Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Hillary Blabbers About Bhutto

“Hillary Clinton is demanding answers about the death of Benazir Bhutto.” She is also demanding that the fracas in Pakistan be internationalized—call in the UN, says she. And above all, put pressure on the already impotent President Pervez Musharraf to usher in democracy. Or hold “free and fair elections,” as she puts it. As though Musharraf alone is what stands between the people of Pakistan—who apparently yearn to breathe free—and democratic institutions and the rule of law.

The harridan Hillary differs very little from Bush: she announced her belief that America is obligated to shore-up civil society in Pakistan and address the “root causes” of the restive, ever-seething Muslim Street in that country. (To quote Clinton: “I’ve talked to President Musharraf about the necessity for us to raise the literacy rate, to reach out with healthcare and education that would help the Pakistani people to really concentrate on civil society.”) Can you say Nation Building?!

This is a meddler with paws stickier than Bush’s.

Above all, in her reaction to Bhutto’s assassination, Hillary has demonstrated that she is a deeply silly woman, having learned nothing from the adventure in Iraq. Forcing democracy down Iraqi gullets—now that worked out really well, didn’t? How about in the Palestinian Authority? At our insistence, democratic elections were held in the PA, and voila! The freedom loving Palestinians voted for Hamas, which the US then promptly boycotted. Egypt anybody? Think the Muslim Brotherhood, which would likely gain a majority if American idiots got the better of a recalcitrant Mubarak and forced him to democratize.

Be careful what you wish for in Pakistan, Hillary! They say about 50 percent of Pakistanis support the al Qaeda Islamist elements and the resurgent Taliban.

As for Bhutto whom the liberal media has hurried to canonize: No doubt, her death is tragic. But you have to admit that she was utterly reckless, bobbing up and down from sun roofs in unarmored, unprotected, rickety vehicles. Musharraf ought to have kept her under house arrest for her own good.

Nor was Bhutto such a saint; her niece certainly disputes her sainted status. Nor was she much of a “democrat”—for what it’s worth in that part of the world—during her time in office. Had she come to share power with Musharraf, she’d have supported an ongoing American presence in Pakistan. That might have also raised some of her countrymen’s hackles.

Huckabee’s Hardcore On Israel

Elections 2008, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

I’ve been extremely critical of Huckabee. See “Ron Paul’s Electability” and “Huck’s For Huck—Paul’s For America.”

But I think I’ve just come across the only policy position Huckabee has professed that I rather like. Dr. Daniel Pipes disagrees:

“[T]rue connoisseurs of the Republican candidate for president are still wrapping their arms around this foreign policy insight delivered in a September interview:

‘If there is going to be a Palestinian state, it needs to be on land that doesn’t threaten the existence or security of Israel. There is a lot of available real estate around the world that would not be a direct threat to Israel’s security.’

James D. Besser, who conducted this interview, added that ‘Huckabee declined to offer suggestions about where that [real estate] might be.’ Uganda or Birobidjan, perhaps? (December 24, 2007)

Here Huckabee sounds just like the Likud Party once sounded. That may not be very pragmatic, considering that the Right in Israel perished a shot time ago, but why is it a bad thing?

Huckabee is certainly in line here with evangelical thinking—and my own. Come to think of it, I think I’ve just stumbled on the first Huckabee-held policy position that I like: quit pushing for statehood for these radical people.

Paul’s Peddling Liberty Again

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Constitution, Elections 2008, Foreign Policy, Ron Paul

Watch Meet the Press. Contemplate the following points:

