Showing posts with label Muslim world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslim world. Show all posts

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Defense Policies for 2012 U.S. House Candidacy

Written in January 2012
Originally published on January 18th, 2012
Originally appeared at www.wix.com/dontvoteforjoe/2012

Philosophy of Government

Living in a free society means respecting individual rights such as the right of private property, contract rights, and freedom of – and from – association. In order to preserve legitimate, contractual government, society must engender only those forms and agencies of government whose powers are delegated through the authorization of informed, consenting sovereign individuals who wield such powers to begin with.
Governments should primarily function as agencies offering insurance protections against harm of person and / or property. I feel that governments which practice jurisdiction over areas larger than towns, cities, and small counties should never wield either perpetual or exclusive rights to govern; and that they should have to compete against other governments within overlapping jurisdictions – as well as against non-governmental agencies of labor and capital – to provide the types of goods and services which are typically thought of as public; security and justice not excepted.
Additionally, I believe that socioeconomic justice can be achieved without taxation, but that there first must be radical increases in the size and variety of types of non-governmental associations.
I would urge governments at all levels to preserve the freedom from association and the consent of the governed by seceding, permitting secession and independence of the smaller governments within them, and decentralizing their governments as much as possible (without compromising competence).
I would sponsor legislation promoting public awareness about dual federalism and the right of individuals to terminate federal citizenship. I would also support amending the Constitution to permit multiple seceding states to form into confederations, and I would urge the states to amend their constitutions to permit citizens to terminate their state citizenship.



Civil Liberties

Nine-tenths of the Bill of Rights has been violated and / or significantly eroded in our history; and loose interpretations of the General Welfare Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution are subverting civil liberties like never before. I would support a strict-constructionist interpretation of the Bill of Rights.
I believe that the Constitution affords equal due process rights to federal subjects, citizens of the states, and subjects of foreign governments alike. I also believe that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment only applies the 5th Amendment – and not the entire Bill of Rights – to the states, and prohibits the states from punishing citizens for being or becoming federal subjects.
As such, I would urge the states to ensure that their constitutions provide perfect due process, and that they nearly mirror the civil liberties standards set by the Bill of Rights. I would also promote increased public awareness of our common-law rights under the states, and vote to defend the corpus delicti principle of crime.
I would sponsor legislation requiring that citizens coming of age be provided with certain information about the difference between their sets of privileges, immunities, and / or rights both before and after coming of age and entering political associations; and that prospective jurors become informed about jury nullification.
Additionally, I would vote to repeal all of the last decade’s PATRIOT-Act-type legislation, many continuity-of-government laws, all federal gun and drug control laws, all federal mandatory-minimum-sentencing laws, and all laws permitting the death penalty for federal crimes. I would also vote to oppose similar legislation in the future.


National Sovereignty

We should follow Washington’s advice about avoiding entangling alliances. I would vote to end U.S. partnership to all military alliances – including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – and demand congressional approval for overt attacks and destabilization operations on foreign sovereign nations which do not directly or immediately threaten Americans.
Documents from the Founding to just several years ago have confirmed that the states are sovereign and independent, and I believe that the federal government and the states should be regarded as having co-equal sovereignty. Local, state, federal, foreign, and international, sovereign governments ought to have the equal right to choose whether to submit to one another.
All levels of all governments should also have equal rights to compete against one another to provide human rights, financial well-being, and sufficient market freedom to their citizens. These rights are threatened when our federal government subjects itself to the low standards for human rights set by the United Nations, the institutionalization of wealth-derived power embodied in the World Bank and the I.M.F., and the slowing of the liberalization of trade posed by the World Trade Organization and reformist multilateral free-trade associations such as N.A.F.T.A.
I would vote to end membership of the U.S. federal government in the U.N., the World Bank and the I.M.F., the W.T.O., and all free-trade associations. I would also vote to repeal a constitutional provision which prevents the states from becoming partners to military alliances; and could also be construed to prevent them from seeking recognition by the international community, any level of membership in the U.N., and membership in the World Bank, the I.M.F., the W.T.O., and free-trade associations.



