Baby Boomers seem to enjoy borrowing money. At some point, however, someone confronted with having to pay off the debt will object since those future generations will not have had any say in the creation of the debt. What does the nation do when it reaches that point?

The last three presidents of the U.S. (George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump) have imposed  $22 trillion in additional National Debt out of a total of $29 trillion of debt. These three presidents are responsible for 76% of the nation’s entire National Debt from the founding of the Republic. Each person’s share of just the National Debt is $85,423 and for every household, it is $221,321. In his first year in office, President Biden (FY 2021) has increased the National Debt by $1.5 trillion and is now proposing many trillions more in new social programs.

At what point does this massive national debt become so burdensome that it is an unjust law on the citizens of the U.S. by placing them in servitude to the federal government?

There is a passage in Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, on unjust laws that should be mandatory reading for every lawmaker. It extends far beyond the heinous evils and unjust nature of racial discrimination. It is a timeless analysis of the fundamental attributes needed in structuring “just laws” in a democracy.

King is asked: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” He replied, “…there are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws.” He explained the moral basis for the distinction. But it is his two examples of the differences that provide insight into structuring “just laws” in a democracy.

To Dr. King, an unjust law is a law the majority imposes on a minority but not on itself. A just law is one that applies to all equally.

Secondly, an unjust law is one inflicted upon a group that had no part in its passing; e.g., the group was deprived of the right to vote.

While these principles apply to racial discrimination, they can also be applied to the rapidly increasing, massive national debt that is being imposed on future generations who have not been given a “say” or “vote” in the process. Future generations are being told, “pay our bills.”

Republicans and Democrats are equally responsible for the National Debt. Actually, Republicans, through the Trump presidency, for all their righteous calls for fiscal restraint, are responsible for about 60% of the National Debt. Biden is quickly moving the split into a 50-50 tie. Both parties relish spending our money and using budget gimmicks to impose more debt on us while lying to our faces. For example, Congress and past administrations lie about the increasing debt by keeping the cost of continuing wars off the books or passing Continuing Resolutions.

It is highly unlikely that present politicians and voters will pay off this debt in their lifetimes. This means we citizens are living on the future productivity of those who have no ability to participate in creating the debt.

Other than the writings of Dr. King and a few leaders of peaceful resistance movements, the discussion of “unjust laws” is left for philosophers and ethicists. The immenseness of the national debt and its impact on future generations requires discussion today—especially by federal candidates.

The national debt could become so burdensome to future generations that it undermines democracy. We can no longer separate questions of morality from the consequences of legislative actions like thoughtless increases in the debt ceiling and new open-ended programs.

We can easily claim there is nothing we can do—our elected leaders control the budget, spending, and continuing increases in the debt ceiling. Moreover, those borrowed funds go to “good causes” supporters claim must be addressed, arguing it would be immoral not to take care of the least among us.

If the state imposed the full amount of taxes on citizens needed to pay for all the programs it provides, there would be a tax revolt against “unjust taxes.” Tax revolts have happened since the government first imposed taxes on people. But the accumulation of massive debt is different from imposing taxes on people. Accumulating and deferring the payment of debt allows the state to avoid taxing voters by shifting the cost of our wants to future generations.

Each dollar expended by us today without earning that dollar is a dollar our posterity will have to repay for us. Is there a point at which the debt imposed on future generations is so massive that it converts the social obligation of paying reasonable taxes into involuntary servitude to the government?

Citizens in a democracy are responsible for the actions of the state. Those taking state action are our servants. We have the ability through our vote to control them.  As we continue to amass debt, we are telling future generations they “have no rights.” This is the essence of an “unjust law.” Worse than being a Kakistocracy, we are becoming an unjust country that is willing to inflict servitude upon future generations so that we can avoid living within our means.

The post $30 Trillion National Debt is an Unjust Law to Our Children appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Andrew Kerr on July 15, 2020

The Twitter accounts for former Vice President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama were compromised Wednesday afternoon by hackers pushing a bitcoin scheme amid a wide-scale attack on the social media platform.

