At a time when there is an army of nine million unemployed Americans (and these are officially finessed figures), Americans are expected to place a couple of countries on the payroll ~ilana

The Iraq quagmire and its ever-mutating justifications show that George W. Bush is oblivious to a basic principle of his own conservative ideology: Top-down central planning—economic or political—is doomed to fail.

In the process of pursuing some sort of neoconservative “Manifest Destiny,” President Bush has junked the American Constitution—it gave him no authority to “promote” global freedom, democracy or nation-building with blood and treasure not his own.

In his latest address to the nation, Mr. Bush spoke of more sacrifice (not his own) and promised to “do what is necessary . . . spend what is necessary to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure.”

To people who are compos mentis, it is obvious that these abstractions are not advanced by leveling one country (Iraq), and driving another (the U.S.) to the economic precipice. Where does it say that defending the homeland must translate into bringing about “the triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond,” as Mr. Bush said in his address? Security and peace are served better by circling the wagons at home.

The President’s overheated rhetoric about the Middle East becoming a place of “progress and peace”; his prophetic visions of “tyrants falling and resentment giving way to hope, as men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace”—this is the political equivalent of speaking in tongues. At best, it’s ahistoric. Yet the American people are lapping it up.

The kind of faith Americans seem to have in the ruling crusts has dulled the outcry at the President’s $87-billion “emergency-funding request” in lieu of the adventures in “Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere” through next year, an amount greater than the world gives annually in foreign aid for all countries.

Initially, the Bush administration had pegged the costs of the war at $65 billion, total. Recall, Iraqi oil revenues were going to pay for this unconstitutional exercise. Like other little pesky details (the missing WMD come to mind), the administration has neglected to mention that, because of the ongoing sabotage and erratic power supply (courtesy of the invaders), oil revenue will barely reach $7 billion.

The war in Iraq, destined to be shouldered entirely by the American people, is costing an estimated $5 billion a month, and Mr. Bush has shown no compunction about taking the nation from black to red. Spending levels across the board are roughly 24 percent higher than when Bill Clinton left office. This so-called conservative President has yet to veto one spending bill. We now have a deficit of approximately $500 billion (without war costs).

This means we’re into Keynesian deficit spending—the government is borrowing and inflating the money supply to fund its profligacy, a practice that will accelerate the depreciation of the dollar, and may even lead to the horror of hyperinflation. While Mr. Bush was making a commotion about returning plunder to the people in the form of a tax cut, he was focused just as keenly on increasing the ceiling on a whopping $6.8 trillion national debt.

At a time when there is an army of nine million unemployed Americans (and these are officially finessed figures), Americans are expected to place a couple of countries on the payroll. A large portion of the new budget will go toward funding expensive and expansive bureaucracies. The New York Times reported that the civilian side of the occupation is expected to cost $30 billion over the next year. Once ensconced, these fiefdoms become self-perpetuating, interminable and parasitical, forming a permanent drain on the private economy and the American taxpayer.

The warfare state is more costly than the welfare state, and just as intractable.

The truth is, we are bogged down in Iraq. The 140,000 troops now on the ground are going nowhere. There are only 21,000 non-American troops; at most, we can expect an additional 15,000 more by next year. Meanwhile, 289 Americans are dead.* This includes the 148 who’ve died since the President declared victory. Nobody in office is willing to render the Iraqi death count.

The truth is that the U.S. is desperate. Yet it continues to conduct itself with insolence, prompting o
ne senior Western envoy to ponder “whether the world is ready to pick the United States up off the floor and dust [it] off.”

For those of us who believe the lessons lie in rejecting what the U.S. has become, and reviving the legacy of this great nation’s founders, there’s no better time to quote the memorable but oh-so-ironic 1821 words of secretary of state John Quincy Adams: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher of the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Mr. Bush’s “bring ’em on” bravado has been a disaster. The time has come for some bring-’em-home humility.

* Casualty numbers are 443 as of 12/5/2003, and rising daily.

©By ILANA MERCER
WorldNetDaily.com (Appeared also in the Globe And Mail)
September 11, 2003

The post BRING ‘EM HOME, MR. BUSH appeared first on ILANA MERCER.

President Bush’s overheated rhetoric about the Middle East becoming a place of ‘progress and peace’; his prophetic visions of ‘tyrants falling and resentment giving way to hope, as men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace’ — this is the political equivalent of speaking in tongues. At best, it’s ahistoric. Yet the American people are lapping it up ~ilana

The Iraq quagmire and its ever-mutating justifications show that George W. Bush is oblivious to a basic principle of his own conservative ideology: Top-down central planning — economic or political — is doomed to fail.

