John "the Baptizer," perhaps preaching somewhere between Nazareth and Jerusalem, in "the region around the Jordan River" (Luke 3:3), appeared to display incredible ignorance of basic marketing principles. To the "publicans" ("tax farmers" who made their profits by extracting a percentage above the minimum required by the Roman Empire), John told them not to collect more than the Empire required (Luke 3:12). He called the religious leaders a bunch of "snakes" (Matthew 3:7). And to the soldiers, Jesus said, "Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages" (Luke 3:14).
Are you a soldier in Iraq? Do violence to no man. Do you know a soldier in Iraq? Tell him to not accuse someone falsely of being a terrorist. Are you thinking about enlisting in the military? Be content with your wages and don’t covet the Army’s $20,000 signing bonus to be a hired killer. Isn’t it time, after the loss of a million Iraqis and almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers, to say enough is enough?
All Americans have choices. Germans under Hitler had choices.
For the soldiers currently in the United States who face the possibly of going to Iraq the solution is a much simpler one: Don’t go. Go AWOL, go to jail, get court-martialed, get dishonorably discharged, lose your rank, lose your retirement – just don’t go. Make the military drag you there kicking and screaming.
Marketing Guru Seth Godin asks questions about marketing the war. How could America have marketed the idea that the ideals of America are good, and the ideals of terrorism are bad? I have suggested that we should have sent missionaries instead of soldiers. Let people in the Middle East see America's charity, small business loans, tariff-free trade, hospitals, universities, irrigation and advanced agriculture, and see how well the religion of suicide bombing looks in comparison.
As it stands now, suicide bombing looks more attractive than being an American.
There's a word for what the world's superpower is doing in the Middle East. The word is "genocide." Three thousand Americans died on 9-11. The U.S. has killed not just twice as many Iraqis, not just seventy-seven times as many Iraqis, but three hundred times as many Iraqis as died on 9-11. But it's "good for the economy," especially military contractors, because U.S. forces have expended at least 250,000 small-caliber bullets for every one insurgent killed in the present wars.
And Christians in America who believe Iraq had something to do with 9-11 and support the wars are often baptists (boasting of some connection to John the Baptist) who claim to be followers of the "Prince of Peace."
On this day, September 19, 1796, American newspapers published George Washington's "Farewell Address." It was not actually a speech, but an open letter to America in the form of a speech. (American newspapers also serially published the essays in defense of the Constitution which are today known as "The Federalist Papers." American newspapers had different standards than they do today, as we will see shortly, perhaps because Americans today have different reading habits, if they read at all. But that's a chicken-and-egg question for another day.)
Washington's Farewell Address quickly became a basic political document for the new nation. It was reprinted as part of the membership paraphernalia of the Washington Benevolent Societies that sprang up after his death in 1799. It was printed in children's primers, engraved on watches, woven into tapestries and read annually before Congress. The Address received widespread fame and became a symbol of American republicanism, the nation's guiding political philosophy. It was used as a benchmark with which to judge the two-party political structure, foreign affairs, and national morality. It was regularly memorized and recited by American students.
There were three major themes in the address, all of them relevant to today's political scene.
First, Washington warned America "in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party." It
leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
The spirit of party dominates politics today, and as Washington predicted, it is leading to tyranny. Republicans tolerate socialism and mass-murder if it's committed by the right Party. Democrats denounce a war they would support if it were led by a member of their own Party. Christians won't vote for Ron Paul.
What should unite us instead of a political party, are "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" (to quote here the Declaration of Independence). Many in our day claim that Washington and the other Founding Fathers created a secular government. This is simply not true, and couldn't have possibly taken place in a country dominated by Christianity. Washington declared that the idea of a secular government is contrary to reason:
Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
Finally, Washington criticized our current foreign policy 200 years in advance:
The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible.
The policy was echoed by Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address (1801)
I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration,…peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.
The Address was invariably cited whenever an alliance was discussed. Not until 1949, with the signing of the treaty that established NATO, did the United States again enter into a military alliance. Then, continued violations of the Founders' policies characterized the federal government, notably alliances with Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan and aid to Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran.
As Washington D.C. continued to abandon the wisdom of its Founding Father, it was ironically appropriate that on this very same day in history, in 1995, the Washington Postchose to publish the "manifesto" of the "Unabomber."
The first Gulf War gained irreversible momentum with reports that Saddam Hussein's soldiers were tearing infants out of their incubators and throwing them to their deaths. Congress and the rest of America were shown the passionate pleas by a Kuwaiti peasant girl in October of 1990.