Military Spending

America’s economy, international reputation, and capacity for self-defense have been weakened by our reckless, expensive, and expansive military adventurism; our entangling conspiracy with other pro-Western powers to radicalize the governments of sovereign nations and the opposition movements within them against one another; and our promotion of aggressive war in the name of prevention, containment, humanitarianism, and peace.
If the annual budget of the U.S. military were cut by 80%, the U.S. would still have the largest military budget of any nation. I would vote to cut the military budget in half as soon as possible, which would require reversing just a single decade of excessive spending, and which could be accomplished without cutting funding for any programs which are essential for the purposes of legitimate and responsible self-defense.
I would vote to de-fund our wars and police actions against governments that do not directly or immediately threaten the U.S.; cease the funding, training, armament of foreign armies and opposition groups; close our hundreds of military bases around the world; bring our troops home; end the development of wasteful, unnecessary military technology; drastically decrease U.S. participation in international weapons sales, and defend and secure the homeland first and foremost.
            I would also vote to transition as much of the administration and taxation responsibilities for the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs to the governments of the states as would be efficient, and I would urge the states to transition some of those same responsibilities to the local governments within them, as well as to permit charity organizations which serve veterans to function without government interference.



Foreign Aid

Although foreign aid constitutes only a fraction of a percentage of the federal budget, this aid is wasteful and unnecessary, and it often risks compromising our ability to defend ourselves and act unilaterally and independently.
Foreign aid benefits a select few countries primarily; in recent years, funds for the State of Israel and its neighbors combined have typically constituted nearly 40% of all foreign aid spending. I would describe this and similar practices as the finance of arms races.
I would vote to oppose the spending of foreign aid in this manner, and I would seek to eliminate between $12 and $27 billion in unreported additional federal aid to the State of Israel each year. I would also vote to oppose federal funding for the purposes of arming and training foreign armies and opposition groups.
This would help avoid the risks of blowback, the conditioning of aid recipients to become weakened militarily due to overdependence on foreign aid funding, and the distortions of aid recipients’ civil economies arising from the over-centralization and over-bureaucratization of the administration of government welfare programs, the finance of which becomes more feasible once military aid relieves nations’ burdens of providing for their own self-defense.
Additionally, I would urge the people, local governments, the states, and non-governmental charitable agencies to give to others as they deem appropriate; and vote to oppose attempts by governmental agencies to derive revenue from donations to non-governmental charitable agencies made by persons not consenting to be subjects of the pertinent government.



Israel and Palestine

I believe that agencies of the State of Israel played significant roles in murdering of Americans in the Lavon Affair, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the attacks on the U.S.S. Liberty and the U.S.S. Cole, and the events of September 11th, 2001.
As such, I would vote to decrease and eliminate all military and domestic federal aid to the State of Israel – whose historical record of abuse of religious freedom, human rights, and the freedom of speech risks compromising the morality of all those who even tacitly support it – as well as all aid to the people and government of Palestine.
A small but vocal one percent of Jews worldwide believes that there should be no Jewish sovereignty until the arrival of Mashiach, objects to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate's centralization of religio-juridical authority in the country, believes that local rabbinic courts should be the only sources of religious and military authority, and resents Israel’s status as a self-defined “Jewish… state”.
I would strongly urge the Israeli government to de-establish itself – and to refrain from preventing the enactment of the aforementioned reforms – as soon as possible within the next 221 years.
I do not believe that a two-state solution with full U.N. membership for the Palestinian Territories is necessarily the most thoughtful and humane solution to the greater Israeli-Arab conflict. Those who support this policy should be cautioned that it could cause the self-determination of the Palestinian people to become subordinated to the power of their elected officials and the supranational U.N. governance.



