The 2012 presidential election cycle is underway. With the Democratic candidate a foregone conclusion, there is not much uncertainty about where the Democratic Party is going. For better or worse, Democrats will likely continue to “dance with who brung them,” meaning Barack Obama and his brand of 21st century liberalism.
Not so on the Republican side. After historic defeats and victories in the past two elections, respectively, the Republican Party has yet to define itself for the future. It must come to grips with the fact that its miraculous comeback in 2010, after crushing defeats in the presidential and congressional elections of 2008, was due in large part to the Tea Party. However, with that victory came a large group of new Republican lawmakers, many of whom were not ready to fall in line with the Republican leadership. The most striking example, of course, is Rand Paul, who has constantly challenged mainstream Republican positions that do not jibe with his libertarian-leaning constitutional conservativsm.
Critics dismiss the Tea Party as simply a Republican Party publicity campaign rather than a grassroots movement that truly seeks change in Washington. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the Tea Party did indeed challenge the Republican establishment and defeated many establishment Republicans in primary elections – which means they obviously cared about far more than simply defeating Democrats. So, if not simply a front group for the Republican mainstream, what does the Tea Party stand for?
If you ask them, they would answer that they stand for smaller, more fiscally responsible government and a return to America’s founding principles. They wish to reign in the federal government and restore the limits placed upon it by the U.S. Constitution. This is why you can find Sarah Palin touring 18th century historical landmarks and Michelle Bachmann evoking the shot heard round the world at Lexington and Concord (Concord, Massachussetts, that is, after clarifying her original statement).
It is easy to throw stones at the Tea Party for gaffs such as Bachmann’s. However, it is wrong to attribute the shortcomings of politicians trying to acquire political capital out of the Tea Party to the grassroots members themselves. Just because Michelle Bachmann might not know exactly where the American Revolution began doesn’ t mean that the Tea Partiers themselves don’t understand the American Revolution or the principles which inspired it. Indeed, the legislation that galvanized the Tea Party in 2010 – Obamacare – fundamentally violates those founding principles for exactly the reasons that the Tea Party opposes it.
Where the Tea Party departs from founding principles is on the subject of war and the military. At any Tea Party rally, a large percentage of the comments by the speakers, content of the signs and banners, and general atmosphere of the event amount to glorification of the military. Over and over, attendees are reminded that they should be grateful to the military for their freedom and should remember that “someone paid for it.” In addition to enthusiastic support for the gargantuan military establishment itself, unqualified support is given for every overseas war or occupation that the U.S. military is involved in. Whatever the president orders the military to do, it must not only be right but also essential to the freedom of every American.
This couldn’t be farther from the ideas of most of the founders. The Constitution reveals their suspicion of any permanent military establishment. The Congress is given the power to raise an army, but only for two years. This ensures that the people can disband the army during every Congressional election, as the House representatives are elected at the same intervals. The power to declare war is kept away from the president and given to Congress, where two separate bodies have to vote on it.
It is apparent from the document itself and the statements of many of its framers that they were very aware of the dangers to liberty that accompanied prolonged warfare or a standing army in peacetime. Contrary to what most Tea Partiers apparently believe, the founders were anti-war.
Remember that the colonists were reluctant to fight with the British right from the beginning. The colonial militia at Concord held their fire even after the British had fired upon them, killing two Americans. It was only when one of their commanding officers yelled “Fire, for God’s sake, fellow soldiers, fire!” that they fired upon the British. Three months later they sent the Olive Branch Petition to King George in an attempt to avoid all-out war.
Once the Constitution was ratified, the administrations of the first three U.S. presidents were dominated by efforts to avoid going to war. During Washington’s administration, pro-France Jeffersonians urged the president to take France’s side in its conflict with England. Instead, Washington approved the Jay Treaty, which normalized trade relations with Great Britain.
