What price for imperial peace?
Is it the case that you endorse and confirm the statement Ron Paul made voluntarily, on his own that he armed forces spend $20 billion a year on air conditioning in Iraq and in Afghanistan?
Dude, this is the most absurd subject to be talking about. You’re splitting hairs. You’re getting desperate! However, if I must, I endorse his claim. I cannot confirm it because I do not think I have the resources to do so. If I do have the resources to do so, I do not have the skills necessary to do so. Let’s put this in yet another perspective, since you won’t take a former Brigadier General/West Point graduate/logistician’s rough estimate seriously.
The Department of Defense’s 2010 base budget was almost $664 billion. The former Brigadier General said that $20 billion is spent on air conditioning (he included raw fuel, transport, and security in his estimate). My calculator is telling me, then, that the total amount of money spent on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes about three percent of the DoD’s annual budget (if we are to take the former Brigadier General’s estimates seriously). Given that we have been occupying a state that is located in one of the hottest areas of the world, I do not think that this is such an absurd estimate. However, if you able to provide me with some official figures then I will retract my endorsement of this statement and condemn Ron Paul to a demagogic hell.
About Gingrich’s alleged misstatements, I don’t know what you mean. Please, stop treating as obvious what others may not have seen, heard of, or noticed or may not exist at all.
I confess that I have not watched any of the debates. I go to school all day and work all night. There is no rest for the wicked! Since you want some sort of proof that Newt Gingrich is an ignoramus, I will refer you to his campaign page on foreign policy – oops! I mean national security – for an example. Number 5 on his list of things to do is “implement an American Energy Plan to reduce the world’s dependence on oil from dangerous and unstable countries, especially in the Middle East.” Got that Dr Delacroix? Implement an American energy plan to reduce the world’s dependence on oil from blah blah blah. I am deliberately choosing to bypass the absurdities associated with his calls for “energy independence,” of course.
Just for your readers’ sake, I think it would be a good idea to contrast this with Ron Paul’s official statement on dangerous and unstable sources of oil. First of all, I had to go to the “Energy” page, not the “National Defense” page, to find out about his thoughts on foreign sources of oil.
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There was nothing at all said about foreign sources of oil. Not a goddamn word, Dr Delacroix. Yet you slander him as an isolationist.
However, they take us a long way from your original statement on the illegality, the unconstitutional character of these wars.
I’m going to ask you for a third time (not that I’m keeping track or anything): what part of “only Congress can declare war” don’t you understand?!
Perhaps a different angle can be used to illustrate my point on this issue: the Department of Education was created by an act of Congress, so does that make it constitutional? It’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question (unless you’re a Leftist, of course).
On moral responsibility, I chose Rwanda of an extreme case where it would have been easy to intervene productively at little cost or risk. That’s what this country did we respect to the beginning genocide of Kosovars against a much more powerful and sophisticated oppressor.
Your words speak for themselves on the Rwanda genocide.
Your comparison between the mess in the Balkans and the mess in the African Great Lakes region is, like your comparison between the U.S. and Libya, superficial at best.
I’ll keep this brief. The Balkans are in Europe and neighbor a sizable number of allied states, and we picked sides (losing Russia in the process) before we started bombing.
I may be willing to concede that non-intervention is an immoral doctrine if you can answer me this simple question: which side of the Rwandan war should we have picked?
Notes On Liberty 
While man may have been created equal and with unalienable rights, he is not given liberty – liberty must first be desired; then, it must be earned. One of the negatives I find with imperialism and its core values is that, while it finds virtue in the intervention of the internal affairs of foreign states, it dismisses the moral primary virtue of self-determination.
Whether on an individual level or a state level, people have a right to determine their own path to happiness, and so do all nation states. And while there is a right of individuals and nations seeking their own brand of happiness, to find the true path to happiness and remain on it, there is also a moral obligation to take a moral and intellectual stand in defense of one’s vision or rights. Using force peremptorily has no basis in morality. Moral application of force can only be retaliatory in nature.
America wasn’t forced to turn toward socialism by an outside power: that happened by the will of the American people themselves as reflected and expressed in elections and their choice of leadership. Liberals want power and are willing to give supporters anything they can in exchange for votes and support. It is liberals who are more likely to use force to secure or exert power as influence.
“Conservatives”, including Libertarians, can’t even properly define themselves or agree upon a universal set of principles and goals; and until they can, they will never sell their message of living life through the guiding principles of a consistent moral philosophy.
Neither conservatives nor libertarians will ever sell the virtue of free market capitalism as a system of government; so long as, altruistic pragmatism powers their thinking and policy goals. The same can be said of the premise that freeing the world from dictators and oppression is best accomplished by force instead of by example combined with diplomacy.
Again, liberty is not a gift freely given by any being, real or imagined. It is a right that comes to every person who believes that Nature’s God or the “God of Nature” grants him or her certain unalienable rights – the right to live for one’s benefit, and not as a self-immolating vehicle that serves the whims, needs and demands of others.
Liberty is only secured when enough people choose to stand up and demand or fight for the guarantees of legal protections for all from oppression; irrespective of race, religion, sexual preference or any other difference that resides within those laws constructed around the premise that all men are created equal [regardless of physical or intellectual differences pass through the “God of Nature”]
Freedom begins with the courage of each citizen’s willingness to demonstrate, and put into life’s daily practice the acceptance of the individual as the world’s smallest minority. It is the obligation of each free man, or man who desires freedom, to work to inspire [not force] other men and women seeking liberty and true freedom to contribute to protecting the individual from the power expressed by any group or organizational entity [each composed of individuals with like mindedness].
The majority must believe in and stand for his/her right to free will, free choice and assuring everyone else’s right to the same. The path to happiness must remain open, possible and viable by living each life fully without government assistance beyond the primary and true purpose government was democratically structured to provide. This is the only way to keep the proclivity of those in power from striving forward as “protectors” under the banner of corruption and mischief.
War produces no winners. Even the “victor” suffers loses and runs the risk of losing more in the future unless it can convince others to willingly work for peace and mutual respect for each other.
Just as no one person or group of people can know everything about the economy sufficiently to run it by fiat, no one nation or group of people can know more about working effectively and efficiently toward peace than the synergy of billions of individuals who send signals as to what is desired and what is not – just as they direct the economy most efficiently when participating according to price and cost shift to provide the most desired products made of limited materials with alternative uses at the lowest price.
Consider this discussion in economic terms and ask yourself which method [force or individual choice and free access] provides the greatest standard of living to the most people who participate within the limited rules of dealing with each other willingly, one on one.
[…] Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism […]
I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good. I do not know who you are but certainly you’re going to a famous blogger if you aren’t already 😉 Cheers!
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