Ron Paul uses his 5 minutes quite well as he declares that sanctions are an act of war and attempts to educate his peers on the unintended consequences of these types of sanctions.

(Thanks to Minnesota Chris for the video, check out his blog)

Decorated Marine, Foreign Service Official resigns

“It’s time to end the whole mess!”

When watching it one gets the impression he’s made these same arguments a few too many times. Judging from his demeanor he may be getting sick of replaying the same arguments and not have anyone really listen to him. Well, a few of us are listening, and agreeing.

Watch it below.

Louis Armstrong’s famous song “What A Wonderful World” is now officially satire.

Maybe the Nobel Prize Committee was afraid of being called racist?

Or maybe it was just another giant middle finger to former President George W. Bush. Apparently, he is now being blamed for Obama winning the prize by at least one source.

The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.

Perhaps Obama winning this award is not surprising after all. The only other two sitting U.S. Presidents to win the award were Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt. Hmmm, do I detect a pattern here? Perhaps it should be renamed, “The Nobel Progressive Prize”. It certainly has nothing to do with peace.

What if this obvious political move has the unintended consequence of spreading more resentment for America overseas than less? In effect this would be using the prize as a strategic chess piece for wishes that will never come true.

Here is a quite appropriate reaction from a student in Kabul:

“I don’t think Obama deserves this. I don’t know who’s making all these decisions. The prize should go to someone who has done something for peace and humanity,” said Ahmad Shabir, 18-year-old student in Kabul. “Since he is the president, I don’t see any change in U.S. strategy in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Exactly Ahmad, Exactly.

We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer

The soldiers’ biggest question is: what can we do to make this war stop. Catch one person? Assault one objective? Soldiers want definite answers, other than to stop the Taleban, because that almost seems impossible. It’s hard to catch someone you can’t see

The chaplains said that many soldiers had lost their desire to help Afghanistan. “All they want to do is make it home alive and go back to their wives and children and visit the families who have lost husbands and fathers over here. It comes down to just surviving,” said Captain Masengale.

Full Article

Yesterday it became quite clear that she was never in danger of becoming a foreign policy non-interventionist like Paul.

From CNN:

Palin published a note on her Facebook page Tuesday that encourages President Barack Obama to grant a request for the tens of thousands of additional troops reportedly requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in the country.

“Now is not the time for cold feet, second thoughts, or indecision,” Palin wrote on the site. “It is the time to act as commander-in-chief and approve the troops so clearly needed in Afghanistan.”

Noting the possible consequences of not helping to build up Afghanistan’s institutions, the former Alaska governor also wholeheartedly endorsed McChrystal’s counterinsurgency approach to continued U.S. military presence in the country.

“We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail. The stakes are very high. The 9/11 attacks were planned in Afghanistan, and if we are not successful there, al Qaeda will once again find a safe haven, the Taliban will impose its cruelty on the Afghan people, and Pakistan will be less stable.”

She is just confirming that she never was and never will be a libertarian, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Don’t let the new designation (or Eric Dondero) fool you. The Palin-Cons are the same old Neo-Cons.

While Beck may not be there yet, there is a noticeable difference in his rhetoric when it comes to foreign policy and war. This could certainly be attributed to the fact that Obama is now in the White House instead of George W. Bush who used to get endless praise from Beck on foreign policy. Or is this evidence of a core transformation in Beck toward a more non-interventionist approach?

I shamefully admit that I once supported an interventionist foreign policy but that has changed over time as I investigated and became more informed on the issue. It took months, not days. Could Beck be going through a similar transformation? Only time, and maybe another Republican President will tell.

Does it really matter what Glenn Beck thinks? I argue that it does. He has some of the highest ratings of all the political talk shows. Like it or not many people care what he says and thinks. If Beck can make the transition to non-intervention then any formerly devout neo-conservative can too. Don’t shun them with charges of distrust. Welcome them and help them along their path.

For evidence of the Beck transformation-in-process I submit the video below.

In those early years and up until the economic crisis of last year Ron Paul was brushed off as crazy whenever he brought up the unchecked powers of the Federal Reserve. Once the bailouts began and continued it became politically expedient to be more like Ron Paul. That is, as long as you are talking about economics. On foreign policy Ron Paul is still apparently crazy for firmly believing in non-intervention.

I am not alone among the Ron Paul faithful when I say that I’m very tired of reading articles with any of the following labels attributed to Ron Paul:

Paul writes:

Neoconservatives who have come to power in both the Democratic and Republican parties argue that the U.S. must ether confront every evil in every corner of the globe or risk danger at home. We need to “fight them over there” they say, so we don’t have to “fight them over here.” This argument presents a false choice. We do not have to pick between interventionism and vulnerability. The complexity of our world is exactly why the lessons of our past should ring true and demand a return to a traditional, pro-American foreign policy: one of nonintervention.

In this piece Ron Paul seems to be taking some lessons from his son Rand. Paul the elder is framing his non-interventionist foreign policy beliefs in a way that should be less off-putting to die hard neo-conservatives.

This is truly Ron Paul at his best. Read the entire article here.

If Obama starts jawing strongly against the Iranian government what happens next? Does his God-complex become reality and the Iranian government crumble underneath every syllable? I doubt it.

