Liberty MavenCharlie Wilson’s War and Ron Paul Economics
March 24th, 2008 4:59 am | by Marc Gallagher | Published in Activism, Communism, Economics, Foreign Policy, Free Market, History, Liberty, Maven Commentary, Money, Philosophy, Politics, Ron Paul, War | 4 Responses
In the recent movie, Charlie Wilson’s War, Congressman Charlie Wilson is given credit for being the main contributor in ending the Cold War. The movie suggests by spending billions of dollars to aid Afghanistan against the Soviet Union it ultimately caused the Soviet Union to collapse. I’m not sure how accurate that really is. It seems that the Soviet Union was headed for collapse due to their flawed economic system anyway. Their attempt to take over Afghanistan being thwarted certainly pushed them more towards their already inevitable collapse, but it should not be considered the main reason.
Ron Paul preaches the foreign policy ideology of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington in an age where doing so is quite unpopular. Neither the Democrats or Republicans are willing to keep the over-reaching US hands overseas to ourselves. Charlie Wilson seemed to possess this trait as well. The Cold War then is equivalent to the War on Terror today. How ironic it is that if it weren’t for Charlie Wilson’s interventions in Afghanistan in the 1980′s the War on Terror may not even exist today. At least not in its current form.
Osama Bin Laden was amongst those rebels we gave weapons and money to in order to help them defeat the Soviets. This was Charlie Wilson’s doing. He like many at the time were blinded by the evils of the Soviet Union and communism. So instead of foreseeing the inevitable economic collapse of their empire and letting Afghanistan run its course, he lobbied to get weapons and funding funneled covertly to the Afghanistan resistance. This propped up Afghanistan enough to push the Soviets back in retreat. Once this was complete, the US stopped the funding. This left Afghanistan out in the cold and alone with 50% of their population 14 years old and younger (according to the movie).
I’m no expert on the middle east or Islam. I do know the common sense of cause and effect though. It seems to me the problem was not with the United States “abandoning” Afghanistan following their conflict with the Soviet Union, but rather getting involved in aiding Afghanistan in the first place. If we never allied with Afghanistan against the Soviets, the Soviets would have occupied the country. Yet another country for the Soviets to maintain would likely have cost them more economically than retreating as they did thanks to the American aid.
It is arguable that if the US did nothing, the Soviet Union would have fallen even sooner than it did. It is estimated that up to $20 billion in tax payer money was funneled into Afghanistan in the effort. In hindsight that seems like a colossal waste of money for trying to affect something that was already going to occur without that expenditure.
Today we are spending ourselves silly with our foreign aid and interventionism. We have 700 bases all over the world. We continually pass legislation giving monetary aid to foreign governments as our own debt increases (now over $9 billion and growing). It is seemingly more and more likely that the only way this behavior will end is by an economic collapse. I was born in an America full of dreams and boundless hope. I hope I don’t leave behind an America in ruin for my children and yours to sort out. They deserve better. We deserve better. Our founding fathers wouldn’t even recognize the country they created. It is not too late to turn it around now, but sooner or later that point of no return will come. That is unless we do something about it by getting involved.
At the end of the movie Charlie Wilson says “we f—– up the end game.” Perhaps the best way to avoid that in the future is to never begin his kind of game in the first place.
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March 25th, 2008 at 11:36 am (#)
We, pushed by the MSM special interest groups, are now trying to decide what we should do about Tibet. Why is this any of our business? We have, pushed by corporate special interest groups, already become involved in a potentially devastating treaty with Taiwan. AT the same time, we are having billions of dollars worth of products built in China and have supplied them with technology that helped them fix problems with their long range missiles. China is using the revenue received from us to build up their military and calling war with the U.S. as inevitable.
None of this makes any sense. China would not have the ability to enforce their control if we were not supporting them. We need to talk to the Chinese and express our displeasure but we have no business supporting an Olympics there, supporting their economy, or getting involved in their internal affairs. They were following the path or the Soviet Union and going down the tubes until they decided to allow a quasi-capitalistic economy to exist. They will fall if we just leave them alone.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:58 pm (#)
[...] This blog topic responds to the Liberty Maven Article, ‘Charlie Wilson?s War and Ron Paul Econ… [...]
June 30th, 2008 at 12:59 pm (#)
Ron Paul does indeed preach the basic thrust of Jeffersonian and Washington foreign policy; and for that he deserves considerable credit.
I am not sure the idea is as unpopular as you suggest, so much as it is adverse to the largely undeclarable goals of candidates who represent selfish and destructive U.S. hegemony, international usury, and *their* corporate interests above the people’s. To say it is unpopular is as much then as to say the people don’t understand how all these things represent interests which are against them. The sheeple of the corporate media of course *can* know no better, because the same people, who own that media, purge the tales of today’s events of all the things which would tell sheeple their masters are wolves.
But whether Americans overall have so lost touch with their original principles is at least debatable. I hear some Americans declare outright that they support killing for oil. Yet if many others weren’t astonished by that proposition, neither would the neo-cons have had to invent the WMD lies, or allege that Iraq was a base of terrorism. These lies themselves attest to the unpopularity and distastefulness instead of this naked form of imperialism and military coercion.
