Murder with majority approval is still murder, whomever the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by actors within or without The State; by the designated ‘good guys’ or by the ‘bad guys’; murder of innocents is still murder ~ilana

The razing of Gaza by Benjmain Netanyahu, abetted by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices, in the course of which civilians are dying: This is murder with malice  aforethought, a concept that includes ‘deaths resulting from actions that display a depraved indifference to life! ~ilana

It’s simple: If you know in advance that your actions will cause the death of thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy.

The razing of Gaza and the ongoing murder of thousands of civilians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with western imprimatur, is a war crime. Strafing civilian populations and pulverizing entire neighborhoods to ostensibly “soften” the few embedded targets within—this violates natural law, international law, libertarian law and Just War Theory.  

It was true when Genghis Bush dropped daisy cutters and cluster bombs on Iraqi civilians, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of them; it was true when allied forces firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and it was true when Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilians.

Not that it helped his victims, but Truman icily expressed some “regret” for “the [beastly] necessity of wiping out whole populations”: “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare,” he told an ardent supporter, “but I can’t bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner.”

We know ineluctably that Gaza is “a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare.” The sympathies expressed by Gazans toward their neighbors, victims of the October 7 slaughter, were meager and grudging, coerced by media, for the most.

Leadership in Egypt and Jordan is less than candid as to why they refuse to welcome Gaza’s refugees into their midst as the Polish welcomed the Ukrainians. In fact, the Egyptians have no intention whatsoever of allowing Palestinians, whom they view as a radicalizing element, into their country. Like President Hosni Mubarak before him; President El-Sisi refuses to swell the already-swollen ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Mubarak had periodically conducted mini-massacres against the Brotherhood—the organization that sired Hamas—with no particular outcry from the West.

In 1970, King Hussein (ibn Talal) of Jordan massacred thousands of Palestinians for fomenting a coup against the Hashemite monarchy. To avert the anarchy Hussein associated with the Palestinians and their simmering resentments, the King then expelled the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and many thousands of Palestinian troublemakers to Lebanon.

Contra the West’s angels-and-demons foreign policy narrative, the mirage of Hamas as an oppressor of its downtrodden people is just that: a mirage.

Last I looked, the Palestinian People had voted with a vengeance for the “Islamic Resistance Movement” (Hamas), an organization whose existence revolves around Israel’s destruction. In the last election, Hamas got a majority in all but two of the 16 districts in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

According to Mark Mellman, a pollster, “If new presidential elections were held with two candidates, Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, Abbas would receive 37 percent of the vote, and Haniyeh would win in a landslide with 58 percent.” Substantial majorities in the West Bank and Gaza favor “armed conflict” over peaceful, political solutions to the conflict.

The Arab Street has always been more militant than its leaders. Said Arab-American scholar Fouad Ajami: “It is a peculiarity of the Arab political order that many of the rulers and the dynasties are more moderate than the populace.” This is why Iraqis turned out en masse for Sharia law. And why, enabled by George W. Bush and Ms. Condoleezza Rice, the people of Egypt sought to replace Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party with the banned Muslim Brotherhood. The people’s proclivities catapulted Hezbollah into government in Lebanon. And they account for the smashing success enjoyed by Islamists in Saudi and Afghani elections.

These uncomfortable facts notwithstanding, murder with majority approval is still murder, whomever the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by actors within or without the State; by the designated “good guys” or the “bad guys”; murder of innocents is still murder.

Thus, the razing of Gaza by Benjmain Netanyahu, abetted by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices, in the course of which civilians are dying: This is murder with malice aforethought, a concept that includes “deaths resulting from action that display a depraved indifference to life.” (Read “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason.”) Further depraved indifference to life is Israel’s throttling of supplies of water, food and power to the millions of aid-dependent Gazans, as Israel knows full-well this will imperil civilians indirectly.

Silly soliloquies poured into our ears about “Hamas using civilians as human shields” amount to morally bankrupt non sequiturs. True: Hamas has invited the IDF to “come get us if you can find us among Gaza’s civilians.” The IDF and its handlers, however, have accepted Hamas’ invitation to pulverize civilian communities.

In other words, Hamas’ culpability does not absolve Israel from blame. One agenda of wrongs doesn’t change another.

“To be very good at something inherently stupid,” said a great English novelist, “is not the mark of high intelligence.” In addition to betraying its own citizens by failing to uphold their basic rights; the unthinking IDF has effectively bombed Gaza back to the stone age. This will do nothing to eradicate Hamas! Previous forays into the West Bank and Gaza signally failed to accomplish this necessary mission.