Largely because of this treaty, John Adams spent most of his presidency dealing with a hostile France, which considered the new American nation extremely ungrateful after France’s support of it during its revolution. Avoiding war with France was the dominant issue of Adams’ presidency, this time under pressure from his own party to take Great Britain’s side. In fact, while Adams maintained a commitment to enlarge the navy to provide “wooden walls” for the young nation, he steadfastly refused to grant Hamilton the standing army he wanted, despite the fact that Adams was fighting the “Quasi War” with France. Adams eventually achieved peace, possibly at the cost of a second term as president due to the dissention it caused within the Federalist Party. However, Adams considered peace the crowning achievement of his presidency, saying “I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: ‘Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800.”[i]
Not to be outdone, Thomas Jefferson went even further in repudiating militarism. Having no standing army to disband, Jefferson went to work on the U.S. navy, decreasing it by roughly 95%. This allowed him to eliminate virtually all internal taxation in the republic, leaving only the tariffs to provide federal revenue. Jefferson refused to use ground troops in his clashes with the Barbary pirates until the Pasha of Tripoli actually declared war upon the United States. Later, in yet another effort to stay out of the wars in Europe, Jefferson signed into law the Embargo Act. While he was rightly denounced for this legislation, which was almost as hostile to liberty as the Alien and Sedition Acts, it did demonstrate the lengths to which Jefferson was willing to go to keep his country out of war.
It is Jefferson who is most quoted in Tea Party signs and by Tea Party candidates, and rightly so. If one is consulting the founders for the purest version of the American philosophy of liberty, it can be found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. However, Jefferson was also the most staunchly anti-war, cutting all military spending not absolutely necessary to defend the American borders. This was no accident. War is the natural destroyer of liberty. As James Madison put it:
“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”[ii]
If the Tea Party truly wishes to reestablish America’s founding principles, then part of their platform should be to disband the U.S. Army. They would be in good company. Founding fathers from both major political parties in the 18th and early 19th centuries opposed a standing army, most adamantly Tea Party icon Thomas Jefferson. Only Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson’s political arch enemy, differed from the rest on this point. Hamilton’s militarism was part and parcel of his imperial political philosophy, which also included a controlled economy, a central bank, and a national debt that would further tie corporations to the government – all policies that the Tea Party rejects.
While embracing militarism and championing liberty are philosophically inconsistent, there is also a very practical reason to disband the army. It has outlived its usefulness. With the U.S. government’s nuclear arsenal and dominant naval and air forces, there is no conceivable reason that an army of ground troops is necessary to protect the United States. Think for a moment how hard it has been for the U.S. to conquer a few backwaters in the Middle East. Now imagine a foreign army trying to land in Maryland or Georgia, against all of that air, sea, and missile power. It is inconceivable. Furthermore, even the government’s own military “experts” for the most part admit that a conventional army is ineffective in fighting terrorism. Given these realities, the vast federal spending, deficits, and debt –core issues for the Tea Party – that result from the existence of a standing army cannot be justified in the 21st century United States.
The Tea Party broke almost four decades of relative apathy by American citizens in the face of unchecked expansion of federal government power. Not since the Viet Nam war had Americans taken to the streets as they did during the 2010 elections. During the 1960’s and 70’s, the left wing-dominated anti-war movement brought with it socialist domestic policies that were as hostile to liberty as the war itself. Now, the right wing-dominated Tea Party embraces a foreign policy as anti-liberty as the domestic policies that it opposes. It is past time for a movement that promotes liberty and opposes leviathan government consistently on all fronts. Embrace America’s founding principles. Restore the republic. Disband the army.
[i] McCullough, David John Adams Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 2001 pg. 567
[ii] Madison, James Political Observations 1795 from Letters and Other Writings of James Madison J.P. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia, PA 1865 Vol. IV pgs. 491-492
Thank you for writing this piece Tom. I wish I could have had it about a week ago to link to during an online argument about this very topic.