“I am giving back to the community,” a now-deleted tweet posted on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s account read. “All bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000.”

A nearly identical tweet was posted to Obama’s personal Twitter account Wednesday afternoon.

Similar tweets were posted to the accounts of Biden’s former rival, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Kanye West, Elon Musk, Uber and other major figures.

The bitcoin address linked in the tweets has racked up at least $100,000, according to NBC News, citing a public register of bitcoin transactions.

Twitter spokeswoman Aly Pavela told NBC News it was aware of the issue and was currently looking into the issue.

The post Bitcoin Scammers Compromise Joe Biden And Barack Obama’s Twitter Accounts Amid Massive Ongoing Hack appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

“Then your favorite president wouldn’t have been able to conduct his foreign policy.”

Wow, that went from 0 to Iran-Contra very quickly. It was a discussion between me and my college professor. His reference to my “favorite president” meant Ronald Reagan. Reagan is indeed one of my favorite presidents because, as I alluded to before, his foreign policy was much more limited and informed than others we have seen.

My strong and loud declaration that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional might have been a bit dramatic. I tend to take extreme positions just for the heck of it and it happened a lot in college. I was known as that libertarian girl. You know, the one still making isolationist arguments when discussing World War 2, passionately defending over-the-counter birth control and legalizing prostitution, carrying a Gadsden flag around campus, and fervently insisting the 17^th Amendment is wrong.

No one that I can see is arguing that the War Powers Act is completely unconstitutional, but some in Congress are finally demanding their constitutional power when it comes to war approval.

On January 9, the House passed a resolution to limit a president’s ability to wage war with Iran. All Democrats voted for it except for eight members who are known to be moderates and/or facing difficult reelections in districts that Trump won.

All Republicans voted against it except for three. The dissenting Republicans include: Matt Gaetz (R-Fl), Thomas Massie (R-Ky), and Francis Rooney (R-Fl).

Neither Congressman Gaetz nor Massie are against Trump, but, let’s be honest, anti-Trump hysteria is likely the main motivator behind the Democrats’ new-found concern about executive overreach and endless war. However, for Gaetz and Massie, the principle of congressional approval for war is the main thing at stake.

We have been at war in the Middle East for 18 years. The authorization for military force in Iraq was passed in 2002 and they’re still using it. Gaetz is adamant that this resolution did not criticize Trump for killing the Iranian General Soleimani. He celebrates what he calls the “Trump Doctrine” where we “kill the terrorists and come home”. He voted for this resolution because if any president wants to drag us into another war, they need to gain congressional approval.

The thing about limited government is it doesn’t matter if it’s your guy or my guy in office. If the government is limited, we have more checks and balances to keep one man from calling all the shots. If you worried about Obama misusing power, limit government. If you worry about Trump misusing power, limit the government.

What usually happens is that Democrats get concerned with overreach, congressional approval, checks and balances, and constitutional limits when it is a Republican in office. Then, act like nothing is wrong when their preferred candidate has the power. Republicans do the same thing. Governmental power is rarely limited in a serious way and so we have a behemoth federal government, and an ongoing war that is older than some of the soldiers fighting it.

The War Powers Act might not be unconstitutional, but a resolution to limit presidential power to declare war is definitely sensible… and conservative.

The post Where War Powers Belong appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Chris White 

A former CIA analyst and cyber disinformation researcher said people are sharing satirical content suggesting Democrats called for the American flag to be at half-mast for Gen. Qasem Soleimani “like it’s legit.”

“Some family members just called bc their Republican friends on FB are circulating it like it’s legit. We have a lot of work to do, all,” Cindy Otis, a former CIA analyst who specialized in European and Middle Eastern issues, told her Twitter followers Sunday.

Otis was referring to a Jan. 3 article from The Babylon Bee titled: “Democrats Call For Flags To Be Flown At Half-Mast To Grieve Death Of Soleimani.”

