Category Archives: War

UPDATED: Republicans Desperately Need To … Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy (Entrenched, Un-Rothbardian Meta-Perspective)

Democrats, Elections, Just War, libertarianism, Liberty, Middle East, Military, Old Right, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans, War

Democrats and Republicans are warring over who won last night’s vice presidential debate. Democrats say Joe Biden; Republicans Paul Ryan.

While I agree with Daniel Pipes’ impressions of Biden’s repulsive demeanor (excerpted below); to the impartial observer, the outcome was clear. This time around, Ryan took the place Barack Obama occupied last week: loser.

Or, rather, relative loser (BHO was an absolute loser).

Ryan, of course, was never as bad a loser as Obama, as he is far more intelligent, studious, and quicker on his feet than the president. But overall—and during most of the bickering—Ryan lost.

Here’s Pipes on “Joe Biden’s smirk”:

Actually it was not just the smirk – it was also the false hilarity, the 82 interruptions of Ryan, the finger pointing, the preening arrogance, and the talking down to the audience – that overshadowed all else in the debate. Not until the last fifteen minutes did Biden talk like a normal human being, and then he became quite effective. Before then, however, his ugly demeanor overwhelmed his words, leaving a powerfully unpleasant impression. In contrast, Ryan spoke earnestly and respectfully, even while getting in a couple of sharp elbow jabs.

Dr. Pipes and I diverge over the nature of the principles mentioned, but Pipes correctly points to the absence of any in the debate, writing that, “With only a few exceptions, both candidates (as was also the case in the presidential debate) stayed aloof from principles, preferring to make the case as to who is the more competent manager. … those endless numbers and the disagreements over small facts meant the discussion verged on the tedious.”

Particularly painful (to longtime observers vested in an Old-Right, non-interventionist foreign policy) was Ryan’s deer-in-the-headlights look under Biden’s relentless barrage of,

“You gonna go to war (Iran)? You’d rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the [Afghan] trainees? You wanna send our soldiers to the border with Pakistan; let the Afghans step-up. We’re leaving! Let them step-up. The last thing America needs is to get in another ground war in the Middle East …”

I’ll say this much: Poor Paul Ryan knows his Afghan mountain passes.

His boss’s behind Biden saved.

The debate dovetailed with “Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy,” this week’s column, now on RT. It pointed out that “in fact, there is little daylight between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, as far as foreign policy goes.”

UPDATED (Oct 14): ENTRENCHED, UN-ROTHBARDIAN META-PERSPECTIVE. In reply to the Facebook thread, and Myron Pauli’s entrenched meta-perspective.

Myron, you mean you would not wish to hear and see Republicans commit to not launching wars and leaving all foreign bases? What kind of libertarianism is THAT!? Not Murray Rothbard’s. He was a tireless political junky, never one to sit on the fence lazily and feign disinterested piety. Alas, we have this debate every week, Myron. It’s not a debate. You adopt the same meta-perspective on politics; I cut and paste a characterization of your response, and it is this: “… We libertarians must not comment on policy, for it compromises our precious libertarian purity. We must not apply the mind to the issues of the day to enlighten our readers and bring them closer to liberty, for no enlightenment other than the immediate and absolute application and acceptance of the non-aggression axiom can be entertained.

Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy

Barack Obama, Democrats, Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Middle East, Political Philosophy, Republicans, War

The quote is from the current column, “Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy,” now on WND:

“‘He’s the first Nobel Peace Prize winner with a kill list.’ Excerpted from a PBS documentary, “The Choice 2012,” that is a pithy and apt adage to describe President Barack Obama’s warrior credentials.

Mitt Romney has promised that ‘there would be no daylight between the United States and Israel,’ when in fact there is little of the same between he and Obama, as far as foreign policy goes. If anything, the fact that Obama has resisted Benjamin Netanyahu’s calls to invade Iran plays in the president’s favor.

The sum of rival Romney’s foreign policy is this: Anything Obama can do, I can do deadlier.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Michael McGough points out the same.

Against the wishes of war-weary Americans, Romney has vowed to arm the Syrian rebels. But Obama, discreetly, is already doing in that country what he did “for” Libya: Level it and invite into it an evil even greater than The Dictator he helped oust. …

… From behind familiar parapets, the neoconservatives at the Washington Post are egging Mitt Romney on to heights of depravity which Obama, in their book, has failed to obtain. …

This president is perceived in the Middle East as hawk. Yet the WaPo would like to see him replaced by a vulture militarist.

… Having turned the political flip-flop into an art form, Romney should try to elevate it in the cause of a principle. …”

The complete column, now on WND, is “Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy.” Read it.

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Diplomatic Immunity From The Dangers Of Occupation

Barack Obama, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Government, Individual Rights, Islam, Just War, Terrorism, War

Our government’s only legitimate function is to protect American lives, one by precious one. Yet under “W,” ordinary Americans were regularly beheaded in the theaters of war Genghis Bush launched. None of their representatives stateside bargained for their lives or staged showy Congressional hearings to probe their forsaken security.