Doubtless, you are going to raise the ire of many, especially with the “disband the army” advisory; I know I can step into a room of ‘friends of liberty’ or tea partiers, and instantly turn that into a room of enemies when I begin to explain how rampant militarism is incompatible with liberty.
It seems to me that there are two fundamental misconceptions/myths/distortions that are propagated:
1.) We have to continually be engaged around the earth, to “make the world safe for democracy,” or “fight them over there, instead of over here.” Ironically, so-called conservatives don’t seem to realize that they and the Progressive-Liberals of the Wilsonian school they supposedly abhore so much are on the same plane when it comes to this.
I think this is defeated best by drawing on all the historical (and current) evidence that shows liberty or democracy at the point of a bayonet doesn’t work. Nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq has been an abysmal failure, and if there is any silver lining to these deplorable wars, it is that they do effectively demonstrate the lunacy of the paradigm.
2.) The entire “the troops are fighting for our freedom” paradigm. You would think that it would be blatantly obvious by now how fallacious this is, yet it still persists. Anyone I have run into, particularly lately, that still espouses this presupposes the ‘clash of civilizations’ paradigm, i.e. we are “at war” with Islamic civilization, which seeks to destroy our liberty.
The fallacies with this paradigm are so numerous you’d be hard pressed to list them all here. In my personal experience, when all reasonable explanation fails, the neo-con that adheres to this schema falls back on his/her own religious fundamentalism to justify what the U.S. is doing overseas. This in turn, stems from a failure to understand natural law and the meaning of true human dignity.
If every citizen was a soldier and had a weapon to fight with, we could mobilize an army as needed and forgo a large standing army. That means we have to have GUNS.
Vae Victus: While Mullen points out interesting historical facts about the founding of America, both he and you missed the major point – there are people and countries out there that either hate us, want to conquer the world, or both. in the late 1700’s, even through the late 1800’s, oceans kept America safe.
However, Russia, German, France, Spain, Portugal (or what was left of it), Greece, Italy, China, etc. all tried to or did expand way beyond their immediate borders, by force (i.e. wars of conquest). That is why Africa became a fragmented cesspool which continues on today. Only the nations with great navies and the ability to project force did the over-the-waters expansion while Russia (whose fleets were useless) took the land routes and established the Soviet Union, later the Soviet Bloc (of Captive Nations).
Force stopped the Red Chinese, somewhat (India, Tibet, Vietnam, Korea) but today they are hell bent on overseas force projections that will eventually rival anything the U.S. has afloat. Plus they have the advantage of a massive land-mass air craft carrier platform that reaches across Asia right into Europe. And the Red Chinese are on a roll right now and only the U.S. can challenge them. Britain no longer has an aircraft carrier in its fleet, Wow, Britannia the Queen of the Ocean is now Toothless Clarence the Lion on Medicare.
Terrorism, via Islamic Jihad, has extended its low-level warfare capability to nearly every country of significance in the world and it is growing. Let’s see how Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, etc. turn out in the next year.
Extremism is rising in Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Iraq, and the Islamic states of the old Soviet Empire.
Turkey is at a pivotal phase in its existence. Which way it goes may turn the whole Asia Minor into a new jihadist arena.
Much of Islamic Africa is in a perpetual state of war, against Christians, the West, and each other. Non-Moslem Africa is, by and large, a basket case (Congo, Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc.
Marxist and partially-marxist states are also basket cases or partialy crippled (Zimbabwe, So. Africa, Angola, etc).
MArxism is slowly winning in South America (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, potentially Argentina) and in Central America (Nicaragua is back in the “red”, El Salvador is led by former? reds, and Honduras is under attack from within). Mexico is a narco-terrorism state with mini-civil wars, drug wars, and a hidden marxist guerrilla movement waiting in the wings.