Gazans, in an extremity of suffering, are instructed to “evacuate to the southern part of the strip.” That exhortation reminds me of Ivanka Trump’s ludicrous counsel to men in hard hats, whose occupations had been outsourced forever: “Learn how to code.” “Evacuate to the southern part of the Gaza strip” is but a ludicrous meme given that Gaza has been levelled. There is nowhere left to run.

Tragically, Israel has squandered much of the goodwill generated by the heinous, diabolical, pogrom, executed by spawns of Satan on October 7. In the end, Bibi has obliterated the memory of those martyrs by creating new martyrs in Gaza.

So, “How To Defeat Hamas And Stop The Carnage In Gaza”?

IN A NEW HARD TRUTH PODCAST, your columnist argues that needed was a smarter, more effective response that targets only the culprits of the Oct. 7 slaughter, and not innocents. Such a response is outlined in detail. UK’s David Vance and I further discuss the idea that Netanyahu has desecrated the memory of the Oct. 7 martyrs, creating new martyrs in Gaza, via his crude— nay, diabolical—response to the Hamas massacre. The world’s sympathy has been squandered. In all circumstances, David and I both agree that the US/UK interference in the region is not helpful and that REGIONALISM ALWAYS BEATS GLOBALISM.

https://rumble.com/embed/v3qo82m/?pub=fyb9t

ADDENDUM

THE COLUMN YOU HAVE JUST READ, “Bibi Obliterates Memory Of Oct. 7 Martyrs; Creates New Martyrs In Gaza,” was published by only three exceedingly courageous publications: My home at The New American. The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

And, The Mises Institute (“Bibi Netanyahu May Find Himself In the Dock, In The Hague.”)

https://mises.org/power-market/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-himself-dock-hague

Note that this is a column penned by a systematic, anti-war rightist. It offers facts about Palestinian voting patterns and agency in order to dispel the Disney world foreign-policy worldview of the West. This antiwar argument, coming as it does from the hard, libertarian Right, is made from a place of reality, and not hippie naiveté.

Whatever you might think of people as a group; ethical human-beings can never-ever endorse their wholesale murder, now underway. I have, however, since mid-October, come to see that justice is on the side of the Palestinians.

I thank my editors at TNA for, at least for a while, standing by The Truth. https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity have always stood for the Truth. As has The Mises Institute.    https://mises.org/power-market/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-himself-dock-hague

That Truth is now visible from space.

I thank my podcast partner, David Vance, for sharing a moral commitment, and, well, having the proverbial male bits so few men have.

I am still hopeful there will be others on the Right.

Alas, little has changed since Iraq. This response to the razing of Gaza has elements of an Iraq redux, where you tell the unvarnished truth, from day one, https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq/   https://www.ilanamercer.com/2003/04/murder-by-majority/, become persona non grata forever. Twenty years hence, you get to watch fools slowly feel their way to the truth as you and your ideological ilk had articulated, at the time it mattered, and against your own professional interests, https://www.ilanamercer.com/2015/05/iraq-liars-and-deniers-we-knew-then-what-we-know-now/ in dozens of essays, https://www.ilanamercer.com/category/iraq/page/2/ , starting on September 19, 2002: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq .

Many are the good people who learn to trust you; the rest remain as dumb as fuck.

Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian author, essayist and theorist. Her new book is “The Paleolibertarian Guide To Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & The Aberrant Economy” (February 2024). Mercer is described as “a system-builder. Distilled, her modus operandi has been to methodically apply first principles to the day’s events.” (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-29608-6_47) She’s Jewish and grew up in Israel from which she fled, aged 19, never to return. She’s on Twitter & LinkedIn; banned by Facebook.

©2023 ILANA MERCER
The New American, November 2
The Ron Paul Institute For Peace and Prosperity November 3
The Mises Institute (“Bibi Netanyahu May Find Himself In the Dock, In The Hague“), November 14

* Gaza, Before and After, Screen Pic Courtesy Al Jazeera

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Democrat Party is the part of ‘fear, war and censorship… neocons with woke bobble-heads’  ~Robert F. Kennedy

Tucker like Trump is transformational ~ilana

Fix News is finished, having just fired their only attraction, Tucker Carlson. As a writer who put in years of sustained antiwar writing against Genghis Bush and the neocon coterie—who burned (and consequently burnt-out) as hot as a Babylonian kiln against invasions backed 100 percent by Faux New and its blonde war-porn flank—something just short of total extinction seems a fitting fate for Fox. The foolish firing of their top rated host, and one of the highest-ranking cable news shows in the country, is sure to hasten the death rattle of the War Porn channel.

Evil And Envy

Fox News has thus cemented its unimpeachable credentials as lickspittle of the Republican Party, which it always was until Tucker. Just so there’s no confusion: the Party is exulting in Tucker’s ousting.

The intuitive and likely most base reason for the ouster of Tucker tracks with human nature: evil and envy strive for mediocrity.