A post from a satirical website has been shared more than 500k times saying the DNC called for the flag to be at half-mast because of Soleimani. Some family members just called bc their Republican friends on FB are circulating it like it’s legit. We have a lot of work to do, all.

— Cindy Otis (Pre-order TRUE OR FALSE now!) (@CindyOtis_) January 5, 2020

The satirical article included what the website said was a quote from former President Barack Obama that said: “To think, this all could have been prevented with a few pallets of cash. If only [President Donald] Trump had targeted a U.S. citizen with a drone strike instead.”

The Babylon Bee was apparently mocking liberal activists who reacted after Trump orchestrated a Jan. 2 airstrike against Iranian Gen. Soleimani, who U.S. analysts believe was responsible for a series of attacks against the U.S. and its allies.

Hollywood actress Rose McGowan, for one, apologized to Iran in a Jan. 3 tweet for the death of Soleimani.

“Dear #Iran, The USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people. 52% of us humbly apologize,” McGowan wrote on Twitter. “We want peace with your nation. We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime. We do not know how to escape. Please do not kill us. #Soleimani.”

Otis suggested the article is confusing people.

“You’ll see it’s also circulating on Twitter. Many accounts sharing it as funny satire, some sharing it because they say it’s satire but still close to the truth, and others that appear to not know at all that it’s satire,” Otis wrote Sunday. She also suggested that someday she’ll write a “screed” on satirical websites.

CNN tech reporter Donnie O’Sullivan commented on Otis’s concerns as well. “A lot of people sharing this ‘satirical’ story on Facebook don’t know it is satire,” he told his Twitter followers Sunday while retweeting the analyst.

Media analysts have hammered The Babylon Bee in the past. Snopes, for instance, created a fact-check label in August for satire and published a study that month suggesting that such content is a “problem for democracy.” Otis has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post Former CIA Analyst Says The Babylon Bee’s Satirical Take On Democrats’ Reaction To Soleimani’s Death Is Duping People appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

We were against going into the Middle East when Bush was President. We’re also against Trump’s use of military strikes and sending more troops back into Iraq again.

What sets us apart from other folks who are Anti-War, is that we didn’t hit the snooze button in between those two Administrations.

Oh, look who’s awake now.

Following an airstrike that killed Iranian General Soleimani outside of Baghdad Airport in Iraq, The Left are suddenly becoming vocally Anti-War.

At the risk of sounding like a “before it was cool” hipster, my message to The Left: Go back to bed.

In regards to the assassination of General Soleimani, maybe he should have had a more responsible father. 

Wait, what? Why? I don’t know. But that explanation from the Obama Administration appeared to be sufficient for The Left in regards to the assassination of 16 year old US Citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

From The Atlantic:

ADAMSON: …It’s an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial. And, he’s underage. He’s a minor.

GIBBS: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.

The Left didn’t draw the line at assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki, the inspiration behind the underwear bomber (not mastermind, but inspiration). They didn’t draw the line at assassinating his 16 year old son in a separate drone strike.

They didn’t draw the line at the Obama Administration expanding air strikes into 3 more countries than Bush did. The Left’s justification was primarily “but Bush did it too.”

They draw the line at assassinating a General who actually planned and ordered attacks against Americans, in a country that was also bombed by Obama.

I’m not in favor of the assassination. I’m just saying that all things considered, that’s a stupid place for The Left to suddenly draw the line.

But we all know it’s not about principle. It’s about who is President. We all know that once a Democrat is elected President again and carries on the same Foreign Policy, it will be back to the sidelines for The Left.

If you can’t be counted on in the future, then count yourselves out now. Saying you’re suddenly Anti-War, suspiciously and opportunistically now, reminds me of that high school kid who says “Yeah I’ve got a girlfriend, but she goes to a different school so you don’t know her.” 

Everyone knows better.

So Ssshhhhh, baby, back to sleep.

The post Good Morning, Anti-War Left. Go Back To Bed. appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Mary Margaret Olohan

Former President Barack Obama said Monday that most of the world’s problems are due to “old men not getting out of the way.”