Today, any of these states, esp. if aided by the Marxist-Islamic Convergence, personified by North Korea and Iran, can get nuclear weapons (Syria is the intermediary, as is Russia). That is why we took out Saddam, as one leg of the three-legged nuclear stool (Iraq, Iran, Syria). Israel has so far neutralized Syria but how long can it last?
Nuclear weapons ingredients smuggling is rampant throughout European Moslem territories from Turkey (also via Bulgaria), Kosovo, Albania, Moslem areas of Greece, etc. And those bombs are aimed at Israel, Western Europe and America. That is why we are involved in most of these countries in one form or another.
Today, the enemy can reach us in minutes, be it by nuclear missiles or fuel-laden airplanes. The “Ocean” no longer isolates and protects us from our enemies as it did for centuries. When Teddy Roosevelt sent “The Great White Fleet” around the world, it was a message to our potential enemies – don’t screw with us, we can reach you and destroy you.
Today, our enemies are saying, no matter how many aircraft carriers you have, we can bring down your tallest builidngs, blow up your subways and schools, blow planes out of the air, and shoot your citizens and you can’t do a damned thing to seriously stop us (unless in invade and destroy us).
Getting Bin Laden in his home was one of the greatest U.S. military/psychological warfare victories in modern times because we reminded our enemies that we can get them no matter where they are. The concept of “privileged sanctuary” which protected No. Vietnam, is no longer doctrine. We still have the “long arm” abilities as long as we have a leader who is willing to use them. Once that stops, our enemies will be on us like red army ants on anything in its path.
Nobody loves war, but we had better be prepared to wage it , ferociously, devastatingly, and totally with one goal in mind, total victory. Otherwise we are historical toast and our enemies know that too.
Mr. Friedman, I think Duke1632 is right in stating that you are actually the one who has overlooked Mullen’s main point. You totally missed the entire logic of the idea that if we cannot subdue an insurgency in a backward state such as Afghanistan, then how could the reverse ever possibly be conceivable? I.e., how could such a force of insurgents hope to ever, in their wildest dreams, dominate us? Even if a coalition of third-rate states allied against us, do you seriously believe they pose a threat to the United States’ sovereignty?
You spend most of your post highlighting all of the threats to the U.S. While some are more substantive than others, I think I speak for most of us in the Liberty Movement when I say that a STRONG NATIONAL DEFENSE is paramount. However, what Mr. Mullen and others have been trying to hammer into people’s heads for years is that expansionism, adventurism, nation-building, etc. does NOT equate to “defense.”
The mere fact that there are people are out there who wish to do us harm is just that…a fact of life. It in no way speaks to justifying the military adventurism our nation has been engaging in, especially over the last 10 years.
The Constitution provides for a Navy, in fact, that was one of the key reasons the Framers deliberated upon a stronger Federal government, so as to enable a Navy for the entire Union. Presidents such as Adams and Jefferson, while abhorring foreign wars and entangling alliances, were not adverse at all to using the Navy to DEFEND the interests of the U.S, particularly commerce and the rights of seamen as we saw during the Quasi and Barbary Wars.
Today, it is not only permissible under our Constitution, but one of the highest DUTIES of our national government to provide and maintain a Navy and Marine Corps, and I would think the Framers would see the Air Force and missile defense falling within the same purview.
What Mr. Mullen was questioning, was the need for a large, standing army. During peacetime, the existence of such a force is all too often a tool at the disposal of self-aggrandizing Executives that are tempted to use it in foreign mis-adventures that only gather more despotic power unto government, while disrupting foreign trade, tarnishing our international reputation, and eroding liberty here at Home.
It is the existence of this large scale, permanent Army that Mr. Mullen was questioning, and he has good reason to in light of how it has been used by successive presidents over the last 25 years. While I do not necessarily agree that the Army should be disbanded, I see the merits of his argument; they hold more water and do less damage to liberty than any alternative coming out of the Neo-con population, New American Century, or any of the rest of the Progressive Corporatists that have been dominating our nation’s politics for the past 97 years.
