Category Archives: Foreign Policy

The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)

Capitalism, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Military, Uncategorized, War

“The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has done some “conscious uncoupling” from reality. The term was disgorged by a celebrity, Gwyneth Paltrow, to announce a separation from her spouse. In the same breath, the actress bemoaned her gilded, glamorous life, and offended America’s military sacred cow by comparing the cyber-attacks she endures to the experience of war.

As heir to a political dynasty founded by a powerful man, Hillary has received millions of dollars to write books. Over the years, she and husband Bill Clinton have made hundreds of millions from both book deals and speaking engagements. Yet in a recent ABC interview, the former “First Housewife” complained about emerging from the White House not only “dead broke, but in debt”: “We had no money when we got there and we struggled to … piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.” …

… But on CNN, love is in the air. Viewers have expressed a belief that Hillary would restore the country to the Clinton years of peace and prosperity. Bill Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998, as well as a Sudanese pharmaceutical company that turned out to be the main manufacturer of medicines and vaccinations in Sudan. And he strafed the Serbs in 1999. Stateside, Bill butchered 76 men, women and children in Texas. Alas, so long as Hillary steers clear of another Waco, and confines her murderous sprees to killing far-away people from high above—few boots on the ground—her countrymen will consider her a peace-maker.

While prosperity during the Clinton years was due less to Clinton-economics than to Reaganomics and a Republican Congress not yet completely comatose—in fairness, Bill does grasp something about prosperity. “This is good work,” he famously said about Mitt Romney’s much-maligned work at Bain Capital. Hillary, conversely, has no economic acumen. “There are rich people everywhere, and yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries,” she grumbled at the Clinton Global Initiative, in 2012. According to economist George Reisman’s cogent analysis—and contra Mrs. Clinton’s crushing ignorance—“a highly productive and provident one percent provides the standard of living of a largely ignorant and ungrateful ninety-nine percent.” As for Obama’s putsch for a North-Korean style health care: Instead of aborting it, Hillary will guarantee that Obamacare reaches full-term gestation.

Another wily fox called Bill (O’Reilly) has defended Mrs. Clinton’s riches as capitalism’s reward for hard work. Not quite. Hillary has accrued wealth by using the predatory political process to wield power over others. Although she has pudding for brains, Gwyneth Paltrow, on the other hand, has made a living in the honest, productive, non-predatory and salutary ways of the free-market. Paltrow’s affluence, unlike Hillary’s, is a reward for assets she peddles to people who choose to purchase them. …

Read the complete column. “The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)” is now on WND.

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Praying To The Military Moloch

Foreign Policy, Government, Jihad, Military, Terrorism, The State, War, Welfare

“Praying To The Military Moloch” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“… At the center of the Bowe Bergdahl contretemps—a story that grows in the telling—was a passion to ‘learn about other cultures.’ This motivated him to join the army. Poor Pashtuns are certainly more interesting than the generic granny from the Midwest. Our soldiers, after all, are groomed as ‘citizens of the world.’ ‘We pay their wages,’ this column ventured in ‘The International Highway to Hell,’ ‘but their hearts belong in faraway exotic places with which Main Street USA can hardly hope to compete” for their affections.

There’s a problem with the American military’s sentimental flirtation with internationalism: The Constitution these men and women swear to obey brooks none of this stuff!

Who then grooms this army of avowed internationalists? Aided by the military’s upper echelons, Uncle Sam does. Commanded constitutionally by the commander-in-chief, the military does the government’s bidding. Although limited-government advocates refuse to consider the military as a division of Leviathan, it is just that. As was further argued in ‘Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program,’ ‘The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while exempting the military mammoth.’

Better still, if the military is government—and it is—fanatical militarism is a facet of statism. And if the military is government—and it is—then the missions on which the government sends the military must be questioned. An equally distinctive characteristic of the current military statism is to extend the worship of The Man in Uniform to His Mission. We worship the men and women in uniform and their mission without question.

Conservatives question government programs. War is a government program. … ”

Read the rest. “Praying To The Military Moloch” in now on WND.

UPDATED: Here Mark Levin prays to “our beautiful, precious, wonderful men and women in uniform.” Two minutes and 12 seconds into the monologue come these words of worship. Now, there was certainly one gorgeous man among Ggt. Bowe Bergdahl’s platoon members, interviewed by Megyn Kelly. But they aren’t all wonderful beauties.

Bowe Bergdahl’s Story Grows In The Telling

Foreign Policy, Military, Terrorism

From being treated like a caged animal to enjoying the privileges of a comrade, the odyssey of Taliban hostage Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl just gets weirder. Down to his progressive, off-putting parents, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, traded “five fierce-looking Muhammadans from Afghanistan’s Jihad Central,” conjures John Walker Lindh, alias Abdul Hamid, a 20-year-old American who had been captured by U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, during the 2001 invasion. Walker was a combatant, fighting for the Taliban.

Reports James Rosen, a very credible reporter at Fox News:

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a “mujahid,” or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.
The reports indicate that Bergdahl’s relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, “he became much more of an accepted fellow” than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry a gun at times.
The documents show that Bergdahl at one point escaped his captors for five days and was kept, upon his re-capture, in a metal cage, like an animal. In addition, the reports detail discussions of prisoner swaps and other attempts at a negotiated resolution to the case that appear to have commenced as early as the fall of 2009. … MORE.

No wonder Bergdahl looks so lost and pitiful in the clip of his release (via the New York Times). The military is home to some confused individuals. This poor guy thought he was joining UN Peacekeeping.

Hawks Want Their Interventionism Straight Up

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, War

There’s a surprise: West Point cadets, allegedly, hardly clapped in honor of President Barack Obama, who delivered a message about “limiting the use of American power to defending the nation’s core interests and being smart enough to avoid the temptation to use such power when it embroils the country in costly mistakes such as the decision to invade Iraq.” (CNN)

“Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” said Obama, who, rhetoric aside, is hardly a dove.

But hawks are furious. They want their interventionism straight up. If the Empire loses its grip, how will they remain the world’s Top Dogs?

“Is this how a great nation decides matters of war and peace”? demanded Chucky Krauthammer. The neoconservative columnist derides Obama’s foreign policy as “a nervy middle course between extreme isolationism and madcap interventionism.” More like the latter, if you ask me.

Krauthammer also bemoans Obama having “denied night-vision goggles, protective armor” and military assistance to “Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s newly elected president.”

I’m not cut up about it at all.