Posts tagged non-interventionism
Former CIA Chief Scheuer votes for Paul’s foreign policy
0This is a intelligent plan that takes into account the enemy’s motivations, desires and capacity—not fear mongering and inefficient war plans promoted by a corrupt government.
“President Paul”
Ron Paul maybe a long shot in November, but he’s America’s best bet on foreign policy.
BY MICHAEL SCHEUER | MAY 3, 2012
ForeignPolicy.com
Ron Paul’s treatment by mainstream media, other Republican hopefuls, and the punditry makes me think the W.B. Yeats lines “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” also describe the year 2012 in the United States. Indeed, Paul’s experience in the nomination campaign suggests U.S. politics lacks reasoned substance, common sense, and an understanding of what America’s Founding Fathers intended.
Open up any newspaper to see the mess America has sunk itself into around the world: for example, facing off with China over a lone, non-American dissident whose safety has no relation to U.S. security. Yet today, Paul’s call for staying out of other people’s wars unless genuine U.S. national interests are at stake is deemed radical, immoral, even anti-American. Amazing.
If elected president, Paul’s most valuable contribution to a prosperous and secure American future might well lie in his application of a noninterventionist foreign policy, following the wishes of George Washington and the other founders.
Before explaining why Paul’s foreign policy would benefit the United States, it is worth rebutting those ill-educated jackasses in politics, the media, and the academy who denigrate the founders as “dead white males.” To them, the modern world is so different from Washington’s time that nothing the founders said or wrote pertains to contemporary foreign-policymaking. Such self-serving and ahistoric attitudes allow their advocates to pursue policies negating the Constitution, piling up debt, and fueling relentless intervention abroad.
Several years ago, Georgetown University’s distinguished professor emeritus Daniel Robinson cogently explained that the founding generation did not prescribe specific policies for unforeseeable future problems, but, rather, conducted a prolonged and profound seminar on “the nature of human nature.”
They examined history and their own experiences and devised a set of principles true not only in their own era and in ancient Sparta, but also for the unknowable American future: Human nature never changes; man is not perfectible; individuals and governments must live within their means; man is hard-wired for conflict; and small government, frequent elections, and secure private property best protect liberty.
Should the neo-cons run third party?
0Judge Napolitano and Chairman of The Ludwig von Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell connect for a great conversation on how Ron Paul is dragging the republican party kicking and screaming back to its roots of free markets, peace and non-intervetionism supported by a powerful yet mightily restrained military.
Could such a revolution of mind and action push the currently dominant neo-conservative faction of the republican party out of power?
Will the war hawks one day have to be the ones considered extreme?
Ron Paul: Foreign Policy & Israel
0A very interesting interview centered solely on Dr. Paul’s opinion on Israel and the middle east. It doesn’t take long to prove the viability of Ron Paul’s non-interventionist views and reinforce the profound long-term problems caused by our financial, political and military meddling around the globe.
A SEAL’s account of how Osama bin Laden really died
0*from (to my amazement) YahooNews
Forget whatever you think you know about the night Osama bin Laden was killed. According to a former Navy SEAL who claims to have the inside track, the mangled tales told of that historic night have only now been corrected.
“It became obvious in the weeks evolving after the mission that the story that was getting put out there was not only untrue, but it was a really ugly farce of what did happen,” said Chuck Pfarrer, author of Seal Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden.
In an extensive interview with The Daily Caller, Pfarrer gave a detailed account of why he believes the record needed to be corrected, and why he set out to share the personal stories of the warriors who penetrated bin Laden’s long-secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
In August the New Yorker delivered a riveting blow-by-blow of theSEALs’ May 1, 2011 raid on bin Laden’s hideaway. In that account, later reported to lack contributions from the SEALs involved, readers are taken through a mission that began with a top-secret helicopter crashing and led to a bottom-up assault of the Abbottabad compound.
Freelancer Nicholas Schmidle wrote that the SEALs had shot and blasted their way up floor-by-floor, finally cornering the bewildered Al-Qaida leader:
“The Al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed. ‘There was never any question of detaining or capturing him—it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,’ the special-operations officer told me. (The Administration maintains that had bin Laden immediately surrendered he could have been taken alive.) Nine years, seven months, and twenty days after September 11th, an American was a trigger pull from ending bin Laden’s life. The first round, a 5.56-mm. bullet, struck bin Laden in the chest. As he fell backward, the SEAL fired a second round into his head, just above his left eye.”
Chuck Pfarrer rejects almost all of that story.
Foreign policy experts agree on Paul’s counter-intuitive policies
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Ron Paul is often chided by his Republican opponents for his extreme views on American foreign policy. His calls for ending all foreign wars and shutting hundreds of military bases across the globe have drawn howls from his GOP rivals, who have labeled the moves irresponsible and naïve.
His campaign pledge of cutting all foreign aid and withdrawing U.S. participation in the World Trade Organization and the United Nations has been at odds with even the most conservative members of his own party.
Yet as voting day in Iowa and New Hampshire draws near, Paul, the Congressman from Texas, is finding support for his non-interventionist positions from a growing number of foreign policy experts.
“He’s attacking our rich lazy friends, why is that not more popular,” said Harvey Sapolsky, emeritus professor of public policy and organization at MIT. He backs Paul’s calls for reducing America’s military budget, arguing that much of it is used to defend wealthy nations’ security.
A huge, Cold War-era global presence — with hundreds of overseas military bases — isn’t necessary, now that the Soviet threat is over and the collapse of communism, Sapolsky said.
Intervention’s costs vs. Non-intervention’s benefits
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By Michael Scheuer, former CIA chief of the bin Laden unit
In a world rife with examples of the damage done to the U.S. economy and our national security by Washington’s relentless and bipartisan overseas interventionism, two current situations can be cited to demonstrate the high cost of intervention, on the one hand, and the wisdom of national-interest-protecting non-intervention on the other.
The first deals with the growing likelihood of frequent and widespread attacks in the United States by Islamist militants, and the second deals with recent events in Syria and Somalia.
The coming Islamist attacks in America will be the direct result of our interventionist foreign policy, while our failure to intervene — so far — in Syria and Somalia provides clears evidence that disasters, insurrections, and wars can occur in many areas of the world, have no impact on U.S. national security, and will cost us nothing in terms of lives, funds, or security if we simply refrain from intervening.
Domestic Islamist violence is the price of U.S. interventionism
On 3 August 2011, the White House issued a new plan to combat violent extremism in the United States. The plan urges an outreach program at the state, local, and community levels to “explain more effectively our [U.S.] values, ideas, policies, and actions internationally and support moderate voices willing to confront extremists and discredit radicals.”
The federal plan says the bulk of our defense against Islamist militancy in America — the plan is aimed at Islamist extremism but never uses the words Islam or Muslim — will be handled through social-science-driven out-reach programs conducted at all non-federal levels of government, as well as similar efforts by private sector organizations.
Want to stop (or slow) global terrorism?
0Listen to Michael Scheuer.