Again, I think we can all agree there are people out there who wish harm to the U.S. But we need to separate DEFENSE from INTERVENTIONISM or IMPERIALISM.
The ideological paradigm that drives the later is based mostly upon unwarranted suspicion and fear of “alien” civilization: at this point in time that alludes mostly to Islamic cultures. As Duek1632 highlighted already, most terrorism is anything but propagated by Islamic fundamentalists. I recommend a study of the topic by Robert A. Pape at the University of Chicago titled “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism” (American Political Science Review, Aug. 2003) for deeper understanding on this point.
It is also useful to consider the following rhetorical question: if we truly are at “total war” with the Jihadists, and this arises from our predominantly Christian culture and Classically Liberal values, i.e. freedom, then why is it that other states such as Switzerland, Sweden, or others are not assailed by Jihad terrorists?
A state such as Switzerland has far higher per-capita income and standard of living than the United States; they have respect for the rule of Liberal law and are proponents of world trade and cosmopolitanism. Why are they never attacked? Why are they not hated for “their prosperity,” or “their freedom?”
Consider that question. Then consider how Switzerland does not maintain over 900 installations and bases around the earth. Consider that they do not covertly and openly support Israel’s ill-conceived and unjust policies throughout the Mid East. Consider that they are not the military strong arm for international financiers, that they do not sit on the Security Council and with clear bias favor some nations’ nuclear programs whilst sanctioning others for mere discussion of the topic of nuclear power. Consider that Switzerland does not practice premptive war. Consider that Switzerland does not form eternal alliances and vows to support particular others states, with blood if necessary, regardless of how these same states behave themselves on the world stage. Consider that Switzerland does not bestow “favored status” on some nations whilst blockading others; they trade with everyone.
The U.S. should be like Switzerland, yet only even more Liberal. Strong and capable national defense. No entangling alliances. Trade and commerce with all. No nation building. No adventurism. Peace.
If that was so, then maybe the Jihadists would ignore the U.S. as they did for the first 200 years of its existence.
When any government or militia is engaged in acts loathsome to mankind, whether against its own people or another, it is the duty of the community of nations to put a stop to it, by diplomacy preferably, by force if necessary. Silence in the face atrocities is complicity in the same. Even if we avoid going to war with perpetrators of such atrocities, we most assuredly must not trade with them. To provide fuel to Japan during the ongoing invasion of China would have been just as bad as invading China ourselves, for that fuel would have been used to sustain the invasion of China. We should not trade with all, but rather only those who value peace and deal honestly.
Also, the jihadists did not ignore the United States for the first 200 years of her existence; they didn’t even ignore us for the first 20. Rather, they kidnapped our merchant sailors and held them for ransom, until President Jefferson finally got fed up and sent in the Marines. Neither is any nation in Europe safe from the scheming of jihadists. You cannot satisfy those who seek world domination, who believe it is their divine right and religious duty to conquer all nations. You can only make them fear to try or crush them if they do. You speak of Sweden? Islamic jihadists have bombed them twice this decade. Switzerland? Swissair Flight 330 was bombed by jihadists.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have encouraged Japan, during the T. Roosevelt and Taft administrations, to do precisely what they were doing in China. That would have made our later pontificating a little easier to swallow for a nation that had been a loyal ally of Great Britain until they double-crossed them, too.