Obama spoke at a private event on leadership in Singapore where he said that many issues the world faces stem from older men not knowing when to step down.

“If you look at the world and look at the problems, it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way,” he said, the BBC reported.

“It is important for political leaders to try and remind themselves that you are there to do a job, but you are not there for life, you are not there in order to prop up your own sense of self importance or your own power,” the former president said.

Obama’s critique of elderly men in politics comes as the former president continues to refrain from endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden for president of the U.S. Biden has attempted to explain Obama’s silence by telling reporters in April that he asked Obama not to endorse him.

“I asked President Obama not to endorse and he doesn’t want to — whoever wins this nomination should win it on their own merits,” Biden said.

President Donald Trump suggested in June that Biden lied and said that “there has to be some reason” why Obama has not endorsed Biden.

“How [Biden] doesn’t get President Obama to endorse him — there has to be some reason why he’s not endorsing him,” Trump told Hill.TV in June. “He was the vice president. They seem to have gotten along. And how President Obama’s not endorsing him is rather a big secret. Then he goes and lies and said, ‘I asked the president not to endorse me.’ Give me a break.”

Obama also warned Biden’s campaign advisers in March to make sure the former vice president did not “damage his legacy” and met with Biden several times before the former vice president announced his presidential bid.

Obama pushed Biden on whether he would run for president again, and Biden reportedly told Obama in response that he would not be able to forgive himself if he did not try to defeat Trump.

“You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t,” Obama said to Biden, a source familiar with the situation told The New York Times.

The Biden campaign did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post Obama Says World Problems Are Due To ‘Old Men Not Getting Out Of The Way’ appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Kevin Daley 

–  A coalition of insurance companies told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the government must pay out $12 billion to help defray losses incurred on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges. 

–  The ACA included a risk-sharing mechanism, which provides the government “shall pay” insurers to help cover any losses.

–  Congress has not appropriated money to make those payments, however, prompting the case now before the high court. 

The Supreme Court seemed to agree Tuesday with arguments that Congress must pay out some $12 billion to health insurance companies as part of a program meant to mitigate risks caused by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The companies hope to collect those funds pursuant to a provision of the ACA that says the government “shall pay” insurers who incurred losses on the Obamacare exchanges. Despite that promise, Congress has not appropriated funds to compensate insurers.

“This case involves a massive government bait-and-switch and the fundamental question of whether the government has to keep its word after its money-mandating promises have induced reliance,” said Paul Clement, who represents the insurance companies before the high court.

Obamacare established “risk corridors” to help health insurers participating in ACA exchanges. Those companies took on previously uninsured clients and people with preexisting conditions, but could not charge higher premiums. The risk corridors set up a system for sharing profits and losses: If costs exceed premiums received, the insurers can collect payments from the government to offset losses. Similarly, if premiums received exceed costs, the insurer must pay a portion of its profits to the government.

For example, in 2016 health insurers paid $25 million into the risk corridors. By contrast, the government owed insurers $3.98 billion. Yet the Trump administration argues Congress is not obligated to make those payments, despite the law’s “shall pay” language.

“HHS was required and empowered to make payments only to the extent Congress appropriated funds to do so — and Congress was free to decide whether and to what extent to fund those subsidies,” the Trump administration told the justices in legal filings.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to disagree. He said when Congress avoids taking on financial obligations, it uses language like “subject to appropriations,” instead of or alongside “shall pay” clauses.

“Congress knows how to prevent the obligation from taking effect before the future appropriation and, in fact, does so often and did so in the Affordable Care Act,” Kavanaugh told Edwin Kneedler, a government lawyer who argued Tuesday for the administration.

Clement put a finer point of Kavanaugh’s observation later in the argument.

“The ‘subject to appropriations’ language [is]…not just a feature of many other provisions of the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “I asked one of my associates to look at how many times that appears in the U.S. Code. When he gave me 200, I told him he could stop.”

Justice Stephen Breyer suggested Tuesday’s issue was an easy one. He compared the dispute to a paradigmatic contract case, in which one person, whose hat is stuck atop a flagpole, agrees to pay another $10 to retrieve the hat.

