Tag: war

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies Popular The Draft

Daughter Draft

draft, registration, conscription, women, war

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” 

For years, the Selective Service System — the friendly folks who bring us the military draft — used the above slogan to portray registering for the draft as a rite of manhood. 

If macho draft registration is now expanded to women, perhaps the slogan will change to: “Men and women have to do what they’re told — equally.” That’s where the issue is headed: to equality. Equality before the law is important, sure — but we don’t want equal servitude. Equal freedom is better.

“It appears that, for the most part, expanding registration for the draft to include women would enhance further the benefits presently associated with the Selective Service System,” stated a Pentagon report to Congress recommending the mandatory registration of women.

What benefits are those?

Spending $25 million each year on a Washington bureaucracy to keep a woefully inaccurate and incomplete list of young people between 18 and 25 years of age for a possible future military draft doesn’t hold any benefit for me. 

If a draft were conducted, many observers believe the Selective Service would throw away its coerced list of young people (gathered by threatening and punishing and imprisoning young people*) and simply purchase a list or lists on the open list market.

But there is no need for conscription. Never has been. Citizens in these United States have always stepped forward. Today, the All Volunteer Force is the best military in the world. 

Most of all, conscription is anathema to the idea of individual liberty. We can and will defend ourselves, but without registering or forcing our daughters into the military. 

Or our sons. 

Ending registration, forswearing conscription, that’s equal freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* I know, I was one of those prosecuted back in the 1980s. 

 

Additional Reading:

Common Sense: For Genderless Freedom

Common Sense: Needless List?

Townhall: Obama’s New Rite

Common Sense: Equal or Free?

Common Sense: Junk the Law

Townhall: Draft the Congress and Leave My Kid Alone

Townhall: Americans Gung-​Ho to Draft Congress

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Asleep at the Constitution

Niger, war, Congress, Sen. Lindsey Graham, responsibility,

Are we at war in Niger, too? Do our “representatives” in Congress know?

The answer to the first question is, obviously, yes. The answer to the second is, admittedly, no. 

Yesterday, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham (R‑S.C.) what the four U.S. soldiers ambushed and killed weeks ago were doing in Niger. “I can say this to the families,” Sen. Graham offered, “they were there to defend America,” before conceding that, “[W]e don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world militarily and what we’re doing.”

Oh.

Graham acknowledged he had been unaware U.S. military forces were even in the African country. And still hasn’t “been briefed.” Later in the program, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑N.Y.) also confessed his profound ignorance … before reading in the newspaper about the deaths of four soldiers there. 

Still, Sen. Graham expressed great hope that Sen. John McCain (R‑Ariz.) could “create a new system” to ensure that “if somebody gets killed there, that we won’t find out about it in the paper.”

Huh?

Doesn’t Congress’s job description include something about debating and deciding on policies, providing funding, and checking executive power?

Not, surely, cuddling in ignorance and burping up pablum.

Cradled in their long-​term careers, our congressional delegates neither debate, deliberate, nor oversee much of anything.

In any case, we can be sure that Congress’s role in our constitutional system is not to scoop reporters to war news.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

We Are At War — So What Else Is New?

Russia, war, hack, propaganda, Morgan Freeman, video

As if on some hellish, punitive treadmill, we keep “experiencing” the last federal election, over and over. 

Hillary Clinton, who didn’t get a majority of all votes and who lost in the Electoral College, keeps on grinding through her long list of people who failed her. 

Her nuttiest charge, that “Russia ‘Hacked’ the election,” reached its apogee, last week, in the bizarre video featuring Morgan Freeman. The actor, who’s played both the President and God, intones that “We have been attacked; we are at war.” 

Financed by a cobbled-​together Committee to Investigate Russia, the notion seems to be: stretch Hillary Clinton’s conspiracy theory into the talking points for . . . a coup d’état.

Congress is, of course, investigating “what Russia did.” 

Unearthed, so far? Not much. 

As James Freeman wrote, in The Wall Street Journal, considering the paltry Russian presence on Facebook, “if Russian disinformation managed to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential contest, the Kremlin must have created the most influential advertising in the history of marketing.” 

And when you add in the FBI’s multiple FISA requests to bug Trump’s campaign manager, it’s hard not to come to this conclusion: it was not Trump, but the Deep State that colluded with the Russians.

The Committee/​Freeman video talks about “using social media to present propaganda and false information,” which puts the “hack” on the level of ideas — not real manipulation. Propaganda from the Kremlin is not appreciably different from propaganda from Clinton or Trump. 

