War, What is it Good For? - by Paul Watson

I think it’s time the American public woke up to the evil, imperialistic actions of our great nation. I know it’s a sensitive and controversial topic, but something needs to be done, and as a patriot, I have a duty and a heavy burden to get people to see and accept the truth about American foreign policy.

We are currently involved in a supposed “War on Terror”. We are all aware of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The reasons, or more appropriately, excuses for these actions are tied to the attacks of September 11th, 2001, but this answer is inadequate on levels too numerous to list here. I will, however, try to address the most outstanding. Firstly, the government of neither country was involved in the attacks. Those people responsible for 9/11 are a terrorist group. They must be punished. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan must not. We can hunt down these people and arrest or kill them, but it must be done with the cooperation of the governments in whose countries we are operating, and if it cannot be done with their cooperation, it should not be done at all. To attack a country and assume control of it is a violation of international law, the laws of just war, and the United States Constitution. It is, in fact, the behavior of an empire.

We are often told that we are providing a good service to the citizens in these places by removing bad governments from them. We removed the totalitarian Taliban and the sadistic Saddam. These things may be objectively good, but they are not the business of the United States, or of any other country for that matter. There is an essential concept in foreign relations known as self-determination. It is the idea that each country is responsible for itself. To understand the importance of this, imagine that there is president that you dislike in the White House. No matter how much you dislike him or disagree with him, would you approve of another country coming in and ousting him for us? Our involvement in these countries violates the policy of self-determination. Even if this were our purpose, why are we not doing the same in other countries, such as North Korea and Sudan, where the situation is much worse? This is obviously an excuse for our more secret objectives. Furthermore, even if this was our policy, is it even practical? We don’t have near the economic or military strength to do this for every country that “needs” it. Also, once we accept this idea that we can invade and take over a country for such a reason, does this not set a precedent for the invasion of any country we dislike in the future? Might we use this excuse perhaps to occupy regions which produce large amounts of valuable oil? Hmm, one does wonder…

We are often told that we are preserving freedom in the Middle East. Why are we then enforcing a police state? Why did the Iraqi government, which we installed, arrest over 300 people involved with the Jasmine Revolution for simply demonstrating against the government?

There were no nukes. Even if there were, it’s not our business who has nukes and who doesn’t. What if China decided they didn’t like us having nukes? Should they be able to come in here and make us give them up?

The army is for national defense. National defense entails only one thing: defending the nation. I cannot make this clear enough. We are currently using our army as a massive police force and an invasion force. We are involved militarily right now in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, and the public doesn’t even know about it. There are serious rumblings that we may soon be involved in the revolution in Libya. We have over 700 military bases in over 130 countries worldwide. We still occupy our post-WWII posts in Germany and Japan. Why? Might this be sending a message to the world that we mistrust them? Might this possibly hurt international relations? How would we as Americans feel if other countries had their military bases here? Do we even need these bases? Do they contribute to our ability to defend U.S. soil? Some would argue that we have prevented an invasion by attacking these countries first. Well then, if I ever feel like punching somebody, is it okay for me to do it as long as I say “I thought he was going to punch me?” No! How is this excuse not going to be abused? As I said earlier, this also is a precedent allowing us to go to wars for other reasons than those spoon-fed to us by the White House and the media.

Can we even afford this military action? The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost a combined nearly $1.2 trillion dollars. If those dollars were seconds, it would take over 38,000 years for that time to pass. Over 5,000 American troops have died and over 30,000 have been seriously injured in these wars. Also, a large part of our current interventionist foreign policy (so called because we intervene in other countries’ affairs trying to accomplish our own benefit, often at the expense of theirs) is the practice of foreign aid, wherein we fund countries’ government and give them weapons. Did you know that we installed the dictators of all these governments that are being revolted against right now? Did you know that we installed Saddam Hussein in control of Iraq and that we gave him money and weapons to fight Iran which he later used to persecute his own people? Did you know that we set up Osama bin Laden and equipped him with the resources necessary to drain the Soviets of power? In fact, bin Laden is now doing to us what he did to the USSR. He said it himself. One of the biggest factors in the USSR’s collapse was their failed invasion of Afghanistan. The USSR failed because it went bankrupt. Simply put, they went bankrupt in large part because of the money they wasted fighting Osama bin Laden. The reason he launched the attacks on 9/11 was to draw us into a similar money-draining war in hopes of bringing about financial collapse. This means that by occupying Afghanistan, we are losing. How can we hope to escape a similar fate to that of the Soviets? As the war goes on and the possibility of new wars arise, we creep ever closer to bankruptcy. Most Americans do not realize just how precarious our financial situation is. The collapse of the dollar is coming if “these shadows remain unchanged”, and with it comes the collapse of the United States. This could even open the door for us to enter into a new political and economic union with our northern and southern neighbors, but that is another matter entirely.

