Failed Obama Middle East Policy and How Ron Paul is Partly to Blame

I'm going to catch H E double hockey sticks for this post, but I'm fed up and I don't care anymore.  I am utterly sick of hearing Paulestinians gloat as thousands of Christians and Jews in Iraq are being slaughtered by the peaceful Islamist armies marching toward Baghdad.  And I am violating my policy of not calling them names like Paulestinians, Paulistas and Paul-bots in this post because they keep calling me a stupid neocon and I'm tired of it.

As Inigo Montoya famously said, "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

If I get one more post from a Paulite gloating about how Ron Paul was right about Iraq and Obama should make him Secretary of State, I'm going to start marking these guys junk mail so I don't have to see it anymore and some of these guys are friends. Of course, they do give me a lot of blog material, which is why I haven't done it yet.

The gloating is completely disgusting. The fringe right is prancing around saying George W. Bush was wrong and this proves that Ron Paul was right. Not a word for the victims of Islam. Not a prayer for the dead or a word of condemnation for the army of Islam - and don't kid yourself, those guys are the armies of Islam. What's even more puzzling, there's been nary a word among my RP loving correspondents condemning Barak Obama's dismal policy failure in the Middle East. This strange support for a clearly disastrous Obama policy only helps encourage more Middle East foolishness by this State Department.

The whole region is going to go up in flames once we come back home to hide. It may tamp down temporarily once either the Sunnis or the Shiites wipe the other side out. When that happens, it will get quiet for a while alright. They'll use the time to rearm, but they WILL turn on us and there won't be a thing we can do about it. They will take Pakistan's nukes and make themselves some more. The top Pakistani nuclear scientist has already said that he wants to donate nukes to all the Islamic nations. Establish an Islamic mega-nation and that's going to be the first thing they acquire. And won't that be fun?

Meanwhile, if we follow the Obama/Paul doctrine, we'll sit back and wait for the attack, believing firmly that no one in their right mind would attack the USA. We're far too strong for that. And besides, we could boost our economy by not having to have such a big military. So let me get this straight. Let's gut our military, withdraw from the rest of the world and people are going to be afraid to attack us. Did you not watch the atomic bomb safety films when you were a kid? Let them attack us first?  Can you say, "Suicide"? I do believe these guys have been smoking rather too much of that marijuana they want to legalize.

And you can be sure that Islam will go first in any war with the West. They are not afraid of the consequences. Allah, their militant wing believes, will protect them. Besides, if Allah gives them a new terror weapon, they believe they must use it. Being terrorists, their militant wing is likely to hold the world hostage for as long as they can to the threat of nuclear war. They've always been able to raise money for the cause that way. It's kind of their favorite fund-raising technique.

I'm not saying all of Islam is evil, but if there is a peaceful wing of Islam, they are sure being terribly quiet about the excesses of their fanatical members. Silence is complicity, guys. When my church had an armed terrorist in our midst, we expelled him. He went elsewhere and wound up getting himself and 82 of his followers killed along with 4 ATF agents. The point is, we kicked him out from our midst once he revealed himself for what he was. If Islam is a religion of peace, it needs to expel their murderous members from their midst.


Every time one of my Paulista friends drops me a note to gloat about how Ron Paul was right, they call me a neocon and use all these talking point phrases over and over ad nauseum. The big killer argument is always that I'm a stupid neocon and can't see the truth (as revealed by Alex Jones, Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell) and if I'd just watch a few more Youtube videos, I'd understand and support Ron Paul. I've actually watched some of those videos and they are a hash of unsupported "facts" and wild speculation that works out to be about 90% uninformed speculation based upon ideology rather than an understanding of history as it actually happened.

It make me weary; it really does.  To believe all this "America is evil" crap and to think that peace and love will magically break out across the world if we just hunker down behind our borders and hide is the worst sort of stupid. It's not America's chickens that have come home to roost. It's the vultures created by an evil culture that treats women like cattle and unbelievers like dogs and dogs like vermin. And they are circling, waiting for America to lie down, nice and quiet-like in the sand.

My reaction to the tragedy unfolding in the Middle East is to offer up prayers for the thousands being slaughtered in Iraq. It's genocide and we are supposed to be against that. A Christian woman and her two children are sitting in prison waiting to be stoned because her father was a Muslim and she chose not to be one. Muslim warlords in Africa are suiting up children as soldiers to go and slaughter Christians for Allah.

I'm just about ready to declare war on Islam. It wouldn't take very many carpet bombings of ISIS army formations, SEAL team strikes to eliminate Muslim warlords and a few air strikes on the houses of terrorist leaders before the nations of Islam would decide to take the road to peace.

What Ron Paul, Alex Jones and Lew Rockwell do not understand (and apparently my Paulista buddies don't either) is that the Arab/Islamic culture only understands strength. The culture is a tribal culture. It always has been. Islam draws its DNA from those origins. Over the centuries European diplomats have despaired of making any real progress in Islamic/Western relations. Throughout Arab history a substantial majority of sheiks, caliphs, pashas, bashas, shahs, sultans and kings of Araby were strangled by one of their lieutenants fairly early in their terms of office. Few Arab leaders ever died comfortably in their beds. Any slight show of weakness in a leader virtually demanded that someone stronger kill him and replace him with someone stronger. Politics in places like the Barbary States was a bloody Darwinian business. The Arab cultures to this day see a nation that is hiding at home as being weak and unworthy. Steeped in the belief that strength is the most important thing, Arab/Islamic strong men feel duty bound to Allah to subdue the weak in Mohammed's name.

Modern historians like to pain Muslim culture, particularly where it existed in Spain as benevolent and tolerant.  A 13th century Spanish Grenadan Muslim general wrote, "It is permissible to set fire to the lands of the enemy, his stores of grain, his beasts of burden, if it is not possible for Muslims to take possession of them." This "peaceful and tolerant fellow advised his fellow Muslims to raze cities and do everything in their power to ruin anyone who wasn't a Muslim. So much for the religion of peace.

When the mullahs talk about subduing "the weak" - there talking about us, guys. As seen through Middle Eastern eyes, Bowin' Barak is the epitome of American gutlessness. And Ron Paul looks like a major wimp to the warlords and pashas over there too and not a whit of difference between the two.

More and more, I find that I really do miss Ronald Reagan. If we could only find someone like the Gipper, who wasn't afraid to tell the truth right out where people could hear it - advisors be damned, we might restore peace. Reagan was willing to be strong. He started developing defensive weapons against nukes and then had the stones to walk out on nuclear disarmament talks at Reykjavik. The result?  He got an entire class of the most dangerous nuclear weapons in the world eliminated. He publicly challenged Mikael Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" and down came the Berlin wall. When Mohamar Gaddafi bombed our soldiers and blew up a planeful of people, Reagan bombed his house and wiped out his anti-aircraft capabilities in one shot. Gaddafi was quiet for 30 years after that.

What we don't need is government by wimps. The Paul-bots* are going to get all over me about this, but I think GW was right. Preemptive action was the best way to bring peace to the Middle East. Obama's wimpitude confused them and the noise from the Paulestinians encouraged them. That's not George's fault. He did the best he could with the crowd of colossal wimps he had to work with.

Just my opinion, of course, but I'm right.  Feel free, however, to puff and sputter about the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs and tell me how steel doesn't melt.

© 2014 by Tom King

*That's equals exactly half of the total number of names I've been called by Ron Paul fans in just the last 4 emails I've received. I'll stop now, but don't make me do that again. I have more euphemisms and I'm not afraid to use them.

There You Go Again.....The Paulestinians Stretch Another Conspiracy Theory to Ludicrous Lengths

The rumors of Judge Napolitano's banishment from
FOX News have been greatly exaggerated.

The Paulestinians are at it again. Apparently, Judge Napolitan's show on Fox Business will be cancelled, although the judge will remain a Fox contributor. A recent bit of political conspiracy spam has popped up saying a specific speech more than 8 months earlier was the reason he was fired.