The instinct of man is evil from his youth ~Genesis 8:21

Or, in the language of statistics, it’s the regression toward the mean; the quest in America for mediocrity:

“Tocqueville in the 19th century, and Solzhenitsyn in the 20th, noted that conformity of thought is powerfully prevalent among Americans,” observed my friend Clyde Wilson, professor of history at the University of South Carolina and the foremost scholar of John C. Calhoun.

So, too, do the responses from the mediocre media—and I flatter them—where one sees nothing but schadenfreude (“joy derived from the misfortunes of others”), track with the theory of evil and envy.

Fox News is an echo of the Republican Party, which serves the deep, warfare, industry-captured state.

Robert F. Kennedy, on the other hand, is “a choice, not an echo.”

One need not agree with every word Kennedy spoke in a pellucid address announcing for president, almost two hours long, delivered extemporaneously, to grasp that, on the defining issues of our time, almost all of which Kennedy addressed in depth and in detail, Robert F. Kennedy is right and righteous.

Of the welter of words spoken so very beautifully—for a man with a disorder of the vocal cords—Kennedy, Jr. underplayed perhaps two issues and failed to mention but one crucial matter, while delivering a riveting information-dense address, at once deep and philosophical, yet wise and pragmatic, undergirded by historic and constitutional truth. Tactical to boot.

Against The Deep, Warfare, Woke, Industry-Captured State

The overarching impetus of  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s announcement is this:

Americans live and labor under an illiberal, unconstitutional, oppressive administrative state. Our representatives are meant to make law. How, then, has this vast bureaucracy, captured by globe-straddling industries, acquired tyrannical law-making powers! Most certainly not constitutionally.

Candidate Kennedy astutely connects the corrupt merger of state and corporate power with the events, stateside and abroad; past and present, unfolding around us—from the collapse of the dollar, the murder of the middle-class via Covid crackdowns and lockdowns (courtesy of the pharma-state), to inflation (Federal Reserve Bank), to the sundering of individual and constitutional rights, to war forevermore (in service of the military-industrial-complex against which Dwight Eisenhower and John Quincy forewarned).

State run “corporate feudalism” keeps us sick, disenfranchised, robbed of rights and due process of law; drug addled and always at war.

On second thought, and for now, I retract my implicit insinuation that Kennedy had omitted to address the war on whites and on law-and-order; for he may have opted to do so tactically and indirectly. Kennedy is hardly sanguine about the “garrison and surveillance state” America has become, noting that, “Being an imperium abroad will destroy democracy, turn America into a garrison and surveillance state.” Kennedy’s condemnation and contempt for the fulsome, foul Democratic Party was complete, calling it deliciously the party of “fear, war and censorship… neocons with woke bobble-heads.”

For now, I charitably conclude that this gifted man has simply hit on a way to approach the war on whites and on law-enforcement in a less divisive and direct manner, using proxy issues. Kennedy thus spoke as passionately and deliberately about the impoverished whites of Appalachia—they were as much Kennedy constituents as the poor of Southeast Washington. He promised the poor—and all Kennedy constituents—this:

“I will be president to those people. We are going to take back the country. You give me a piece of ground and a sword I will take back this country, with your help, we will go America first.”

Behind candidate Kennedy, moreover, were aligned the kind of men and women one saw at a Trump rally: middle class and working-class Americans of all races. With a difference: Theirs were fine, sweet, not spiteful, faces. None sported nose rings or pink hair. All faces were etched with untold pain and suffering.

Caveat emptor. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will need to address the border, as that by-now meaningless phrase goes. He has not. If he cares about the poor of his country, he must convince them that he is not part of the Ted Kennedy Fifth Column, which, in 1965, wrote the multicultural legislation that altered America forever. Kennedy Jr. will need to plug the border down South and, ideally, expel Biden’s legions of foreign invaders. If you are championing the middle-class and the working poor you cannot swamp their country with an unending supply of labor.

Since almost no candidate has spoken as advised here—the Republicans having more or less learned to live with the Biden Border—Robert F. Kennedy is still ahead.

Ukraine: Masterful Philosophical Triangulation

Likewise did Mr. Kennedy approach Ukraine in what was a brilliant bit of philosophical triangulation.

First, Kennedy argued that the “geopolitical machinations” underway in Ukraine were tantamount to regime change. Mr. Kennedy next constructed a political argument against the war in Ukraine so inclusive and all-encompassing that it would appeal to all political factions.

To wit, the war in Ukraine is being peddled as a humanitarian mission. Americans are a humanitarian people. Side by side with that claim are the “geopolitical machinations” to effect regime change in Russia. So, if we are prolonging the war to wear Russia down, in the name of regime change, argues this brilliant litigator, then America is also using Ukraine to create “an abattoir of death” for that country and its young.