The American policy for decades has been to meddle in other countries’ affairs and install totalitarian governments and leaders in those countries to ensure our national interests are served. This is why people in the Middle East (and much of the rest of the world for that matter) hate us. We are often told they hate us because we are wealthy (what?), free (what?), “Christian” (what?), or any other half-baked lie. They hate us because we put dictators over them that torture them and kill their families! This is where terrorism has come from! This is the CIA principle of “blowback”, the idea that people react to you messing with their stuff. How can we do things like what we’ve done and expect people to just get over it? The notion is insane.

Bottom line: Our foreign policy and specifically the “War on Terror” are unethical, infeasible, and illegal.

As Churchill said, “the length of this document well defends against its being read.” I hope you have made the sacrifice of your precious time to do so despite the intimidation. Please give a little more of your time to engage in patriotic conversation with your American comrades. I have supplied some helpful links for those who are interested in learning more.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/
http://costofwar.com/en/

Welcome To Vox Populi

If ignorance is bliss, then we must have a lot of happy people in the U.S.  

I've only been around for 20 years, not long by any standards, but what my generation lacks in time, we make up for in timing. We were born at exactly the right... or perhaps wrong time. The situation we find ourselves in, with Americas economy in free-fall, unprecedented violations of our constitutional rights, and warmongering on a biblical scale is absolutely unique in American history. While corruption has made itself a theme throughout American history, never before has greed ran as rampant as we've seen in recent years, and the jumps in technology are presenting new avenues for large corporations and the Fed to influence citizens in their day-to-day lives. Look on the right side of your screen. There are Ad's there, specifically for you. Google search and Facebook can gauge your interests, and make a special Ad setup, just for you. Sounds a lot like the Minority Report, right? So with all this technology and so many new products and services available on the market, why isn't the market functioning correctly? Big Business glibly concludes that regulations are suffocating innovation and economic movement, and the funny thing is that they've managed to convince many middle class workers that are suffering because of a lack of regulation that this is the case. Sorry to all Reagan-Lovers, but while the massive de-regulation of the market under Reagan boosted the economy in the short term (In the sense of the stock market, realistically the supply side economic structure had significant short term harms as well) it's not even debatable that these policies paved the way for the current economic crisis. As regulations waned, the economy became less and less stable. It was an unsustainable trend, and eventually it had to blow up.  If no one has noticed, our country is over 14 trillion dollars in debt (Which, is not counting our trade deficit, which amounts to another 48 trillion dollars.) and household debt is now over 100% of the GDP. What are we doing about it? Are we encouraging businesses to open manufacturing plants within the US borders, to raise GDP and fight unemployment? Are we cutting ridiculous war spending, which has been instrumental in increasing the debt? Are we even learning from our mistakes on an individual level, and halting the move towards living on borrowed money? The answer is a resounding no. Our country continues to outsource manufacturing jobs. We continue a war that NEVER should have started. Wages have only gone up 1% on average in the past 30 years, while the cost of living has ricocheted into the stratosphere, forcing even middle class families into foreclosure. This is all preventable, but nobody seems to want to step up. We're inheriting this mess, there's no way around it. We just need to make damn sure that we don't pass it down again, to our children. America's youth need to stop sitting around, playing on twitter and watching Jersey Shore, and do something. If not us than who? We have the chance to push America forward, to make progress. Those who yell the loudest tend to be heard the most, it's the sad truth. So let's make our voices louder than those who got us into this mess. Let's take this country back.

We cannot allow ignorance to be bliss anymore, because we're blissfully sitting around on a quickly sinking ship.