This is because someone found a Napolitano piece that mentioned Ron Paul favorably and tried to connect it to the cancellation of his show.  Never mind that Napolitano did this piece two years ago. Never mind that Fox was already planning a program shuffle before Napolitano did this report. Never mind that the Judge did a major piece on Fox News just last week. Never let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

The Paulestinian, conspiracy junkies, every ready to stretch a suspicion to ludicrous lengths, call an unrelated Freedom Watch segment the so-called "speech that got him fired" and run it as a breaking news story.  Since Napolitano was "fired", the Judge has been on Fox as a commentator and reporter so often most people didn't realize his regular show was gone.  It really seems unlikely that Fox would keep giving him feature stories for almost two years after they "fired" him for mentioning the almighty Ron Paul with suitable (for Libertarians anyway) reverence. And he's done some even more controversial pieces since then.

It looks like the Paulistas would get tired of this nonsense after a while. They really are starting to make conservatives look bad. Let me say this one more time and since the forces de' Paul seem to prefer to write in all caps let me as one of the Bible's minor prophets put it, "Write it with large letters so that he who runs may read it":

LYING DOES NOT HELP THE CAUSE. IT ONLY MAKES US LOOK LIKE..........LIARS!

Stop it, please.

Just sayin'

Tom King © 2013

A Species of Cowardice - On Defending the Muslim Brotherhood

My friends of the Ron Paul Libertarian fringe keep trying to find an excuse for the Muslim brotherhood - usually by declaring, "It's all America's fault." In a blog entry just last week, I called for prayer for Egyptian Christians during the recent political unrest in Egypt. This was just before the flames began to ascend from churches and orphanages. One of my Paulista buddies shot back: "Do you think the reasons they don't like us is because we prop up their tormentors? Their anger has little, if nothing at all to do with religion."

It was not unexpected. It's right out of the "Red Book o' Ron Paul Sayings", but it still surprises me when someone of passable intelligence goes there. But okay, let's take a look at the Muslim Brotherhood - the merry band of lovable Islamic Egyptian jihadists with the matches and the gasoline.

This group supports repression of women, Jews, Christians and anyone else who dares to disagree with them. Their take on Islam includes virulent misogyny, legalized pedophilia, brutal enforcement of arbitrary standards and the elimination of freedom of speech, religion, the press and virtually every other principle America stands for. And they use terrorism as a political tool.

No I do not think it has anything to do with us supporting the Muslim Brotherhood's tormentors. They have no tormentors. They ARE the tormentors. Their idea of a tormentor is anyone who will not "bow the knee to Baal" as Elijah so succinctly put it.

Let's look at Elijah while we're at. His story makes a nice parallel. Do you think it was Elijah's own fault that Ahab was trying to kill him along with most of the pagan priests and soldiers in Israel? Ahab called him a tormentor because Elijah had prophesied against him - just following God's orders - freedom of speech and all that. Elijah's continued existence was painful to Ahab and his wife, the ever-faithful, mother-goddess/Baal worshiping Jezebel. So they tried desperately to hunt him down and kill him.

Voltaire, whom I seldom quote, did have one thing to say about situations like Elijah's and the Christian church of the Middle East. "To discover who it is that rules you, find out first, who it is who cannot be criticized."

It is disturbing to me that Paulistas freely criticize Republicans, Christians, Jews, The Tea Party and conservatives, but every time you criticize a Muslim, these people try to shut you up or defend them by blaming it all on America. This is little more than base cowardice as far as I am concerned. It lets one put on a show of "bravery" by speaking truth to a power that you know won't hurt you. But when it comes to speaking truth to someone who will strap a bomb on a handy woman or poor person of any sex and send them to where you live to blow themselves and you up, if they don't like what you are saying.......speaking out is quite a bit more dangerous for yourself.

Well, that' s a totally different matter. Without the protection of the constitution, I suspect that it will soon deteriorate to that very state of affairs if the Democrats and President Obama have their way. The mainstream media already censors itself voluntarily where the president is concerned.

This is what troubles me about the Ron Paul libertarians. They spend an awful lot of time criticizing Republicans, Christians, Jews, the Tea Party and conservatives, but when it comes to Democrats and president Obama they are far less energetic in their attacks.  And when it comes to criticizing Muslims they're downright lethargic, preferring to defend the victimhood of jihadis, even when they are busily murdering their fellow Muslims and burning down Christian churches as they have been in Egypt lately.

NOTE TO AMATEUR RP/LIBERTARIAN PUBLICISTS:

• The "because we prop up their tormentors" meme only applies if you actually have tormentors. If you ARE the tormentor, not so much.
• The "It has nothing at all to do with religion" meme rings hollow when they call what they are doing a jihad. Look it up. Jihad means "holy war".
• Furthermore, It's hard to take the "nothing at all to do with religion" meme seriously when the Mullahs issue fatwah's commanding that someone be murdered for daring to criticize Islam or offend the prophet.
• It's even harder to buy that idea when they set up terror cells based out of mosques and press hard for the institution of "Sharia Law for All" in countries where they have immigrated en' masse and are fast becoming a racial majority.

Keeping quiet and/or defending the Muslim Brotherhood when they are burning and murdering, not Americans, but Egyptian Christians who are NOT Americans is feeding the alligator, hoping he'll eat you last.

Not only that, but it's cowardly. Man up you guys! For crying out loud.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

One More Time.....A History Lesson About "The Rest of the World"

More unmitigated crap from the hate America first crowd.

Fred has a donor link called "Feed Fred" - Don't!

My good buddy, the Ron Paul Libertarian keeps sending me links to articles he thinks will convince me to support legalizing marijuana, bringing all the troops home and admitting that I should have supported Ron Paul after all.  This time it was an article by Fred Reed on the ever-doofy Lew Rockwell website. I should have known better.

Fred Reed comes off arrogant and elitist, looking down his sunburned nose at the rest of us from his hideout in Mexico.  I've read his stuff before and it's nothing but isolationist drive.  I have zero respect for him.   I won't include a link to his stuff.  You can find it easily enough, but I'd hate to be responsible for wasting your time that way.  Fred moved out of the United States and now lives in that bastion of freedom - Mexico, a fact that reveals a lot about how much common sense his writing is likely to contain.  His articles have this sneering tone of moral superiority common to Ron Paul libertarians.  The article this time was about how the United States is responsible for all its troubles with the "rest of the world".  Fred's position is like Ron Paul's (and Barak Obama's for that matter) is that it is bad that the world hates us so much.  We should, he opines, withdraw our troops from everywhere and squat behind our borders being nice to everyone since it's arrogant of us to suppose that we're the best place in the world to live.

Meanwhile Fred sits on his veranda in Mexico, living off money he makes here in the States writing anti-American drivel and calling those who pay for his cheap vino names. 


I could care less what the rest of the world thinks about us here in the United States.  If we're so bad, one wonders why the actual citizens of the "rest of the world" want to get here so badly they are willing to smuggle themselves across the border to do it.

There's a reason why America has done so well.  It's because we're NOT like the rest of the world.  We've looted the best and the brightest from all those so-called civilized countries in the "rest of the world" because they were pretty much crappy countries.  They were dictatorships, monarchies and repressive societies.  Britain had a worldwide empire and still hangs on to a large chunk of their old empire, but if you weren't part of the gentry, you had little opportunity to rise in the world.  The Brits exploited everybody they conquered and felt they were perfectly justified, as did France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and God help us, even Belgium, which took a crack at empire-building.  Even Argentina tried to pick a fight over land with Britain because they looked at them with that Latin macho eye and though that with that Thatcher woman in charge, Britain looked soft.

The Muslems have repeatedly tried to conquer Europe.  Turkey sided with Germany in World War I and the Muslims were great admirers of Hitler back in the day.  India tried her hand at conquest as did China, The Soviet (We will bury you!) Union and even several African nations tried their hands at it.  Syria, Jordan and Egypt tried to overrun Israel several times in the past 60 years and got their fuzzy butts kicked for it.  They blame us for providing Israel with weapons.  Sure they are mad at us.  Fred's right about that.

