Tag Archives: Noninterventionism

Is Washington Fighting Russia Down to the Last Ukrainian? by Ron Paul

Posted on March 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Washington’s politicians waste lives, especially foreign lives, almost as extravagantly as they waste money. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.com:

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves past its third week, there are slight hopes that negotiations between the two sides may soon produce a ceasefire. But with the shrill warmongering talk in Washington, it almost seems like the US government would hate to see that happen.

Congress and the US Administration seem determined to drag the United States into a war with Russia over Ukraine. Senator Lindsay Graham is openly calling for someone to kill the Russian president and many in the US House have demanded that the Administration establish a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine.

Are they insane? A no-fly zone means you destroy anything and everything that can prevent total US air dominance. That means an attack on Russian missile and air defense systems within Russia. In other words, World War III.

We can all feel disgust at the destruction in Ukraine, but is it really necessary for us to gamble with our own nuclear annihilation?

Sadly, a large bipartisan group in Congress seems to think so.

Much of what is happening in Ukraine can be traced back to the Obama Administration. State Department officials like Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken planned and executed the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014. This is what set us on this path to conflict, as the government put in place after the coup began demanding NATO membership.

Blinken, Nuland, and the others responsible for this heinous act returned to government in more senior positions under President Biden and they have continued to push their Ukraine agenda.

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Posted in Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

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The Failed US War In Afghanistan Has Sparked A New Generation Of American Anti-Interventionist, Pro-Putin Conservatives, by Rachel Marsden

Posted on July 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

There are many people in the US who share a fundamental belief with Vladimir Putin: the US should mind its own business, we’ve got more than enough challenges at home that we don’t have to go looking for more in far-flung corners of the world. From Rachel Marsden at rt.news via lewrockwell.com:

Twenty years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, US and allied troops are finally leaving Afghanistan as the Taliban seem set to return to power. This failure has created a generation of conservatives opposed to US interventionism.

This week, when asked whether the US mission in Afghanistan was a failure as American and NATO troops handed over Bagram airfield to the Afghan army, President Joe Biden replied by citing purportedly achieved goals: “One, to bring Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell as I said at the time. The second reason was to eliminate Al Qaeda’s capacity to deal with more attacks on the United States from that territory. We accomplished both of those objectives. Period.”

Way to pretend to clean up the mess that you were responsible for creating in the first place.

Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi-born former CIA asset used as a proxy fighter against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the Cold War, as was Al Qaeda – both beneficiaries of US assistance against the Soviets.

The 9/11 hijackers were also largely all Saudi citizens. And while Bin Laden himself may be dead, the main problem hasn’t much changed. US ally, Saudi Arabia, has long since played a role in supporting other jihadists in the region, including the so-called US-backed Syrian ‘rebels’ in another American-led failed regime change effort in Syria.

And if there are fewer jihadists in Afghanistan right now, it’s only because the Taliban has been taking over the country again piece by piece as other fighters flee to other parts of the region – a sort of jihadist Big Bang.

In 20 years, the narrative against the Taliban – which never had any interests, terrorist or otherwise, outside of Afghanistan – has significantly changed.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Politics, Propaganda

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Time for a Foreign Policy of Adequacy, not Primacy, by Doug Bandow

Posted on May 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

American foreign and military policy should be about protecting Americans, not what our rulers consider American “interests.” From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

Perhaps the biggest problem with U.S. foreign policy is the belief that Americans are born to rule the world. American exceptionalism means being convinced that citizens of this nation have the mandate of heaven to kill whoever and destroy whatever is necessary to impose their will on every nation and person on the planet. For the good of humanity, obviously!

If that seems harsh, consider Washington’s record. Over the last half century no country has gone to war as often. Sanctioned as many nations. Destroyed as many countries. Ravaged as many societies. Created, fomented, or fueled as many civil wars. At least since the end of the Cold War the US also may have caused more deaths than any other state. And displaced more people. In sum, in recent years no other government has done as much harm while its officials pompously swaggered about the world issuing imperious dictates, praising themselves sanctimoniously, and blaming others for the resulting death, destruction, and chaos.

Hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions killed. Reflect upon the graveyards filled with America’s victims. Millions displaced. Consider the communities destroyed and emptied after the US intervened. Unimaginable hardship imposed on tens of millions of people. Gaze upon the consequences of militarized social engineering by self-satisfied, well-compensated, and extraordinarily comfortable US policymakers, oblivious to the world around them.

All because American officials believe that they are entitled to treat other people as pawns in a global chess game and decide “the price is worth it,” as UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared when callously dismissing the deaths of a half million Iraqi babies. After all, she emphasized, America’s elite stand so much higher and see so much further, entitling them to do whatever is necessary to get their way.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Imperialism, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

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Trump Challenges Pro-War Foreign Policy Elite, by Doug Bandow

Posted on September 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

Just using the term “crazy endless wars” makes Trump the most antiwar president in decades. From Doug Bandow at theamericanconservative.com:

Calls from experts to continue our current endeavors all fall flat. Intervention is the problem, not the solution.

