitution.  While there is a section that states that the Constitution is the law of the land along with any treaties, I believe that it even trumps any treaty agreements.  But should go without saying among even most conservative warmongers.

In any case, I believe it high time we took a long, hard look at our foreign policies we have instituted and upheld over the past century and consider what we have gained.  From my perspective, we have only gained war heroes and world-wide hatred.

Offensive Military Action and the Constitution

The Constitution of the United States indicates that only Congress can declare wars and issue letters of Marque and Reprisal.  In effect, this means that the power to initiate offensive campaigns must be approved by Congress in a formal vote.  This is why I believe that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional because it grants the President the ability to initiate offensive campaigns and then go to Congress to ask for additional funding.  In effect, it absolves Congress of the crucial responsibility of sending soldiers into conflict, where many could die, and instead places it on the President.  It also grants the President way too much power to commit military forces to areas that we may not otherwise wish to go.

The problem is, most conservatives these days deny that interpretation of the Constitution and, in effect, deny the writings and intentions of the Founding Fathers who they so revere as saints.  It sickens me when I hear about conservative pundits wishing to start another war with Iran all because they might develop a nuclear weapon.  In other words, they want to send our troops into an even more hostile land than Iraq or Afghanistan all because Iran may launch a nuclear weapon on Israel.  They forget that Israel could easily launch its own series of nuclear weapons and completely wipe out all their enemies in the Middle East.

Today I heard a new argument for going to war with Iran, a war that we cannot afford and probably will not have a stated objective to finish like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.  The argument was that because we have signed a treaty with Israel saying we will defend them from foreign aggression, then we must go to war with Iran.

Those of you who are intelligent know that this argument is utter garbage, but for those of you who are conservative or just a pro-war Statist (which right now includes all the Democrat(ick) leaders and their myrmidons), I will explain why.  The reason is simple: the Constitution requires Congress to declare war.  Even if we had a defensive treaty with another nation, we could not initiate offensive military actions against another nation who was threatening our ally without a Congressional declaration of war.

Let us keep in mind that allowing one man the authority to initiate war against foreign nations without Congressional approval is more dangerous than most conservatives realize.  To say that it is perfectly OK for the President to do such a thing means you support Obama’s actions in Libya and the countless innocent people he has killed by his massive bombing campaign there.  Not only that, but he snubbed Congress by ignoring their vote that required him to leave.  Of course, Congress also voted to continue the funding of the bombing campaign but the fact remains is that if the President could do that without any consequence to his office or his policies from within our government, it means he is a virtual dictator.

And that dictatorship he holds is in place largely because of the pro-war conservatives who have dominated the right-wing in the Republican party over the past several decades.  Thanks a lot assholes.

Motives

Often times, the excuse made for when foreign Muslim terrorist organizations attack the United States is one of envy.  Conservatives tend to argue that because they hate our freedom and prosperity, they are seeking to destroy us.

That explanation has always bothered me.  I understand the implications of envy and how potent it can be, but envy is usually related to passion.  What the terrorists have done requires much organization, coordination, and planning, all of which would be circumvented if all of it was done on impulse.

Certainly, envy could be a core part of the problem.  But it seems to me that there is a much larger reason for doing so.  And certainly not everyone within a terrorist organization is there because of envy.

When Ron Paul states that the 9/11 attacks were because of the United States occupations in the Middle East, he does so because he does not believe that such matters all that simple.  Naturally, conservatives jump on him by claiming he is blaming the United States for the 9/11 attacks.  But they offer little to no real explanation for how 19 people would be willing to crash planes into buildings other than hating us for our freedom and prosperity.

The fact is the United States has been heavily involved in the affairs of other nations for well over a century now.  Ever since the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,  progressive-minded leaders have always worked toward getting us involved in things that do not concern us.

But is the world better off these days compared to when we began all of this?  We have spend the last century propping up dictators who proceed to use the weapons and money to enrich themselves and oppress their citizens.  When confronted with this, many warmongering sycophants respond by stating that we need these grade-A assholes around in order to handle this grade-A asshole over there.