Despite the mess the rest of the world keeps trying to make of things, the United States has kept its hand remarkably out of the nation-conquering business.  We've protected our business interests as in "to the shores of Tripoli" where we cleaned out some pirates with the old "big stick" - in the early 1800s and again under Teddy Roosevelt when they decided to start up their nonsense again.

Yeah, they hate us.  We took their best people and created the richest, most powerful nation on the planet.  We don't understand what the REAL world is like, Fred says.  True.  We've never had extermination camps, gulags and musical governments.  Why would we even WANT to understand that.  We make all those movies and the "world" thinks they know us and so they hate us.  And Fred thinks we ought to study the rest of the world so we understand them.

Why should we work so hard to understand the rest of the world when they exert so little effort to understand us? We're wealthy and in "the rest of the world" you get wealthy because you cheated or stole or exploited someone.  So they assume we must have gotten wealthy the same way and so they can safely hate us. Besides it helps distract the attention of the masses from the fact that they are being exploited by their own governments and elite classes.

We have big guns and big ships and nobody gets to mess with us.  If most of them had big guns and big ships, they'd be off on wars of conquest, but they can't because we keep getting in the way with our bigger guns and planes and ships.  Now we've even taken to stopping nations from running over each other and supporting folk who are attacked.  I think that's a GREAT thing.  If we aren't the world's cops, who will be.  Russia?  China?  Hell, I wouldn't trust Britain or France with the job (the foreign legion ain't what it used to be).

When somebody gets big and bad and starts threatening or actually attacks their neighbor, who do they call?  When Cuba decided to take over Granada, who did the Carribean nations call to liberate Granada?  It sure as hell wasn't Brazil or Venezuela or France. We get called on to play cop because we have a nice, rich stable country (and it's rich because it IS stable) and we can afford to play cop.

But nobody likes cops unless they are in trouble.  And cops don't like to go back to the station house and let the bad guys run amuck until things get so bad we have to go clean it up.  We've taken to pre-emptive patrolling and intervening earlier and harder than we used to.  People in the rest of the world don't like that because in their own countries, powerful nations always want to take over less powerful nations.  They are suspicious of our motives so they hate us.

But every time someone else actually does attack them, who does the "rest of the world" call?  When Iraq and Afghanistan began threatening their neighbors, nobody liked that.  Saudi Arabia about crapped its pants when Saddam overran Kuwait.  And who did they call.

Ruyard Kipling wrote a poem about soldiers.  The chorus went something like this....

O, it's Tommy this and Tommy that

And chuck him out the brute.

But it's "Saviour of his country"

When the guns begin to shoot.

They all hate us the way people hate cops, occupying soldiers and big brothers.  They hate people who are stronger than they are.  They see us through their own filters, their own paradigm.  They assume that we are like them, despite evidence to the contrary.

Well, I don't give a damned what the rest of the world thinks.  I don't care if they like us. We can take our toys and go home like the Ron Paul people believe we ought to, but that will not relieve the hatred. Nobody's going to love us for that.  When it all goes to hell, they are probably going to hate us even more for abandoning them.

If we retire from being the world's cop, the world will just find a new cop, and pay that cop whatever it's asking price is.  And we probably one we won't like the new cop because whoever it is probably hates us if you believe the Paulestinians.

What the folks that run the "rest of the world" really want is to have what Pope Benedict called "a world government with teeth" that can chain up the big dog (us) and make him obey.  The Old World wants to call the shots once again.  They have not forgotten that they once had empires and they are jealous and suspicious of any nation with as much power as we have who doesn't go out conquering.

Europe hasn't had a nice all out war since 1945. These are people that once had a war that lasted 100 years.  Thirty years was a piddling little spat.  The reason the Europeans haven't had a major squabble since is because American soldiers are sitting in the middle of Germany with nukes and the American guard dog kept the Soviet Union at bay for the better part of 4 decades.  The Europeans really don't want us to go because then they'd have to pay for their own defense and they aren't sure Russia is really tamed and the Muslims are making jihad noises these days.  The Japanese and Koreans enjoy a busy world trade and even China has been pretty peaceful and content to let the US patrol the waves and protect trade. 

When the Somali pirates started raiding, everyone expected the US to go in and fix the problem but with our hands tied behind our backs.  Even the Russians have been enjoying not having to have all that massive military - spending their money on MacDonald's franchises instead of leaky submarines.

You want to see it get violent in short order out there in the "rest of the world", go ahead and turn the cop duties over to people for whom war is a blood sport.  Without America the teacher in place, the nukes would eventually fly and fallout doesn't discriminate - it goes wherever the wind blows and the currents flow.

America was settled by intelligent, hard-working peace-loving people looking for a chance to live in peace and prosperity.  We did it too - made a prosperous home for ourselves and went a long way toward creating a classless society.  Now we've got Americans longing for European style everything - military, government, economic system.  Well let 'em go live out there in the real world.  And when all hell breaks loose and you call for help, never fear.....America is here, ready, willing and able to cover your lily white arrogant, elitist, racist, egalitarian, socialist butts.

And yes, the United States picked a war with Mexico.  Fred Reed is right about that. A century and a half ago we fought a war that we shouldn't have.  It was unjust.  When it was over, we took some of their land which had been ruled by the Dons and upon which the peons were worked brutally by the rich nobles. 

And we PAID FOR the land they ceded us and turned them into states and made free American citizens of the peons.  I know we still hadn't quite beating up on the Indians, but then, they weren't always very reasonable either.  The English may have invented scalping, but the Indians made it an art form.  And we feel terribly guilty about beating up on native Americans - so much so that hardly a spending bill gets passed these days without substantial earmarks for the tribes in it.

Also, when we bought New Mexico, Arizona and California, the Mexican government at the time really needed the money.  Also we drove the final nail in Santa Anna's career and by all accounts, he wasn't through beating up on Texas yet despite having signed a treaty to save his worthless life.. 

And Texas had every right to rebel.  The idea that Texas is stolen property is balderdash.  The colonists began by demanding only that Mexico abide by its own 1824 constitution that the colonies had been established under instead of under the repressive new government that Santa Anna established to tax the crap out of Texas for his planned wars of Central American conquest. 

Running that evil little man out of office was NOT a bad thing in the same way that running Saddam Hussein out of office wasn't a bad thing.  Probably the only way to settle the issue was to win a war with him decisively.  Santa Anna had no intentions of ever giving up his dreams of conquest until he was thoroughly beaten. And beaten he was and by an army less than a third the size of his own.  Scared the hell out of him and he was peaceful ever after.

I'm glad Fred Reed likes Mexico, though.  So long as he doesn't piss off any drug cartels by telling them he wants to kill their business by legalizing drugs in the US, he should be okay.  Mexico is the perfect place for someone like Fred.  Servants are cheap, prostitutes almost free and eventually your immune system gets strong enough to handle the dysentery.


And they've done it to me again.  Pissed me off and got me to waste an hour writing all this stuff in answer to someone who thinks I'm an idiot and is so firmly wedded to his ideology as to be hen-pecked by it.

God save us from the intellectuals......

Tom

Why Santorum, Newt and Ron Paul Should Stay In.

I'm tired of not voting in the Republican Primary. For the last few decades, by the time the primaries came to Texas, the vote was moot. Everybody had already dropped out except the heir apparent. I didn't vote in the primary last time. If I had, I'd have cast a useless vote for Fred Thompson who'd already dropped out. As it is I don't feel guilty not voting. It would have been a total waste of time. The candidate was already chosen before I got my say in it.

I think all the states should do their primaries on the same day - kind of a mini-presidential election. I think it's monumentally stupid to set the tone for the selection of the presidential candidate based on Iowa, New Hampshire and a couple of other smallish states and retirement centers. So what if the candidates wouldn't be able to campaign in each state. I don't like their commercials anyway and I don't care if they actually come to my state to campaign. I can watch them on television.  This tailing out of primaries is only good for one thing - allowing the party bosses to control the primary so no one unfortunate gets nominated and so that there isn't a real battle royale at the convention.

