Category Archives: Military

UPDATE II: Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword (Ron Paul Agrees)

Media, Military, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, The State, The Zeitgeist, War

He sculpted a career out of killing for Uncle Sam. A former Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle’s claim to fame, by the news media’s telling: He “held the record for number of kills by an American sniper. The Pentagon has confirmed more than 150 of his kills. The previous record was 109.”

Nobody is prepared to say that it is NO astounding accomplishment to have killed so many individuals, in the service of the US state. So consider it said.

Now Kyle is dead, “shot point-blank” by “another soldier who is recovering from post traumatic stress syndrome.” The therapy “sometime involved taking these veterans to the shooting range.”

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Or in hippie speak: Kyle had bad karma.

UPDATE I: From the Facebook thread:

Kyle (and his kill-for-Uncle Sam supporters) reminds me of a real-life Jack Bauer “Federal Zombie”: “the unstoppable, undead agent who has actually been killed and brought back to life, in service—and in thrall—to the state…”

To be a man is to defend your family and community. Not the empire and its “goals.” Men like Joe Horn are American heroes.

UPDATE II (Feb. 4): Ron Paul agrees, down to the adage, tweeting out, on Monday, 9:05 AM, 4 Feb 13, the following:

Chris Kyle’s death seems to confirm that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn’t make sense.

America’s chosen heroes are either killing someone in far away lands, or crying on TV, here at home. Crying—and coming out about private, personal matters—this imbues someone with goodness, even conferring him with the status of a hero.

And always: Be they your grief, your struggles, or your Iraqi culling expeditions—the key to everlasting honor is to be public about it.

I hope you realize that these deformed values are exactly inverted.

Posse Comitatus And Police State USA

Constitution, Homeland Security, Law, Liberty, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, The State

Americans live under a militarized police force. SWAT teams are forever poised to descend on their homes at the drop of a hat. Is it possible that the military will soon be stepping in to do some policing of its own?

The Posse Comitatus Act was supposed to restrict America’s military from acting as a domestic police force, but then none of the limits on power put in place by the Constitution and other legislation have ever stuck, now have they?

Via Drudge comes this ABC report of an especially energetic military drill in a HOUSTON neighborhood. If you hear helicopters or hear gunfire near your homes, don’t worry, assures the reporter.

Another comatose journo, writing for CBS (via Karen De Coster ), is blasé about yet more militarized operations, this time in Miami. The excuse given:

“The training is designed to ensure that military personnel are able to operate in urban areas and to focus on preparations for overseas deployment. It also serves as a mandatory training certification requirement.”

Dig a little and you’ll find a Republican or two behind earlier efforts to undermine Posse Comitatus.

On Sept. 26, President Bush urged Congress to consider revising federal laws so that the U.S. military could seize control immediately in the aftermath of a natural disaster, noting that “it may require change of law. The law the president seems to be referring to is the Posse Comitatus Act, the longstanding federal statute that restricts the government’s ability to use the U.S. military as a police force. Sen. John Warner, R.-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also has signaled his desire to change the law.”

As CATO’s Gene Healy has written , “The Posse Comitatus Act is no barrier to federal troops providing logistical support during natural disasters. Nor does it prohibit the president from using the Army to restore order in extraordinary circumstances — even over the objection of a state governor.”

What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role. That reflects America’s traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that’s well-justified.

UPDATED: Fighting Words From Left-Libertarian Egalitarians (Andrew Napolitano)

IMMIGRATION, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Military, Old Right, Paleolibertarianism

Judge Andrew Napolitano, who exemplifies left-libertarianism on many issues (not least immigration, civil rights law, etc), believes that freighting men with females in combat is a great step toward the ideal of judging individuals based on their merits and not their group.

To left-libertarians liberty is an abstraction. Apply it “properly,” and it will work everywhere and always. Enforced by the state, this egalitarian abstraction has culminated in the idea that women belong alongside men on the battle field. You know, only the right kind of women—the kind that is as physically able, and will not introduce sexual dynamics to what has been the business of brothers-in-arms since time immemorial.

A crucial difference between left libertarians and the Right kind (the paleolibertarian) is that left-libertarianism is egalitarian; its idea of liberty is propositional–a deracinated idea, unmoored from the reality of history, biology, tradition, hierarchy.

The paleolibertarian, on the other hand, grasps “Liberty’s Civilizational Dimension”; he understands that liberty cannot be reduced to the non-aggression axiom, and that it has a cultural and civilizational dimension.

A paleolibertarian gets that, as an arm of the state, the military is already manacled by doctrinaire mediocrity, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action (fem and other), and every postmodern pox imaginable. So now you want to further tweak it in this direction?

As Pat Buchanan puts it in his latest column (“Obama has hijacked the American Revolution”), “The freedom of all Americans to compete academically, athletically, artistically and economically must inevitably result in an inequality of incomes, wealth and rewards. Why? Because all men and women are by nature and nurture unequal.”

But not if liberals and left-libertarians can help it.

