Korea shows all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy.

After World War II, the United States and its allies — against the wishes of most Koreans — divided the country at the 38th parallel. After North Korea invaded the South in 1950, Harry Truman intervened with U.S. combat troops in a “police action.” The result was the senseless death of more than 36,000 American soldiers for Truman’s foolish policies, for the United Nations, for the failed diplomacy of World War II, and for the division of Korea in the same place it was divided before the war started. Since that time, a day has not gone by when the United States has not had thousands of troops stationed in South Korea, some no doubt the grandchildren of the soldiers who fought in the Korean War. There are at least 25,000 U.S. soldiers currently in Korea. There are also more than 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan.

There was no U.S. declaration of war against North Korea. On five different occasions, the United States has declared war on a total of eleven other countries: Great Britain in 1812 (the War of 1812), Mexico in 1848 (the Mexican War), Spain in 1898 (the Spanish-American War), Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1917 (World War I), Japan, Germany, and Italy in 1941 (World War II), and Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania in 1942 (World War II).

Only a few Republicans in Congress dared to object to Truman’s clearly unconstitutional intervention in Korea. Most notable was Sen. Robert Taft, who maintained, “The president is usurping his powers as commander in chief. There is no legal authority for what he has done. If the president can intervene in Korea without congressional approval, he can go to war in Malaya or Indonesia or Iran or South America.” The Korean intervention set a terrible precedent, for no declaration of war has ever been issued since, even though the United States has been involved in many military conflicts since then, some of them being major wars, such as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The personal army

But not only was there no declaration of war in Korea, there was not even a congressional authorization to use force. Such a resolution has been issued eight times in U.S. history: under Eisenhower in 1955 and 1957 to defend Formosa and check Soviet expansionism in the Middle East; twice under Kennedy in 1962 in response to the threat of Cuban communism and the crisis in Berlin; the infamous 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution under Johnson; under Bush the elder in 1991 when he ordered the first U.S. invasion of Iraq; and twice under Bush the younger for launching the Afghanistan war in 2001 and the Iraq war in 2002. The lack of any congressional authorization for the Korean conflict shows that U.S. foreign policy is really at the whim of whoever is the president. Americans are expected to support or demonize a country at the word of the president.

The lack of any congressional input in the decision to go to war in Korea signals the beginning of the U.S. military as merely the president’s personal army, as Jacob Hornberger has pointed out:

Thus, as a practical matter the troops serve not as a defender of our freedoms but instead simply as a loyal and obedient personal army of the president, ready and prepared to serve him and obey his commands. It is an army that stands ready to obey the president’s orders to deploy to any country in the world for any reason he deems fit and attack, kill, and maim any “terrorist” who dares to resist the U.S. invasion of his own country. It is also an army that stands ready to obey the president’s orders to take into custody any American whom the commander in chief deems a “terrorist” and to punish him accordingly.

The misuse of the military since the Korean War is so prevalent and wide-ranging that the majority of what the military now does has nothing to do with the defense of this country and everything to do with intervening in foreign countries. The U.S. military performs most of its duties outside the United States providing disaster relief, dispensing humanitarian aid, supplying peacekeepers, enforcing UN resolutions, nation-building, spreading “goodwill,” launching preemptive strikes, establishing democracy, changing regimes, assassinating people, training armies, rebuilding infrastructure, reviving public services, “opening markets,” maintaining no-fly zones, occupying countries, and, of course, fighting foreign wars.

The U.S. military should be engaged exclusively in defending the United States, not defending other countries, and certainly not attacking, invading, or occupying them. Using the military for any purpose other than the actual defense of the United States perverts the purpose of the military.

The misuse of the military results in needless deaths of U.S. soldiers. The most unnecessary job in the world is that of the Casualty Assistance Calls Officer, who must go knocking with a message that no military family wants to hear. In addition to the more than 36,000 soldiers lost in Korea, there are the more than 58,000 soldiers who lost their lives in Vietnam, and the more than 4,450 soldiers in Iraq and 1,750 in Afghanistan who paid the ultimate price fighting in those places. Every one of those deaths was unnecessary and preventable and can be charged to a reckless and meddling U.S. foreign policy.

Where the boys are

The continued U.S. military presence in South Korea with thousands of troops at 87 different sites (if you include golf courses) is but a small part of the U.S. global empire of troops and bases. According to the Department of Defense’s “Base Structure Report” for FY 2009, there are 716 U.S. military bases on foreign soil in 38 countries. Yet, according to the expert on this subject, the late Chalmers Johnson, that number is actually closer to 1,000 because “the official figures omit espionage bases, those located in war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and miscellaneous facilities in places considered too sensitive to discuss or which the Pentagon for its own reasons chooses to exclude — e.g., in Israel, Kosovo, or Jordan.” This same report lists the DOD’s physical assets as “more than 539,000 facilities (buildings, structures and linear structures) located on more than 5,570 sites, on approximately 29 million acres.”