September 11th, 2001

I believe that what happened on September 11th, 2001 was a false-flag operation orchestrated by the American government and the intelligence agencies of the U.K., Saudi Arabia, and the State of Israel; and that the purposes of these events included creating desired artificial deflation, distracting the public and the press from a loss of $2.3 trillion in Pentagon funds, excusing incursions into civil liberties, repressing criticism during the lead-ups to military involvement in Afghanistan, generating sympathy for the U.S. and Israel, and flooding Israel and the West with oil.
Given the 9/11 Commission Report's total omission of information relevant to the collapse of World Trade Center #7, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta's testimony regarding Vice President Cheney's actions on the day of the attacks, and the fact that Cheney and President Bush were permitted to testify to the commission behind closed doors and not under oath, I believe that the commission was a whitewash.
I would vote to support a new, independent, and non-partisan investigation into the events and planning of 9/11, wherein I would strongly urge an extensive probe into the possible complicity of W.T.C. leaseholders Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy, M.O.S.S.A.D.'s counter-terrorism unit Sayeret Matkal, Sayeret Matkal officer and Akamai Technologies co-founder Daniel M. Lewin, Israeli security firm I.C.T.S., Israeli airline Tower Air, and Urban Moving Systems of New Jersey. I believe that such an investigation would be well worth any price in the neighborhood of the $15-million cost of the 9/11 Commission.



The Muslim World

Over the last four decades, the U.S. has financed an arms race between Israel and its neighbors; and colluded with Israel and other Western powers to weaken, destabilize, and plunder Middle Eastern nations' natural resources.
Practicing an diplomatically open, non-interventionist foreign policy would discourage our allies from requesting our military assistance to help them plunder foreign resources, as well as from participating in false-flag attacks on us in order to blackmail, intimidate, and provoke us into attacking their enemies; and save over a hundred thousand lives a year, eventually leading to peace without shame and a better international reputation of the United States.
Today, there are many Americans who hate and fear Islamic law and culture, and believe that the government of this or that given majority-Muslim country was solely responsible for 9/11. I would remind these Americans that tolerance of Islam was publicly promoted in the U.S. in the 1980s in order to inspire antipathy towards the atheist U.S.S.R., and I would defend my view that the planners of 9/11 did not include a government of any majority-Muslim nation which is not hospitable to the West and Israel.
Although much of the culture war between the West and Islam was concocted in order to inspire loyalty to – and sympathy for – the American and Israeli governments, the surge of Muslim sectarian violence over the last 35 years and the existence of territorial Jewish sovereignty have profound implications on the eschatology of all three Abrahamic faiths.
Western interventionism in the Middle East has exacerbated an increasingly violent division between the sects of Islam – as well as the various religions – which, left unchecked, could potentially precipitate an international nuclear holy war. I believe that an expedient reversal of our foreign policy towards Muslim nations could save hundreds of thousands – if not hundreds of millions or even billions – of lives, and I would urge the president to meet with the leaders of Iran.



Homeland Security

Although I believe that September 11th was a false-flag operation – and that poor communication between our intelligence agencies was not a major cause of the attacks – I would vote to support streamlining coordination between our homeland security apparati, if only for the purposes of increasing efficiency and saving resources and revenue.
I would suggest that fiscal incentive and the desire for financial efficiency should also motivate us to restore 4th Amendment rights to travelers, to administer our security apparati without violating the Constitution, and to end government’s abusive monopoly on the provision of security by permitting competition.
I would vote to oppose the Transportation Security Administration’s routine violation of civil liberties, and to permit the states to take up the taxation and administration responsibilities necessary for its administration.
I would also urge the governments of the states to transition at least some of those responsibilities to local governments, urge governments at all levels to permit non-governmental agencies to compete against them to provide secure transportation, and – in the interim – urge commercial airports to apply to the TSA’s Screening Partnership Program and transition to private screening while maintaining TSA oversight.



Europe and Russia

I would vote to support the practice of a diplomatically-open, non-interventionist foreign policy. This would require pursuing the cessation of U.S. partnership to all military alliances and free-trade agreements, and membership in all foreign and multinational governmental agencies and financial organizations.
To make Europe and Russia no exceptions to this policy would help prevent their markets, sovereignty, and self-defense capabilities from becoming weakened and compromised. This would ensure a lack of American complicity in Western-backed coups on oil-producing nations, and help improve our international reputation.
I would vote against the disbursement of federal funding to – and U.S. membership in – N.A.T.O., the U.N., the E.U., the World Bank and the I.M.F., and all governmental agencies and financial institutions claiming Russia and / or European nations as members. This would help allay the risk of the U.S. being further drawn into the European debt crisis. I would also urge Russia to reverse its current financial policy towards Europe.
Additionally, I would urge Russia to continue nuclear talks with the U.S. with the aim of reducing both arsenals tenfold, provided that China agrees to do the same; 150 American nuclear weapons are returned from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy; the U.K., France, Turkey, Pakistan, and India agree to cut their arsenals in half; and Israel agrees to publicly acknowledge its possession of nuclear weapons and to cut its arsenal by at least half.