That, noted Kennedy with passion and invention, is not humanitarian. QED.

Americans are a militant people. At the same time, they are sentimental to a fault. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s argument against war in Ukraine is tailored to his people, the American People, and thus represents a feat of triangulation. His is not the pure libertarian, Just War, constitutional, anti-war argument, but when have those worked? So let us, then, try a position against war that’ll appeal to every segment of the American people (other than our overlords who art in D.C.).

“As long as our major exports are weapons and war,” he thundered, “we will never have a middle-class in this country.” And, “the principal job of every president is to keep the country out of war.”

RFK might even prove intellectually more nimble than Pat Buchanan on matters war. Both would agree that Pax Americana has brought very little by way of peace with it. But this younger member of America’s political aristocracy must distance himself from the late Ted Kennedy on immigration. Robert F. Kennedy will need to concede that, like war forevermore, an open border is inconsistent with a stable middle-class and upwardly mobile working poor who can strive, not starve.

WATCH UK’s David Vance and your columnist discuss, “Tucker Removed by Fox. Robert Kennedy Jr Against The Deep, Warfare, Woke, Industry-Captured State.”

https://rumble.com/embed/v2hpzgc/?pub=fyb9t

Thank you for subscribing.

©2023 ILANA MERCER
WND, April 27
Unz Review,  April 27
The New American, April 27
Townhall.com, April 28

* Image as screen picture courtesy Kenny Powers @MattRyan0070

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Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died today, September 8, at Balmoral. Her funeral will be a celebration of a great lady, the very embodiment of mettle.

The queen of England might be a member of the much-maligned landed aristocracy, but she has acquitted herself as a natural aristocrat would. Elizabeth II had lived a life of dedication and duty, and done so with impeccable class.

The queen had been working quietly (and often thanklessly) for the English people for over seven decades. Elizabeth Windsor was but 13 when World War II broke out, which is when she gave her first official radio broadcast to console the children who had been evacuated “from Britain to America, Canada and elsewhere.” Still in her teens, Elizabeth joined the military, “where,” according to Wikipedia, “she … trained as a driver, and drove a military truck while she served.”

This is precisely what the George Bush girls ought to have done in Iraq or Afghanistan, but didn’t. Both the queen’s grandsons have shown more mettle than most members of America’s pampered political dynasties. I may not share these young men’s version of duty and patriotism, but I can, nevertheless, appreciate what it takes. William worked as an RAF search and rescue helicopter pilot.

Before marrying that dolt from Tinseltown—Meghan Markle, who imagined she was a match for the queen of England—young Prince Harry had served in Afghanistan, and wore his Afghanistan Campaign medals on his brother’s wedding day. By contrast, in 2010, young Barbara Bush graduated as a royal pain in the behind: She assumed her official duties as spokesperson for Obama’s health care plan.

If forced to choose between the mob (democracy) and the monarchy, the latter is far preferable and benevolent. This thesis is anatomized in Democracy: The God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order, by libertarian political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe. In his seminal work, Hoppe provides ample support—historical and analytical—for democracy’s inferiority as compared to monarchy:

… democracy has succeeded where monarchy only made a modest beginning: in the ultimate destruction of the natural elites. The fortunes of great families have dissipated, and their tradition of a culture of economic independence, intellectual farsightedness, and moral and spiritual leadership has been lost and forgotten. Rich men still exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortune now directly or indirectly to the state.

‘[I]n light of elementary economic theory, the conduct of government and the effects of government policy on civil society can be expected to be systematically different, depending on whether the government apparatus is owned privately or publicly,’ explains Hoppe. ‘From the viewpoint of those who prefer less exploitation over more and who value farsightedness and individual responsibility above shortsightedness and irresponsibility, the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline.’

The democratically elected ruler has no real stake in the territory he trashes during his tenure in office. It was no mere act of symbolism for the Clintons’ staff to have vandalized the White House on the eve of their departure. Besides, the democratic political transient has learned that he can trust court historians and assorted hagiographers to re-write history favorably for him.

Pat Buchanan captured the rival perspectives—the despot’s vs. the king’s—in the following anecdote: “Louis XVI let the mob lead him away from Versailles, which he never saw again. When artillery captain Bonaparte asked one of the late king’s ministers why Louis had not used his cannons, the minister is said to have replied, ‘The king of France does not use artillery on his own people.’”

From pundits on our side of the pond, however, the monarchy regularly draws nasty barbs. Trashing the British monarchy appears to be their way of asserting American exceptionalism. I wager that were the conservative, periwigged Englishmen who founded America to pounce back on to the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” TV set—the only place they’d be welcomed, given their “Ultra MAGA” bent—the founders, too, would favor the monarchy over the current American mobocracy.