But not only does the United States have thousands of troops in South Korea, Japan, Germany, and Italy decades after World War II and Korea, there are, according to the DOD report titled “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,” U.S. troops stationed in 147 countries and 11 territories in every corner of the globe. That means that U.S. troops have a presence in more than 75 percent of the world’s countries. All told, there are more than 300,000 U.S. troops in foreign countries — not counting the 50,000 troops in and around Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom or the 100,000 troops in and around Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Those numbers would be even higher were it not for the thousands of DOD contractors.

The United States is committed to the defense not only of South Korea, but of many other countries as well, thanks to various security alliances and bilateral agreements. That, in spite of the warnings of Washington and Jefferson to stand clear of permanent and entangling alliances.

The real issue about Korea, as Congressman Ron Paul recently explained, is that “the American taxpayer is still forced to pay for the U.S. military to defend a modern and wealthy South Korea.” According to the CIA, the economy of South Korea is 34 times larger than the centrally planned economy of its northern neighbor. South Korea has twice the population of North Korea. Per capita GDP in the South is 15 times what it is in the North. North Korea faces chronic shortages of food and fuel and its “industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts.” It makes no sense, financially or otherwise, for the United States to guarantee the defense of South Korea against a country where malnutrition and poverty are the rule rather than the exception.

Korea shows all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy: disregard for the Constitution, departure from the wisdom of the Founders, unaccountable presidential power, misuse of the military, a global empire of troops and bases, callous disregard for the lives of American soldiers, meddling in the affairs of other countries, and wasting billions of dollars taken from American taxpayers. U.S. foreign policy is hopelessly interventionist — no matter which party controls the Congress or the White House.

Originally posted at The Future of Freedom Foundation on January 18, 2012

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Korea Shows All That Is Wrong With U.S. Foreign Policy

Throughout the twentieth century, opponents of U.S. intervention in foreign wars were smeared as isolationists.

Conservative and Republican opponents of Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, although they may argue and fight among themselves, are all agreed on one thing: Ron Paul is an isolationist and espouses a dangerous foreign policy of isolationism.

Actor and conservative activist Chuck Norris insists that “Texas Representative Ron Paul’s bent toward being an isolationist who wants to bring home every one of our 572,000 troops abroad makes the anti-terror, pro-military hairs on the back of my neck stand.”

Speaking in South Carolina just before Christmas, Newt Gingrich “sharply criticized Mr. Paul for what he said were his isolationist views on foreign policy.”

While stumping in Iowa the week before the Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum “urged Republicans to carefully study Mr. Paul’s isolationist foreign policy views.”

Tune in to the leading conservative talk-show hosts or read the comments posted by their followers on right-wing websites and you will hear and see Ron Paul regularly described as an isolationist.

Okay, so what would an isolationist America look like? What if the United States really retreated from the world stage, avoided engagement with the rest of the world, and actually did isolate itself from every other country?

Under a real foreign policy of isolationism, the United States would refuse to participate in the Olympics, refuse to make treaties, refuse to issue visas, refuse to allow foreign goods to be imported, refuse to allow U.S. goods to be exported, refuse to allow foreign students to study at American universities, refuse to allow American students to study at foreign universities, refuse to allow foreign investment, refuse to extradite criminals, refuse to exchange diplomats, refuse to allow cultural exchanges, refuse to participate in disaster-relief efforts, refuse to allow travel abroad, refuse to engage in diplomacy, refuse to deliver mail to or receive mail from foreign countries, refuse to allow emigration, and refuse to allow immigration.

Under a real policy of isolationism, living in the United States would be about as bad as living in East Germany, North Korea, or Myanmar.

Is that the kind of America that Ron Paul envisions?

The last time Ron Paul ran for president, he made it perfectly clear that he espoused anything but isolationism:

Under a Paul administration, the United States would trade freely with any nation that seeks to engage with us. American citizens would be encouraged to visit other countries and interact with other peoples rather than be told by their own government that certain countries are off-limits to them.

American citizens would be free to spend their hard-earned money wherever they wish across the globe, not told that certain countries are under embargo and thus off limits. An American trade policy would encourage private American businesses to seek partners overseas and engage them in trade.

A Paul administration would see Americans engaged overseas like never before, in business and cultural activities.

No one has ever accused Dr. Paul of changing his position.

Why, then, is Ron Paul accused of being an isolationist? When his critics hurl this epithet at him, they know full well that he is not an isolationist at all. Here is Rick Santorum on Ron Paul’s “dangerous” foreign policy: “One thing he can do as commander in chief is he can pull all our troops home. He can shut down our bases in Germany. He can shut down the bases in Japan. He can pull our fleets back.” According to Santorum and his fellow conservative and Republican warmongers Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, and the Weekly Standard, Ron Paul is an isolationist, not because he wants America to be isolated from the rest of the world, but because he wants to terminate the empire, stop fighting foreign wars, close the foreign military bases, cut the bloated military budget, end foreign aid, halt all offense spending, bring all the troops home, limit the military to the actual defense of the United States, and stop being the policeman of the world.