“President Bush sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to haggle for his countrymen.”

The helpless faces in televised pleas of Americans such as Private First Class Keith Maupin, Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, and American engineers Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong; the depraved indifference of my countrymen to their plight—these haunted me throughout 2003-2004, documented in columns such as “AFTER THEIR HEADS ROLL, AMERICA’S DEAD REMAIN FACELESS.”

Now, Republicans are attempting to saddle a war president by any other name—Barack Obama—with the blame for the “resurgence” of terrorism in America’s occupied territories, when the same anger was evinced by the occupied under Bush, and it will persist under future Republican leaders.

One voice of sanity on foreign policy is “departing Congressman” Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. Kucinich, who will be sorely missed, made a cameo today during the “House Hearing on Attack on U.S. Consulate in Libya,” where he asked about al-Qaida’s presence in Libya. Lt. Col. Andrew Wood said: ‘Their presence grows everyday. They are certainly more established than we are.'”

More from Kucinich via Reason:

Departing Congressman Dennis Kucinich said at today’s hearing on security failures in Benghazi that rather than engaging in partisanship Congress ought to look at its role in failing to curb American interventionism as what led to the terrorist attack in Benghazi on 9/11, saying extremists exist and are more powerful in Libya because the U.S. “spurred a civil war” there, “absent constitutional authority, might I add.”
Kucinich blamed “decades of intervention” on the rise of extremists in the region and asked why no lessons from Iraq were drawn on Libya.
“Interventions do not make us safer,” Kucinich said, “they are themselves a threat to America,” before asking how much more Al-Qaeda there is in Libya now than before the U.S. intervention (the only answer he got was that they have a bigger presence in Libya than the U.S. does.” He also asked how many surface-to-air missiles were still missing since the U.S. intervention. Between 10 and 20,000, according to one of the witnesses.

Andy Sullivan: Struggling to Stay Relevant

Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Foreign Policy, Healthcare, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Pseudo-intellectualism, War

Like the late Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan lacks a philosophical core. Unlike Hitchens, Sullivan is not a formidable intellect, rhetorician and writer. Hitchens didn’t have to struggle to stay interesting. Sullivan does. The fruits of Sullivan’s Struggle are splayed on the latest cover of Newsweek, provocatively titled, “President Obama: The Democrats’ Ronald Reagan.”

Like any liberal who doesn’t have to worry about a pay cheque, crunchy con Sullivan is still convinced that Barack Obama can “hold his staff out” over stormy waters, and divide the sea so that the people may pass through “with a wall of water on either side.”

Obama’s “tally of achievements is formidable,” declares Sullivan, who then proceeds to praise every thing BHO has done to cripple the American economy (including extending or entrenching US hegemony abroad):

…the near-obliteration of al Qaeda, democratic revolutions in the Arab world that George Bush could only have dreamed of, the re-regulation of Wall Street after the 2008 crash, stimulus investments in infrastructure and clean energy, powerful new fuel-emission standards along with a record level of independence from foreign oil, and, most critically, health-care reform. Now look at what Obama’s second term could do for all of these achievements. It would mean, first of all, that universal health care in America—government subsidies to people so they can afford to purchase private insurance and a ban on denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions—becomes irreversible. Yes, many details of the law would benefit from reform, experimentation, and fixes—especially if Republicans help to make them. But it’s still the biggest change in American health care since the passage of Medicare in 1965.

Sullivan’s piece tells you about the degree to which neocon and left-liberal political “thinking” have converged.

On war too.

Crunchy con Sullivan’s anti-war followers should not forget what was documented in “Confess, Clinton; Say You’re Sorry, Sullivan“:

Senator Hillary Clinton and neoconservative blogger Andrew Sullivan share more than a belief that “Jesus, Mohamed, and Socrates are part of the same search for truth.” They’re both Christians who won’t confess to their sins.
Both were enthusiastic supporters of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, turned scathing and sanctimonious critics of the war. Neither has quite come clean. Both ought to prostrate themselves before those they’ve bamboozled, those they’ve helped indirectly kill, and whichever deity they worship. (The Jesus-Mohamed-and-Socrates profanity, incidentally, was imparted by Sullivan, during a remarkably rude interview he gave Hugh Hewitt. The gay activist-cum-philosopher king was insolent; Hewitt took it .)
I won’t bore you with the hackneyed war hoaxes Sullivan once spewed, only to say that there was not an occurrence he didn’t trace back to Iraq: anthrax, September 11, and too few gays in the military—you name it; Iraq was behind it. Without minimizing the role of politicians like Clinton, who signed the marching orders, pundits like Sullivan provided the intellectual edifice for the war, also inspiring impressionable young men and women to sacrifice their lives and limbs to the insatiable Iraq Moloch.