Latin America

            I would urge people and governments at all levels to strive for a civil society based on the notions of informed and voluntary association, the right to bear arms, the freedom of travel, and corpus delicti.
Taking this stance in regards to our foreign policy towards Latin America, I would vote to oppose expenditures for purposes of enforcing our unconstitutional federal drug laws, aiding foreign governments to enforce similar policies within their own territories, and especially drugs-for-weapons and destabilization operations across the U.S.-Mexico border.
I would vote to end the treatment of Latin America as a protectorate of the United States. This policy – especially in the last half-century – has caused much of Latin America to fall prey to a rash of our Middle-Eastern-style coups and coup attempts, destabilization operations, wars against drug trafficking, and inhibitions of trade.
A diplomatically open, non-interventionist foreign policy towards Latin America should prohibit the use of American force to prevent the nationalization of oil industry by a foreign sovereign government, unless it presents a direct or immediate threat to the U.S.. As such, I would urge the president to meet with the leaders Venezuela.
I would also urge the president to meet with the leaders of Cuba, and vote to support significant military disengagement from Cuba, Central America, Columbia, Ecuador, and Uruguay.



Sub-Saharan Africa

Thus far, Western policy towards Africa has done little other than perpetuate a centuries-old economic colonialism by saddling the continent with debt. I would vote that the U.S. cease assisting Western European nations to continue military and financial destabilization operations in Africa.
I would also vote to oppose the disbursement of all federal funds to African nations, to international governmental and financial agencies to which African nations belong, and to charity organizations which donate to Africa; while advocating for the fair and unhindered competition of governmental and non-governmental actors to provide development and relief for the people of Africa.
Additionally, I would vote to remove all U.S. military infrastructure, resources, and personnel from Africa – especially from the nations of Liberia, Mauritania, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, and Botswana – and to oppose the expenditure of federal funds towards the use of government force against agencies of the Chinese civil economy based in Africa.



South and East Asia

I would urge China to participate in talks to reduce its nuclear arsenal tenfold – and Pakistan and India to cut their arsenals in half – provided that the U.S. and Russia agree to cut their arsenals tenfold; 150 American nuclear weapons are returned from Western Europe; the U.K., France, and Turkey agree to cut their arsenals by half; and Israel agrees to publicly acknowledge its possession of nuclear weapons and to cut its arsenal by at least half.
I would vote to return all U.S. military infrastructure, resources, and personnel from – as well as to prevent future military coordination with – the nations of Asia and Oceania, especially Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand.
I would urge the governments of China and North Korea to implement rounds of decentralization of decision-making authority over matters of labor and capital. I would also urge Japan to lower its corporate income taxes in order to stimulate domestic capital investment.
Additionally, I would vote to oppose the disbursement of federal funds to Asian and Oceanic nations, to international governmental and financial agencies to which they belong, and to charity organizations which donate to them; while urging all non-federal American governments and non-governmental agencies to compete to provide relief and development to South and East Asia and Oceania.



For more entries on military, national defense, and foreign policy, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/american-sovereignty-restoration-act-of.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/foreign-occupation-and-declaration-of.html

For more entries on Judaism, the State of Israel, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/us-withdrawal-from-united-nations.html

For more entries on theory of government, please visit:
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Friday, March 25, 2011

Middle East Foreign Policy

 


I would not have voted to authorize the “wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. I was opposed to all three military interventions from the start, although, in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, I cannot say that at such a young age I was aware of precisely why our reasons for doing so were either unjust or illegal.



Legality of War

The difference between a war and a police action is that in a war, the armed forces of at least two sovereign states are committing state-sanctioned violence against one another. Congress has not formally declared war since Pearl Harbor.