The foreign policy of Ron Paul is a foreign policy of noninterventionism. In a speech on the House floor several months before the United States invaded Iraq, Paul made his case for a noninterventionist foreign policy of peace, prosperity, and liberty:

A proper foreign policy of nonintervention is built on friendship with other nations, free trade, and open travel, maximizing the exchanges of goods and services and ideas.

We should avoid entangling alliances and stop meddling in the internal affairs of other nations — no matter how many special interests demand otherwise. The entangling alliances that we should avoid include the complex alliances in the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO.

The basic moral principle underpinning a noninterventionist foreign policy is that of rejecting the initiation of force against others. It is based on nonviolence and friendship unless attacked, self-determination, and self-defense while avoiding confrontation, even when we disagree with the way other countries run their affairs. It simply means that we should mind our own business and not be influenced by special interests that have an ax to grind or benefits to gain by controlling our foreign policy. Manipulating our country into conflicts that are none of our business and unrelated to national security provides no benefits to us, while exposing us to great risks financially and militarily.

Ron Paul is merely echoing the foreign policy of Thomas Jefferson, who said,

No one nation has a right to sit in judgment over another.

We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country, nor with the general affairs of Europe.

I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment.

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.

A noninterventionist foreign policy is a policy of peace, commerce, travel, cultural exchange, diplomacy, neutrality, and free trade.

A noninterventionist foreign policy means no preemptive strikes, invasions, occupations, bombings, threats, sanctions, embargoes, foreign aid, assassinations, imperialism, meddling, bullying, regime changes, nation building, entangling alliances, spreading democracy, NATO-like commitments, peacekeeping operations, forcibly opening markets, policing the world, and no foreign military bases.

It is a sad day for America and Americans when not supporting an aggressive, belligerent, interventionist, and meddling foreign policy means that you are an isolationist.

Is Ron Paul isolationist?

Is France isolationist because its navy doesn’t patrol our coasts? Is Canada isolationist because it doesn’t have military bases below the 49th parallel? Is Germany isolationist because it doesn’t have tens of thousands of troops stationed in the United States? Is Brazil isolationist because it doesn’t kill Americans with drone strikes? Is Russia isolationist because it doesn’t build military bases in scores of countries? Is Moldova isolationist because it doesn’t send its soldiers to fight foreign wars? Was Ronald Reagan an isolationist because he pulled U.S. troops out of Lebanon?

Noninterventionism is not isolationism. It is practical, sane, moral, just, and right. It is the foreign policy of the Founding Fathers — and Ron Paul.

Originally published at The Future of Freedom Foundation on January 17, 2012.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Is Ron Paul an Isolationist?

However, on this latter point it needs to be said that it is only natural to expect that foreigners on the receiving end of U.S. military invasions, occupations, bombings, and killings would retaliate against U.S. troops. Just think of what Americans would do if these things were done to them.

So, on the one hand, as Herbert Spencer wrote over a hundred years ago in his essay on patriotism: "When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves." But on the other hand, as an American, I don’t want to see any American soldiers harmed, and especially those that were duped into fighting some unnecessary and senseless foreign war.

The solution to the dilemma is to not send American soldiers overseas to fight foreign wars, which are inherently unjust. This keeps foreigners from having to shoot invading American soldiers and American soldiers from having to shoot resisting foreigners.

The difference between a warmongering Republican or conservative (like every major conservative talk show host and every major Republican presidential candidate except Ron Paul) and yours truly is that I don’t want anyone on either side to die.

One way that American soldiers are increasingly dying is at their own hands. More U.S. military personnel have died because they committed suicide than from suicide bombers detonating explosive devices near U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would like to see military suicides reduced.

According to a new policy brief titled "Losing the Battle: The Challenge of Military Suicide," published by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), from 2005-2010, "service members took their own lives at a rate of approximately one every 36 hours." The Army had a record number of thirty-three suicides in July of 2010. That is eight times more soldiers dead by suicide than were killed in Iraq that month. That is over half the number of soldiers killed in the much-more-dangerous occupation of Afghanistan that month. The report also says that the Veterans Administration estimates "that a veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes." Although only 1 percent of Americans have served in the military, veterans account for 20 percent of all suicides.

