The Foreign Policy Debate

I know my writings will go out into cyberspace and will never influence Mitt Romney, Barack Obama or any power players in our government, but I will write anyway. The Iraq War did not accomplish what was planned. The mideast is in violent turmoil, and any small changes we set up in Iraq for what appears to be good will be wiped away by the waves of revolution throughout the mideast -- a revolution influenced by irrationality, domination and ignorance. Are there people in the mideast who only want peace and to live their lives in community? Yes, but the forces of violence and domination are greater -- the forces of good are not winning.

America always wants to help the underdog and to spread democracy, but we can't give people what they don't want, so the realists win as they say we have to protect our national interests. Our interests are better served by leaving the mideast and developing our own energy or by buying the energy wherever we can through free trade disconnected from politics. The mideast is a sucker's game and now that we've answeredd 9/11, we should leave the mideast to the mideast -- they have to work out their own problems.

We can build a totally superior, hi-tech defense system with the money we transfer from the bogholes of Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Libya, etc, so that any threat by al-Qaeda will be answered and dealt with. Once we've left the mideast and have made it clear that we won't tolerate any type of terrorist attack on our homeland or Israel, things will change quickly in the region. Turkey, Iran and Israel will have to work out their problems or face years of war that will be good for no one.

The neo-con hawks tell us that mideast countries like Iran and Syria are run by madmen, and they will do crazy things that rational Americans can't imagine, but the mideast has always been like this, and most of it is bluff to blackmail America into paying more and more money. We've paid enough to this region starting from the trouble we experienced shortly after the creation of America. This is not a new situation we have in the mideast -- it's an old situation that has to stop. It has to stop. We can't go on indefinitely spurred by some free-floating fear that terrorists are lurking at our windows. We must go forward with courage, open eyes, a superior defense and a growing dynamic economy. We can't exist in fear any longer without destroying the character of our nation and allowing the State to dominate with the promise of security. Let's move on. Please, let's move on.

Morning Joe 6/20/2012 -- Wow, Obama is winning big!

On Morning Joe today, Sam Stein, Al Hunt, Andrea Mitchell and a few others talked about Bloomberg's latest poll that shows Obama winning by 13 points. It's truly fantastic that Obama has made such progress in a week. I'm impressed to the point of disbelief.

What really impressed me this morning is how much time shows like Morning Joe spend on the ins and outs of politics, and how they talk about very little about fundamental problems. Morning Joe did have Ron Paul on the show, and he discussed fundamental problems and solutions, and I give them kudoes for giving Paul a voice.

Earlier in the show, though, they showed a clip from the Jamie Dimon congressional hearing in which a representative asked Dimon why the government should allow JP Morgan to grow so big. Everyone talked about Dimon's intelligence and skill dealing with political matters, but no one addressed the mindset behind the representative's question, and Dimon's answer fot that matter -- why should government allow a private business to grow that big? Dimon answered that being big helps Morgan do what government wants it to do. This is where we have come -- no one thinks this conversation is at odds with America's past embrace of free market principles.

We now accept without question that government has the right to decide how big a company can grow -- it allows or disallows a company to grow. And the business community accepts that it's okay for a private company to do the bidding of the government. This government/corporate enmeshment is so complete that large corporations have become a part of the State machine. This is a fundamental problem, and it's one big reason why our economy has stalled, why there is high unemployment, and why we're drowning in debt. We desperately need a separation of State and Economy, but government is going full bore to gain more control over the economy and thus expand the power of the State. Central management of the economy through political means is destroying our nation, as it's destroyed much of the EU, and as it will eventually destroy the bubble being created by China.

Later in the show, Mika had her dad back on the show to give his views some exposure and to help him sell his new book. Mika's dad, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is lot like Scarborough -- they sound reasonable until you listen closely. ZB says that America should not enter into a war with Syria or Iran. Yes, good, let's get out the mideast and let them take care of their own problems -- but, wait, that's not what ZB wants to do. ZB is okay with controlling Iran and Syria, as a long as it's done in concert with other nations. As we know from the recent past, starting wars with the support of other countries means that we have a fig leaf covering us, and in the end, it's America's war. No, ZB, you should stop at America has no business intervening in Syria or Iran. Plus, when will we learn that the violent mideast dictator we want to overthrow is most times protecting himself from all the competing violent would-be dictators trying to kill him? And when will we quit pretending that a country like Iran is an actual threat to our country. These big-mouth, blustering, tin-pot dictators have blackmailed us for centuries, and we continue to give them credibility -- if we leave them alone, they will fall apart.

It's just like Scarborough writing why he voted for Ron Paul. That's good -- Scarborough is a libertarian -- no, wait, he's not. Scaroborough doesn't want to end the Fed, and Scarborough is not for separating the State and the Economy by creating a true free market. Scarborough just wants to cover all his bases, so at some point he can say he relates to Tea Party types, Centrist types and libertarian types, but at heart he's just a statist with a pragmatic/political bent, pure and simple.