Granted, this does not happen often, but a radicalized Iran, for example, is largely the fault of the United States’ own misguided policies in setting up the Shah.  Now, I will not say that had we not intervened in Iran, they would be an ally or would not be seeking nuclear weapons.  We cannot possibly know what would have happened had things been different.  Perhaps the same events would have played out with different faces and names.

But it would have been their choice and not ours.  We constantly talk of freedom and boost about our accomplishments, which we have good reason to do so, but we deny the opportunity of freedom to others around rest of the world.

Come to think of it, this nation is probably one of the largest tyrannical nations these days anyway.  The government at all levels presumes to know what is best for people like some poor man’s Dune novel rejecting the God-like notion of freedom to choose.

Which brings me back to my original quandary.  I do not believe that these people view us with any envy but with an ardent fanaticism to their religion and an annoyance.  Terrorism is usually employed against an overwhelming force in order to demoralize an opponent.  It is a kind of guerilla warfare technique.  The Viet Cong successfully employed it during the Vietnam Conflict in order to get the United States to leave (with no small help from Walter Cronkite).

Perhaps they were tired of seeing intelligence networks and special forces troops being used to kill, maim, and destroy their families and friends.  God only knows how many secret operations have gone on in foreign lands in the name of the United States.

In any case, I really do not know the motivations behind these various organizations.  Perhaps to claim that we do shows just how arrogant as a nation we are.

I suppose the real reason I support Ron Paul’s foreign policy is not because I believe we are to blame or because of our various military occupations, but that we simply cannot afford them.  And frankly, I am tired of trying to fix the world.

Foreign Policy is Domestic Policy

Another thing that bothers me about conservatives in general: their failure to see the link between foreign policy and domestic policy.  This usually becomes apparent when you see what they say about Ron Paul.  In general, conservatives agree with Ron Paul 90% of the time (to paraphrase prominent conservative Sean Hannity).  But they would rather vote for someone with whom they agree with 75% of the time, like Mitt Romney, because apparently there is still fear rather than reason being the primary driving force in foreign policy.

The fact is, the more wars and overseas conflicts we engage in, the more enemies we will create and the more freedoms we will lose here at home.  The fact is, there were no Al-Qaeda militants in Iraq nor was Saddam Hussein willing to sell weapons to them.  But they were there after we toppled Saddam’s regime.  And of course Saddam’s loyalists forces were going to work with them because they needed the manpower.  It was the whole enemy of my enemy is my friend scenario.

Yes, I am aware that Iraqi agents met with Al-Qaeda in Europe at one point, but I have yet to see if any kind of mutual alliance came from it.  Since the United States and other NATO allies spend most of the 1990s monitoring Saddam, I am sure he was looking for people who could help get the monkey off his back.  Given that Al-Qaeda never joined up with them, it seems to me that Saddam probably considered them too dangerous to work with, until he lost his power.

Considering it has now been a decade of war on terrorism which has been waged on Afghanistan, Iraq, parts of Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and various other places, do you feel safer or freer from your government?  I feel like what used to be a minor annoyance is now a major pain in my rear when it comes to the progress of government encroachment.  Have you noticed how the police and various non-law enforcement agencies have gotten more militant?

Last year, our military budget was around $689 Billion.  The only other program that exceeds this is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Combined, the cost of those four programs is 2.1 Trillion, which is about what the Federal government gets in tax revenue, considering the economic depression.  This entirely excludes the domestic law enforcement and homeland security budgets, as well as the foreign aide and State Department expenses, such as elaborate embassies we build in various third-world nations.  All in all, it is quite clear that everything needs to be cut, that we cannot just simply exclude military and entitlement spending from our budgets.

The fact is, the United States’ domestic agenda is tied directly with our foreign agenda.  While you can separate these issues out for classification sake, they are intricately linked together.  We have lost our ability to board an airplane in the country without showing off our genitals to some stranger in a back room and having our luggage searched, where TSA agents have been known to steal from it in the past (Neal Boortz, a solid supporter of the War on Terror, has had stuff stolen in this way).  I personally refuse to use an airplane, unless I absolutely have to, which is sad because I was planning a cruise with my wife around Christmas.  Now, instead of boarding a plane and going south, we will have to drive or take a bus to Baltimore and board one there.