According to the report:

• The mental health screening process following deployment is flawed.
• Suicide among service members and veterans threatens the health of the all-volunteer force.
• America is losing its battle against suicide by veterans and service members. And, as more troops return from deployment, the risk will only grow.
• Soldiers who deploy are more likely to die by suicide. Data have long indicated definitive links between suicide and injuries suffered during deployment.
• Additional factors that heighten risk include chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms such as depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, substance abuse and difficulties with anger management. These factors are also widely associated with deployment experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The report also noted that military hazing caused some of the suicides and that excess prescription medication in the military community was also a problem.

At an event launching the CNAS report, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Peter Chiarelli said that trying to reduce the number of suicides in the Army has been "the most difficult challenge" in his forty years in the military. One of the authors of the report, Dr. Margaret Harrell said that the battle against suicide was being lost "multiple times a day."

According to the Department of Defense Suicide Event Report (DoDSER) for calendar year 2010, 295 service members died by suicide in 2010 (Air Force – 59, Army – 160, Marine Corps – 37, Navy – 39). There were 863 known suicide attempts. The suicide rate for divorced service members was 55 percent higher than the suicide rate for married service members. Most of those who successfully committed suicide were white, male, and under 25 years old. The number of suicides in 2009 was 309; the number in 2008 was 268.

According to the Final Report of the Department of Defense Task Force on the Prevention of Suicide by Members of the Armed Forces, in the nine-year period from 2001 to 2009, more than 1,900 members of the military took their own lives. This is more soldiers than have died fighting in Afghanistan since the war on terror was launched.

Although I am not a physician, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or a mental health or suicide prevention counselor, I can think of four things that would reduce military suicides. And not only that, these things would also save the taxpayers money, improve America’s image in the world, keep us safer, and make it honorable to serve in the military.

One, stop fighting foreign wars.

When soldiers are sent to fight unnecessary, unjust foreign wars (is there any other kind?), there will always be questions in their minds about why they are fighting in a place they couldn’t locate without a map and against a people that never harmed an American until Americans first stuck their noses in their business. And we wonder why soldiers get depressed and suicidal?

The aforementioned CNAS report found a direct connection between deployment and suicide. Some soldiers don’t even wait until they get home to suffer chronic pain, PTSD, depression, and unemployment – they kill themselves in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The fewer foreign wars our soldiers are told to fight (the ones who have to do the actual fighting are never asked for their opinion), the fewer cases of traumatic brain injury, loss of limbs, depression, PTSD, anxiety, substance abuse, and chronic pain our soldiers will needlessly have to suffer with.

I just can’t see U.S. soldiers getting depressed and suicidal or suffering PTSD and sleep loss over having to kill enemy soldiers who actually tried to attack the United States.

Two, end the empire.

Why does the United States still have tens of thousands of troops in Germany, Japan, and South Korea? Why does the United States have any troops at all in Djibouti, Australia, and Argentina? Why does the United States have 250,000 troops in foreign countries? Why does the United States have troops in 160 countries and territories? Why is it now so commonly accepted that someone in the military is being deployed to Germany or Japan?

Military life is destructive to children, families – and service members. The strain of separation or relationship breakups, or the guilt over temptations succumbed to, can certainly lead to suicide.

Sailors on Navy ships in Jacksonville should sail down around the Florida Keys and up through the Gulf of Mexico to Texas and then turn around and go back and see their families. No landing in Mexico, the Caribbean, or South America – for any reason. That will do more to keep America safe than sailing in the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Tonkin. And it will certainly do more for morale and military families than overseas deployments.

Three, end most roles for women in the military.

"Your mother wears army boots" used to be a derogatory remark. Now it is true for 207,308 women in the U.S. military. This is about 15 percent of the 1,425,115 total members of the military. (All figures are as of September 30, 2011.) And these numbers don’t include the Coast Guard. Women comprise an even higher percentage in the Guard and Reserve.

Over 200,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been 111 female U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. There have been 30 female U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan, the most recent one being Sarina Butcher, aged 19, who died on November 1, 2011. It is a terrible tragedy that we send young men to die in senseless foreign wars; it is a horrendous evil that we send young women.

Call me a sexist, a chauvinist, and a misogynist all you want, but no woman has any business flying a helicopter in Iraq, like twenty-seven-year old Army captain Kimberly Hampton, who died when the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter she was piloting was shot down. (No man does either, but that is not my point here.)

According to Allan Carlson, the U.S. Department of Defense is the nation’s largest child-care system. Up to 40 percent of military pregnancies occur among unmarried military personnel. The 10 percent of military personnel who are "service couples," with both husband and wife in uniform, are 64 percent more likely to be divorced by age 24 than comparable civilian couples. Carlson made the case many years ago for the "Bachelor Army" in Policy Review (the Fall 1993 issue in which it appeared is apparently not online).

Things will only get worse since the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, established by Congress two years ago, recommended that the Pentagon do away with the policy that bans women from serving in combat units.

According to the previously mentioned DoDSER, one fourth of attempted suicides in the military are by women. Relationship issues are a factor in both male and female military suicides.