I want a real battle royale at the convention. I'd love to have seen what the delegate split would have been going into a convention if people had been allowed to vote for whoever they wanted to from the entire field at once.  I'm sick of only having one choice. I'm in Washington state now and it's not any better here.

Up here in Washington it used to be sometime in February, but they did away with the presidential primary altogether this year, ostensibly to save money. They called the primary a beauty pageant. It's now a smoke-filled room caucus kind of deal. Nobody mentioned we were having one and unless you go to a lot of Republican party gigs,  you didn't know it was even going on.

I hope Santorum stays in it to the bitter end alongside Newt and Ron Paul.  Then I think the three of them ought to get together and threaten to wreck the country club Republican leadership's carefully orchestrated Mitt Romney coronation at the convention. I think they should speak very openly about this strategy and let the votes fall where they may in the rest of the primaries. It's the only way conservatives will have any sort of significant voice at the convention.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Ron Paul Openly Courting the Muslim Vote

Photoshopped caricature*

Ron Paul has for some time been rolling up the anti-Semitic vote with his libertarian flavored stance on Israel. Dr. Paul states clearly that he is not anti-Semitic and I believe him, even though he has done a fairly poor job of distancing himself from his overtly anti-Semitic supporters. I don't think he's an actual anti-Semitic. I just think he's wrong on Israel.  Dr. Paul has kept his chastisement of his lunatic fringe following to the gentle side. He is careful not to offend the conspiracy theorists and anti-Semitic in his legions lest his poll numbers drop by half. What politician would bite the hand that feeds him after all?

And Dr. Paul is, after all, a politician. Paul's actual vote-getting numbers in the primaries so far have puttered along in the 9% range no matter what the polls or Paulestinians might say. He's done better than Newt Gingrich in a few places, but unlike Gingrich has not won a single state.

Now Ron Paul supporters are actively courting the Muslim vote.  The talking points to Muslim Voters are:

1. Ron Paul supports a non-interventionist stance in the Middle East
2. Ron Paul wants to remove US support for Israel

I am puzzled as to why this makes sense to ANYBODY, but then, I have a bad habit of reading history. The wave of Muslim immigration to this country has been largely from areas threatened, not by evil western imperialists, but by brutal middle-eastern regimes like those of such lovable tyrants as Assad, Quaddafi, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and their ilk. It really doesn't make sense for a refugee, after he or she escapes persecution, poverty or whatever else drove them to leave their homeland, to come to the US and then turn around and oppose efforts by the United States and its allies to stop the very people who committed violence and oppression against them in the first place. It seems illogical at the very least and wondrously selfish at worst to say, "I got out, but screw the rest of you people back home."

If the Ron Paul people are counting on some level of Muslim antisemitism to drive the Muslim vote to Dr. Paul, that's just shameful.  Ronald Reagan showed that you win presidential elections by appealing to the best in people and not the worst. Unfortunately, that's precisely what some Paulestinians are doing in the Muslim community - poking the antisemitism beast hoping to garner votes for their boy and again confirming my opinion that there are a lot of folk in the Ron Paul camp who are only in it for the legalized pot.

Me, I'm looking for a candidate that would like to see a peace in the middle-east that doesn't involve one side killing everybody on the other side. That does NOT look very much like the Ron Paul plan to me. I don't think stepping back and letting radical Muslim nations drive Israelis into the sea is going to give us peace - only a little quiet before the storm.

I keep hearing that we shouldn't be the world's policemen. Is that so? Well then tell me. Who SHOULD be the world's policemen?  Somebody's going to do it if we don't and I can tell you a couple of groups that would like the job that I'd rather not hand it over to.

How about you?  Scream at me from the comments box.  I can take it.

Tom King

(that's my real name and I don't care who knows it)

* The photo above is a Photoshopped caricature (I can't draw worth shucks) - as far as I know Dr. Paul never wears a turban, even while campaigning in Detroit!

Where's a Statesman When We Need One?



The Greatest Statesman of My Lifetime - Bar None

 One of my favorite weblogs, "The Art of Manliness", just ran a piece called "The Four Qualities of a True Statesman."  Brett & Kay McKay, the authors, certainly picked a subject that would get a lot of comments. Predictably the Paulestinians came out in force and I'm thrilled they're getting so many hits off those guys. They've really kicked the ad revenue of small political blogs like mine into high gear. All you have to do to get a spike is to mention Ron Paul and step back and let the comments roll in.

I agree with Brett's analysis as to what a statesman is. It's not hard to spot a statesman. The top 4 American statesmen who made president in the 1800s are carved on Mt. Rushmore. I think you could add Daniel Webster and Henry Clay to that list whether you like their politics or not. Of all of them, I think Washington was the father and model of true American statesmanship. Lincoln had the toughest job, Jefferson the greatest impact on personal freedom and Teddy Roosevelt was the man on foreign policy - him and his "big stick".

In the 20th century, I’d pick FDR, Eisenhower and Reagan – and possibly Harry Truman. Reagan always befuddled "real" politicians because Reagan actually believed all that stuff he was saying and "the people" believed him when he said it. I believe the others I mentioned had that ability as well, with differing degrees of success at carrying public opinion along with them. Truman, who was no career politician, believed the buck stopped with him and that is very statesmanlike and all kind of manly.

In the 21st century we’ve had a shortage of statesmen so far. I’ll give you Ron Paul as statesmanlike, but no more. He’s as principled in what he believes ought to be done as George W. Bush was on the war on terrorism. GW was wrong on some issues as is Ron Paul. Both have fatal flaws in that they fall short in the consensus building department. I don’t think the 21st century has yet seen its first great statesman yet. The closest to a principled politician I’ve seen so far is Sarah Palin. That woman really believes what she says, though I’m not sure we’re ready to hear it from a woman quite yet, despite our efforts to change our culture in that regard. Sadly, we’re not ready for an American Margaret Thatcher. I do hope one will take the stage at some point. It would be nice to add an American iron lady to that list of iron men.

I do believe that statesmen are no accident. I believe, when we need a statesman, God will raise one up.

• “The greatest want of the world is the want of men—men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.”  - E.G. White

Oddly enough, it was a woman who wrote that. but then who better to recognize a real man when she sees one?

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Political Bait & Switch - Ron Paul & Glenn Beck are Losing Me

Bait & switch tactics do not win my support*

I got snagged by the old political bait and switch this morning - TWICE!

I know, "One time shame on you. Twice shame on me!"  But dang it I can usually trust Glenn Beck and he let me down today.

First, I spotted an article by Lew Rockwall, a blogger whose stuff I'm not terribly familiar with - apparently he rights NY Times Bestsellers about things collapsing or the evilitude of the Fed or something. Anyway, it turns out the whole piece was about how Romney was terrible and the only one who can save us is mild-mannered Ron Paul who, if we'll just slip into our little voting booths will turn into President Ron (strange creature from another planet?)

It's a really dirty trick making me read another Ron Paul commercial, especially after the first 400 or so didn't do anything for me. Really. Say what you mean, okay.

Then to my surprise, I got a Glenn Beck e-mail today saying Beck was endorsing Newt Gingrich. Now I thought Beck was pretty much anti-Gingrich, so I clicked over to see what was up. It turned out to be a joke and a surprisingly nasty series of attacks on former House Speaker Gingrich that pretty much turned into name-calling.

Now, name-calling is one of those things that I don't see any use for, although I do admit to referring to some of the kookier Ron Paul supporters as Paulestinians, Paulistas, Ronites, Ronians or in the case of one odd little guy who keeps sending me cryptic e-mails, Zondar the Ronulan Ambassador. I figure with those guys, it's give as good as you get and besides they're really hacking me off.  With most folk, I don't exchange nasty names, however. It's just not nice.