“Why does the government not have to pay its contracts, just like anybody else?” Breyer asked. Kneedler said the ACA is “very far from a contract.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, whose vote has been decisive to past Obamacare cases, asked probing questions of both sides. First, he asked Clement why the health insurers didn’t press for a guarantee of compensation before participating in the exchanges.

“I would have thought at some point they would have sat down and said, ‘well, why don’t we insist upon an appropriations provision before we put ourselves on the hook for $12 billion?’” Roberts said.

When Kneedler argued for the administration, however, the chief justice seemed skeptical that appropriations alone create federal financial obligations.

Justice Elena Kagan detected an apparent inconsistency in the government’s position. She said the administration reads the “shall pay” language in contradictory ways.

“You pay in, that’s obligatory,” Kagan said. “We commit ourselves to paying out…if we feel like it. What kind of statute is that?”

It seemed that the Trump administration’s only friend in the case was Justice Samuel Alito, who peppered Clement with skepticism. At one point, Alito asked if the Supreme Court has ever required Congress to pay out billions of dollars.

“Has there ever been a case where this Court has, in effect, required Congress to appropriate…billions of dollars for private businesses?” Alito asked.

Justice Neil Gorsuch did not ask questions of either side.

A ruling is expected by June. The case is No. 18-1023 Maine Community Health Options v. U.S.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post Insurance Companies Ask Supreme Court For $12 Billion In Obamacare Losses appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Jason Hopkins 

Worksite immigration enforcement actions have increased dramatically under the Trump administration, part of the White House’s crackdown on incentives that drive illegal immigration into the country.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) investigative unit opened four times as many worksite inquires in the 2019 fiscal year than it did at the end of former President Barack Obama’s time in office, according to data obtained by the Wall Street Journal. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations opened a total of 6,812 in the last fiscal year, a sharp increase from the 1,701 in the 2016 fiscal year.

These worksite enforcement actions target non-citizens who are working in the U.S. illegally and their employers. The increase in inquiries has also led to more apprehensions, with the agency making 2,048 administrative arrests in fiscal year 2019, up from about 500 from the previous year.

ICE has broken records in its recent crackdown on illegal employment of foreign nationals. The agency, for example, raided seven different Mississippi food processing plants in August, leading to the arrest of 680 illegal aliens. The bust marked the single largest such raid in U.S. history.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which serves as the investigative branch of ICE, is behind numerous high-profile arrests and raids that extend well beyond immigration-related activity.

HSI agents in fiscal year 2019 made 3,771 criminal arrests relating to child exploitation, an 18% increase from the year before. ICE’s investigative division in November officially opened the Angel Watch Center in Fairfax, Virginia, which is dedicated to the prevention of child sex tourism — the act of traveling internationally for the purpose of sexually exploiting minors.

During the 2019 fiscal year — which began on Oct. 1, 2018 and ended on Sept. 30 — criminal arrests by ICE agents totaled 37,547, a 10% uptick from the previous fiscal year, according to WSJ data. These arrests included drug-related and human trafficking crimes, and also includes immigration-related crimes such as employment of illegal aliens.

While President Donald Trump has made immigration enforcement a focus of his administration, the demographics of the current border crisis have made it more difficult for arrests to lead to deportations.

For months, the vast majority of those reaching the U.S.-Mexico border were migrant family units from Central America, not single, male adults from Mexico. Foreign nationals from noncontiguous countries are more difficult to process and remove from the country because of current U.S. immigration laws. The result has been record detention of illegal aliens, but still far fewer deportations than seen under the Obama administration.

Around 1.8 million foreign nationals were deported from the country in the first three years of the Obama administration. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has deported fewer than 800,000 in the same time period. Detainment, however, has reached record levels, with roughly 50,000 individuals jailed on any given day last year by ICE, the biggest detainment number in the government’s history.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Jason Hopkins on November 3, 2019

• Michale Simon, an Oregon federal judge, issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s health care requirement for immigrant applicants. 