The Kuwaiti peasant was the daughter of Kuwait's Ambassador to the US. And the Washington D.C. PR firm that put together the story for President G.H.W. Bush was led by a former staffer for then-Vice President G.H.W. Bush.
Two weeks ago, G.H.W Bush's son was seen on Television shaking hands with "Sheik Abu Risha," who, we were told, had united Sunni tribes in Anbar Province against Al Qaeda and other insurgents, and provided ample evidence to Congress that "the surge is working."
Then it was announced last Thursday that "U.S. Ally Sheik Abu Risha" had been Killed in Anbar Province. President Bush was choked up over the report.
Problems: (1) Sheik Abu Risha wasn’t a sheik. (2) He wasn’t killed by Al Qaeda. (3) The new alliance with former insurgents in Anbar is as fake as the sheik - and a murderous deceit.
This according to BBC reporter Greg Palast. His dauntless cameraman, Rick Rowley, went into Anbar where network cameras dare not go, to see the Sunni militias -- alongside the U.S. militias -- guarding against insurgents.
And taking vengeance on the Shia.
And "whacking" the "Sheik."
The General Petraeus Show was not as effective as the "Kuwati Babies" Show, but about as genuine. "Sheik" Abu Risha had been paid millions by the U.S. government, something other tribal leaders may not have been enthusiastic about. The former Sunni war criminals have also been paid by the U.S. to turn against "al queda," with promises that after their probation they will be given jobs with the Iraqi government.
• The Al Jazeera reporter, Samah El-Shahat, is not wearing a burqa. • The people seen on film are not nomadic Bedouin tent-dwellers. A couple of aerial scenes look like shots of San Bernardino, Calif. Before U.S. bombing and destruction, Iraq was a highly-developed nation. • Children are carrying machine guns. • General Petraeus told Congress that the U.S. was not giving them weapons. But weapons can be bought with the money the U.S. is admittedly giving them. • Rick’s film shows US commanders placing their headquarters in the homes abandoned by terrorized Shia -- terrorized by the Sunnis being paid by the U.S. military. • Notice how easily the "insurgents" are bought off. Western money and western goods are more highly valued by many in Iraq than the religion of Osama bin Laden. • Rick followed the Shia to refugee slums, a result of U.S. policy.
I wish every voter could watch these films instead of O'Reilly and Hannity. Just for one evening. Then ask yourself if you're happy you're paying somewhere between $3,000 and $6,000 for each member of your family for the U.S. to overthrow Saddam, bomb hundreds of thousands of Iraqi homes and hospitals, destroy the lives of children, and now to pay off Sunni insurgents' "protection money."
Not a single person who signed the Constitution would agree that the United States is governed by or subject to the Constitution in any meaningful sense.
The fundamental structure of government created by America's Founding Fathers no longer exists. The separation of powers has been replaced by "The Administrative State," and the system of federalism ("states' rights") embodied in the 9th and 10th Amendments and vigorously defended by Madison and Jefferson has been destroyed by what is today a powerful centralized federal government.
The values behind the Constitution have been abandoned. By joining the modern secularist trends and repudiating the Christian foundations of the Constitution, the courts have stripped the Constitution of all meaning. The oath to "support the Constitution" or to be "attached" to its principles likewise lacks any meaning.
America is no longer under the British Crown. America is no longer under the Articles of Confederation. And -- not just de facto, but (arguably) de jure, -- America is no longer under the Constitution. Anyone taking an take an oath to "support" a Constitution which no longer exists must not be oblivious to Secularism's march toward tyranny.