Max Freiedman: You have been bitten once too many times from American lame stream media with its irrational fear tactics, misplaced anger and unneeded hatred of other “hostile” nations. There are no other nations that are quite the threat to the world as USA, in fact our beloved country is the biggest threat to itself. No other nation, especially during past decade, has tried to “conquer the world” nor has anyone attacked us from outside…the parables of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 lay daunting before us, In both cases, our incumbent President allowed the “overt actions” by a foreign country to happen first to “justify” America’s involvement in costly wars for spurious reasons. In both cases, the American people were made to believe they were outright “surprise attacks”, to rally the masses into the same historic self-righteous wrath of “vengeance”, without knowing full story of just what this “vengeance” would be for. In both cases this blind vengeance and unjustified fury is thought of as synonymous with “justice“. In both cases, there was a huge failure of U.S. intelligence and several internal signals purposely ignored. In both cases, there are a significant number of highly credible sources including military personnel challenging the official “stories”. Both cases very well likely involved either active or passive U.S. Federal Government complicity, unbeknown to the American people. There is a reason why the OWS movement was started in New York City, and I personally know of one family with victim of that family killed in twin towers on 9/11, whom were one of families starting the movement. They, the families most touched, want accountability of our own fed gov involvement of 9/11 “attacks”. We, the American people, are now being manipulated into believing Iran could possibly be as much a “threat” to the world as the USA, when Iran has 1% of any “nuke” weapons to USA’s 99% and has no designs on attacking any nation. Look outside the box of American supremacy we’ve all been conditioned with, it’s exatly what our oppressed fed gov wants, to keep the American people blindly ignorant, in a state of irrational fear. While Iran’s gov does “suppress its people”, don’t be too apathetic about fact USA’s fed gov suppresses its own people. The shared psychosis anyone could possibly be “dying for our nation” so widespread not even deemed the pathological insanity it is. A complete and utter mind, heart, and soul sickness
Max Freiedman: you are totally in the dark, bitten once to many times by America’s media manipulation bug There are really no boogeymen or “people from outside” that want to “conquer the world”….only USA is destroying itself with these venture. Many of those countries you claim “won by force” now rank much higher than USA in peace and freedoms as they have wisely stopped spending so much on oppressive war and weapons. USA has slipped to #88 in global peace index, Japan ranks 3rd most peaceful, Germany is 15th. And please, no ignorant remark like “we pay for their “defense”. EXACTLY! To “conquer the world” at the expense of our own people!! Why do you think USA ranks dead last in healthcare out of any developed nation, slightly above a 3rd world? Why do you think our cancer rates so high? Look at the big picture, we spend more than half the world combined on the 3rd world mentality of war and weapons, while cutting budgets across more beneficial areas for our society to :”protect our people:” such as healthcare, environmental regulations (80% plus cancer caused by pollution), education, etc. War does not “protect our freedom and security:” if you believe that marketing spin by the $900 billion extremist Pentagon you are a lost soul. People “hate us” outside our country BECAUSE of our violent wars for greed/oil, certainly not because they are resent the “American way of life”. The USA is responsible for the killings of exponentially more innocent lives than Hitler or al-Qaeda, yet our TV channels and all media outlets, owned by 1 of 6 war profiteering corporations, keep the American people brainwashed into thinking the “threat” is “out there” somewhere. We never fought against “communism” (never a threat), and nor is “terrorism” quite the threat made out to be. The parables of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor lay daunting b4 us, both internally provoked, plotted to fuel unnecessary and self-destructive wars. The sad thing, is if 9/11 hypothetically was some flat out “sneak attack” from the outside (of which it wasn’t) by some “extremist” group (more extremist than USA?????? Such group is nonexistent) we STILL would have had no business “attacking back” as the angry sick birds think we should do….it would have been another nation “defending its freedom” so to speak or country, since the USA ships weapons of mass destruction around the globe. Nothing to be proud of. there is nothing pro-American or “Patriotic” about people waving the American flag around chanting “support the troops”, it’s blatant ignorance and misplaced anger fueling such chant. We should be keeping those young women (and no less horrendous young men) SAFE from undue harm for nothing but political and economic corruption at expense of our nation as a whole. WAKE UP Max!