As much as I dislike President Obama's policies, I try to call him by his proper name and title. He is, after all, the president. I disliked the disrespect leveled at Reagan and the Bushes and believe the President should be treated with the respect due the office. Criticize his politics if you wish, but nasty names are out of place.


If Ron Paul does get himself elected, I will call him Mr. President till the day Zondar the Ronulan makes contact with the mother ship and it sets down on the White House lawn to conclude the first interstellar peace accord in history - probably something like, "We won't invade your alien worlds if you'll promise not to death ray us and make zombie slaves out of us."  We'll call it the "Niceness Accords".

If the little green men will just take Zondar and his minions away with them when they go, the aliens and President Paul will have done us all a great service.

In the meantime does it bother anyone that only three tiny states have held primaries and we've already lost most of our candidates?  Trouble really is, that the four we have left, nobody seems to want!  By the time we get to vote in a primary it'll be like scraping through the leftover tomatoes at the end of Farmer's Market day looking for an unbruised one.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King (formerly of East Texas)
* And I do know that using a Ron Paul picture draws the Ronians like moths to a flame and that it is a just plain sneaky way to drive up pageview numbers and ad revenue  on my website and also that it's a dirty trick to play on the Paulestinians, but as they say in Vegas, "C'mon, mama needs new shoes......!" and low-rated bloggers live on advertising.

There Ain't Enough Youtube Videos in the World...

(c) 2011 by Tom King



What?  Me worry?

 Why is it that Ron Paul people think that if you just watch enough Youtube videos you'll finally recognize the genius of Ron Paul and join their cult?
I'm sorry if that offends some of you. I have some friends who are rabid Paulistas and I do realize they have come to support Congressman Paul as a result of many hours of viewing Youtube videos and studying conspiracy theories. I know this because they keep sending me the same cut and paste Ron Paul talking points and keep repeating the same things over and over and over without variation. They send me link after link to videos that will "absolutely convince me".  If I present any argument whatever, they inevitably ignore it completely and accuse me of "not watching the videos I sent you".

Let me repeat this one more time.  I've read Ron Paul's writings. I've seen the videos about "blowback", about what really happened with 9/11, about how the Jewish bankers are destroying our economy, about how Israel doesn't need our support and we're only making it worse, about how our mere presence in the middle east is why Muslims hate us, about how the Japanese wouldn't have attacked us at Pearl Harbor if we hadn't provoked them by not selling them oil and war materials for them to use in their slaughter of Chinese, Koreans and Southeast Asians (the latest new Paulista talking point).

Every video I view, every Ron Paul speech or debate appearance I see, every cut and paste, 20 page e-mail I've read has only served to convince me even more that Ron Paul is not someone I'd vote for.

Period!

End of discussion.
I'm almost voting against Ron Paul's supporters.  Congressman Paul, I actually kind of like, even though he's way off base on Foreign Policy (and yes I've seen that video too).
Here we are at the end of the world and I'm watching the devil slice up the last remaining humans who have any sense, setting them against each other and confusing them with lies, conspiracy theories, racism, drugs and arrogance.  It's live and in color and ends with the Second Coming.

Those of us who manage to avoid being anal-probed will be heading for the mountains to hide soon. They'll be coming after us because of our unbelief in whichever "messiah" ascends the throne next, whether it's Obama or Ron Paul. Either one of them - their followers give me the willies. I promise you, if it's Ron Paul vs. Obama, I plan to fake my own death and disappear into the forest. Thank goodness I'm carrying enough weight on me to last a few months after the food runs out.

Just one man's opinion though. Feel free to pay no attention at all.

Tom

How We Could Have Prevented Pearl Harbor

But would it have been a good idea?

(c) 2011 by Tom King

I came across this puzzling statement today on a Facebook post about Pearl Harbor. "Japs wouldn't have even bombed us if we gave them the oil we promised for helping us in WWI."

Disregarding the racist slur that came along with the poster's apparent compassion for those who bombed us, I had to ask, "What is it with people thinking that it's our own fault every time some foreign nation bombs us, knocks down a skyscraper or blows up an embassy?"

Ron Paul during the Republican Forum on Fox the other day, blamed American policy in the Middle-East for 9/11 as though somehow we could and should be able to control the behavior of fanatical Muslim terrorists through smarter foreign policy.

This whole idea that we're somehow smart enough to figure out how to control the world's behavior is exactly what got us into all this in the first place.

We thought we could control Japan which was busily trying to create an Asia-Pacific empire at the time. We cut off selling them oil and steel because they were murdering innocent civilians in China by the millions. We thought it would make them stop murdering Chinese. Instead the Japanese got mad because we got in their way by refusing to sell them the tools that would allow them to keep murdering people.  So they attacked us. Chamberlain thought that if he gave the Germans the Sudentenland (which wasn't actually his to give away in the first place), then Hitler would leave the British alone. Next thing he knew the British were up to their eyes in German bombers.

I suppose technically this Facebook goober is correct. If we had just sold them the oil and steel they wanted, the Japanese probably wouldn't have attacked us on December 7, 1942.

If we'd have given them the oil they would have instead gone on to take China, to brutalize hundreds more cities as they did Nanking. Then, when they'd built a huge Asian empire, they'd still have bombed Pearl Harbor (just not till they'd conquered the northern resource areas (Manchuria/Siberia) and didn't need our oil and steel anymore.  It just wouldn't have been on December 7, 1942.  They they'd have attacked San Diego Harbor, San Francisco Harbor, New York Harbor, the ports of Houston, Charleston, Seattle, Miami, Mobile and on and on and on.

And we'd have been surprised because a whole lot of us don't really believe in evil. We think, like the B.F. Skinner behaviorists, that behavior is a result of external conditioning. Lots of us don't really believe in free will. We think everyone can be good if we just give them the right cookies at the right time.

But it doesn't work. You might get your kids to behave for a while, but once they are out of your control, they will do what they want to do - what they choose to do. 

On the international level, if we gave every cent we had to everybody that thought they had a grievance against us, we'd not only be broke, but they would all hate us even more because we were out of money. They'd have come to rely on it.  And, even if we did have unlimited money and gave it to them as fast as they could grab handfuls of it, they'd still hate us just like very spoiled rich kids hate their parents.

You cannot buy peace. Evil is evil. The lust for power exists and those who are evil and who lust for power need no excuse for committing acts of treachery. Oh, they will inevitably make up some sort of excuse, but that's more for you than for them. They will excuse their own behavior because of some sort of perceived slight on the part of their victims and then do or take whatever they want. They'll do it time and again until their conscience will no longer function and they have no sense of guilt anymore. When they stop making excuses you're in real trouble.

And that's pretty much when evil people self-destruct - when they don't care anymore.

The wages of sin, we are told, is death.*

Anyone who raises his hand against another, to take what does not belong to him whether it's money, land or power, commits a sin. The United States is one of the few powerful nations in Earth's history that ever chose to renounce taking the fruits of conquest. The Soviet Union planned an empire. China has never given up the idea. Even Britain still has an empire. In the last century, however, every territory won in battle by US forces has been given back to its people. In some cases, island nations, offered their independence chose to remain US territories. Others chose to be independent. Some chose poorly. Nations which attacked us unprovoked were conquered and not only freed, but we helped rebuild them.

Yet, but it seems, if you listens to the apologists, we are supposed to be the bad guys somehow.  Well, I don't think so. Yes, we've meddled in the Middle East. We helped them build oil fields and become wealthy - at least in nations where the people did not tolerate tyrants and dictators. We did not set up the nation of Israel. That was the British. All we've done is protect its existence. In return Israel has been a friend and ally in the region. We've had friendly relations with many largley Muslim nations, but remember. All Arabs are not Muslim and many are businessmen before they are religionists. We are not responsible if the religious authorities don't like us having a military base in Saudi Arabia. Nations deal with nations, not with churches.

Suppose the Christian church in the US were to demand that all mosques in the US be destroyed or that any Christian who becomes a Muslim should be killed. Would that be right?  Should other nations of the world base their relationship with the US on what the Christian church says or what the US government says.