UPDATE (Jan. 28): Jack Kerwick writes on some of the Judge’s other left-libertarian positions:

The Judge eviscerated Arizona Governor Jan Brewer when she signed SB 1070 to help Arizonans deal with the ravages of illegal immigration that it had been suffering for years. And he also has never put up any kind of resistance to amnesty. Instead, Napolitano has remarked that if “our rights come from our Creator—as the Declaration of Independence declares,” then “how can they differ because of where our mothers were when we were born?”
With respect to the administration’s decision to lift the ban on women in combat, Napolitano claimed to be “thrilled.” While on a Fox News panel last week, the Judge noted what he perceived to be the irony involved in the fact that it is a “collectivist president” who has decided “that people should be judged as individuals and not as members of groups [.]” Napolitano lavished praise upon the President for relegating to the dustbin of history “the old military prejudices against…women,” ideas rooted, “not in facts,” but “often…in ignorance, bias and prejudice [.]”
This latest development, Napolitano believes, is a victory for liberty and individualism, for “each person in the military will [now] be judged for combat, leadership and command based on their skills and ability—not some group they are a member of based on the consequence of birth” (Emphasis added).

Uncle Sam: ‘The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World’

America, BAB's A List, Family, Government, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Military, Pop-Culture, Race, Terrorism, War

BAB contributor MYRON PAULI agrees with MLK, who said: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today–my own government.”

‘The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World’
By Myron Pauli

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government” is the revered Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior saw America. Well, we are now a country where millions go to the movies to applaud “terrorists” being tortured by the CIA which, apparently, enabled us to lynch Osama bin Laden (the “terrorists” do not deserve to be put on trial since our government tells us they are “guilty” and it is none of our business to ever question the government but just to shut up and applaud). We have a secret and unaccountable organization, the CIA (instead of our own military which has more accountability) conducting secret undeclared wars all over the planet. Some people objected when Nixon did this in Cambodia – rather that Nixon be hailed as a Prophet of what was to come. Gadhafi comes clean on his nuclear program so WE OVERTHROW HIM and scatter his forces into Mali where …. – “Good Golly Miss Molly” – now the “terrorists” are destabilizing Mali – send in the French and troops and airplanes and drones. Like a proverbial tube of toothpaste, it will probably spread to Niger or Mauritania or who-knows… – remember when Cambodia was a quiet neutral ignored country until the US and the Vietnamese Communists decided to use it as a battleground and 2,000,000 Cambodians later died?! Collateral damage!

Meanwhile, the Washington Post of January 11 told of how foreign governments and our own are cracking down on parents who want to adopt orphans from overseas. Yes, ostensibly there are rules to prevent foreign kidnappings – but 2 hours of investigation by a reputable orphanage should be sufficient. A couple spent $45,000 over 5 years and came up with no child! The Homeland Security Department made them submit their fingerprints twice because the first set of fingerprints “expired”! And the foreign governments use the children rotting in their orphanages as fodder for their own corrupt political aims. Any cretin can give birth, and any other cretin can have an abortion, but G-d help us from those evil people trying to adopt babies. They are now on the lookout for single parents, the obese, elderly, divorced parents, gays, or whatever. Imagine a kid being adopted by a single old fat divorced lesbian – call out the drones. Perhaps we should be thankful for abortion since it prevents these kids from being adopted?!

Nowadays, 55% of black American developing children get aborted, and 70% of the rest are born out of wedlock. Whites are lagging behind but gradually catching up. Naturally, we will be subjected to the 40th Anniversary “discussion” of that random exercise of Harry Blackmun’s stream-of-consciousness, “Roe v. Wade,” in spite of its irrelevance. Even if Utah could outlaw abortion, a woman could hop on the Greyhound bus to Nevada to dispose of her developing child. Additionally, it is highly dubious that a jury of 12 in any jurisdiction would ever convict when 65% view abortion as less morally objectionable than burping at the dinner table. Heck – just announce that the fetus is part of “Al Qaeda” and the audience will cheer! Kill, kill, kill!

But perhaps the aborted babies are not missing much. Any child born in America comes into the world owing $50,000 of national debt and about ten times that in promised obligations to current Americans. Government grows in secrecy while Americans are regularly spied upon. Prosecutors threaten a jerk like Aaron Schwartz with 180 years in jail for computer “crimes”, e-mails are read, due process of law is disposed of entirely, laws are passed without being read and subject to arbitrary “interpretations” by the executive. We can celebrate Martin Luther King day because instead of Lyndon Johnson conducting idiotic wars in far-flung places, we now have a half-African origin President conducting new idiotic wars in far-flung places. We can celebrate because thanks to technological advances, we can conduct new idiotic wars with less American casualties.

America has advanced to the point that a dark skinned American can now be “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and even do it “on the cheap” – out of view from the public which focuses more on the phony girlfriend of some Notre Dame football player than our trillion-dollar war budget and the dozen or so ongoing perpetual wars.

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.