Does the Constitution uphold private property? At one time it did, but no longer. In 1933, a state of "national emergency" was declared. Some researchers contend that wartime powers were invoked to suspend the Constitution. World War I produced legislation ("The Trading with the Enemy Act") which was conscripted for duty in Roosevelt's "war" against the "Great Depression." Congress approved his Executive decrees which essentially declared all those who might believe in a Constitutional Free Market to be "enemies" of the State, and the gold of all these "enemies" was confiscated.[7]
In 1973, a special Senate committee led by Senators Frank Church and Charles Mathias confirmed that
Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. [H]undreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers . . . which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing manners. This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional processes. . . . A majority of the people of the United States have lived all their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. [A]ctions taken by the Government in times of great crises have - from, at least, the Civil War - in important ways shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency.[8]
In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that it could not be said for certain that an admitted member of the Communist Party, holding positions in the Communist Party's National Committee and being the Party's nominee for Governor of Minnesota, was not "attached to the principles of the Constitution."[9] In addition to working for the violent overthrow of Representative Government, the Communist Party denies the legitimacy of private property. But that was no problem for the Court.[10] Through "New Deal" policies, the "organic law" of the Founders was completely overturned. According to such organic charters as the Declaration of Independence, human beings are created by God with unalienable rights to life, liberty and property. These rights exist prior to the State. No longer. The "theoretical basis" of property rights embodied in the "New Deal" was "far different from what it had been"[11] under America's organic law (e.g., the Declaration of Independence: rights given by God, unalienable by the State):
Property rights, from this [new] perspective, are simply a "delegation" from the state to the citizenry . . . . No longer did "property" represent some prepolitical "natural" entitlement; it now represented a public policy judgment by the state that, overall, important social values would be realized by leaving certain controls in the hands of ordinary citizens.[12]
To facilitate the State's unalienable rights over the citizens, "a fourth branch of government"[13] was established, which, to use Madison's words in The Federalist, "may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."[14] For years, government officials with strong Communist leanings had "urged differing degrees of governmental ownership and control of natural resources, basic means of production, and banks and the media of exchange, either with or without compensation."[15]Between 1913 and 1937, most of the planks of the Communist Manifesto had been put into law in America[16] by high-ranking government officials, including President Roosevelt;[17] officials who had taken a solemn oath to "support the Constitution," and therefore, according to the Court, officials "whose attachment to the general constitutional scheme cannot be doubted."[18]
Today the oath to "support the Constitution" is not taken seriously. This is because oaths in general are not taken seriously. At the time the Constitution was written, an oath was understood to be a solemn declaration made to and in the presence of God. In 1961 the US Supreme Court ruled God out of the oath of office. But removing God from an oath is like removing water from a swimming pool: all that is left is an empty shell. The Court in Cole v. Richardson correctly noted that the oath had been reduced from a solemn and weighty act of eternal consequence to a mere "amenity."[1]
No one takes an "amenity" seriously. The rise of Secularism has meant the decline of oaths. Prof. Sanford Levinson, having been admitted to practice in California, suspects that
many of us did not reflect with any great seriousness on the[] meaning [of the loyalty oaths we have signed]. Assuming that we noticed them at all, many of us probably treated them roughly the same way my law students responded to part of a document that they are required to submit to the Bar Association as part of the process of becoming a lawyer. All applicants must sign a statement indicating that they have read the Code of Professional Responsibility and pledge their adherence to its demands. The overwhelming majority of my students freely indicated that they had perjured themselves: They had not in fact read the Code, and they treated the affirmation that they had as a mere formalism, not to be taken seriously . . . . How many of us who have taken loyalty oaths are any different?[3]
I have read and heard many Professors of Constitutional Law admit that they do not require their students to read the Constitution from "We the People" to "ratifying the Same." Indeed, with the current controversy over "originalism" or "original intent," it may be academically unfashionable to require students to read the complete text of the Constitution.[4] The great constitutional scholar E. S. Corwin was
told that Professor Powell of Harvard carefully warns his class in Constitutional Law each year against reading the Constitution, holding that to do so would be apt to "confuse their minds." Certain it is that of the 6,000-odd words of the constitutional document, at least 39 out of every 40 are totally irrelevant to the vast majority, as well as to the most important, of the problems which the Court handles each term in the field of constitutional interpretation.[5]
It is not stretching credulity to claim that a large proportion of law students who have successfully passed a Constitutional Law class in law school have never actually read the Constitution.[6] And as the quest for high salaries in legal practice begins (to pay off school loans) the likelihood of taking time to read the increasingly-irrelevant Articles of the Constitution becomes even smaller. As a result, no one can seriously doubt that a large percentage of people who have been admitted to the Bar or have assumed public office and have taken a solemn oath to "support the Constitution" have never even read the Constitution in its entirety.
Transport any of the Founding Fathers into the first decade of the 21th century. Let them look at our schools, our tax-rates, our mortality rate for pre-born children,[20] and ask them if they will take a (secular) oath to "support the Constitution." I dare say none of them - except perhaps Alexander Hamilton - would take such an oath.[21]
Walter Williams, in The Freeman, Ideas on Liberty, published by The Foundation for Economic Education, explains why James Madison or Thomas Jefferson could never make it as a political candidate today.
Virginia Senator John Warner asked General Petraeus if victory in Iraq will make America safer. Petraeus, seen here, admitted, "I don't know."