Four, stop perverting the purpose of the military. As I have said in one form or another on many occasions:

The U.S. military should be limited to defending the United States, securing U.S. borders, guarding U.S. shores, patrolling U.S. coasts, and enforcing no-fly zones over U.S. skies instead of defending, securing, guarding, patrolling, and enforcing in other countries. The U.S. military should be engaged exclusively in defending the United States, not defending other countries, and certainly not attacking, invading, or occupying them. Using the military for any other purpose than the actual defense of the United States perverts the purpose of the military.

Soldiers should know without a doubt that what they are doing is moral, just, and right. Limiting the military to actually protecting the United States is the surest way to do this.

This means no more offensive wars. No more nation building. No more spreading democracy at the barrel of a gun. No more policing the world. No more providing disaster relief. No more dispensing humanitarian aid. No more preemptive strikes. No more bombing. No more extraordinary renditions. No more enhanced interrogation techniques. No more peacekeeping operations. No more enforcing UN resolutions. No more regime changes. No more assassinations. No more overseas deployments. No more foreign military bases. No more containing communism. No more opening markets. No more enforcing no-fly zones. No more training foreign police and armies. No more invasions. No more occupations. No more foreign wars.

I support the troops. I support the troops not being put into positions where they face unnecessary danger. I support the troops not fighting senseless foreign wars. I support the troops not being separated from their families. I support the troops not being sent to kill foreigners. I support the troops not being stationed on overseas bases. I support the troops not being misused by presidents, politicians, and military brass. I support the troops not being killed as invaders and occupiers. And I support the troops not killing themselves.

Originally posted on LewRockwell.com on November 28, 2011.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

How to Reduce Military Suicides

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Ron Paul’s Christian Foreign Policy

1. The Church, not Israel, is God’s Chosen People. Promises made to "Israel" in the Bible are for Christians, those who acknowledge Israel’s rightful King, descended from the House of David, Jesus Christ.

2. Even if Biblical promises made to Israel are not the exclusive birthright of Christians, but of the Israeli people, they should not be conflated with the modern, secular state called Israel.

3. It is not for temporal authorities to systematically carry out God’s promises. He’s capable of keeping them Himself, and Biblically, He often used corrupt and evil nations to carry out His plan.

Of course, in the full post he elaborates in much more detail. Go to the Humble Libertarian blog to read more.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Christians, Israel, and a Humble Libertarian

Perhaps I am just an idiot, but I would never have thought that this event would be covering the news with joyous jubilation in the way that it has. Hardly a sober consideration has crossed my computer screen via Facebook, Twitter, or otherwise. Even Chris Preble of the generally libertarian Cato Institute begs to differ:

“All Americans celebrate the news that we have been waiting to hear for over nine and a half years: Osama Bin Laden is dead. The operation that resulted in his demise is a credit to the prowess and professionalism of the men and women in our military, and our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. All Americans — and the world — owe them a huge debt of gratitude.”

Really? A debt of gratitude? For cleaning up one dirty spot amidst the colossal mess they themselves created? No way. Bin Laden was hardly a threat to me personally. If he was a threat to anyone, it was largely because of United States foreign policy to begin with. Instead of rejoicing at his death, perhaps the USA could consider the laws of cause and effect, reflecting on the concept of “blowback” from interventionism in other countries.

To make matters even stranger, the military buried Bin Laden at sea. What was the purpose? According to the White House, they wanted to bury him within 24 hours in accordance with Islamic customs. This seems somewhat ironic, since the military seems unconcerned about burials in accordance with Muslim tradition or anything else with the multitudes of innocent people who have died as a result of American interventionism.

On a different note, you’ve got to love how the timing of this event was near perfect. Certainly this will help Obama’s desperately low approval ratings. Make no mistake, he’s going to bring this up in the 2012 race. I can see it now…

Republican candidate: “I am tough on terrorism. We need a president who stops coddling terrorists.”
Obama: “Uh, I’m the one who caught Osama – remember how you guys failed to do that for ten years?”

Of course, Ron Paul would say: “Don’t forget, the CIA trained Bin Laden. He is a monster of our own creation.” Zing.

It looks like the Vatican has the best perspective on this deed:

“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of everyone before God and man, and hopes and pledges that every event is not an opportunity for a further growth of hatred, but of peace.”

Truly, Bin Laden leaves a dark legacy in America, with wounds running deeper than 9/11 can approximate. We should not cheer or rejoice in this evil man’s death, but contemplate what has been lost in the meantime.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Should I be thanking God that Bin Laden is dead?

Mubarak quits. That’s the news, folks. I’m not sure anything else comes close to this. The next big question really is what the US Federal Government will do. They propped up Mubarak for years, and Suleiman is the US-hand-picked VP and likely successor. Sheesh, are all of our supposed “leaders” just psychopaths in disguise? For more information about events in Egypt I recommend reading AntiWar.com’s series: click here, here,  and here.