* Selling liberty is tougher when free people morph into pliable sheep. But there are still very many buyers—since October Ron Paul has raised more than any other Republican: $19 million!
* If not for Dr. Paul’s run for president, can you imagine Tim Russet ever seriously addressing the elimination of the income tax?
* Is anyone other than Ron Paul repeatedly reminding the unreceptive leaches that form the Media-Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex that they’ve bankrupted us? Who other than Paul is telling Americans that America is a debt nation?
* If not for Dr. Paul, would anyone know that it costs a bankrupt America over a $1 trillion annually to police the world?
* There is no doubt that war is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne warned. In her more recent tedious, socialist screeds, Naomi Klein has seized upon and run with this thesis, which libertarian economist Bob Higgs has empirically verified. Why is she listened to but not Paul?
* As you know, while I concur with Paul about the need for the US to leave its posts across the world, I do not agree that that will eliminate Islamic terrorism—just as I don’t believe Israel giving back its well-deserved, disputed territories will make the Palestinians “hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” However, although I think Paul’s understanding of Islam’s impetus is limited and reductionist, his foreign policy is the right one. What’s the problem? If we are attacked on our soil, Paul will not hesitate to retaliate.
* As for earmarks and term limits: this is the first time I’ve seen Russet challenge a politician for real.
* With respect to Russet’s challenge vis-à-vis the 14th amendment, and the elimination of birthright citizenship, Paul retorted: “Amending the Constitutional is constitutional”: A great line.
* The Civil Rights Act: Paul reiterates that any objection thereto is rooted in respect for private property rights and freedom of association, not racism. We’ve said as much, and frequently.
* In the interview, I heard a great deal more of the gradualist approach specified in my critique of Dr. Paul’s strategy. Pragmatism is unavoidable.

See also:
On Idiot Ideologues Who Pan Paul
Huck’s for Huck–Paul’s For America
Ron Paul’s Electability
The Pauline Gospel at Its Best
Some Advice For Ron Paul

Values Vulgarizers

Foreign Policy, Individual Rights, Neoconservatism, Objectivism, The West

One of our regular contributors here on Barely a Blog makes an uncharacteristically incoherent comment on his own blog:

“…on the subject of the war against civilization …Mercer gets it (she just wants us to fight it Marquis of Queensbury rules with our foot in a bucket.)”

Can he be serious? Apparently. Wait for this: Accolades for offering a strident defense of the West go to the prototypical open-borders Objectivist, whose positions are generally indistinguishable from those of the neoconservatives.

Philosophical incoherence at its best.

But it’s predictable. In my commentary over the years—cultural and political—I’ve mounted a systematic defense of Western values as I see them. This includes—gasp!—defending the distinctly Western character of the US (and the West), something the neocons and the Objectivists who ape them daren’t do.

The neocons and their Objectivist friends, on the other hand, have cheered the unprovoked bloodletting in Iraq and have deceptively framed as individual rights the “values” the US is planting in that country’s blood-soaked soil.

Because of their incremental convergence over the decades with the liberal left, this axis has, to all intents and purposes, embraced “equality” as a value for which they’re prepared to drag the country kicking and screaming to war.

Iraq is a colossal bit of social engineering. To the fact that the US is not defending individual rights in Iraq—not by any stretch of the imagination—add the matter of jurisdiction. A constitutional American government has no right to use the property of Americans to free people around the world. The Iraqi people, moreover, did not sanction the American government’s faith-based democratic initiative. These are the fictions for which neocons and their Objectivist tagalongs are willing to kill and have others killed.
Nation building and assorted mindless meddling have also found a place within this “philosophy.”

So what is my apparently constricting prescription? First, bring the armed forces home, so they can protect this country, not Kosovo, Korea, and Kurdistan. Next, scale back mass immigration, legal and illegal. Defending negative liberties at home is more effective and less violative than waging aimless, unwinnable, rights-sundering wars.

As anyone who’s followed my writing over the years knows, I most certainly support fighting and winning just wars. (The position I deride in this post equates unjust war with a defense of the civilization—a position too dumb and evil for words.) My stance is congruent with individual and national sovereignty, constitutional principles, and just war ethics.

Again, the prototypical warring Objectivist our misguided friend praises is indistinguishable from a neoconservative. He is tough on crime, in general (a good thing), big on war crimes (a bad thing), and even bigger on the idea of inviting the Third Word to our shores. All of which the left supports. There’s a reason the media has grown fond of the neocon/Objectivist/Catoite hybrid.

In the age of unreason, violence-for-values verbiage defeats my own coherent defense of the West. Atavism trumps reason, because it appeals to primitive emotions.
This is the vulgarization of values.