Nonetheless, the traditional foreign policy Mr. Paul would like to return to is not merely attributable to Jefferson and Washington. As John Adams recorded by declaring our roots, it’s basis is an adherence to the Christian doctrine of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The principle of that doctrine of course is justice; and that justice, to which no exception can exist, is the core of the further idea that universal justice is the only foundation for real peace. Our original foreign policy was no less a noble concept than that.
Understanding these simple things, furthermore, essentially means advocating the teaching of justice, for without its understanding, we can never have or maintain it. To maintain justice also means the thorough reporting of injustice. It means sustaining dialog capable of establishing universal justice. These in fact were the very things the colonists sought; and against which, being denied them, we revolted.
Rather than imposing the injustice of taking a country’s resources, or denying its means of production, the colonists rose against these very things inflicted against themselves. It is a matter of either great hypocrisy or whole loss of the original principle (or both) then, that a nation which rose up to establish an eternal fortress against imperialism, non-representation, and any denial of property or right, should today find itself resorting to lies and plunder, largely because of a purported economic system which so deprives us of our own production and opportunity to produce, that we leave ourselves little answer but such wickedness.
One reason Mr. Paul is so popular among our military then is it is they who are forced to implement this wickedness not only have to see it for what it is, but pay all its dearest prices. Truly supporting them involves an equally dear obligation to ensure that price is right.
You rightly complain of the faults of interventionism; the costs of foreign aid, while we endure perpetually escalating indebtedness; the banishing of our industry to foreign countries; our sustainment of that industry at huge, unsustainable deficits; and the incredible irresponsibility of leaving our children this mess if we should even be so fortunate not to suffer its full consequences far sooner than that. You muse, “It is seemingly more and more likely that the only way this behavior will end is by an economic collapse.”
But there is one common cause yet of all these things. That cause is usury, which multiplies debt upon us as we are obligated by it to maintain a vital circulation; and as maintenance of that vital circulation inherently entails perpetually re-borrowing principal and interest as ever greater sums of debt, increased at escalating rates of ever greater periodic interest on an ever greater sum of debt.
It is this process which Christ too complained of which is responsible for our industrial deterioration, for it is the costs of servicing the debt which have long ago now driven our real industry elsewhere. It is the usurers who came to own our industry by “markets” which are arenas of predation; and it is these usurers who have taken technologies we developed elsewhere, to our complete disadvantage. It is usury which owns the monopolies which extend their might by foreign “interventions” which thinly disguise the imperialism of the undeclared plutocracy. It is that plutocracy which raises candidate after candidate who will never raise the nature of usury as the most destructive process against the people. It is that plutocracy which owns the media.
Ron Paul however does not preach Jeffersonian and Washingtonian monetary policy, not only because there is no such thing, but because if anything, Austrian dogma preserves the destructive usurpation which was urged on by Hamilton, unopposed by Washington’s monetary naivete.
Hamilton of course worked hard to gain the undeserved trust of Washington, who, because he had not understanding of monetary theory, largely left the development of a monetary system to this representative of “banking” interests. In the resultant controversies against Jefferson, the inability of the founders to determine a sustainable and just monetary system, together with our own failure to do so, paved the way for the issues of our own day.
As opposed to the idea of money representing the wealth we produce, Hamilton advocated both a central bank and the purported free markets which offer up ownership of our productive capacities to the highest bidder, which of course will be the central bank.
Austrian dogma supports these pretentious notions, against which of course, Jefferson warned that the currency of such a system would deprive the people of all property until their children woke homeless on the continent their fathers had conquered.
continued at http://perfecteconomy.com/wp/2008/06/30/response-to-liberty-maven-article-charlie-wilsons-war-and-ron-paul-economics/
October 24th, 2008 at 12:52 am (#)
There are two main points that I would like to correct about this article.
The first major mistake was stating that the US supplied Osama bin Laden with weapons and money. That is a myth. Bin Laden was also not a “rebel”. He is from a wealthy family. Him and his fighters came from all over the Muslim world (although mostly from Arab states) to go fight in Afghanistan. We supplied very different people. In fact, our main allies in the country, and the people we were hoping would win the power struggle, was the Northern Alliance, which was almost completely wiped out when Ahmed Massoud was killed two days before 9/11.
The second point I would like to clear up is about your belief that a Soviet victory would have meant a long term Soviet occupation. That would have been very unlikely. They knew that they would be unable to sustain a long term presence there. This thing started when Jimmy Carter decided it would be a good idea to supply the Afghan mujahedin with weapons in order to foment a rebellion against the Marxist government of Afghanistan. This was surprising for two reasons. First, Jimmy Carter rarely has good ideas. Second, Jimmy Carter is usually very friendly towards oppressive Marxist dictatorships. Eventually, these rebels started to become a problem for the Afghan government, which had an alliance with the Soviet Union. The Soviets didn’t want a bunch of Islamists overthrowing a secular dictatorship south of them, so they cited a treaty with their ally as an excuse to send troops into Afghanistan to support the Marxist government. This is similar to what the Soviets did in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The difference is that the Soviets never planned on the war taking as long as it did. If the Soviets had been able to defeat the mujahedin, it is very likely that they would have left Afghanistan.