On top of that, even non-law enforcement agencies have started to crack down on things.  The Department of Education conducted a SWAT raid for a person who was delinquent on her student loan.  ICE has been shutting down websites for copyright infringements, which has nothing to do with immigration or customs enforcement.  And the IRS had ordered a whole lot of automatic shotguns for some reason.  Meanwhile, Janet “Shoulder-Pads” Napolitano has decided to classify war veterans and Ron Paul supporters as domestic terrorists.  The Federal court system has upheld many cases where police have entered people’s residences without a warrant.  Do not look to the court system to protect you from the government is the lesson here.  I am sure I am just scratching the surface here, of course.

How does this all link to our foreign policy?  It is simple: the culture of war is one that spills out everywhere.  In war, you have an enemy who you must target and take out quickly.  What we have domestically is a group of government technocrats who view civilians as either part of the system, sheep to be managed, or dangerous enemies to be squashed.  They do not consider themselves to be servants but masters and anyone who defies them will be punished.  The government culture is the us versus them culture and they practically brag about it all the time.

Because of the many years of warfare mentality, the government no longer views us as people to serve but people to control and direct.  I know conservatives will just blame this on Left-wing policies, but it was Left-wing policies of warfare which got us this way (see Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, and LBJ’s war policies).  In fact, one of the best things the Left ever did was enter us into a state of constant war.  The Republicans have just recently been all too willing to carry on since 1955.

I want true freedom from government, but it will not happen so long as the United States government’s insane foreign policies are left in place.  If conservatives had any sense, they would follow suit.  Fortunately, given the Ames poll and various other things I have seen, it looks like many conservatives are waking up to this simple truth.

Jeffrey Lord Gives Typical Criticism of Ron Paul

So I am listening to Jeffrey Lord on Jerry Doyle’s show today.  The interview focused on his latest article about how Ron Paul is a liberal because of his non-interventionist foreign policy stance.  I’ve read over the article and while I am not going to quote it here, because it is long and I have already linked to it, I want to point out some things about it that were predictable from Ron Paul opponents:

• Almost predictably, Mr. Lord trots out the anti-Semitism argument.  If you oppose bombing foreign Muslim children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, and Somalia, you must hate the Jews.  Never mind that none of these bombings are constitutional considering they are not about national defense and no official declaration of war has been declared.  I have yet to hear Ron Paul declare that it is the Jews who are behind United States foreign policy.  I will acknowledge that some of his supporters are openly racist, but by and large the non-interventionist stance has nothing to do with race and more to do with the constitutional limitations of foreign policy.
• Jeffrey Lord does his best to cite liberal Republicans who share the same views as Ron Paul does with regards to not intervening in World War I and World War II.  While there is a lot to get into with regards to both, let me just turn Mr. Lord’s logic on his face.  If Ron Paul’s stance on foreign policy matches that of liberal Republicans who opposed those wars, then the conservatives of today are more like the progressive liberal Democrats of last century such as Woodrow Wilson, who entered World War I to spread democracy to Germany, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Both Presidents who presided over these wars were extremely Left-wing which would make modern “conservatives” like George Bush more akin to progressive liberals than conservatives.
• Most of what he bases his accusations on is based on people who have supported Ron Paul rather than Ron Paul himself.  Granted, there are many anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, and libertarians who make up Ron Paul’s support.  Frankly, I am glad to see that these Americans have a voice in one of the major parties rather than being relegated to some no name third party.  And I thought George W. Bush was trying to create a big tent?  I guess the far Right has to use the back door and different water fountains in that tent.
• Mr. Lord cites the Monroe Doctrine as an example of the United States’ history of intervention in foreign policy and as a founding father.  I do not recall James Monroe as being a prominent member of the Founding Fathers and from what I understand, the Monroe Doctrine was not used to interfere militarily in the affairs of Central and South America until progressive Republican President Teddy Roosevelt.  On a side note, read up on Teddy Roosevelt’s death and the tragedy that befall this warmonger’s idealism.  In any case, the United States was, by and large, not intervening until the progressive movement took hold in the ranks of power.
• Mr. Lord cites Alexander Hamilton and his role in the creation of the first central bank as an example of a Founding Father who Ron Paul overlooks.  Too bad he forgot that most other Founding Fathers overlooked him as well since Hamilton was in favor of establishing a monarchy here in the United States our the post-colonial, pre-Constitution nation.  Hamilton was nothing short of a Statist but he was trusted as Treasury Secretary largely because he was good at financial matters.  Keep in mind also that the United States existed and prospered without a central bank for over eighty years, that the Federal Reserve was established to stop nasty depressions, and that it oversaw the Great Depression.  It is foolish to support the Federal Reserve given that more and more Americans are looking into it and questioning the value of it.
• Finally, Mr. Lord runs through a list of conservatives who Ron Paul supporters have labeled as not conservative.  Again, though, Ron Paul himself has merely taken support from people who have otherwise not had a voice in any of the major parties for several decades now, so of course you are going to get some unconventional views.  Besides, if you trace the conservative movement before 1955, it was largely a non-interventionist movement.  It was William F. Buckley, Jr. and Brent Bozell, Jr. who hijacked it and made into the warmongering movement it is today.