Lies were everywhere, and if “false information” were worth declaring war over, the American people would have revolted against Washington, D.C., decades ago.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies

Of Course, You Know, This Means War

Afghanistan, war, Trump, foreign policy, defense, middle east, east asia

When Steve Bannon was booted out of the White House, my thoughts turned immediately to war. As I wrote in frustration on Friday,

Bannon’s departure probably means the slim chance that the US might withdraw from “our” open-​ended, never-​ending occupation of Afghanistan has been foreclosed. 

If we don’t win the war by ushering in a completely transformed, modernized and westernized Afghanistan, at least our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, etc., etc., will each have. their turn.

Of course, if the fabled “Graveyard of Empires” continues to work its historic magic, maybe future generations won’t face that burden: the United States could fall … as a worldwide imperial presence. And, if our global military archipelago fails — for, say, want of wealth to throw overseas — do we have any reason to believe that our republic would bounce back?

There remains more than enough reason to work for foreign policy sanity.

Prior to his evening national address on the day of the eclipse, Trump explained what he intends to do in Afghanistan — send 4,000 more troops.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon’s door-​slapped rump did not dissuade him from tweeting out what he intends to do “on Capitol Hills, in the media, and in corporate America”:

If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents.…

Call this the Bugs Bunny Policy: “Of course, you know, this means war!”

And considering the promises made in the President’s speech, we can amend that to “of course, this means never-​ending war.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Syria & Sanity

TulsiGabbard, Democrat, Syria, arms, rebels, war, Obama, Trump, Russia

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert* program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-​Assad,” the Washington Post first reported last week, immediately adding that it was “a move long sought by Russia.”

This insinuation that the policy change was simply a concession to Russia belies the recent history of U.S. involvement — and failure — in Syria. 

President Barack Obama had intervened.

Very ineffectively.

“Calling” for regime change. 

In 2012, Reuters disclosed that the president had signed “a secret* order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-​Assad and his government.” In 2013, after accusing the Assad regime of using chemical weapons, Obama announced the U.S. would provide direct military aid to rebel groups. 

But Obama’s execution seemed more designed to make it look like the U.S. was trying really hard than actually toppling Mr. Assad.** 

This may have been a good thing, though, seeing that some of the best-​organized rebel groups in Syria are aligned with al-​Qaeda and ISIS. 

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii) has introduced “The Stop Arming Terrorists Act”*** to prevent American weaponry and material from being handed to terrorists. She cheered Trump’s move, explaining to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that “providing direct and indirect” aid to the “very same terrorist group that attacked us on 9/​11” made no sense.

Also lacking in sense is the Obama Administrations claim that the congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which specifically authorizes action against al-​Qaeda, also covered the attack upon Assad’s regime. Surely arming rebel groups aligned with al-​Qaeda couldn’t be justified under such an AUMF.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was not very covert. And not secret. 

** In 2015, the Administration abandoned a separate $500 million program to put together a moderate rebel force opposed to both ISIS and the Syrian Government of Basher al-​Assad after training only 4 or 5 soldiers. The BBC suggested much of the problem was indecisiveness, observing that, “US President Barack Obama never seemed to want a train-​and-​equip programme for Syrian rebels.”

*** The Senate bill is SB 532, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky).

Printable PDF

 

Categories
Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

A Threat We Can’t Refuse

NATO, Angela Merkel, Germany, Europe, Trump, Donald Trump, Russia, defense, war

“Recent days have shown me that the times when we could rely completely on others are over to a certain extent,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told folks in a Munich beer hall last Sunday. “We also know that we Europeans must really take our destiny,” she said, on the heels of the NATO and G7 meetings, “into our own hands.”

Merkel may have designed her comments to elicit shock and dismay among the inhabitants of America. But my shock is that anyone would find anything shocking, at all.*

Merkel’s responding, of course, to President Donald Trump’s censure of European NATO members for not ponying up to their treaty obligations.** This is widely whispered as … rude. Mustn’t upset Germany and other allies, even if only five of NATO’s 28 nations have reached the agreed-​upon two-​percent of GDP goal.

The received wisdom seems to be: don’t embarrass the freeloaders.

I’m often not copacetic with Mr. Trump’s demeanor. But the “threat” that U.S. soldiers might somehow not be permitted to shed their blood to defend deadbeat countries against a feared Russian attack is … just not all that threatening. 

What’s so scary about self-reliance?

It was also announced that German security agencies won’t share intelligence with the U.S. regarding alleged Russian interference in their upcoming election. 

This, too, we can survive.

But, gee whiz, I hope we aren’t banned from the cool countries’ lunch table at the cafeteria in the brand new $1.23 billion NATO headquarters — for which the U.S. pays a disproportionately high 22 percent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* In my judgment, Merkel should have jettisoned “to a certain extent” and put a period after “over.”
** It’s worth noting that Trump is not the first president to marshal this complaint.

Printable PDF