In the process of pursuing some sort of neoconservative Manifest Destiny, President Bush has junked the American Constitution — it gave him no authority to “promote” global freedom, democracy or nation-building with blood and treasure not his own.

In his latest address to the nation, Mr. Bush spoke of more sacrifice (not his own) and promised to “do what is necessary . . . spend what is necessary to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure.”

To people who are compos mentis, it is obvious that these abstractions are not advanced by leveling one country (Iraq), and driving another (the U.S.) to the economic precipice. Where does it say that defending the homeland must translate into bringing about “the triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond,” as Mr. Bush said in his address? Security and peace are served better by circling the wagons at home.

The President’s overheated rhetoric about the Middle East becoming a place of “progress and peace”; his prophetic visions of “tyrants falling and resentment giving way to hope, as men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace” — this is the political equivalent of speaking in tongues. At best, it’s ahistoric. Yet the American people are lapping it up.

The kind of faith Americans seem to have in the ruling crusts has dulled the outcry at the President’s $87 billion (U.S.) “emergency-funding request” in lieu of the adventures in “Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere” through next year, an amount greater than the world gives annually in foreign aid for all countries.

Initially, the Bush administration had pegged the war at $65 billion, total. Recall, Iraqi oil revenues were going to pay for this unconstitutional exercise. Like other little pesky details (the missing WMD come to mind), the administration has neglected to mention that, because of the ongoing sabotage, and erratic power supply (courtesy of the invaders), oil revenue will barely reach $7 billion.

The war in Iraq, destined to be shouldered entirely by the American people, is costing roughly $5 billion a month, and Mr. Bush has shown no compunction about taking the nation from black to red. Spending levels across the board are roughly 22 percent higher than when Bill Clinton left office. This so-called conservative President has yet to veto one spending bill. Here in the United States, we now have a deficit of approximately $500 billion (without war costs).

This means we’re into Keynesian deficit spending — the government is borrowing and inflating the money supply to fund its profligacy, a practice that will accelerate the depreciation of the dollar, and may even lead to the horror of hyperinflation. While Mr. Bush was making a commotion about returning plunder to the people in the form of a tax cut, he was focused just as keenly on increasing the ceiling on a whopping $6.8-trillion-dollar national debt.

At a time when there is an army of nine million unemployed Americans (and these are officially-finessed figures), Americans are expected to place a couple of countries on the payroll. A large portion of the new budget will go toward funding expensive and expansive bureaucracies. The New York Times reported that the civilian side of the occupation is expected to cost $30 billion over the next year. Once ensconced, these fiefdoms become self-perpetuating, interminable and parasitical, forming a permanent drain on the private economy and the American taxpayer.

The warfare state is more costly than the welfare state, and just as intractable.

The truth is, we are bogged down in Iraq. The 140,000 troops now on the ground are going nowhere. There are only 21,000 non-American troops; at most, we can expect an additional 15,000 more by next year. Meanwhile, 289 Americans are dead. This includes the 148 who’ve died since the President declared victory. Nobody is willing to render the Iraqi death count.

The truth is that the U.S. is desperate. Yet it continues to conduct itself with insolence, prompting one senior Western envoy to ponder “whether the world is ready to pick the United States up off the floor and dust [it] off.”

For those of us who believe the lessons lie in rejecting what the U.S. has become, and reviving the legacy of this great nation’s founders, there’s no better time to quote the memorable but oh-so-ironic 1821 words of secretary of state John Quincy Adams:

“America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher of the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Mr. Bush’s ‘bring ’em on’ bravado has been a disaster. The time has come for some bring-’em-home humility.

©2003 ILANA MERCER
TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

COMMENT

September 11, 2003

The post Bush’s Warfare State appeared first on ILANA MERCER.

Without let, the United States continued to bully its way to war, in the process, bribing one opponent—Turkey—with American taxpayers’ funds and thus attempting to suppress and subvert a democratic vote passed in a democratic congress; threatening another—Russia—with the loss of oil “rights” in a conquered Iraq; and generally dictating the terms of debate, including to frame as a moral failure any opposition in the Security Council to an invasion of a prostrate Iraq.

Amidst this chilling swagger, one thing became clear: The Russians got it. The Germans got it. The French got it. The Canadians got it, and many British and European people got it. Even Hollywood, in its invincible ignorance, was able to grasp why the war Washington and Whitehall were about to wage was unjust.