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Yawn…Max Friedman just put me to sleep with the tired (and false) neo-con lies I’ve been hearing for over 10 years now, which are merely recycled Progressive lies being told for a century. As a matter of fact, Mullen’s article does address that “major point” Friedman claims it does not in his opening paragraph. The article clearly notes at the end that national defense is supposed to be just that–DEFENSE. Specifically (and I paraphrase), if the mighty, aggresive US army cannot subjugate many poor, broken, backward third world countries, how is it presumed any foreign power or combination of foreign powers could ever, under any circumstances, subjugate the US, whose people are armed and by and large relatively independence-oriented. At most, the US could only be occupied or destroyed, but not conquered by foreign force, as ocupation is a costly endeavor even of tiny, indigent nations. WWII, ostensibly the only war of the 20th Century that even pretended to be about defense, saw millions of volunteers within weeks of the Pearl Harbor incident, so the (then) lack of a standing army was not a liability, indeed it was a boon. Mr. Friedman could benefit from, and have much of his fear alleviated by reading “The Myth of National Defense” edited by Hoppe. Doubtless he will not, as he likely favors alarmist hysteria to actual fact, history, or the sentiments of the Founders of this country as well as the precepts of liberty and natural law.
Mr. Friedman would also benefit from a rational perspective on what he calls, “Terrorism, via Islamic Jihad” Terrorism throughout the world has no significant Islamic character at all. Indeed, according to Europol for the previous 3 years, Islamic terrorism accounts for a WHOPPING 0.6% of all terrorism that occured in the EU. In case you missed it, that’s LESS THAN ONE PERCENT. In the US, FBI databases report that a STAGGERING 6% of all domestic terrorist attacks between the years of 1980-2005 were perpetrated by Islamic extremists. Thus, Islamic Extremists barely surpassed Communist extremists (5%) and were actually LESS than Jewish Extremists who accounted for 7% of the domestic terrorist attacks (a la ADL). Indeed, these statistics are heavily skewed by 9/11, but not ONE SINGLE US resident has been killed at the hands of Islamic terrorists since September 11, 2001–that’s 10 years of nothing from what you ostensibly believe is the greatest threat to our livelihoods, and what justifies any level of spending and tryanny at home.
But in any case, all the above is moot. The overriding fact is that there is no legal or moral cause of action, and certainly no cause for the despicable outrages of war, without actual harm being done. It is immoral and even retarded, indeed, incredible that one could argue others need to be punished for what they MIGHT do, rather than for what they have done. If you, Mr. Friedman, want war, if you want to seek out dragons to slay, and engage in adventurism and imperialism, then by all means get a gun, empty your own bank account and go do it yourself. If you want to hate or blame any given demographic, have at it, but don’t demand my life and my money for your cause.
VERY well said Duke1632! I might add the alarmist hysteria that has spread across America from these invisible flying Islamic “terrorist” is utterly ironic……and reflects the American peoples lack of knowledge of our TRUE history which surely cannot be learned from most history books extolling “virtue” over our wars. 9/11 itself has so many proven indications of internal plotting, internal provoking, and it was highly known about prior to the “attack”….and purposely never stopped. It was Pearl Harbor all over again, since back then FDR took 8 measures to provoke WWII including imposing strict trade and oil embargo’s onto Japan. Our wars have always only been about oil, “power”, greed, the USA trying to conquer the world at gunpoint. No other nation is out to conquer us, and never was, we spend more than half the world combined on war and weapons, neither of which do anything to “protect the American way of life” or our freedom. Misplaced anger out there,,,,,,,such angry birds, fly away!
HI Tom this is poulianna…as usual and as expected you presented yourself so very well on the Judge’s program.
..KUDOS!!!! Also to see a face with the words is just such a privilege and technological wonder……Really enjoyed the interchange amongst the THREE…KUDOS to the up and coming political new comer…
Everytime I include the “military complex” along with big Pharm and Agri-take such as the likes of Monsonto and the corruption of FDA It makes some people who served in the Military very defensive and argumentative…We may just have to wait for that “crowd” to move on but how about the newly brainwashed, who have been forced due to economics to step into the military….????
Keep up the Good Work…(*)
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