According to the War Powers Resolution of 1973, in response to a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces” the president has the power to act unilaterally in committing armed forces to military action, but must notify Congress within forty-eight hours. The resolution also stipulates that, unless Congress authorizes the use of military force or declares war within sixty days of committing armed forces, armed forces may not remain after sixty days, and the chief executive has an additional thirty days to disengage.

However, the War Powers Resolution only applies to national emergencies created by attacks upon the United States. The sovereign governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya did not attack the United States; neither the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hussein’s Ba’ath Party regime in Iraq, nor Gadhafi’s regime in Libya purposely attacked the United States or its territories or possessions, at least not in a completely overt manner that was not in response to some unjust action committed by the United States. I will explain this one country at a time.

Being that no direct attack on the military or land of the United States occurred in the cases of either of these three countries, former president George W. Bush and President Barack Obama acted – or are acting – in manners that were – or are – unconstitutional, as well as in violation of the War Powers Resolution, when they ordered attacks against those three countries. Therefore, I believe that impeachment of either or both of these presidents would have been – or would be – appropriate, legal, constitutional, and within the jurisdiction of Congress.



Libya

 In the case of Libya, it can rightfully be argued that Colonel Muammar Gadhafi has caused the deaths of Americans, as Gadhafi’s former justice minister claimed about a month ago that Gadhafi personally ordered the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed nearly 270 people, two-thirds of them Americans. Admittedly, that happened nearly twenty-five years ago, so President Reagan was most likely unaware that Gadhafi may have been behind the bombing, even though Gadhafi had possibly sponsored a hijacking in Pakistan two years earlier.

Nevertheless, I do not believe the airplane which was allegedly bombed on Gadhafi’s orders in 1988 qualified as a possession of the United States – as it was a commercial plane heading from Germany to England to the U.S., as opposed to U.S. military aircraft – and so, I do not believe the War Powers Resolution applies in any case in which a U.S. president – past, present, or future – would be justified in claiming that action against Libya – even if the goal were to kill Gadhafi – qualifies as a response to an emergency situation resulting from an attack on the United States.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that an international panel could potentially seek to convict Colonel Gadhafi of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in order to provide closure for the families of the victims. This may explain why so many U.S. officials are now claiming that our intention is not to kill Gadhafi. Our officials are also saying that the U.S. is not playing a leading role in the enforcement of the No-Fly Zone, but we are deploying the vast majority of the missiles, and permitting Britain to bomb Gadhafi’s headquarters.

The main reason which American officials are providing for enforcing the No-Fly Zone against Libya is that we would like to help the opposition against Gadhafi, which has been losing ground against him rapidly. Former Bush administration White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove even characterized the opposition as intent on establishing a democracy. That’s the major problem with our intervention in Libya; the U.S. is taking a side in a civil war in which we do not know whom we are supporting, nor what its goals are.

As in the case of Egypt, no doubt at least some of the Libyan opposition – or those sympathetic to it – support establishing democracy, but there is also a distinct possibility that many want to bring about a Sunni Islamic republic which would be more religiously orthodox than Gadhafi’s faction. It is also possible, as Gadhafi has repeatedly claimed, that some among the opposition have military and financial ties to – or at least sympathy with - Osama bin Laden and / or al-Qaeda.

The situation in Libya represents a sea change in American Middle East foreign policy. Usually the United States finds a Middle Eastern dictator it likes, then funds and arms him, and later invades his country. This time, Gadhafi started off as an enemy of the United States; and then, during the Bush administration, Libya was removed from the list of sponsors of state terrorism, and we began funding him; and now, rather than invading his country outright, we are “enabling” the enforcement of a No-Fly Zone against Libya.

It is difficult to judge what to do about Libya. With President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton repeatedly saying, “the time for Gadhafi to leave is now”, it is very puzzling why they desired to allocate taxpayer money to continue to fund him just a month ago and did not ask him to resign once the Obama administration transitioned into the White House.

While many argue that President Obama should have asked for congressional approval for the U.S. role in enforcing of the No-Fly Zone before he went to the headquarters of the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the League of Arab States, it appears that, since Libya has not attacked us, congressional approval does not even apply to this situation. That would mean that President Obama’s actions are clearly illegal and unconstitutional, and he should be impeached whether congress votes to “authorize” the intervention by late May or not.