Was it just a softball question from the Republican Senator, giving Petraeus a chance to shout praises for the Bush Iraq policy, and Petraeus missed his cue? Or is he honest?
It's the President's job to determine the global strategy, he hinted, and his job is merely to implement the military tactics that the President believes will carry out that strategy. The General is just "doing his job," "just following orders," even if those orders will not accomplish any lasting good (or even a temporary good). He's focused on his local objective, which is . . . I don't know, maybe he does . . . kill all al Qaeda members, I guess, and wait for new ones to pour into Iraq to fight the infidel oppressors who are there in Iraq waiting for the terrorists to come. I guess this is the general's objective.
I'm sure some will reply that his objective is to "bring democracy to Iraq." But Petraeus' means to this end are soldiers, guns, and bombs. Undoubtedly neither General Petraeus nor President Bush agrees with America's Founding Fathers in their belief that "free government" is the product of Christian morality.
Significantly, Petraeus admits he doesn't know if the military objective Bush has ordered will actually make America safer. Perhaps Petraeus doesn't "know" this because any non-partisan disciple of Christ could see that the military occupation of Iraq is only being used as an excuse for terrorists to pursue terrorist acts against the U.S., making us less safe. The more determined we are to impose our will on the Middle East by military force, the more determined the terrorists will be to "resist the oppressors."
The War on Terrorism is giving terrorism an excuse to perpetuate itself.
"But if we withdraw from Iraq," I was told the other day, "America will eventually be converted to Islam."
There are few ways this can happen. First, Osama and his terrorists can invade the U.S. and overpower a nation that no longer understands the meaning of the Second Amendment. All 300 million of us. For some reason, I doubt this scenario.
Second, Osama and his terrorists run a slate of political candidates who win the popular vote and gain control over Congress and the White House, and immediately declare America to be an Islamic Theocracy under Sharia Law. For some reason, I doubt this scenario as well.
Third, Americans convert to Islam, a million a day, and America goes Islamic.
Name your favorite scenario for the Islamicization of America, and my response will be the same: What strategy does Jesus advocate to prevent such an event, and what policies does He require of us if it does take place? Can we bomb or shoot a million civilians in Iraq to prevent it? If millions of American join al Qaeda, can we shoot or bomb them?
"No, no," I'm told, "the terrorists will get a nuclear bomb from Iran and detonate it on American soil."
And our military occupation of a muslim nation makes this less likely?
And given the fact that Pakistan's CIA wired the money to alleged 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta, combined with the fact that Pakistan (not Iran) already has nuclear weapons, why is the Bush Administration gearing up for a coming war with Iran? Why not Pakistan?
Iraq was never a threat to America's safety, the real threats are being ignored, and our unconstitutional and unChristian military presence in Iraq is only enraging the terrorists.
This is why, when asked if the war in Iraq makes America safer, General Petraeus, the man anointed by President Bush to lead the forces in Iraq (and confirmed by the Senate, 81-0) had to answer, "I don't know." Complete honesty might have cost him his job.
I received this email from Dr. James Dobson's think-tank, Family Research Council (I'll interrupt along the way):
Amid flags at half-mast and a capital city shrouded in clouds, the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001 has arrived quietly in a nation still divided over the war it provoked.
From Ground Zero to the broken ring of the Pentagon, we can't help but remember how many of the fallen were heroes that day. They were men and women on planes, in skyscrapers, charging up stairwells, and digging through rubble. As diverse as they were, the victims had one thing in common--they were all patriots.
I'm sorry, but how do we know this is true? Did they become patriots simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Their deaths were a horrible and unjustifiable tragedy, but they would not all have supported the war in Iraq.
Today, the spirit of 9-11--that of selfless determination--is still very much alive in our brave troops overseas. Despite months of bickering and distractions at home, our soldiers have carried out their mission valiantly, many of them making the ultimate sacrifice while their fellow citizens, speaking from the safety and comfort they provide, feel free to question what these soldiers are giving their lives for.
No doubt some soldiers are patriotic and selfless. Others are in it for the money. Others love the thrill of military action. You and I might not want to go to Iraq and do what soldiers are doing there, but there are people who do.
While the news is trained on the war, few seem to remember why we're fighting it--not for Iraq but for the liberty Americans so quickly take for granted.
