Category Archives: War

The "Don’t Tread On Me” Tradition Is Back!

Federal Reserve Bank, Liberty, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Ron Paul, Taxation, Terrorism, War

Or so says Richard Spencer, editor of Taki’s Magazine, in the fabulous article: “Are the Tea Parties Radical and Paranoid Enough?”

In the tea party protest Spencer attended he saw ample signs of the Old Right rising. This recrudescence took the form of fewer “bloviations about the war on terror,” and more “Abolish the Federal Reserve!” and “Republicans + Democrats = National-Socialism” signs. “[O]nly two or three blue-blazer-and-kakis Frumbots” loitered around aimlessly.

Sweet.

Writes Richard: “There’s no question that the Republicans would love to co-opt the Tea Party movement to strengthen their prospects in 2010, but my sense last night was that the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ crowd might be a bit too radical to be neutralized and Republicanized easily.”

Read the rest on Taki’s.

The “Don’t Tread On Me” Tradition Is Back!

Federal Reserve Bank, Liberty, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Ron Paul, Taxation, Terrorism, War

Or so says Richard Spencer, editor of Taki’s Magazine, in the fabulous article: “Are the Tea Parties Radical and Paranoid Enough?”

In the tea party protest Spencer attended he saw ample signs of the Old Right rising. This recrudescence took the form of fewer “bloviations about the war on terror,” and more “Abolish the Federal Reserve!” and “Republicans + Democrats = National-Socialism” signs. “[O]nly two or three blue-blazer-and-kakis Frumbots” loitered around aimlessly.

Sweet.

Writes Richard: “There’s no question that the Republicans would love to co-opt the Tea Party movement to strengthen their prospects in 2010, but my sense last night was that the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ crowd might be a bit too radical to be neutralized and Republicanized easily.”

Read the rest on Taki’s.

Torturing The 'Torture' Issue II

Democrats, Iraq, Law, Military, Morality, Neoconservatism, The Military, War

In the first installment to the ongoing saga of torture under Bush, I asked:

Ever wonder why the Democrats and their media lapdogs never shut-up about the issue of torture, when Bush’s decision to wage an unjust, illegal war ought to be the focus of their ire? The matter of torture is, after all, subsumed within the broader category of an unjust war. Moreover, one can make the case for torture in desperate, dire situations. (I’m not making the case, I’m saying that one can attempt to justify incidents of torture: you were not thinking clearly, you were desperate to avert another disaster, you wanted to save hostages; you worried you’d be blamed if you didn’t extract crucial information.) But how on earth do you justify lugging an army across the ocean to occupy a third-world country that is no danger to you and has not threatened you? You don’t, you can’t.

Democrats are nearly as culpable as Republicans on the matter of the war on Iraq. So they stick with their limited, safe mandate of torture. MSNBC’s Maddow and Olbermann, and their constitutional scholar, are thus careful to skirt the need to prosecute Bush and his bandits for invading Iraq. Instead, they stick to waterboarding.

The current torture kerfuffle was elicited by Obama’s release of CIA interrogation protocols.

(A note to the neoconservatives who stalk this site, and believe their ill-formulated fulminations vis-a-vis Iraq ought to be featured on my private property: The war against Iraq is not going to be adjudicated again on this site–not ever. That crime I chronicled at great length, applying fact and every ounce of reason in my possession to repudiate and denounce. The case is closed! The lazy neoconservative can read my archive on the topic. While I can imagine these ideologues urgently need to make peace with their makers or consciences for their role in a crime of such moral and material magnitude, they will not do so on my private property!)

Update II: Brownie Points For Barack

Barack Obama, Bush, Europe, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Islam, Military, Neoconservatism, War

Yes, I award them when warranted.

• Obama has lifted the “Pentagon’s 18-year ban on media covering the return of fallen U.S. service members” to the Dover air force base in Delaware.
Excellent, honest move. I applaud Obama for taking it. In this way, Americans can see what death in the service of America’s recreational wars looks like.
As a child in Israel, I remember funerals for the fallen being state affairs. The entire nation would honor the fallen soldiers and be made to confront the agony of death. No wonder Israeli Jews have no stomach for wars.

• Recalibrating the relationship with Russia: another very good move, although, given how Bush-like Barack is—in other words, neocon-compatible—it’s hard to envision him taking a fundamentally different stand on Chechnya or Georgia, for example. Still, restarting the relationship with Russia is in itself a start.

• All in all, making nice with “Old Europe”—which is how the stupid, reckless Bush administration dismissed Europe (including its correct objection to the Iraqi invasion)—is a good thing. Sure, neoconservative war harpies get hot for over heated rhetoric against any and all. They’ll have to get their kicks playing video war games. As will they have to get through their thick skulls that this country is no longer a super power. It’s neither sexy nor smart to smite the world when you’re … broke and bankrupt.

No matter how Republicans spin it, Obama’s overtures to Islam and the Muslim world do not present any change from Imam Bush’s religion-of-peace preaching.

• It’s premature to rejoice over the cuts to some military spending announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates today. Touted as a balancing of “want and need,” and intended to gear “Pentagon buying plans to smaller, lower-tech battlefields the military is facing now, and expects in coming years”—Gates’ proposed $534 billion budget for the coming year is up from $513 billion for 2009.

This is really nothing but a reshuffle.

Update I (April 7): Obama gets credit on Cuba too. This from MyWay News:

President Barack Obama will soon move to ease travel and financial restrictions on Cuba as his administration conducts a broad review of its policy toward the communist nation, a senior American official said Monday.

“We can expect some relaxation, some changes in terms of the restrictions on family remittances and family travel,” said Jeffrey Davidow, the White House adviser for the upcoming Summit of the Americas, which Obama will attend.

Davidow said Monday that the changes – which officials say would allow unlimited visits to Cuba by American families and remove caps on money transfers – are intended not only as a moral step for the estimated 1.5 million Americans who have relatives in Cuba, but also to foster change there.

Good going. Trade—not democracy or sanctions—is also the best antidote to war. The more economically intertwined countries are, the less likely they are to quarrel. Boycott Cuba less and barter with it more and it’s bound to tone down its belligerence and transform for the better.

Update II (April 8): Neocon Newt Gingrich is going gaga, but here again Obama’s “refusal to take military action against nations like North Korea and Iran” is the right thing to do.

Newt the nut told Fox News’s Gretta von Susteren that Obama needed to learn from his trip. And what is it that Newt believes the lessons ought to be? Obama must follow the neocons’ policy prescriptions and consider nations that do not do what we want them to do as hostile. From the fact that Europe didn’t indulge Obama, he needs to learn what Newt and the neocons preach: there is no basis for diplomacy, unless the world bows to America.

Only America has national interests; other nations have a problem aligning theirs with America’s.