If we’re agreed that Gadhafi and his supporters are enemies of the United States – even though they have not attacked its citizens in over twenty years – and if we’re also agreed that we should take Gadhafi at his word that some of those armed Libyans who are trying to oust him are in fact al-Qaeda - or people who have sympathy with al-Qaeda – then I have no problem letting Gadhafi and his heavily-armed opposition destroy each other, and allowing the U.S. stand by while a coalition of European states foolishly take sides, to their own potential future diplomatic and military detriment. Only if any of those European states were directly attacked by Libya in the future would it be remotely appropriate that the U.S. should seek international authorization to defend the victims against Libya, in accordance with our N.A.T.O. obligation to assist them.



Iraq

In the case of Iraq, to speak to the issue of whether Hussein’s Iraq ever attacked the United States, I believe the United States had a desire to provoke Iraq into military action in order to justify armed conflict. During the Clinton administration, the U.S. Air Force would intentionally occupy Iraqi air space, and some American military officials hoped Iraq would shoot one of the planes down, which would be presented in the media as an attack, obscuring the fact that we had no reason to occupy their air space to begin with. Also, during the Clinton administration, the U.S. sent hundreds of C.I.A. agents to meet with Saddam Hussein, but they were kidnapped and forced to choose between their own deaths and the deaths of their families. All were murdered by Iraqis. There was even a failed coup against Hussein in 1996 in which the C.I.A. was involved. What all this means is that Iraq did kill Americans, but that violence was provoked, and the military operation which could be characterized as retaliation for those events was not timely in the least.

I believe the U.S. should pull its armed forces out of Iraq as quickly as that task can be safely performed. I also believe we should not leave any permanent military bases there. But, being that the role which the U.S. played in the ‘liberation’ of Iraq can never be undone, the U.S. should continue to play an important diplomatic role in Iraq’s affairs.

I think the U.S. should engage the Iraqis – as well as the governments of Syria, Turkey, Armenia, and Iran – to commence a dialogue that could result in those countries putting into place legal mechanisms whereby the Kurdish minorities in each of them may eventually hold a referendum which would allow them to peacefully declare and establish an independent Kurdish state. I think this would help to fan the flame of ethnic tension in Northern Iraq.


To further the goal of decreased ethnic tension, I also desire that the U.S. – without the use of coercion or threats – encourage the new Iraqi government to adopt a decentralizationist model for their government, affording local communities as much self-governance as is reasonable, in order to lessen the likelihood that a high-stakes federalist paradigm could undermine Sunni confidence in and fidelity to the government, which now affords more rights to Shi’ites than did the Hussein regime.



Afghanistan

In the case of Afghanistan, a little background is required. The Taliban was formed in the mid-1990s as a split off of the more opium-tolerant Mujahideen, which the C.I.A. trained, armed, and funded against the Soviets during the Reagan administration. I don’t believe we should engage in proxy wars or strengthen groups of warriors against sovereign governments, because there can be dire consequences. We should certainly never do it again, and we should also be careful when we fund and arm sovereign nations and help train their soldiers.

Afghanistan’s opium makes up nearly half of the worldwide opium trade, and there are even rumors that Osama bin Laden himself earns money off of the drug trade, in addition to his family’s oil wealth. I believe that the U.S. runs the risk of further and more drawn-out involvement in Afghanistan, now that it has been discovered that the country has wealth in mineral and oil deposits.

I do not desire that the U.S. continue to express solidarity with the CIA-backed Afghanistani President Hamid Karzai, whose brother has been accused of not only being paid by the CIA, but also of being involved in the drug trade. The U.S. claims it invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban had contact with Osama bin Laden and refused to turn him over, but I believe one important reason for the invasion was that the Taliban was cracking down on the production of opium in the several years prior to 9/11. However, this would seem to be contradicted by rumors that the opium trade is a major source of funding for the Taliban.