I am not going to apologize for Ron Paul.  I have my own disagreements with him, mainly his immigration views and his earmarking of President Obama’s stimulus spending.  However, I find that I agree with him more often than not and that his foreign policy tends to represent mutual respect and courtesy for other nations while at the same time allowing for defense against aggression.  When you consider that Israel has 300 nuclear bombs and that if Iran even sneezed fallout in their direction there would be massive repercussions, then you can better understand by Congressman Paul was less concerned with Iran getting a nuclear weapon.  By and large, Iran has never been an aggressive nation and most of its actions have been defensive actions, although on a much lower scale than our “defensive” actions.

The fact is, a President who can go to war without Congressional approval is, fundamentally, a dictator.  If you can engage in military action with impunity and without limitation, then you have the perfect recipe for a thug.  Look at what President Obama did with Libya.  Congress told him to stop and he ignored them.  And all the while, conservative fools like Mark Levin were scrambling to justify it because they know they would painted as hypocrites or partisan hacks if they opposed it.

In any case, Jeffrey Lord has done well to remind me as to why I do not consider myself conservative anymore and has reinforced why I have no political label.  I have always be wary of many of the conservative arguments, largely because many of them are emotion-driven like their liberal opponents, and when I brought to light many of the contradictions, I was hit with insults instead of further instruction as to where I was wrong.  I support Ron Paul because he has been consistent throughout much of his political career and because he shows the most respect for the Constitution, a tired, old piece of paper when it comes to liberals and domestic policy as well as conservatives when it comes to foreign policy.

Remember the Veterans and Their Horrible Masters

Today was Veteran’s Day or a day where I get to drive in to work on the highways without feeling like I was trapped in a parking lot.  Seriously, all the Federal workers had off so I got to drive on the interstate and not have to deal with heavy traffic.  And so, I salute our veterans for giving me a chance to get to work in less than half an hour.

On the other hand, I had to suffer through the whole military worship throughout the day as I read my usual blogs and listened to my usual radio shows.  Naturally being a soldier is a hard job and anyone who doesn’t come back from combat with severe mental issues is probably a sociopath and should be watched carefully.  But at the same time, I feel like we’re abusing our soldiers in various foreign conflicts that are of no benefit to the United States.  Moreover, the worship I keep on hearing only seems to reinforce my anger toward our government leaders.

The sad fact is that the past 60 years of foreign wars have not been constitutional wars at all.  Thousands of soldiers have lost their lives and many more have been permanently mutilated for unconstitutional foreign conflicts.  It really sickens when people don’t realize that and continue to insist that their sacrifice wasn’t in vain.

I feel like I’m one of the few people who say that they are being wasted.  We are losing good people who would otherwise be a powerful asset for this nation all because Congress can’t get off its ass and vote for an official declaration of war.  It is unfortunate that Congress continues to blatantly ignore the Constitution in these matters and what’s more, most people seem to not notice.