There is a kind of political schizophrenia that progressive socialists and Ron Paul libertarians get into when talking about the Middle-East. On the one hand, they demand that the Christian church (the majority religion in the US) has no right to participate in, much less dictate US foreign policy. But with the Middle East they tell us that the demands of poorly organized religious authorities (especially the fanatical ones) should be considered above that of the duly constituted political authorities or the citizens of the nations of the Middle East.

With libertarians, the belief is that if we leave everyone else alone, their natural goodness will cause them to reciprocate and treat us well in return. Never mind that it doesn't work with evil people. The proponents of this policy believe that not "meddling" is an effective way to control the behavior of others.

With progressive socialists, it's all part of this same deluded idea that some of us are smart enough to figure out how to make everyone happy, peaceful and cooperative. They've been watching too many episodes of Star Trek in which the peaceful humans have figured out in some non-specific way how to make communism work on Earth. What they miss is the point that it's the power hungry evil planets out there that make the episodes interesting. Even the utopians realize in the end that there is plenty of evil to go around.

We Americans are raised to feel bad about accusing anyone of being bad. We were all raised to be polite. We'd rather so, "Oh, excuse me. My bad." than to have to confront bullies, thugs and evil-doers -even the petty ones. That's why you can watch on Youtube as two girls beat up another in a McDonald's and nobody steps in -- except one elderly lady whose sense of justice was rightly offended. The rest of the bystanders hauled out their cell phones to video tape the fight. Shame on them!

I'm one of those Americans who, though I don't like calling anyone evil, have come to realize that if you don't say or do anything about evil when it presents itself, you are condoning it. I can no longer say, "Excuse me," to some thug that's beating up someone half his size because I'm in his way.  And I don't think our country has any business saying, "My Bad!" when a bunch of nasty evil little minions of Satan fly an airplane full of perfectly good people into a skyscraper full of more perfectly good people.

May those of us who still believe in right and wrong find the courage to stand for what's right. It's no good thinking we can somehow manipulate other nations into doing right. It's a conceit with deadly consequences. It's the difference between the idea that might is right and that might should be used for right only. I distrust those who think their ideology is is powerful enough to manipulate the behavior of whole nations.

We're coming down to a point in history where it may be left to those who stand in the breach to do what is right to to turn the tide of totalitarianism, if it can be turned at all.

Remember the Spartans. Remember the Alamo. Remember Pearl Harbor.

Stand tall and God bless America!

Tom King

*Romand 8:28

It's Ron Paul's Fault I Put a Bullet Through My Flat Screen

Watched the Republican forum tonight. I was impressed with Perry and Gingrich. Both answered well. Romney avoided saying much of anything showing off his skill as a "politician".  Santorum and Bachmann sounded pretty good too.

But if I have to listen to Ron Paul tell Americans one more time that we need to understand what we've done to make the terrorists mad enough to attack us on 9/11.........I'm going to assault my television set.   Then I'm going to send Congressman Paul a bill for replacing my TV set along with a list of reasons why it's his fault that I put a ballpeen hammer through the screen.

You might be a Ron Paul Supporter if.....

1. If you've systematically "liked" every Ron Paul site on Facebook, you might be a Ron Paul supporter.

2. If you've ever told anyone they weren't a "real" conservative, you might be a Ron Paul supporter.

3. If you believe the Constitution guarantees you the right to smoke a doobie, you might be a Ron Paul supporter.

4. If you've written more than 3,000 10-page posts to people who have previously asked you to "Please stop for heaven's sake!" you might be a Ron Paul supporter.

5. If you think the holocaust was then and this is now, you might be a Ron Paul supporter.

6. If your friends have threatened to "defriend" you on Facebook, you might be a Ron Paul supporter.

7. If you know all about how to grow plants under artificial light in your basement, you might be a Ron Paul supporter. 

8. If you whip out Youtube links like Billy the Kid used to whip out his pistol, you might be a Ron Paul supporter. 

9. If you're sure George W. Bush had something to do with 9/11 and Ron Paul is just waiting to be elected before starting the investigation and trials no matter how much he denies it, you might be a Ron Paul supporter.

10. If Jehovah's witnesses hide when you come to their door, you might be a Ron Paul supporter.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

Cain't Get No Satisfaction - More Sniping From the Propeller Heads!

(c) 2011 by Tom King

Just got a cut and paste hit piece on Hermann Cain from a friend of mine who keeps trying to convert me to a certain political cult I will not name here because, frankly, I'm weary of hearing from the fringies about how he's the second coming incarnate. They keep on coming like Jehovah's Witnesses on steroids or something. While I understand the urgency of the potheads, I'm quite at a loss where apparently rational folk like my friend are concerned.

My friend says this (I have included the entire post. To protect my readers from the urge to harm themselves while reading this stuff, I urge them to take any anti-anxiety medication they've before proceeding):

• In this case, I believe RM* is right. Cain is making art out of making
  fools out of a bunch of idiot voters. People today are too damn lazy
  to learn what is at stake. I'm sure the Republican who wins will be one
  who those with BIG MONEY want the obedient sheep to vote for.
  If the stakes weren't so large, this would be funny stuff.
  
  What's Cain's real purpose? Since he has zero chance, what is he
  really accomplishing? Well, he's siphoning a bunch of time from the
  media airwaves and diverting meaningful conversation of real issues
  towards his "brutha from another mutha" talk and his wanna be
  girlfriends. I guess people want to be entertained and not informed.
  In this regard, he is doing his job well. Even when he loses, we will
  see his face on the tube for a long time as he pontificates. For me,
  
  
  I've seen enough of this black-faced GWB and his idiotic 999 stuff !!!!

Boy howdy does that make a deep intellectual argument (that was sarcasm in case some of the people who will be flaming me later missed it). Can you say Occupy Wall Street? Sounds just like some of the man-in-the-street interviews we've been hearing from OWS lately, doesn't it?

So let me get this straight, guys:

If I buy this deft** argument against Herman Cain and your previous diatribes against Israel, the military, the Drug Enforcement Agency, illegal aliens, corporations and Republicans, then, tell me, O' Wise One***, where I can possibly find an isolationist, white, non-Jewish guy to vote for who secretly believes George W. Bush set up explosive charges in the World Trade Centers the night before 9/11 and convinced a bunch of Muslims to fly planes into them the next morning so he could set off the charges and bring down both center towers with two or three thousand people in it, so that he could pay back his buddies at Haliburton by frightening Americans, the British, the French, the Koreans, the Japanese, and several dozen other nations and trick them all into invading Iraq and Afghanistan so he could give Haliburton some juicy no-bid contracts so Haliburton's stock, which he no longer owned any of, would possibly go up?


Now, whooooo could it be who has such powerful credentials?

• It would have to be somebody, of course, who has the support of the propeller heads, conspiracy theorists, ufo trackers and who can draw that all-important Lyndon LaRouche vote.
• It would have to be somebody who can also get the pothead and peacenik vote.
• It would have to be someone who can get the anti-Israel vote, who really understands that what makes Muslims so mad at us is our protection of those pesky Jews and our interference with their plans to drive them into the sea.
• Probably should be someone who knows how to deliver babies and is a Real doctor (not one of those bogus Ph.D. types. Though why that has anything to do with anything, I'm still not sure, but folk smarter than I seem to think it important for some reason and that's good enough for me.**
• Someone who can channel his inner Neville Chamberlain.

Oh my, oh my, who could it be?

• And like my friends say, it would have to be somebody who doesn't have ZERO chance of getting elected.
• It would have to be somebody who doesn't look stupid in the debates when he talks.

Oops. Now I can't think of anybody anymore.

You know, I almost had this one guy in mind, but if he has to look smart in a debate and have better than a zero chance of getting elected.......I guess we're stuck with no candidate and we should just stay home on election day and let the forces of evil have their way****.

Sigh. Let the flaming begin!