It bothers me, disappoints me, when Christians think this way. This statement is completely mindless. We're not fighting for Iraq? Really? We're fighting for liberty? How has the war on Iraq increased my liberties? How have my liberties been made more secure by the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on destroying Iraqi infrastructure? The biggest threat to my liberties -- according to the Framers of the Constitution -- is the government. Our constitution was designed to "bind down" the government, whose powers were separated, checked, and balanced, then further hedged by a Bill of Rights. True patriotic Americans do not trust their government. How does expanding the power of the government protect my liberties?
Many in this country have forgotten that the best way to honor those who died on September 11--and since--is by upholding the commitment to do everything we can to keep it from happening again.
The best way to prevent another 9/11 from happening is to understand how the first 9/11 happened. This is something the government does not want us to understand, otherwise the government would have conducted a real investigation, with witnessess under oath facing jail time if they lie in their answers to tough questions by prosecutors who want a conviction. We've never had such an investigation.
Abandoning the war would be to abandon America's identity.
This may in fact be true. America was once the most admired nation on earth. America's new identity is one of imperialism, imposing our (i.e., the government's) will on subject nations, putting them under tribute. This is a new identity that needs to be abandoned. Doing so would likely lessen the powerfully persuasive grounds muslim recruiters have for securing new terrorists to fight in the jihad against America.
As Anne Applebaum writes today, "Perhaps it's time to take the main message [of Bin Laden] seriously: Al-Queda's long-term goal is to convert Americans and other Westerners to its extreme version of Islam."
What kind of people would be attracted to a religion of jihad that destroys innocent people in the World Trade Center? Certainly not Christians. But then, fewer Americans are Christians these day. Would teenagers who play violent video games be good candidates for a religion of jihad? Would members of America's armed services be willing to enjoy the thrill of battle for good pay under an Islamic flag?
Although millions more people in Europe are Muslim than a few generations ago, Philip Jenkins has doubts about whether Europe is going jihadist. But Jenkins has also pointed out that most Christians are going to be non-white in 2050, and America will not be the center of world Christendom.
But is military occupation in Iraq -- once secular, but now, thanks to the Bush Administration, an explicitly Islamic theocracy -- the best way to keep American youth from catching jihadist fever and strapping themselves with explosives? Anne Applebaum has written brilliantly on the Soviet Gulag system, but I doubt her fears of mass coversion to Osama's religion.
This is the ultimate struggle between good and evil, the long-standing battle for our ideals of faith, family, and freedom. In the end, this war is not only a military conflict, but a spiritual one. And the entire Western world hangs in the balance.
I certainly agree that this is a spiritual conflict. But why is it a military one? How will a military conflict in Iraq prevent Americans from being seduced into fundamentalistic Islam? The Family Reasearch Council should be the first to see the complete futility of dealing with an intensely spiritual conflict by incinerating Fallujah with white phosphorus.
Though, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "I still have faith in America. ...I still have faith that we will hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope." Let's pray, six years later, that as the stone walls of the Pentagon have been rebuilt and construction is under way at the site of the World Trade Center, so too are we rebuilding our resolve that those who have died in our nation's service will be honored not just in memorial remembrances but in victory over tyranny.
America's Founding Fathers would agree: Tyranny is winning. But tyranny is being imposed by Washington, D.C., not Baghdad or Mecca. The warmonger-wing of the Religious Right is a greater threat to our liberties than Osama bin Laden.
If there's one function of the government that everyone agrees on, it's national defense. There's disagreement about whether it's the government's job to educate, to provide charity, to subsidize pornography, to create a fraudulent retirement scheme, to fund the "World Toilet Summit," to grow tobacco, to determine the proper size of holes in swiss cheese, and a whole lot of other ways the government thinks it knows how we should run our own businesses, but everyone agrees that the government's job is to protect us from attacks by foreigners.
On September 11, 2001, the government failed Job Number One.
We're told that a bunch of guys from Saudi Arabia hijacked four planes and rammed them into buildings, killing nearly 3,000 Amercans.
We spend billions of dollars on radar systems to track unidentified aircraft. We spend billions of dollars on fighter jets to intercept attackers. For what? Where were they six years ago today?
The government told us that they would punish their accomplices, but the government didn't look in Saudi Arabia, it invaded Iraq. The masterminds of the plot were said to be in Afghanistan, but our government allowed them to escape to Pakistan, which is where the hijackers got their money. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are said by our government to be our "allies," while Iraq, from whence none of the hijackers came, has been destroyed.
If you hired an exterminator to prevent termites, only to find that after hiring them your house became infested with termites, wouldn't you fire the exterminators? If they told you that you needed to pay them more money, and give them complete control over how you use your house, wouldn't you call the police? If they bombed your neighbor's house for no reason, wouldn't you not only fire them, but call an attorney to see about a lawsuit for damages?