What does this say about most of the nation’s pundits, who never stopped licking their chops for war? What does it say about those who supported conquering and occupying a sovereign member of the international community? They’ve lost their moral and intellectual moorings. They’re even dumber, and certainly far more politically corrupted and co-opted, than the likes of the bug-eyed bovine Susan Sarandon.

Iraq had not attacked in 12 years and was not poised to attack the U.S. or its neighbors.

To attack Iraq was to launch a purely offensive, non-defensive war. This flouts the Christian duty to do no harm to one’s neighbors. It flouts the Jewish teachings, which instruct Jews to robustly and actively seek justice. It flouts “Just War Theory,” developed by great Christian minds like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. It flouts the libertarian axiom, which prohibits aggression against non-aggressors.

And it flouts what the Founding Fathers provided.

A limited, constitutional republican government, by definition, doesn’t, cannot, and must never pursue what Mr. Bush is after, and what paleoconservative Gladden J. Pappin called “a sort of twenty-first-century Manifest Destiny.” The fact that it does, can, and is intent on spreading global democracy by death and destruction indicates how limitless, unconstitutional, and dictatorial American government truly is.

I’m no pacifist. While I don’t condone the lingering American presence in Afghanistan, and while I doubt the abilities of the U.S. military to contain al-Qaida there, I supported going after bin Laden’s group in that country. That was a legitimate act of retaliation and defense, accommodated within St. Augustine’s teachings, whereby a just war is one “that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects.”

Al-Qaida was responsible for the murder of 3,000 Americans. The Taliban openly succored the organization and its masterminding leadership. Mr. Bush had asked the hosting Taliban to surrender bin Laden and his gang. The Taliban refused, insisting on defending their murderous guests.

The impending attack on Iraq also flunked the criterion for a preemptive war, facilitated in St. Augustine’s idea of the “just cause,” whereby it’s permissible to attack someone who would otherwise shortly and imminently attack you.

The Israeli Six-Day War is a good example of a legitimate preemptive war. (Although, to be accurate, Jordan initiated the first strike.) Before Israel proceeded to deal them a debilitating blow, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon had divided their labor in stepping up raids into Israel’s territory, shelling her farms and villages, amassing troops on her borders, signing a pact, kicking UN monitors out of the Sinai, and blockading Israel’s main shipping route to Asia.

Notwithstanding Colin Powell’s multimedia presentation of circumstantial and speculative bunkum, there was no evidence that Iraq was positioned to pounce as Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt were; nor that Iraq recently posed a “real and imminent” danger to the U.S. or her neighbors. The Bush administration continued, however, to mount a blitz of Goebbels-worthy misinformation in order to discredit the thorough job the inspectors were doing.

In the 2,000 kilometers he crisscrossed in three weeks of searching for nuclear development activities, in the 75 facilities examined, in 218 nuclear inspections at 141 sites, including 21 newly discovered sites, Hans Blix’s colleague, Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, met with an “overall deterioration” and disrepair in Iraqi infrastructure. There was no trace of North Korean or Iranian-style firing up of production. In his account, ElBaradei did make polite mention of an investigation into reports (spread by the U.S.) regarding Iraq’s uranium transactions: They were “not authentic,” he wrote. The American power-worshipping chattering classes (and networks) had concealed that the reports were forgeries!

Blix’s own cautious report details no evidence of “mobile production units” for weapons of mass destruction. The units Collin Powell warned of turned out to be mobile food-testing laboratories. Iraq’s improving, although still less than optimal, cooperation was certainly not a legitimate cause for war.

As a counterweight to “Just War Theory,” which places excess faith in the motives of public authorities, Americans have the Founding Fathers.

In his pre-war National Press Conference, however, Bush showed he hadn’t a clue what was and what was not constitutional. After claiming his job was to protect America, and that this was the essence of his crusade, Bush immediately contradicted himself: “There’s a lot more at stake than just American security… freedom is at stake,” he said, going on to indicate his plan to “deal with” totalitarianism wherever it presents itself.

James Madison predicted this craven and wicked propensity: “The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” he wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1798.

Duly, The Founders vested war powers not with the executive but with Congress! The framers entrusted the declaration of war to the legislature so as to avoid what we’ve seen play out. What The Founders could not have foretold, given their own scruples, is the cowardly abnegation by this legislature. This Congress, like many before it, simply surrendered authority to the president, sans debate, thus forsaking the people.

©By ILANA MERCER
WorldNetDaily.com
March 12, 2003

*Image credit

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