President-elect Trump with retired Marine Corps General James Mattis, who would soon become Secretary of Defense, November 19, 2016. (By a katz/Shutterstock)

Donald Trump’s practical record might suggest otherwise, but his rhetoric has been the most anti-war on record. Last week he chastised Joe Biden for sending “our youth to fight in these crazy endless wars” as vice president. He also complained that top Pentagon officials “want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs, that make the planes and everything else, stay happy.”

In practice, he has done little to turn his words into policy. U.S. troops are still fighting every war they were fighting when he took office in 2017. Before reducing forces in Afghanistan, Trump did an Obama—increasing the number first.

Moreover, the president brought the U.S. uncomfortably close to war against Iran, largely, it seems, at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Worse, Trump played a dangerous game of geopolitical chicken with nuclear-armed North Korea, creating serious concern that he might inadvertently trigger what could become the Second Korean War. The latter would have been far bloodier than all the military actions taken by Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama combined.

Nevertheless, no other president has similarly criticized America’s promiscuous war-making, denounced U.S. aggression, admitted that Washington has abused its power to kill, and questioned the Pentagon’s endless subsidies for wealthy allies. Although the Blob, the ever-interventionist foreign policy establishment, routinely dismisses his observations, its members have been forced to address such critiques for the first time. Which has horrified, even angered those who evidently believe that they have the mandate of heaven to rule the world.

Unsurprisingly, the president’s latest comments were ill-received. And he unfairly maligned the military leadership, which tends to be more cautious than politicians. During the Reagan years Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz clashed over the use of military force, with the former urging restraint.

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Here’s What the Government Should Really Do in the Greater Depression, by Doug Casey

Posted on April 29, 2020 | 1 comment

All of Casey’s suggestions make far too much sense to be implemented by our current rulers. From Casey at internationalman.com:

It’s hard to have a conversation today, or even overhear one, without being exposed to moronic – and I now use that word in its colloquial as well as its clinical sense – opinions about what “we” should do.

“We,” of course, is the government. Everyone believes it should “Do Something.” And it is.

But why deal in half-measures?

Why only send everybody a check for $1,200? Why not buy everyone a new Cadillac to get Detroit back to work, a big new house to help builders, and a $10,000 check that must be deposited at a failing bank and then spent at Victoria’s Secret.

A plan like that certainly sounds like more fun than what I’m going to propose. Especially since Americans are going to be a bit short on fun over the next little while.

They used it all up over the last generation.

I’ve explained elsewhere why we’re embarked on the Greater Depression. That’s a done deal. But here is what needs to happen if the depression is to be as brief and as therapeutic as possible.

1. Allow collapse of bankrupt entities. They’re uneconomic (as their bankruptcy has proven), their managements are overpaid and are proven incompetents. The bailout money going into them is simply wasted. Most of the real wealth now owned by the bankrupt will still exist. It will simply change ownership.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Governments

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What Will Be the New American Cause? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on April 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

Will the US have the money for any American cause? From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

After the Great Pandemic has passed and we emerge from Great Depression II, what will be America’s mission in the world?

What will be America’s cause?

We have been at such a turning point before.

After World War II, Americans wanted to come home. But we put aside our nation-building to face the challenge of a malevolent Stalinist empire dominant from the Elbe river to the Barents Sea.

And after persevering for four decades, we prevailed.

What, then, did we do with our epochal victory?

We alienated Russia by moving our NATO military alliance into the Baltic and Black Seas. We launched bloody, costly crusades for democracy in the Middle East that, invariably, failed. We exported a huge slice of our manufacturing capacity and economic independence to a coddled China.

Historically, blunders of such magnitude have undone great powers.

Even before COVID-19, Americans had begun to realize the folly of decades of mindless interventionism over matters irrelevant to our vital interests. “Unsustainable” was the word commonly associated with our foreign policy.

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Posted in Economy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Medicine, Politics

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Peace Expert George W Bush Says ‘Isolationism’ Is Dangerous To Peace, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on October 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

George W. Bush is absolutely the last person on earth who can talk about dangers to peace. From Caitlin Johnstone at medium.com:

Humanity was treated to an important lecture on peace at a recent event for the NIR School of the Heart by none other than Ellen Degeneres BFF and world-renowned peace expert George W Bush.

“I don’t think the Iranians believe a peaceful Middle East is in their national interest,” said the former president according to The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin, whose brief Twitter thread on the subject appears to be the only record of Bush’s speech anywhere online.

“An isolationist United States is destabilizing around the world,” Bush said during the speech in what according to Rogin was a shot at the sitting president. “We are becoming isolationist and that’s dangerous for the sake of peace.”

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