But Americans have been willing to pay more money to the government, and surrender their liberties to the government. Nearly a majority of Americans believe that Saddam planned 9/11, and a majority of the hijackers came from Iraq. None did. After failing in its core responsibility, Americans now trust the government more than ever, as evidenced by the breadth and depth of control of their lives they yield to the government.
The terrorists undoubtedly had no illusions that they would, by their actions on 9/11, transform America into an Islamic Caliphate. Nor did they think of undoing "The Spirit of '76," and destroying what Jefferson, Washington, Sam Adams and John Hancock rought for. The terrorists had no such long-range vision, but were simply taking pot-shot vengeance on America for U.S. incursions into Muslim nations.
But I think the terrorists (or the government that created them) did in fact play a key role in destroying America and the Spirit of '76. September 11, 2001, may well be the most important date in American history. More important even than the birth of the U.S. on July 4, 1776. That birth has been swallowed up in death. If America's Founding Fathers could see America today, they would weep, and mourn the death of the America they fathered.
"Corruption" occurs when government has the power to use force to extract money from the unwilling, and can use the money without accountability.
Corruption is accentuated when those paying the tribute believe they are more "patriotic" the more they pay. Corruption is rewarded when the quest for accountability is labeled "unpatriotic."
As Robert Welch warned long ago, the foreign policy elite shamelessly exploits our support for the military in order to insulate from criticism those policymakers whose actions precipitate such tragedies as 9-11. During the Vietnam War, for instance, relatively few Americans understood how U.S. aid and trade with Communist nationsmaterially supported the Communist drive to conquer Vietnam.
That same aid resulted in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which prompted U.S. aid to Osama and his "freedom fighters."
Panic, as well as patriotism, is an excellent "revenue enhancement" device, as Will Grigg writes in "Panic Profiteering."
But as with all government programs, in order to get $1 in "aid" to the designated recipient (whether it be the Soviet Union or Osama bin Laden), $2-3 taxpayer dollars must be spent to "administer" the funds. This is where "corruption" is rife.
As if the recipient itself isn't evidence of corruption, as Warren Mass continues:
In similar fashion, relatively few Americans are aware that the same CFR brain trust presiding over the Iraq War helped bring Saddam to power and created his war machine. Even fewer are aware of the material support given to international terrorism by the “former” Communists in power in Russia, including particularly President Vladimir Putin, a veteran of the KGB (and whom President Bush regards as a soul mate). Russia and Communist China are treated as strategic allies in the “war on terrorism,” despite their abundant — and continuing — support for international terrorism, particularly in the Middle East.
The Federal Government has long supported terrorist regimes. Mass continues:
In his 1967 essay about Vietnam, Mr. Welch asked rhetorically if it were possible “that any war carried on against the Communists by [Secretary of Defense] Robert Strange McNamara or [Secretary of State] Dean Rusk is going to be any different from the one they sponsored in the Congo — or more recently in the Dominican Republic — where the net result was the destruction or demoralization of as much as possible of the native anti-Communist strength?”
We could as easily ask the same about the current crop of CFR elitists presiding over the “war on terrorism.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Baghdad as a presidential emissary in 1983 and 1984, offering to provide Saddam with valuable military and economic aid. During the late 1990s, future Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, a taxpayer-subsidized conglomerate that made huge sums doing business with Iraq and Libya. L. Paul Bremer, the Bush administration’s colonial viceroy in Baghdad, was a prominent player at Kissinger Associates, the international consulting firm that arranged many of the deals that built Saddam’s arsenal in the 1980s.
Added to this direct aid to America's enemies is the cost of administrative fees charged by the federal bureaucracies.
More on the absence of accountability in the federal government's military:
The total amount of money transferred from Americans to Cheney-Kissinger-Bush-BinLaden family interests is staggering.
The Boston Globe reports that The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as of June, up to $500 billion has been spent on combat operations in Iraq. But the Christian Science Monitor reports that researchers led by a Nobel Prize-winning economist has concluded that indirect costs may bring the figure above $2 Trillion.
Too many libertarians are willing to privatize the Post Office, but not the military. The argument for military "inefficiency" and corruption are great arguments for privatizing defense, to say nothing about the military's role in giving aid to communism and terrorism. The complete privatization of the U.S. federal military would have saved hundreds of millions of lives and trillions of dollars in private wealth over the last century.