• President Donald Trump issued a presidential proclamation in October, calling on green card applicants to prove that they can obtain health insurance or prove that can pay for their own health care in order to be approved. 

• Simon’s decision marks the latest ruling against the Trump administration’s immigration agenda at the hands of Obama-appointed judges. 

A federal judge has, at least temporarily, blocked the Trump administration from implementing a rule that would require immigrants prove that they have health insurance or can afford to pay for it.

Judge Michael Simon of the federal district court in Portland, Oregon, issued a nationwide temporary restraining order Saturday, barring President Donald Trump from implementing his health care requirement for foreign nationals applying for legal permanent status.

Trump issued a presidential proclamation in early October that called on immigrants applying for green cards to be able to prove that they can obtain health insurance within 30 days of entering the U.S. or otherwise demonstrate that they can afford their own medical care. The order was intended to be the administration’s latest effort to bar migration from low-income aliens and further transition the government to a more merit-based immigration system.

“Immigrants who enter this country should not further saddle our healthcare system, and subsequently American taxpayers, with higher costs,” the presidential proclamation read. “Continuing to allow entry into the United States of certain immigrants who lack health insurance or the demonstrated ability to pay for their healthcare would be detrimental to these interests.”

The proclamation, which was supposed to go into effect Sunday, would have applied to visa applicants living abroad — not immigrants already living stateside. It also would not have affected refugees, asylum-seekers or children. Health care obtained under Obamacare does not reach the threshold of the order.

If implemented, the new policy is expected to dramatically cut the number of green card applications seen every year. A Migration Policy Institute study found that 57% of U.S. immigrants had private health insurance in 2017, according to The Associated Press, and 30% were covered under public health insurance.

Simon blocked the new policy from being implemented for 28 days in his ruling Saturday. The court is expected to hold its next hearing on Nov. 22.

Pro-migration groups celebrated the judge’s restraining order.

“Countless thousands across the country can breathe a sigh of relief today because the court recognized the urgent and irreparable harm that would have been inflicted” without the hold, Jesse Bless, director of federal litigation at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said in a statement Saturday.

The ruling marked the latest courtroom setback for Trump’s immigration policy. The administration has been slapped with a number of losses at the hands of federal judges in recent time.

Three judges, for example, issued separate rulings against the White House’s immigration agenda — all in a single day in September. The judges, all of them appointed by former President Barack Obama, ruled against the administration’s expedited removal of illegal aliens, the reliance of certain databases for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests, and indefinite family detainment. Such rulings demonstrate the influence the U.S. court system has on presidential policymaking.

Obama also appointed Simon and he began serving in his position in 2011. During his confirmation vote, Republican senators questioned his previous workas a volunteer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Simon is also married to Democratic Oregon Rep. Suzanne Bonamici.

The post Obama-Appointed Judge Blocks Trump’s Health Care Rule For Immigrants appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

If ignoring radical Islam made America safe, there would NOT have been a 9/11.”

–Lindsey Graham today on Twitter

You don’t need your eyesight checked, and you didn’t just become dyslexic… and if you do or you did it has nothing to do with the actual words on your screen.

I don’t even know how to argue against this. It’s like he’s speaking in tongues. Or unfamiliar with the English language. Or is having a stroke. I guess it’s possible he’d been drinking or was hacked. In any case, it’s hard to imagine how he could package so much wrong in two sentences without actually being Trump or AOC or a Twitter troll – but here we are in 2019.

“Obama-libertarian foreign policy”. My, that certainly runs the gamut, don’t it? I think he’s trying to combine them somehow, but I don’t understand what the fusion could be. I mean, it’s possible he means there’s a connection between candidate Obama’s speeches and appeal and the ideology, but it’s not like that was expressed in his actual foreign policy.