Tom King - late of East Texas

*I think RM is some guy off one of the RP blogs and when this was cut and pasted, he just forgot that we have no idea who RM is since it could be Robert McNamara for all I know.
** More sarcasm if you're having trouble keeping up.
*** Yeah, still workin' the sarcasm thing - I can't help myself.
**** Sarcasm continues.... I got tired of doing italics, but you get the idea. It's pretty much all sarcasm.  Sorry, but it's back to daylight squandering time and I'm having reverse jet lag.

3000 Cut & Paste Pages of Argument & Ron Paul is Still Wrong!



A deer in the headlights

 What is it about Ron Paul supporters that make them so determined to bury you in cut and paste talking points if you are a conservative, but don't like Ron Paul?  I disagree with Ron Paul's drug policy and defense policy positions. So I get assaulted with Ron Paul's 11 point plan (it should be 12 points, but they always leave out the "legalize weed" one for some reason).  Makes me feel like a back-sliding Baptist hiding from the deacons they've sent over to my house because I converted to another denomination. 
 
Ron Paul's idea of defense is to bring all our troops home and huddle up behind our borders - to create a Fortress America if you will.  That seems like a poor idea to me.
 
He seems to think if we leave them alone, the rest of the world will like us. Who does that sound like?  Do the Paulistas really believe every other country thinks like we do? Sure, if you leave America alone, we generally won't bother you either, but can the Paulistas really believe every body else thinks like that, especially when our ancestors got kicked out of every civilized country in the world precisely because we think that way?
 
Gen. George Patton pointed out that no fortress has ever withstood a determined attack. I might add, especially if everyone behind the walls is stoned.
 
I'm just sayin'
 
Tom King
Texan in a strange land.

Onward Christian Soldiers!

How does a Christian relate to war and military service.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

My good friends who like Ron Paul's foreign policy approach are a stubborn lot.  They keep sending me articles and weblinks, Youtube videos and links to documents in an effort to convince me to accept the apparent core doctrines that they hold. The main ones I've heard are

1. "George W. Bush was evil"
2. "We ought to withdraw all troops back home. No one would dare attacks us here because there's too much water separating us from them. Besides we're too big to attack."
3. "If we leave the world alone, they will love us again and everything will be hunky dory." 

Oh, you mean like detente'?  I don't remember that working out so well for us back in the 70s.

I carefully read the latest piece by a former Air Force pilot turned priest out of respect for my friend. It supports, of course, the idea that we ought to have a military, but just not use it and that Christians should probably not participate in the military at all. 

I was doing okay until he blithely cited some revisionist history about World War II and our use of nuclear weapons.  He stated flatly that Japan wanted to surrender, but would just wouldn't accept it.  He ignores the account of Japanese Army officers' attempts to kidnap the emperor to prevent him from announcing the surrender on the radio. This was after two nuclear strikes on the homeland. I have read accounts by Japanese officers and historians much closer to the action that make it clear that a last ditch, hedgerow by hedgerow fight for the homeland was, not only planned, but embraced by soldiers and civilians alike. It seems pretty obvious to me that the specter of dying uselessly in a nuclear blast, unable to take an enemy with you, completely unmanned the Samuri in the officer corps sufficiently to convince them to accept the ignominy of surrender.

 

The thing that colored the writer's opinion most, I believe, was his military experience.  The war in which he served was Vietnam - a US foreign policy disaster if ever there was one. Eisenhower warned us of the power and dangers presented by what he called the military-industrial complex in his final speech as president. He was right. Vietnam little more than a corporate war run by war profiteers and supported by both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It was about field testing new equipment and experimenting with "limited warfare" as a form of diplomacy by other means. Our soldiers were mistreated, hamstrung and placed in an impossible situation where most still managed to serve with honor despite the horrific conditions into which they were thrust.

 

Limited warfare is always a bad idea. War is a blunt instrument that should only be used in extreme circumstances. It is almost never used effectively by the U.S. because we are so damned ambivalent about it's use.

Were we to use total war selectively and with a clearly conceived policy behind it, we would be a far more effective "global force for good" (as the new Navy recruiting commercials put it). Orson Scott Card's fictional "Ender" novels outline what such a strategy might look like. His books are read at West Point by soldiers studying policy issues related to warfare. Card's hero, Andrew Wiggin reacts to any attack with sudden and overwhelming force and insures his attacker can do him no more harm.  The policy implications are something I could get behind. I
Extrapolated to the world stage, the policy would go something like this:

 

1. Leave your neighbors in peace. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
2. If attacked, respond instantly and with overwhelming force instantly. Go after the instigators of the attack and remove them. Do not stop till they are no longer able to wage war against you.
3. Help clean up the damage caused by the war. Help those caught in the middle to rebuild their lives.

The writer* of the piece I read, incorrectly credits President Reagan with almost starting a nuclear war. Reagan did no such thing! He built our own military to a high state of readiness. It was the Soviet Union's leaders, seeking to preserve their own power and position that were pondering starting a nuclear war. They did not because they knew we would fall on them like a ton of bricks if they did. There was no way for them to win, so they did not fight. We came far closer to war when our nation was engaging in detente'. We looked vulnerable and the Soviets assumed they would eventually find a way to take us down.
 
Reagan wasn't always able to consistently follow his own policy. Political expediency forced him to focus on those he considered our most dangerous enemies and compromise with the diplomats and Democrats in other cases.  That intense focus on the mission at hand, he successfully eliminated an entire class of very dangerous nuclear weapons and made a "first strike" attack by either side almost impossible.

 

It is a shame that diplomat types went back to the same old confused military strategy after he left office.

 

The Hebrew language in the Old Testament's Ten Commandments probably reads less like "Thou shalt not kill" and more like, "Thou shalt preserve life". Others have suggested "Thou shalt not murder." Whatever it says, the Old Testament often suggests killing as a political solution for a nation state when it is under attack. God, Himself, wiped out whole cities. Based on my knowledge of God's character, I suspect such drastic action was done in the interest of preserving life. There was a time in recent history when a nuke on top of Hitler's mountain hideaway would have saved a lot of lives. 

The Jews did a lot of killing at God's instruction.  Sounds terrible, but remember that many of the pagan cultures of the time were slaughtering tens of thousands of innocents on pagan altars and in innumerable raids on their neighbors and wars of conquest. Israel became known for cleaning out the corrupt and evil inhabitants of the land as they settled Canaan. That's why there was a huge mixed multitude. Many of those inhabitants, like Rahab and her family, recognized that things would be better without the corrupt kings, sleazy priests and evil gods and joined the Hebrew nation and joined up with Israel.

  

Ecclesiastes suggests there is a "time to kill and a time to heal". It is difficult for a Christian to decide which time that is. It is why many Christians adopt a noncombatant role in conflict. Some Christians do, however, feel called to participate in defending our country. That's why so many join up in the aftermath of events like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. We feel the call to protect our nation. Since we are not the president or congress, we have to rely on God to guide those men in their decision-making and do our best to serve as best our conscience dictates.

  

I know a lot of folk would like hard and fast, black and white rules that apply all the time and in all circumstances. God gives us 10 basic ones. Jesus whittled them down to two. Then God surrounded those nice black and white principles with hundreds of pages of interpretation, necessitating that a Christian spend his entire life on his knees with that book and in prayer trying to figure out how to apply what he has learned in the real world.

  

I don't know all the answers. I know from experience how to deal with thugs and bullies. I know from experience that being the one who stands in the breach and deals with those thugs and bullies can very easily turn you into one yourself if you're not careful.

 

Two presidents, I think, made an attempt to move our military policy in the right direction. They were both dragged down by politicians and pundits and never able to fully implement the kind of effective military policy that might have brought us peace. Ronald Reagan understood peace through strength and reminded the Russians that "trust but verify" was their own old adage. He defeated a real enemy and almost made them our friends if later politicians hadn't messed it up. We should have shared what we learned during our SDI program with the Russians as Reagan promised. I think we'd be better friends now. Instead, political backbiting killed SDI and left us with only the marginally effective Patriot missile system when we needed it in the Gulf War. 