LewRockwell.com has a great podcast with Eric Margolis on the Egyptian events here.

Check these protest signs from Egypt.

Oh yeah, and it is the tyrant Abraham Lincoln’s birthday today. Let’s celebrate by remembering that his fabled “last pardon” of deserters was a forgery.

And this was definitely my favorite comic of the week:

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

News of the Week: Egypt throws the blokes out

Now they see on TV and the Internet and read in the newspaper accounts of protests, violence, demonstrations, strikes, marches, curfews, military helicopters, tanks, government crackdowns on social media, calls for the Egyptian president to step down, cancellations of flights in and out of Cairo, and evacuations of hundreds of Americans by the U.S. State Department.

The civil unrest in Egypt and the sight of U.S. tanks in the streets of Cairo have brought to light two things about U.S.-Egyptian relations that many if not most Americans have heretofore been ignorant of. I am speaking of U.S. foreign policy in general and foreign aid in particular.

Hosni Mubarak has been the "president" of Egypt since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Mubarak’s brutal military regime has been characterized by political corruption, sham elections, censorship, imprisonment of political opponents without trials, oppression, torture, murder, kidnapping, socialism, state control of the media, an enriched oligarchy at the expense of the majority of poor Egyptians, the crushing of dissent, and a litany of human rights abuses. But in spite of all this, Mubarak has also been a "close and important ally" of the United States.

The country of Egypt received over $1.5 billion in foreign aid last year. And that was lower than what it usually averages. Aid to Egypt peaked in 2002, when the country received over $2 billion in foreign aid. The only country that receives more U.S. foreign aid is Israel. Since their peace accord in 1979, Egypt and Israel have been the top two recipients of U.S. foreign aid. The two countries together account for about one-third of all foreign aid spending, the majority of which pays for armaments. It is not just demonstrators that can be seen in Egypt. M1A1 American Abrams tanks and tear gas canisters stamped "Made in America" can be seen in the streets of Cairo while American F-16s fly overhead. Much of Egypt’s officer corps has been educated at American war colleges.

How many Americans have only just now realized that the United States has been a supporter of oppressive dictatorships in the Middle East? How many Americans have only just now realized that their tax dollars have been supporting the police state that is the Mubarak regime? How many Americans still don’t know these things? And even worse, how many Americans do know about these things and either don’t care or don’t have a problem with them?

U.S. foreign policy is a tangled web of contradictions, lies, incompetence, and incoherence. The United States condemns autocratic rulers and human rights abuses in one country while at the same time supporting or turning a blind eye to autocratic rulers and human rights abuses in another. Every country is in some way vital to American interests. Every conflict is in some way relevant to our national security. Intervention in the affairs of other countries in one form or another has been the historic and customary approach. Neutrality, it seems, is never an option. Not only is our reckless and meddling foreign policy very costly, it often results in hatred of Americans and acts of terrorism toward the United States.

The federal government provides some form of foreign assistance to over 150 countries. Since World War II, our government has dispensed hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid in the form of cash, construction projects, food, medicine, armaments, subsidized loans, humanitarian and disaster relief, security guarantees, and peacekeeping forces. We extend foreign aid to corrupt regimes, countries that regularly vote against us in the United Nations, countries that are not "developing" countries, and countries on both sides of conflicts. Political alignment is the main determinant of foreign aid spending. Foreign aid is really just an elaborate system of bribes and rewards. Yet, foreign aid enjoys bipartisan support in Congress. Even Republicans who tout their "conservative" credentials often dismiss spending on foreign aid because, so they say, it is an insignificant part of the federal budget or an infinitesimal percentage of GDP.

Writing in the neoconservative Weekly Standard soon after the 9/11 attacks, CFR Senior Fellow Max Boot maintained that rather than the attack being a "payback for American imperialism," it "was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation." Compare this with the sentiments of the twentieth century’s greatest proponent of liberty and opponent of the state, Murray Rothbard: " Empirically, taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialist government has been the United States."

So who is right? For the answer we need look no further than Thomas Jefferson:

No one nation has a right to sit in judgment over another.

I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment.

We ask for peace and justice from all nations; and we will remain uprightly neutral in fact.

U.S. foreign policy should be one of peace, neutrality, commerce, and nonintervention instead of one of threats, alliances, sanctions, and meddling. Rothbard’s plan to restore U.S. foreign policy to what it should be is threefold: "abandon its policy of global interventionism," "withdraw immediately and completely, militarily and politically, from everywhere," and "maintain a policy of strict political ‘isolation’ or neutrality everywhere." Sounds Jeffersonian to me.