For those unfamiliar with libertarianism, libertarians tend to be anti-war, or at least anti-interventionist. In fact, their entire philosophy is based on opposing aggression and the initiation of force as the founding principle that public policy stances spring from. Their foreign policy is the polar opposite of the Bush/Obama/Graham foreign policy that has defined the War on Terrorism. The only real thing separating them from pure pacifists is a belief in the right of self-defense.

For those who may have slept through Obama’s eight years, here are some highlights:

– He inherited two wars from his predecessor that he campaigned on ending.
– He ended neither, and added another five wars to the total.
– He armed “rebel” groups linked to ISIS and al Qaeda, not to mention Mexican drug cartels.
– He violated the War Powers Act in Libya, which lead to literal open air slave markets.
– His administration is best known for it’s drone warfare program which was used for targeted assassinations, including of American citizens without charge or trial, throughout the world while claiming there was no geographical limit to the war on terrorism.

In short, he was certainly the strongest Presidential proponent of war in my lifetime through his actions, regardless of what flowery words were used in his 2008 campaign to hoodwink his followers. I’ll admit that he even had me fooled at the time. I remember thinking on election night that “well, at least he’ll be better than Bush on the whole warmongery thing”. I was much more naïve last decade. He wasted no time in proving the hopeful wrong.

I’m struggling to figure out his Orwellian lexicon here, but in Lindsey Graham world, it seems that war-mongering = libertarian and funding = ignoring. By extension, it’s possible he now identifies as a libertarian, and possibly set to receive a Nobel peace prize for his tireless work on foreign affairs as a “dove” and “hippy”. I mean… it seemed to work well enough for Bill Weld to self-identify… so well that he became a vice Presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, so why not just throw out the meaning of words and roll with it?

Maybe he actually uses words with accepted meanings in his second half, though, and he’ll clear it all up. “If ignoring radical Islam made America safe, there would NOT have been a 9/11.” Wow… he’s really committed to his confusion, I guess.

He seems to be implying that we were… ignoring radical Islam before 9/11, and that our… inactive(?) foreign policy lead to 9/11. He didn’t enter the Senate until 2003, and maybe he just wasn’t paying much attention when he was in the House. So maybe he could use a refresher on just how our foreign policy contributed to 9/11.

The group that attacked us grew out of the Mujahideen – a group funded, armed, and trained by our government. Specifically, they were trained in how to take on a much larger enemy with advantages in money, manpower, and technology by using guerrilla warfare tactics and drawing them in to an unwinnable quagmire that could bleed their economy and resolve. Eventually, bin Laden would talk openly of his strategy being to bring Americans to Afghanistan to “bleed them to the point of bankruptcy” in a long war of attrition.

The individuals that attacked us, including Osama bin Laden, came from Saudi Arabia. A nation ruled by a theocratic absolute monarchy, that exports Wahhabism and finances terrorism abroad while oppressing it’s people at home. After the first gulf war, our troops set up permanent bases after HW promised King Fahd we’d leave once Iraq was dealt with.

Many people in the region see the House of Saud as remaining in power primarily due to American support and influence. To many, this presence is particularly odious because Saudi Arabia hosts Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites of Islam. In Osama bin Laden’s first fatwa against the US, this was the primary complaint, and it was actually titled “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places”.

Additional rationales had been given over time, including in his second fatwa, that fall under a belief that American foreign policy has been muscular rather than Graham’s fantasy realm of inactivity. The rationale being that our foreign policy had oppressed, killed, and otherwise harmed Muslims in the Middle East. In the words of CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, “They hate us for what we do, not who we are”.

Perhaps Lindsey Graham ignored radical Islam prior to becoming a neoconservative. But the US government did not. Instead, it funded it, and when it seemed to suit our purposes, encouraged it.

There’s only so much to be gleaned by a tweet, or two short sentences anywhere. This all could be some kind of mistaken autocorrect. But it seems to flow from and highlight Graham’s overall misunderstanding of the world. A misunderstanding that far too many neoconservatives seem to take seriously despite all the historical evidence and common sense stacked up against them.

Image: Michael Vadon

The post Lindsey Graham Attacks “Obama-libertarian Foreign Policy” appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.