There’s every reason to believe that forcefully condemning Iran today will lead to more direct intervention tomorrow. Obama, thus far, has played it properly. If he starts drawing lines in the sand we are in trouble. Or perhaps that is what his opponents would like?

Imagine this… Obama succumbs to political pressure and speaks strongly against Iran to the point of threats. When Iran fails to cease their savagery he has two choices:

1. Draw another line in the sand further back which would only give his opponents more ammo to hit him with the weak President charge.
2. Follow through on the condemnation and intervene more strongly, possibly with troops or other aid, embroiling us in yet another “entangling alliance” that could be expensive, both in blood and money.

This is one of those situations that illustrates why Presidents enter office with their natural-colored hair and leave office with a full head of gray.

Some claim taking a non-interventionist approach on the Iran election aftermath is the height of hypocrisy from someone who claims to believe in liberty. Ron Paul is being criticized for his lone “Nay”  vote on condemning the Iranian government’s heinous actions on it’s own people. On the surface it appears Obama is taking a similar non-interventionist approach for now, although there are some arguing the opposite may be true. Hopefully, Obama stands his ground (this time) against the interventionist opposition.

Those clamoring for intervention need to answer a few questions, but there is one question that trumps them all.

What is the endgame of intervening in Iran?

Is it the preposterous idea to enforce a fair election in another country and install Mousavi as President so the Iranian reformers can be “free”? Where in the U.S. Constitution that we claim is the supreme law of the land permits the U.S. government to intervene in another country’s election process (no matter how flawed it may be)? Of course that pesky Constitution didn’t stop us from doing something similar in Iran in 1953 and many other places over the years. In fact a good argument could be made that the reason Iranians are so “unfree” today was because of our own interventions in Iran beginning in 1953.

Furthermore, If we somehow magically install a new Iranian President but do nothing about the theocratic dictatorship with all the real power in Iran, the Iranian reformists would be no more free than they are right now.

Is the goal then to use force to remove the theocratic dictatorship and transform Iran into a… well… another version of Iraq? Yeah, that worked so well. It was done with minimal bloodshed, it only lasted a year, and it was cheap for the U.S. taxpayers. Oh never mind, that was the promise, not the reality. Doing this would mark the fourth simultaneous nation-building effort if you count Afghanistan in the mix. And I say fourth because we are most certainly doing our own version of nation-building right here in the U.S. with Obama’s “stimulus” plan in effect.

There’s nothing quite like some more nation-building to bring America back to economic prominence in the world by spending more money we don’t have!

Being a lover of liberty I can’t help but cheer for Iranian freedom with a full-throat, but that freedom can only be achieved by the Iranian people organizing and demanding it through whatever means they deem necessary. If the U.S. determines the means then the Iranians will be trading one dictator for another.

We need to focus on leading by example and diplomacy. This is yet another case where America can be that proverbial “shining city on a hill”, but only if we don’t send our military down that hill and around the world “in search of monsters to destroy“.

If you are for U.S. intervention in Iran yet getting yourself all in a lather over attending one of the Tea Parties which are dedicated to restoring our Constitution as the rule of law, may I suggest being cautious about whom you call hypocrites? As hard as it may be to believe, it is possible to support freedom around the world without intervention.

H.L. Mencken wrote:

“I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.”

Couple that thought with Thomas Jefferson’s…

“…peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

and we have the best answer to the Iranian situation. To do otherwise, we may find that when all is said and done, the only tyrant remaining in the world lives and works in the White House. That is of course, if our economy can hold up that long.

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And about that lone Ron Paul vote, here is another quote from John Quincy Adams:

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

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UPDATE: Paul Kroenke, who wrote the article I was critical of above, has posted a clarification/follow-up that readers of this article should also read. Also note my own clarification in the comments section of that piece. In short, I apologize to Paul for misconstruing his article and offer up that I do agree with condemning the Iranian regime’s actions, but I disagree about doing so as an official act of Congress. Furthermore, my largest worry is that such condemnations will lead to eventual intervention.

The Pentagon has already quickly denied the report’s accuracy, but with the government refusing to release the photos to the public they are also denying themselves any ability to fully refute the claims made against them – assuming the claims are false. I simply don’t understand how the Obama administration can, on the one hand, attempt to downplay what is depicted in the photographs, and on the other think it too dangerous to release them to the public.

While the stated fear is consistently that releasing the photographs may “inflame anti-American opinion, and … put our troops in greater danger,” isn’t the fact that torture and prisoner abuse took place really what will inflame opinion? Covering up what happened – and ineffectively at that – simply raises more questions and keeps the issue at the forefront. While Obama rightly states the abuse to be unacceptable, without an open process – without proper transperency – it creates and fosters a culture where abuse could spring up under the protection of the government not wanting to reveal what is essentially embarassing to them.

Until the photos are fully released, the continued spectre of what they may be hiding will do noone any good – nor will the slow, inevitable drip by drip reveal of details from people who have seen them. On this one, I agree with Martin Garbus at the Huffington Post – releasing all of the photos now and coming clean is the only way to begin the process of truly moving forward. But not only that, it’s the only course which would actually save lives, not merely veil an embarassing truth.