Current issues with liberalism

As I write a number of posts dealing with liberalism, they will not necessarily follow one another logically, like today when several incidents fit the concerns I have with the state of liberalism. One is the news/non-news that Obamacare will add to the deficit. Many of us knew that Obamacare would be no different from Medicare or Medicaid, and that the projected costs were political lies to get the programs passed.

Everyone in the US should be concerned with the future of healthcare, because now that government is basically controlling healthcare, as each consequence creates a need for a solution, government will mend what it has already broken until there's single payer nationalized healthcare. How will it be paid for? By taxing the rich to start with, then taxing the middle class. The Buffett Rule is the bare beginning, because it will only raise a few billion, and this will be spent by government in no time flat. Media are laying down when it comes to the Buffett Rule -- this sham, symbolic act is pathetic, yet liberals in media fail to uncover the phony issue.

Obamacare was built on lies, but liberals were okay with the lies, because, I suppose, it was for the greater good. Many analyses of ACA have experts worried. In a country of over 300 million, the diversity of needs will confound any centralized effort to manage the direction of healthcare services. Government will soon be hurting for money as healthcare costs skyrocket, and taxes on the middle class will be the only way out. Republicans can repeal Obamacare if they win the WH and the Senate, but this is up in the air. If the SCOTUS approve of the mandate, this will give Obama momentum.

If we enter entanglements with Syria and Iran, I can see Obama and Democrats making the case for Obama staying in power because change will not be good in the middle of a crisis in foreign affairs. I don't put it past the administration to time any intervention they think is necessary for political purposes. This is something to watch, because if our military contines to be misused, Americans have to act and get them home.

Why there are aren't liberals rebelling against government manipulation, which is harming the very people Democrats say they want to help, I don't know. This is why I'm writing anout liberalism. Why are liberals trusting and supporting an interventionist government which is misleading the America people and driving us all further into debt, and is getting us more entangled in the affairs of mideast countries with no clear understanding of the factions we're supporting. Why is there silence among so many liberals, and why are so many others actively defending and praising this administration?

Meet the Press 3/18/2012 -- Non-interventionism

I understand that no one wants to admit that libertarians have been right on foreign policy, but at least the conversation is taking place about leaving Afghanistan.

David Gregory interviewed John McCain this morning on Meet the Press, and it was striking how out of place McCain appeared with his interventionist position. McCain would have the US keep a presence in Afghanistan permamnently through a military base. McCain would have the US leading an effort against the Assad government in Syria, leading to more pressure on Iran, which McCain would bomb if Iran didn't surrender and fall before the US pressure.

The American people knew what they were doing when they rejected McCain -- if only they had rejected Obama, too. Staying in Afghanistan, leading an attack on Syria and escalating the tensions with Iran all make up the absolute wrong direction for our country. Not only should we stop intervening because the mideast countries should handle their own affairs, but, also, because we're broke -- we can't afford to be the Guiding Light of the Universe. The more we intervene in the mideast, the more the countries of that region will work against us and deceive us and use us and eventually break us.

The round table with Wes Moore, Bob Woodward, and a few others held basically the same conversation, except they concentrated only on the symptomatic problem in Afghanistan. The fundamental problem is a doctrine of interventionism -- this has to change. The roundtable members weren't clear, but they all appeared to accept the futility of continuing what we're doing. At one point there was implications made that a draft would make long term war more fair by investing more people in the wars. A draft would be a great leap from soft tyranny to hard tyranny, and it would only give the State more fodder to conduct wars. The idea is that the rich and powerful would be less eager to go to war, but the result would be that some people receive favors, while many are ordered like slaves to sacrifice their lives for the State.

US hawks should put up or shut up

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/world/middleeast/iran-intelligence-crisis-showed-difficulty-of-assessing-nuclear-data.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

If US hawks believe that US spy reports are wrong, and Iran has definitely started back on their nuclear weapon program, then they need to show their evidence rather than simply asserting what they think is the case.

Did we not learn anything from Iraq? I don't know where the idea came from, but many American leaders, and those who support American interventions all around the world, think that we have the right to bomb and intervene in any country we choose whenever we feel like it.

Iran has been a belligerent country, and they have supported terrorists against our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but all the mideast countries in one way or another have supported our enemies against us, except Israel.

If we get out of the region, Iran will have no reason to bluster and meddle where we are concered. This is called naive thinking by the hawks, but to keep saying we should bomb Iran when they haven't declared war against us, and to say they are on the verge of creating a nuclear weapon and preparing to bomb Israel is unsubstantiated. If Israel has information that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon, and if Israel really thinks Iran will bomb them, then Israel will take care of its own business, and they have said so many times. But right now no one has any real evidence that Iran is close to developing a bomb or even still working on one.