Foreign aid should really be called foreign government aid. The U.S. government doesn’t divide the foreign aid for a particular country by the population and send a check for an equal amount to each person. God only knows what percentage of foreign aid actually makes it to foreign peoples in real need instead of lining the pockets of foreign regimes that are corrupt, bureaucratic, interventionist, socialist, and statist to the core. Foreign aid is further camouflaged as U.S. support for the UN, IMF, World Bank, and similar globalist organizations. And although I don’t support any form of welfare spending in the United States, it still doesn’t make any sense for the U.S. government to send taxpayer money overseas when it could be used here to alleviate poverty, help the unemployed, and invest in education and infrastructure. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t support the federal government doing any of these things, but at least they would provide more of a benefit to Americans than lining the pockets of some miscreant regime like Mubarak’s.

The main problem, of course, is that foreign aid is nothing more than the forced looting of American taxpayers. The purpose, recipient, cost, and benefit of the aid are irrelevant. Foreign aid money is simply appropriated by Congress and then confiscated from American taxpayers. If a Jewish American objects to his money being taken from him and given to the government of a Muslim country, then he has no say in the matter. If a Gentile American objects to his money being taken from him and given to the government of Israel (the greatest recipient of U.S. aid), then he is out of luck. If an American objects to his money being taken from him and given to foreigners, then he can’t do anything about it. If there is any doubt that the vast majority of Americans oppose foreign aid, then consider what would happen if all the countries in the world that receive U.S. foreign aid instead sent a letter appealing for funds to every American taxpayer. Is there any doubt that they would not receive enough money to cover what they spent on postage?

The bizarre U.S. foreign policy in relation to Egypt is but the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface is a foreign policy that is about as far removed from the noninterventionism of the Founders and the early history of our republic as could possible be. It is imperative that the mess that is U.S. foreign policy be cleaned up. And it is just as important to end all foreign aid to Egypt and all the other countries that receive it.

Will the events in Egypt be a wake-up call that results in significant change to U.S. foreign policy or will they lead to more acts of folly, more money thrown away, and more intervention on behalf of the United States?

Because Congress usually leaves foreign policy matters to the president, the prospects of returning to a foreign policy of neutrality and nonintervention don’t look good. Since the end of the Cold War we have had two Democratic (Clinton & Obama) and two Republican (Bush & Bush) presidents. There is no perceptible difference in their foreign policies.

In the last presidential election, there was only one candidate from either party who philosophically, consistently, and openly called for dismantling the U.S. empire, closing foreign military bases, withdrawing U.S. troops, terminating foreign aid, and stopping the endless cycle of folly that is U.S. foreign policy. Nothing short of a Ron Paul revolution in foreign policy will bring about any real, lasting, and needed change.

Copyright © 2011 Campaign for Liberty, original posted 2/2/2011.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Egypt and U.S. Foreign Policy

In his new book Decision Points, former president George W. Bush complains about a 2004 tape by Osama bin Laden "mocking my response to 9/11 in the Florida classroom." What really upset Bush was that "it sounded like he was plagiarizing Michael Moore."

Moore is the documentary filmmaker and liberal political commentator who harshly criticized Bush in his 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11, which he wrote, directed, produced, and stared in. As Lew Rockwell wrote about the film:

The movie decries the warmongering of the Bush administration, exposes the fraudulence of his excuses for invading and crushing Iraq, unearths the unseemly ties between the Bush regime and big oil and the Saudis, and blasts the Bush regime for its egregious violations of civil liberties and massive pillaging of the American taxpayer on behalf of the merchants of death.

This, of course, does not mean that Lew Rockwell or I endorse anything else that Michael Moore has ever done.

Like Mr. Rockwell, I am no fan of Michael Moore. He is a radical liberal, a union propagandist, a socialist, a gun grabber, an economic ignoramus, and a hypocrite who criticizes capitalism and poses as a spokesman of the working class while living an upscale life, sending his daughter to an elite private school, and boasting of his wealth. I even agree with Bush that Moore is a "slimeball."

But there is one thing Michael Moore is right about.

In a recent open letter to Juan Williams regarding his firing by NPR, Moore used the courtroom statements of the Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad to explain why many in the Muslim World hate us. Moore previously wrote an open letter to Bush on the eve of the Iraq war and to Obama about the war in Afghanistan.

Here is what Moore quotes Shahzad as saying at his June 21, 2010, appearance in the Federal District Court in Manhattan where he pleaded guilty to a ten-count indictment:

I want to plead guilty, and I’m going to plead guilty 100 times over, because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S., and I plead guilty to that.

And here is what Moore quotes Shahzad as saying on October 5, 2010, when he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole:

[Saladin] liberated Muslim lands … And that’s what we Muslims are trying do, because you’re occupying Iraq and Afghanistan… So, the past nine years the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the U.S., except for it has waken up the Muslims for Islam. We are only Muslims trying to defend our people, honor, and land. But if you call us terrorists for doing that, then we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing until you leave our land and people at peace.