Now we have Senator Lindsay Graham, the gay neocon, proposing a war with Iran.  The sad fact is that President Obama may very go along with it because every great Democrat President has started a war of some kind.  And it will take a true liberty-minded Republican to end it, like so many foreign “wars” in the past.  It took Eisenhower to end the Korean after Truman started it at the behest of the UN and it took Nixon to stop Vietnam (mostly to get re-elected), after Johnson started it.  If the historical pattern holds true, we may see President Obama entering us into a war with Iran, more than likely to save himself in 2012.

Politicians are the worst kind of people to run anything.  And we eagerly allow them to send our boys off to wars that are basically illegal.  It really makes me sick when I think about the wasted lives.

Meanwhile the military-industrial complex trudges on…

Wilson’s Legacy: Democracy Or Death

Back in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson got our nation involved in the Great War.  Of course, we call it World War I nowadays thanks the ambitions of one Adolf Hitler, but I like the Great War better.  Mostly because it wasn’t the world that was at war then.  It was mostly Europe and Western Asia.  Most other areas had little to nothing to do with a war between the greater superpowers of the time.

Back to Woodrow Wilson.  He was a big time progressive in his day.  He bought the whole progressive dream of some future Utopia and he sought to implement as much of it as he could.  Under his watch, the four Progressive amendments were passed and the Federal Reserve was established.  You could say he was a precursor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, but I don’t think he ever used his power in office to force things on the American people.  He did, however, facilitate many changes that have lasted to this day.

His biggest contribution that was later picked up by his successors was the call for spreading democracy across the globe.  It was Woodrow Wilson who started this notion of the United States spreading our democracy to the rest of the world and it was used as an excuse to send young overseas to fight in a war we had no business being in.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

This is the pattern that the United States has played out in one form or another for the better part of the 20th century.  We have spent countless trillions of dollars in foreign wars that yield little to no benefit for our nation and furthermore empower a military-industry complex that Eisenhower warned us about.  When a retired general and excellent statesman tells us, after serving eight years as a successful President, that our country is getting too militant for its own good, you’d think people would listen to him.

Maybe he was a little too late for the Red Scare had gripped our nation by that point with communists seeking to actively conquer our nation (yes, that was their goal, despite what Tom Brokaw may tell you).  But the communists were never our worst enemy.  They thrived only as long as we had a large government in some form or another.  It’s really hard to spy on a nation that has little to no real government to spy on.  Then again, it’s much easier to spy when everyone and their mama can get top secret clearance.

So we’ve spent almost a century engaging in wars and skirmishes designed specifically to bring about democracy in every country we can.  But the problem is that we do so with the arrogance in believing that democracy brings wisdom and enlightenment.  In truth, our freedom was an effect, not a cause, of a deep and fundamental understanding of human nature and the rule of law.  It stemmed from the idea that man was not the sharpest tool in the shed at times and that a few cannot lead the many in the manner that we’d all like.  This is a standard that has only been brought about in Western civilization, as most of the world has lived in some form of barbarism or another.  Sure the buildings may get fancy but that never did stop the human sacrifices.

And so we continue on, always certain that bringing about democracy somehow makes men bring about freedom in their own lives.  And yet people continue to vote for the tyrants.  In Palestine, they voted for Hamas and we’re all surprised by this outcome?  Democracy has hardly made the world safe, in fact I would dare say that it has made things much worse for everyone because now every conflict, every petty fight has come to the forefront in the political arena and the exchange is not always civil.

Even now, our own interpretations of democracy have landed us with more trouble than it’s worth.  With too many people focused on social issues, issues that used to be private family matters that were dealt with internally, they now spill out into the public arena.  It’s like the family has been disemboweled for everyone to see the dirty shit they’re trying to pass out.

To me, all democracy seems to have done is allow the stupid to have a voice.  You know that person you hate talking to?  Well now they vote as well and I’m pretty sure they won’t be voting for freedom and liberty.  Perhaps it’s time we find a new way, a way that respects the individual and recognizes that the individual is sovereign, not the government.