 

The other president who got it, was George W. Bush. His dad didn't. When Sadaam overran Kuwait, Bush did exactly the right thing. He gathered a coalition and took back Kuwait and gave it back to its people. His mistake was not striking back with overwhelming force and eliminating Sadaam Hussein. Had we done so, there would have been relatively little further bloodshed. The Iraqi Army was defeated and unwilling to fight any further. They knew they were in the wrong and I believe that we could have taken Iraq, set up a new government and been out of there before the end of the century.

  

Instead, we reinforced a lunatic's belief that he, personally, was invulnerable. We abandoned those who revolted against Sadaam and left them to slaughter. We encouraged fanatic jihadists and made ourselves a target instead of a trusted friend. We absolutely missed an opportunity.

  

George W. knew we had to take out Sadaam and the Taliban in order to prevent a wholesale jihad against the U.S. spurred on by the successful attacks on 9/11. It was messy and not as effective as it could have been had we finished the job the first time around.

 

George W. and Donald Rumsfeld attempted to lead the military to a new "leaner, meaner" design structure which emphasized special ops troops (highly trained nation builders) over massed armor and huge formations. They tried to skip a generation of weapons and go straight to weapons that were faster, cheaper and more deadly.

 

Again, the congress, the political generals at the Pentagon (David Hackworth's "perfume princes") and the military-industrial complex launched a campaign to discredit that whole idea, continued to waste money on big ticket projects and to move massive formations around the battlefields like so many chess pieces.

  

We had an opportunity and we missed it because the powers that be in congress were addicted to a big, expensive, awkward military that spent tons of money in their districts for big defense contracts. Rumsfeld and Bush took the blame in what was, in essence, a blizzard of a snow job by big defense contractors and the stooges they support in the Congress. We could do better, but, so long as the military is run by self-serving "perfume princes" instead of warriors in service of the people, boys will die needlessly in half-cocked, ineffective fights all over the world.

 

Why do we put up with Somali pirates, for instance? A few Seal teams riding on a few ships so that the pirates didn't know where they were, could obliterate any attacking force. How long would it take for word to get around that if you wanted to spin the old "wheel o' luck" and attack a ship in the Gulf of Aden, there was no chance you would leave the scene alive?

 

Remember what Reagan did after the attack on our servicemen in Germany by the Libyans? He bombed Ghaddafi's flippin' house. Remember what happened when a couple of Libyan fighter planes decided to play chicken with US Navy Tomcats and popped off some shots at them? The Libyan Air Force was suddenly missing some planes. Remember how quiet Ghaddafi got after that? Remember how anxious he became to restore good relations with the US when our tanks rolled into Baghdad?

 

We should not play around with evil men. Removing evil people can be "destabilizing", but if done consistently, evil men become much more well behaved after only a few examples.

 

Americans, however, and Christians in particular, have no stomach for this kind of warfare. We're peaceful people and we live in hope that we can rap the knuckles of bad boys and reform them It never has worked well with bullies in our public schools it doesn't work with international bullies.

 

I saw this played out on the playground once. Eight grade thugs were making the lives of the smaller kids in the junior high school miserable. A very large young man, Charlie, who wasn't part of the "in":group anyway, was sympathetic with the oppressed kids. The got sick of it and next time it happened, he placed himself between the kids and their tormentor and politely asked them to stop. One of the bully boys laughed and took a poke at our hero. When the dust settled, he was stretched out on the ground with two black eyes, some assorted bruises and a total disinterest in persecuting his fellow many any further. Charlie took three licks from the principle for fighting. When he walked back out onto the playground, the smaller kids were his devoted followers. The bullies slunk quietly away. Word got around that Charlie would take licks if he had to in order to defend his friends and that getting a beating from Charlie was very painful. Charlie's "foreign policy" led to a very peaceful school year for everyone.

  

Maybe, that's a simplistic solution, but I do think it would work.

 

Sadly, I don't think a Pax Americana is possible in this world. Too many bullies and too few brave men and women. Thank God, Jesus is coming to rescue His own.

 

Incidentally, from my reading of Scripture, what happens to the bullies when He comes back will not be an exercise in detente'.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Tom King

 

*Making War: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.

No Nation an Island

Why Ron Paul is Wrong on Foreign Policy

(c) 2011 by Tom King

The US estimates more than 375,000 illegal immigrants cross the southern border annually, 31% from countries other than Mexico. If a weapon of mass destruction can be made to weigh 150 pounds or less, how many could be hidden among those 375,000 refugees that flood the US every year. That's why we have to cripple the ability of terrorists to get those weapons in the first place by attacking our enemies where they live, and why we can't wait till they reach the border.


Ron Paul and his supporters call for us to abandon foreign military bases and adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy. The idea is the same one the left has put forward. If we would only leave everyone else alone, they wouldn't bother us because we are too hard to attack being so far away over so much ocean and too strongly defended.

A modern border is almost impossible to defend as though it were a wall. No defensive wall has ever been successfully defended without being eventually breached or flanked - not Hadrian's Wall, The Great Wall of China or The Maginot Line.

If you leave the enemy unmolested in his lair and allow him time and resources to bring destruction to our borders, it is unreasonable to suppose that a determined foe is not going to be able to get those weapons across the vast, almost entirely undefended borders of this country. A dozen nukes could seriously cripple the U.S. and make us vulnerable to opportunistic nations.

Not only that, but a non-interventionist policy will leave us in the day of 24 hour news, watching helplessly as our fellow man starve, be butchered, made homeless and brutalized by whatever latest power mad dictator/terrorist gets his hands on sufficient weapons and soldiers to overcome and exploit his neighbors.

It may not be fair that we have to support the Pax Americana that currently exists in the world and the peace is not perfectly kept because we do not have the resources to police the world. We must pick and choose our battles. We can't intervene everywhere, but make no mistake about it, it could be much worse if we weren't out there. Anybody who thinks that if America just went away, peace and love and unicorns would break out across the planet, is impossibly naive.

The reason we have 375,000 people risking their lives each year (and that estimate is 5 years old), is that they look across the border and see food and peace and opportunity. Allow dictators like Saddam Hussein to overrun their neighbors and consolidate power unmolested, you create a never-ending stream of refugees looking for a haven, followed by a growing crowd of megalomaniacs leading armies. Let one real lunatic get hold of a nuke or two and smuggle it into the US with the tide of humanity that flows across our border and they can instantly reduce our vaunted ability to defend ourselves.

Militarily, Fortress America is defendable for at most a generation. Beyond that we will find waves of global strife pounding away at our defenses till they crumble. We could even be drawn into another World War, more bloody and devastating than any we have ever faced.

Ron Paul paints a beautiful picture of a peaceful world that results from his non-interventionist strategy. Unfortunately, history doesn't support that picture. It is likely we would have stand by and watch helplessly, as the Old World revives the horrific practices it has known for millenia. I'm not sure we could stand it. Americans are not that calloused. We are the finest humanitarians on the planet. Any money Mr. Paul could save us by going isolationist (another word for non-interventionist), would soon be spent cleaning up the mess that would soon be made by the heirs of people like Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Auguste Pinoche, Baby Doc Duvalier, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Tojo, Ferdinand Marcos and their ilk. The difference will be that the new versions of these madmen won't be hemmed in by American “intervention.


Tell me where I'm wrong on this. Give me historical evidence that this is a fallacy. I've had people say, “History shows this is a fallacy.” and yet they can give no examples except maybe Switzerland.

Switzerland? Really? That's the best you can do in 7,000 years of history? One lonely anomaly.

How about looking at Poland? No territorial ambitions there. Peaceful people by all accounts. And yet through history, the Poles have been overrun and brutalized by their neighbors time and time and time again – simply because they looked weak and vulnerable and exploitable. Do we really want to look like we are afraid and in full retreat in the eyes of a world that has a history of conquering its neighbors every time it gets the chance?

Not me, Ron.

Not this little black duck...