Some of President Obama’s critics are calling the conflict in Afghanistan “Obama’s war of choice”, being that Obama Democrats view that conflict as more popular and legitimate than the conflict in Iraq. As in the case of Iraq, I desire neither that the president commit any more troops to Afghanistan, nor that the U.S. leave any permanent military bases there, and I would vote to pull U.S. armed forces out of Afghanistan as quickly as that task can be safely performed. We should also cease Predator-drone strikes on Pakistani targets, and leave those tasks up to the relatively new government of Pakistan which has replaced that country’s military dictatorship.



General Middle East Policy

Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Iraq are among the top 15 national producers of oil, and Libya and Afghanistan produce some oil as well. In the lead-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, it was repeated that oil wealth would help pay for the costs of military intervention. Bill Clinton’s air strikes on Baghdad were, in part, retaliations for Saddam Hussein’s desire to sell oil to the U.S. through Europe – rather than directly to us – which cost the U.S. money due to rates of currency exchange.

I don’t believe the U.S. should continue this policy of engaging in trade wars over commodities that are highly valuable, and thus, prone to causing conflicts. The U.S. obviously still has some desire to both protect its own economic interests, as well as contain international socialism, whether it be Marxist-Stalinist or Islamic-communitarian in character. I believe that neither of these goals can be achieved through colluding with the governments of foreign nations to intervene in the economy without causing the occasional international military conflict.

 If the U.S. desires to keep practicing Wilsonianism – that is, ‘making the world safe for democracy’ – while continuing to look after its own economic interests, as well as undermining regimes which are destructive to human liberty; trade wars, military strikes, regime-change, and nation-building are not the way to go; nor is training, arming, and funding dangerous groups of warriors within those countries.

We should replace the “stick” approach with the “carrot’ approach”; that is, we should trade with businesses and people in foreign nations, so that they may learn to appreciate the economic liberty which our economic policy affords them, leading them to identify with us ideologically against the regimes which plunder their wealth through taxes.

That way, they may reap the benefits of the free market, and allocate their wealth in whatever way they might. If they choose to use that wealth to destroy their oppressors, so be it; the United States has no place intervening and taking sides in civil wars. Once the free market is enabled, and communal autonomy is secured; legitimate, localistic participatory democracies will have the opportunity to flourish in order to balance the interests of the earners of wealth with the egalitarian interests of the community without the specter of needless monolithic, bureaucratic, federalistic, centralizationist, sovereign, nation-state government incursion into their affairs.



Iran and Israel

Another part of the question of Iraq and Afghanistan is Iran. I believe that, in truth, the United States has practically no legitimate reason to be militarily involved in Afghanistan, that our establishment of military bases there is primarily intended to serve as a launching pad – as a compliment to Iraq – for a future invasion of Iran, and that part of the reason the U.S. is in Iraq is to protect Israel from Iran, and to direct Iraqi oil to Israel.

 Israel is the other missing piece of Middle East foreign policy. Osama bin Laden, in his alleged ‘admission’ to complicity in the September 11th attacks, stated that the attacks occurred because the U.S. has military bases on the Arabian Peninsula, and because it supports the State of Israel. I believe that these two reasons are among the most important causes of the recent inflammation of Muslim antipathy towards the United States.

 In accordance with what was, until about a century ago, the law of the Ottoman Empire, as well as what is the law of the Old Testament, Jewish and Muslim communities are to be as autonomous as possible, with no modern, sovereign, nationalistic, statist entities subverting the law of G-d to the authority of mankind. Furthermore, there is not to be sovereign government among the Jews until the rabbinic court of religious law called the Sanhedrin has been fully established, and the Jewish Messiah has arrived and been identified.

 I believe there is only one hope to cooling tensions between the United States and the Islamic and Jewish international communities, and that a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine is not that hope. That’s why, as a condition of any and all negotiations between the U.S. and Israel, I would vote that the U.S. require the State of Israel to set a deadline for its own peaceable de-establishment. I think this is the only way that members of the three major Abrahamic faiths have a chance to live in peace with one another in observance of the laws of their own religions.




For more entries on military, national defense, and foreign policy, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/american-sovereignty-restoration-act-of.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/foreign-occupation-and-declaration-of.html

For more entries on Judaism, the State of Israel, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, please visit:
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