Whereas the British queen’s role had become purely ceremonial—life and death are in the hands of the monarch who sits in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Lastly, consider the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the tawdry, quintessentially American saga they had inflicted on the queen. That the British monarchy stands for the last vestiges of ancient English tradition is not in dispute. But what do the Americanized Harry Windsor, formerly known as Prince Harry, and Meghan Markle represent? The Economist magazine, whose sources crown Meghan Markle as the “principal agent of the current debacle,” tethers “Harry and Meghan to … Marx”:

Markle, the Economist ventures, is a “product of an entertainment business that has done more than any other industry to fulfill Marx’s prediction that ‘all that is sacred’ would be ‘profaned’ and ‘all that is solid’ would ‘melt into air.’”

The Communist Manifesto predicted and celebrated that crass commercialism would subject national institutions “to the revolutionary logic of the global market.” “The Sussexes,” mused the Economist’s “Bagehot” column, “are … embracing capitalism in its rawest, most modern form: global rather than national, virtual rather than solid, driven, by its ineluctable logic, to constantly produce new fads and fashions.” [Emphasis added.]

Bar Marxist celebrity Meghan Markle from the funeral of the consummate public servant, HM the Queen, a true-blue “Sussex Royal.”

©2022 ILANA MERCER
WND, September 8
Unz Review, September 8
Free Life: For Life, Liberty And Property, September 9
The New American, September 9

* Screen pic image via Sean Gabb.

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The late Charles Krauthammer was right about the rules of good writing. The use of the first-person pronoun in opinion writing is a cardinal sin.

To get a sense of how bad someone’s writing is count the number of times he or she deploys the Imperial “I” on the page. Krauthammer considered a single “I” in a piece to be a failure.

Use “I” when the passive-form alternative is too clumsy. Or, when the writer herself has earned the right to, because of her relevance to the story. (The story itself, naturally, should have relevance.) The second is my excuse here.

As a legal immigrant to the U.S., now an American citizen, I have a right to insert myself into the noisy narrative.

As a legal immigrant who was separated from her daughter, herself a legal immigrant, the onus is on me to share a scurrilous story that is part of a pattern:

America’s immigration policy—driven as it is by policy makers and enforces—exalts and privileges those of low moral character. It rewards law-breakers, giving them the courtesy and consideration not given to high-value, legal immigrants.

The same U.S. immigration law enforcers who cater so kindly to each illegal immigrant—the kind that is a drain on the country and has no right to be in the country—stripped my daughter of her American permanent residency privileges.

A young person travels alone and gets bamboozled at the border-crossing in Blaine, Washington State. So, they strip her of her green card.

That’s our immigration story.

My girl was studying in Canada. She got intimidated at the border and gave the wrong answer to her petty American inquisitor. So, she was quick-marched into a small booth and peppered with more questions meant to terrify.

With an intimidating display of machismo, the burly men of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) bullied a young girl into relinquishing her right of permanent residency (also the road to citizenship).

La Bandida was at bay. America was finally safe.

More fundamentally, hers was not an ill-gotten green card.

The principal sponsor, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, had entered the US on an O-1 visa. Unlike the H-1B visa, the 0-1 visa doesn’t replace Americans; it adds to them. For it is granted to those with “extraordinary ability in the fields of science, education, business or athletics.” The O-1 necessitates “a level of expertise indicating that the person is one of the small percentage who has risen to the very top of the field of endeavor.”

Not by deceit did my child gain her green card. But by deceit is how the swarms on the border will get theirs. The squeaky wheels squatting on the southern border, funneled daily into the interior to create facts on the ground, are not refugees or legitimate asylum seekers. Rather, they are merely from what President Trump has termed “s–thhole countries.” By that criteria, Americans could be forced to welcome the world.

A refugee, conversely, is an individual who is persecuted on the basis “of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.” Like my South-African compatriots, who, every day, are culled like springbok in a hunting safari. But for South Africans, U.S. refugee and immigration authorities reserve their unalloyed prejudice.

Let’s be realistic. Aside from their demands, the hordes on the Southern border have nothing to offer the commonwealth.

Back to la bandida. Was my daughter allowed a phone call to her parents? No! What about access to an immigration attorney? No!

A well-behaved, legal resident, who did not enter the USA to cause trouble, this young lady obeyed the laws of the country. She did not defy its enforces. Timidly, she accepted her lot.

Our daughter had her hard-won green card stripped by state bullies because she gave the wrong answer to a trick bureaucratic question.

Her case, no doubt, was further hindered by the fact that she simply was not a sympathetic “type.” After all, she speaks good English, was attached to productive people, residing lawfully in their own home in the U.S., mere hours away. And she is not of a more exotic persuasion. At least not visibly so.

No, not simpatico at all.