The first thing to be determined is whether Moore accurately quotes Shahzad. In the court transcript from June 21, "100 times over" appears as "a hundred times forward." The only other difference between Moore and the official transcript is a few commas. In defense of Moore I should point out that the way he quotes Shahzad is the usual way the quote has been reported. In the court transcript from October 5, we can see that the first and second statements attributed to Shahzad actually come after the third statement. And just to be fair to Shahzad (yes, I know he’s a convicted terrorist, but that doesn’t give us the right to misquote him), here is what he said without the brackets and ellipsis: "He liberated Muslim lands from the Jewish crusade, Christian crusade. And that’s what we Muslims are trying do, because you’re occupying Iraq and Afghanistan." Moore quotes the third statement word perfect. So, what Moore quotes Shahzad as saying is essentially correct.

It is at the close of his short open letter that Moore reaches his conclusion I quoted above: "Terrorists aren’t trying to kill us because they hate our freedom. They’re killing us because we’re in their countries killing them."

So if Moore is right – and I have no doubt that he is – then Islamic terrorists don’t want to detonate bombs in Times Square or blow up U.S.-bound airplanes because we have a bill of rights or because they think Brittany Spears should wear a burqa.

But Michael Moore is not just right; he is by implication giving us the key to declaring the war on terror over: GET OUT. Get U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Get the CIA out of Yemen and Pakistan. Stop the Predator drone attacks. Cease flying the sorties. I’m not sure about Moore, but I would go even further. Close the overseas bases. Bring all the troops home. Retire as the policeman of the world. Discontinue the foreign wars. Halt the spreading of democracy. Freeze the nation building. End the interventionist foreign policy.

What Moore is saying is not new. The CIA calls it blowback. The Bible calls it reaping what you sow.

The terrible truth is that the war on terror creates terrorists. As the great Glenn Greenwald wrote after Faisal Shahzad entered his guilty plea:

The great contradiction of American foreign policy is that the very actions endlessly rationalized as necessary for combating Terrorism – invading, occupying and bombing other countries, limitless interference in the Muslim world, unconditional support for Israeli aggression, vast civil liberties abridgments such as torture, renditions, due-process-free imprisonments – are the very actions that fuel the anti-American hatred which, as the U.S. Government itself has long recognized, is what causes, fuels and exacerbates the Terrorism we’re ostensibly attempting to address.

But never mind what Glenn Greenwald has to say; never mind what Michael Moore has to say, and never mind what Laurence Vance has to say.

According to a report on strategic communication prepared by the Defense Science Board Task Force, "a federal advisory committee established to provide independent advice to the secretary of defense":

The information campaign – or as some still would have it, "the war of ideas," or the struggle for "hearts and minds" – is important to every war effort. In this war it is an essential objective, because the larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended.

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

Muslims do not "hate our freedom," but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim selfdetermination.

Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack – to broad public support.

But U.S. foreign policy blunders didn’t just begin on 9/11. As Sheldon Richman recently explained:

Contrary to those who think history began September 11, 2001, U.S. regimes have long pursued policies in the Middle East and Central Asia that have brutalized the Muslim world and cultivated a seething passion for revenge. That explains (though does not excuse) the terrorism against civilians that government officials now say they must spend so much to stop. The threat was created by American policy, and it can be ended by changing that policy to the Washington-Jefferson foreign policy of nonintervention. That will not only make us safer, it also will save the taxpayers money.

Richman ought to know, as he prepared the exhaustive study titled "‘Ancient History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention."

The attacks of 9/11 were political acts. They were not undertaken because of our freedoms, way of life, culture, or religion. The problem is our government and its abominable foreign policy. It is because of our foreign policy that our soldiers are needlessly dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, to accept the fact that terrorists want to kill us because we’re in their countries killing them doesn’t mean that those killed on 9/11 deserved to die or that violence is justified or that the Koran is a holy book or that Islam is a religion of peace or that no act of terrorism against the United States would ever take place again if we withdrew our troops.

What it does mean – to anyone except red-state fascists, bloodthirsty conservative chickenhawks, Republican armchair warriors, Religious Right warvangelicals, theocon Values Voters, reich-wing nationalists, God and country Christian bumpkins, and other apologists for the U.S. military and its wars – is that maybe, perhaps, possibly there might be something terribly wrong with U.S. foreign policy, as the heroic Ron Paul has pointed out over and over again.

Michael Moore may be a liberal, he may be a hypocrite, he may be wrong on an innumerable number of issues, he may be overweight, he may even have bad breath, but on the subject of why terrorists want to kill us Michael Moore has never been more right.

Originally published on LewRockwell.com.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Michael Moore is Right

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Podcast: War, Foreign Policy, and the Church (Part 2)