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Toward
Militarism, War, Empire, Caskets, and Bankruptcy
By Jacob G. Hornberger
14/01/08 "fff"
-- -- When U.S. intelligence agencies recently surprised the
nation with their National Intelligence Estimate announcement
that Iran had ceased its nuclear-weapons program several years
ago, many people, including ardent supporters of the president,
felt that the announcement put to rest any chance of a war
against Iran.
Not so fast! After all, did the disintegration of the WMD
rationale for invading Iraq dissuade the interventionists from
continuing their invasion of Iraq and occupying the country and
continuing to kill Iraqis for several years after that?
The incident in the Gulf of Tonkin — excuse me, Gulf of Hormuz —
this past week confirms how easy it is for an American ruler to
send the entire nation into war, especially given that he is now
permitted to ignore the constitutional provision requiring a
congressional declaration of war. If the captains of those U.S.
battleships and destroyers had blown those Iranian speedboats
out of the water, one can already hear Bush and Cheney
proclaiming, “We’ve been attacked! We’ve been attacked! The
Department of Defense is responding by defending our nation from
this attack by bombing Iran. Support the troops. God bless
America!”
Question: If China, Iran, and Venezuela sent a fleet of warships
into the Gulf of Mexico for joint war games, how would U.S.
officials respond? Wouldn’t they go ape?
Question: What’s the point of sending a fleet of battleships and
destroyers into the Middle East if it’s not to poke hornets’
nests? Surely, U.S. officials aren’t claiming the Muslims are
getting ready to board millions of troops onto tens of thousands
of Muslim naval vessels in preparation for an imminent invasion
of the United States.
Of course, in the old days, when the president was expected to
comply with the Constitution, the president would have to go to
Congress, which would decide whether such an incident warranted
going to war against a nation. Today, the Decider decides
whether to declare war, no matter what the Constitution says.
Poking hornets’ nests can play an important role in that
process.
Amidst all the political fanfare about “change,” if anyone was
hoping for a change away from the machismo, militarism, and
empire that has held our nation in its grip, last night’s
Republican presidential debate confirmed that change isn’t going
to come from that direction (Ron Paul excepted, of course).
What was fascinating was watching how conflicted these people
are within their own minds. They first point out that yes,
America is faced with economic problems. They then point out
that it’s all because Washington, D.C., is “broken” and that
each of them is the man who can finally fix the nation’s
capital. They then say that the U.S. should continue expanding
its overseas empire, especially in the Middle East. Of course,
no department or agency of the federal government should be
abolished.
It’s all just a mishmash of thinking that boils down to this:
“Give the power of the welfare-warfare state to me. Put your
faith in me.”
They just don’t get it — or maybe they do. The problem is not
that Washington, D.C., is broken. It’s that their beloved
welfare-warfare philosophy is broken and bankrupt in every sense
of the term — morally, financially, and economically. The
dollar, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, Iraq,
immigration, trade, foreign policy, housing, drug war — all
broken and bankrupt. After decades of welfare-warfare failure
and catastrophe, the chickens are finally coming home to roost.
And all these people can do is summon the ghost of Ronald Reagan
and call for “tax cuts,” no matter how much the Federal Reserve
must continue to debase the dollar to finance the
ever-increasing debt to pay the ever-increasing expenses of this
federal monstrosity.
One of the weirdest parts of the debate came when they were
praising Ronald Reagan’s “defense” buildup, which, they said,
brought down the Soviet Union. Yeah, never mind that it was
out-of-control government spending that brought down the Soviet
Union. That just can’t happen to the U.S. Empire. After all,
we’ll just continue borrowing the money from the Chinese
communists!
One amusing moment in the debate was when Paul pointed out (I’m
paraphrasing): “Let me see if I understand this correctly. You
people want to go out and borrow millions of dollars from the
Chinese communists in order to give the money to the unelected
dictator of Pakistan while you’re continuing to kill people in
Iraq for the sake of democracy.”
What was amazing was that you could tell from the faces of the
other candidates that they didn’t see anything odd about any of
that.
If America continues to move in the same direction of
militarism, interventionism, war, and welfarism and if all this
pushes our nation into a perfect storm of financial, monetary,
and economic crises, combined with lots of caskets containing
the remains of U.S. soldiers as well as victims of terrorist
blowback, Americans will be left with a sad lament: “If only we
had listened to the libertarians rather than the welfare-warfare
statists who took us down this road.”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of
Freedom Foundation.
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