So, she was tossed out of the United States of America like so much … white trash.

I hazard that had my daughter spoken in tongues or rendered a “good” Pidgin English; had she cried, created a scene; called for the presstitutes and the immigration advocates—she’d have “passed” with flying colors and would have been sent on her merry way.

It’s as though people of early American probity, to paraphrase writer Mary McGrory, are carefully and purposefully weeded out by contemporary America’s immigration policies and policy makers. (Until Trump.)

Indeed, we South Africans are just not part of the “multicultural noise machine,” now sitting on the southern border seething with rage, poised to make common purpose with America’s professional merchants of racial hatred.

We are not pushy. We do things the right way. And we swallow the pain and indignity.

All this was in 2006 or thereabouts, shortly after the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) changed its name to USCIS. Only now, in 2018, has mother (me) been able to “share my story.” (There’s another vernacular tumor that should be excised by all decent editors.)

“Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” roared George W. Bush, at the time.

El presidente forgot to mention that family values do stop with the decent, documented residents of the United States.

©2018 ILANA MERCER
Quarterly Review, Townhall.com, The Unz Review, WND.com,
The Ludwig von Mises Centre for Property & Freedom,
Constitution.com
July 5

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©2016 By ILANA MERCER 

Donald Trump has buried George W. Bush, for good. Or so we hope.

This might not be “Morning in America,” but it is a moral victory for values in America. Somewhere in those Judeo-Christian values touted by “values voters” is an injunction against mass murder.

Before the February 20 South Carolina primary, it looked as though G. Bush might just make a comeback.

After the South Carolina primary, where Donald Trump won with 32.2 percent of the Republican vote, it seems certain that nothing will resuscitate the legacy of “one of the nation’s worst presidents.” Notwithstanding his war crimes and unprecedented intervention in the financial system and the private economy, “W” also happened to preside over the largest domestic spending since Lyndon Johnson. As chronicled in Ivan Eland’s “Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty,” “[Bush] advocated bad policies and demonstrated horrendous operational incompetence.”

The disastrous and expensive (in casualties and money) nation-building project in Iraq and Afghanistan were only exceeded in catastrophic results by Bush’s expansion of executive power and theft of the civil liberties that make the United States unique. Bush had almost no accomplishments to offset such foibles.

Trump addressed the war: “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”

The chattering class, Left and Right, was—still is—gobsmacked. A political Samson was bringing down the pillars of their world.

Desperate to restore equilibrium before the crucial SC vote was CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “You would not say again that George W. Bush lied?”

Trump obliged. He backpedaled before the primary, going with non-committal: “I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I mean, I’d have to look at documents.”

So America has some unfinished business. Because we do know. We can say for sure. And we have all the documents. George W. Bush lied America into war.

Bush began his ballyhooed presidency by lying during his campaign. He promised America a humble foreign policy, but came into office with the express purpose of using his plenary powers to unseat Saddam Hussein. Reliable sources—vaunted officials such as the former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism office, Vincent Cannistraro—attested that Bush started plotting to “settle” old scores with Saddam Hussein as soon as he got to the White House.

This was well after the International Atomic Energy Agency vouched Iraq had “dismantled its nuclear program.” To good effect, Bush and his bandits dusted off “decade old” IAEA reports and presented these as the casus belli for a new war. Yes, the Bush reports about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction were a “decade old”; out-of-date and inapplicable, when they were deployed to go to war, in 2003.

In 2004, U.S. weapons inspector David Kay was tasked with a post-invasion investigation as to why no WMD were found in Iraq. The evidence Kay marshaled was the same old evidence those of us who opposed the war cited back in the dying days of 2002. Having publicly fumed about the impotence of the IAEA’s much-maligned inspection process, Kay found himself in the embarrassing position of vouching for IAEA effectiveness.

IAEA inspectors were, in fact, still crisscrossing Iraq when Bush invaded.

For his 2004 tome “Plan of Attack,” author Bob Woodward was given his usual unparalleled access. Woodward conducted 75-odd interviews with members of the Bush administration’s inner sanctums, Bush too. Woodward concluded, and was lauded by the proud culprits themselves: “Bush is in charge. Bush is all over [Iraq].”

“Just five days after September 11,” by Woodward’s telling, “the president indicated to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that he was determined to do something about Saddam Hussein.”

On November 21, 2001, the bombastic Bush who had characterized his war as “the story of the 21st Century,” demanded an invasion plan from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

“Get on it,” Bush barked.

Gen. Tommy Franks was then given carte blancheto develop such a strategy, for which the president, unbeknownst to Congress, siphoned $700 million from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War.

On February 16, 2002, Bush signed a “Top Secret intelligence order” granting authority to the CIA and the military to commence covert operations in Iraq. December 21, 2002 saw CIA Director George Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin summoned to the Oval Office to screen a slideshow of Iraq’s alleged WMD. The president took the lead. He made it clear that Tenet had to deliver on his promise of an intelligence “slam dunk.” Alas, G. Bush was wholly unimpressed by the “rough cut”:

“Nice try, but that isn’t gonna sell Joe Public.”

“Richard Clark, the White House anti-terrorism coordinator, reported that on the day after 9/11, even after he protested that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks, Bush personally insisted that he look for one.” Clark’s memo disavowing such a connection was returned by the “office of Bush’s National Security Adviser with the comment: Wrong answer. Do it again.”

Soon, Secretary of State Rice was filling her days with forecasts of a Saddam-seeded nuclear-winter. On September 8, 2002, this liar told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs.” David Albright of the Institution for Science and International Security was appalled. “That’s just a lie,” he reiterated to New Republic.

The “Lie Factory—the Office of Special Plans”—was a central edifice of the Bush administration. The OSP, reminisces Justin Raimondo in a retrospective about Bush’s lies, was “a parallel intelligence-gathering agency set up by the neoconservatives in the administration [to feed] Congress and the media ‘factoids’ which were later proved to be false.”

To make his sub-intelligent case for war, Bush mustered the fictitious uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes from Timbuktu, the invisible “meetings” with al-Qaida in Prague, an al-Qaida training camp that existed under Kurdish—not Iraqi—control, as well as the alleged weaponized chemical and biological stockpiles and their attendant delivery systems that inspectors doubted were there and which never-ever materialized.

“Guilt is an intrinsic quality of actions,” wrote the 19th-century American philosopher of liberty, Lysander Spooner. Judging by the actions they commanded, former President George Bush  “and his neoconservative Rasputins” were–are—as guilty as sin for the crime of Iraq.

Before his February 23 victory in the Nevada caucuses, fresh from the win in South Carolina, Trump returned to Fox News to dance on George Bush’s political grave.

Pompous Chris Wallace imagined he’d get the upper hand with Donald Trump, but ended up changing the subject … quickly.

“The pundits, including yourself,” blasted a triumphant Trump, “thought I made a mistake when I took on Bush on that issue. But when I took on Bush on that issue, I never felt it was a bad thing to do because people that are smart know that the war in Iraq was a disaster.”

No more “neoconservative Rasputins.” “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Or, in Bushspeak: “Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … You can’t get fooled again!”

©ILANA Mercer
WND, Quarterly Review, Praag.org,
The Libertarian Alliance &  The Unz Review
February 26, 2016

The post Trump Called Bush A Liar & He Won South Carolina (Nevada, Too) appeared first on ILANA MERCER.

©2016 By ILANA MERCER 

If Donald J. Trump wishes to lessen the impact of his disappointing second in the Iowa caucuses and walk back the tack he’s taken with Ted Cruz—he must begin to think big and talk big.

Loud in not necessarily big.

Call it triangulation, a concept associated with Bill Clinton’s successful strategies, or call it “the art of the deal”: It’s time for Trump to DO IT.

To this end, Trump must quit the “we don’t win anymore” formulaic rhapsody, and start fleshing out substantive positions. A pragmatist does so by introducing the people he’ll be recruiting to “Make America Great Again.”

To Cruz belongs the Trump Department of Justice portfolio. Offering Justice to Cruz allows Trump to both put Ted in his place as unsuited to the presidency; while simultaneously making him part of Team Trump and repairing that relationship. Ted is too soft to be US president in these troubled times. But he’d make a spectacular attorney general in charge of DOJ.

There’s a reason George W. Bush hates Ted Cruz. In 2008, Cruz gave America reason to cue the mariachi band and celebrate the death of detritus José Medellín. As part of a gangbanger initiation rite, Medellín had raped (in every way possible), strangled, slashed, and stomped two young Texan girls to death.

“In Texas,” to quote another Ron from the Lone Star State, “we have the death penalty and we use it. If you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back.”

Bush 43 would wrestle a crocodile for a criminal alien. Backed by Bush—and on behalf of Medellín and other killer compadres awaiting a similar fate—Mexico promptly sued the US over procedural technicalities in the International Court of Justice. The president ordered Texas to halt the execution of murderer and rapist Medellín.

Texas’ heroic solicitor general said no.

Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court. There, he bested Bush and his lickspittles. As the Conservative Review gloated, Cruz “won the case, 6-to-3.” He had sought justice for Americans against a president who subjugated them to international courts. Ted, moreover, was forever gracious about Bush; Bush and his bambino bro routinely slime Ted.

In trashing Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Trump is in bad company.

The American government currently outsources the job of vetting Muslim refugees headed for the US to the most corrupt of UN agencies: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. If anyone can vanquish the UN and extricate America from sovereignty sundering international treaties—it’s the victor in Medellín v. Ted of Texas.

Next is Rand Paul. The senator has abandoned hopes of becoming president of the United States, in 2016. With his departure, the libertarian bloom is off the Republican race for the White House.

Rand has been the only Republican in the running to sound a strong trumpet against the warfare state of his rivals. If a giant welfare state is unconservative, what of the warfare state?

By logical extension, not signing on to the bombing of Bashar Hafez al-Assad was a good thing, observed Rand. Assad was the source of stability in Syria, much as Saddam Hussein was in Iraq. Have we learned nothing about the perils of toppling dictators, only to see the rise of barbarians worse than their predecessors?

Besides, why are we still at war in Afghanistan? Why are we dropping bombs there? Why have we been “helping” Afghanistan for over 10 years, inquired Rand in the course of his campaign? We’ve spent more in that blighted and benighted region than we did on the Marshall Plan. “Why can’t the Afghans defend themselves after a decade? Will we have to defend them in perpetuity?”

And what’s unconservative about diplomatic engagement?

As impure a libertarian as he is, when compared to father Ron Paul, Rand has mocked his rivals’ military chauvinism and jingoism as incompatible with conservatism. In particular, why was the robotic Marco Rubio being given the time of day? Rubio is spoiling for fights that’ll dwarf the wars Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton waged on Libya, surreptitiously in Syria and in Afghanistan. As president, “the Boy in the Bubble” (Governor Chris Christie’s moniker for Marco) has promised to use American power extremely liberally. Or, as Rand has kept reminding Americans, there is no daylight between the Rubio and Hillary Clinton regime-change foreign policy.

Rand has been rather rude to Donald Trump, who, in turn, has not spared Senator Paul his repartee. But the front-runner, not Rand, has some placating to do. Promise Rand Paul a cabinet position as secretary of state in charge of US foreign policy. Trump will thus bring the libertarians in from the cold. (By  Gallop’s count, the libertarian-leaning vote might be as large as 24 percent.)

Rand can have State on one condition.

In the past, Trump has praised Representative Ron Paul. Trump will further solidify libertarian backing if he places Paul senior in charge of the US Department of the Treasury. Independents and some on the Left may follow (although they’ll lie to pollsters about it). No one is better suited than Congressman Paul to the task of halting further debasement of the coin courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank. He will also put an end to the depravity that is the Internal Revenue Service.

The urgency of the strategy offered in this column dawned when a ghastly idea was floated on Twitter to approving “Retweets”: “Trump should choose Colin Powell as VP.” Powell was the establishment toady who endorsed the war on Iraq while in the employ of Genghis Bush. Later, General Powell backed Barack Obama, using the pathos of racial justice as his excuse. In Trump parlance, Powell would be a “horrible” mistake. The same can be said about Ann Coulter’s calamitous Trump-Mitt Romney suggested ticket.

No, Trump must go outside the political tribe for a vice president. 

A  previous Return to Reason column suggested “the talented James Webb” for the Trump ticket. Webb is a decorated Marine who served as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the navy. In particular, Webb is the recipient of the “Navy Cross for heroism in Vietnam,” the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts.

Indisputably the last salt-of-the-earth Democrat of his generation, Webb had considered a bid for president as a Democrat, last year. However, he appeared out of place at the first dominatrix-dominated debate in October of 2015, where he confessed to killing a man or two in battle. He soon dropped out.

Citing paleoconservative thinker Pat Buchanan, Mr. Webb had argued forcefully against affirmative action and for poor whites, well before reports about the early demise of white working-class America percolated to the public.

Webb the Southern Democrat can galvanize Reagan Democrats as well as fans of the military on the Left.

Rand Paul will bring libertarians along provided the little guy brings his dad to work with him.

Wasted on the presidency is an outstanding mind like that of Senator Ted Cruz. An outstanding businessman like Donald Trump should appreciate the intellectual value of such an asset.

©ILANA Mercer
WND, Quarterly Review, Praag.org,
The Libertarian Alliance &  The Unz Review
January 22, 2016

The post The Winning Trump Ticket And Cabinet appeared first on ILANA MERCER.

©2015 By ILANA MERCER

©ILANA Mercer
WND, Quarterly Review, Praag.org,
The Libertarian Alliance,  Target Liberty & The Unz Review
May 29, 2015

The post Ask Bush Why The Iraqi Military Won’t Fight appeared first on ILANA MERCER.

©2015 By ILANA MERCER

©ILANA Mercer
WND, Junge Freiheit, Quarterly Review, Praag.org,
The Libertarian Alliance &  Target Liberty
May 22, 2015

The post Iraq Liars And Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now appeared first on ILANA MERCER.

©2015 By ILANA MERCER 

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