FrankRep
01-18-2010, 11:54 AM
It is amazing that when western governments, including our own, talk about what is best for the people, it is sold under the banner of capitalism but ends up being a monopoly for the elite and socialist control over the people including foreign policy failure like the war in Afghanistan. by Art Thompson
The State Department: "Epic Fail" (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5857-the-state-department-qepic-failq)
Art Thompson | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
18 January 2010
American citizens and armed forces are always given plausible reasons for the actions of our State Department and for our various armed incursions into countries around the world. It usually takes a little time before people start to ask questions about what is really going on.
First, the people who have run the State Department for years are not stupid, nor are they ignorant. Yet they seemingly make some very stupid decisions, and this has been going on for decades.
Second, when we expend the purse of the United States and the blood of our fighting men, the end result is far too often to the benefit of those who either are our enemy or turn into our enemy later on.
Third, we have a bad habit of training and arming “friends” who later turn out to be enemies and provide another excuse for future wars. Examples abound, such as Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and many more.
Fourth, these cannot be accidents. It’s happened so often, even since World War II, that only a fool would attribute our foreign policy failures to chance.
Now we have the same situation in Afghanistan, where history is repeating itself. But is it history or something else?
We are told that one of the reasons that we are in Afghanistan is to stop the traffic of opium and heroin to the world, yet we receive reports that the poppy crop (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8319249.stm) there is still flourishing and has even reached new records in some of the years we have been involved there.
In fact, the so-called War on Drugs is the longest combat war in the history of the United States. We hope it does not match the duration of the Hundred Years’ War (http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/hundred_years_war.html) of Europe.
With all the treasure expended, and the placement of our agents and soldiers in harm’s way, are we winning this war or just puttering along? Where in the United States, for instance, has the traffic of drugs stopped for even 24 hours as a result of this war? We do not blame the lower level personnel involved in this “war,” but we have to ask serious questions about how serious the government in Washington is or is there another agenda hidden from the American people?
Likewise, we see the situation in Afghanistan where the enemies of our armed forces are the same people that Secretary of War Gates helped as a CIA operative during the Russian occupation of that unfortunate country. They are now our enemy.
Now we see that our army is protecting the roads into the Aynak copper reserves. This copper mining development has fallen into the hands of the Chinese communists. It is substantial. We wonder who will get the vast reserves of oil, natural gas, and iron that exist in Afghanistan.
Of this, writing in Foreign Policy (http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/30/making_the_world_safe_for_chinese_investment), Stephen M. Walt quipped: “While we've been running around playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban and ‘investing’ billions each year in the corrupt Karzai government, China has been investing in things that might actually be of some value, like a big copper mine.”
While Walt notes that “it's not like U.S. troops are ‘guarding’ China's investments,” there has nevertheless been what amounts to a “tacit division of labor going on” in which he says, quoting a New York Times article, "American troops have helped make Afghanistan safe for Chinese investment."
The same thing has also happened in Iraq. We are leaving that area with a government that is joined at the hip with Iran and everyone else reaping the benefit of what is jokingly called capitalism.
It is amazing that when western governments, including our own, talk about what is best for the people, it is sold under the banner of capitalism but ends up being a monopoly for the elite and socialist control over the people.
Every decision by our State Department comes back to haunt us in the long run. This is particularly true when it comes to our policies on immigration -- or what some may say is our lack of a policy. But even the lack of a policy is a policy in itself.
Illegal immigration is a serious problem. Legalizing the illegal will not change the havoc that this immigration has caused any more than decriminalizing crime will make it go away.
In the case of our State Department, they have exacerbated the problem of massive illegal immigration with massive legal immigration. This has been done by not only accepting refugees from around the world, including the nations we are at war with, such as Iraq, but from disaster areas such as just happened in Haiti.
We have no problem with the idea of immigration or immigrants, as long as it is done at a moderate level and there is no burden placed on the American taxpayer. However, these immigrants have been subsidized since they have no jobs, housing, or medical care. They have been brought in on American aircraft and resettled all over the country, putting stresses on not only the immigrant populations themselves, but also on the host communities.
The problems that have come about and will ensue as a result of illegal and legal immigration are obvious to anyone taking a look at the situation and drawing out the lines. There can be no question that it will, in the long run, cause tremendous strain on local community governments, change local voting demographics, and cause religious and cultural problems leading to a Balkanization of America.
We are already seeing that in some communities immigrants are not assimilating and have their own publicly supported schools since they do not want their children to mix with American children. Minnesota alone has 30 such schools among the Somalis and Hmong.
These problems are not unknown to those in the State Department who have formulated these policies. Again, they are not stupid, or ignorant, nor are these things a result of accidents.
Our own State Department is at war, more with the American people than those they profess to be fighting overseas.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5857-the-state-department-qepic-failq
The State Department: "Epic Fail" (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5857-the-state-department-qepic-failq)
Art Thompson | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
18 January 2010
American citizens and armed forces are always given plausible reasons for the actions of our State Department and for our various armed incursions into countries around the world. It usually takes a little time before people start to ask questions about what is really going on.
First, the people who have run the State Department for years are not stupid, nor are they ignorant. Yet they seemingly make some very stupid decisions, and this has been going on for decades.
Second, when we expend the purse of the United States and the blood of our fighting men, the end result is far too often to the benefit of those who either are our enemy or turn into our enemy later on.
Third, we have a bad habit of training and arming “friends” who later turn out to be enemies and provide another excuse for future wars. Examples abound, such as Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and many more.
Fourth, these cannot be accidents. It’s happened so often, even since World War II, that only a fool would attribute our foreign policy failures to chance.
Now we have the same situation in Afghanistan, where history is repeating itself. But is it history or something else?
We are told that one of the reasons that we are in Afghanistan is to stop the traffic of opium and heroin to the world, yet we receive reports that the poppy crop (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8319249.stm) there is still flourishing and has even reached new records in some of the years we have been involved there.
In fact, the so-called War on Drugs is the longest combat war in the history of the United States. We hope it does not match the duration of the Hundred Years’ War (http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/hundred_years_war.html) of Europe.
With all the treasure expended, and the placement of our agents and soldiers in harm’s way, are we winning this war or just puttering along? Where in the United States, for instance, has the traffic of drugs stopped for even 24 hours as a result of this war? We do not blame the lower level personnel involved in this “war,” but we have to ask serious questions about how serious the government in Washington is or is there another agenda hidden from the American people?
Likewise, we see the situation in Afghanistan where the enemies of our armed forces are the same people that Secretary of War Gates helped as a CIA operative during the Russian occupation of that unfortunate country. They are now our enemy.
Now we see that our army is protecting the roads into the Aynak copper reserves. This copper mining development has fallen into the hands of the Chinese communists. It is substantial. We wonder who will get the vast reserves of oil, natural gas, and iron that exist in Afghanistan.
Of this, writing in Foreign Policy (http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/30/making_the_world_safe_for_chinese_investment), Stephen M. Walt quipped: “While we've been running around playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban and ‘investing’ billions each year in the corrupt Karzai government, China has been investing in things that might actually be of some value, like a big copper mine.”
While Walt notes that “it's not like U.S. troops are ‘guarding’ China's investments,” there has nevertheless been what amounts to a “tacit division of labor going on” in which he says, quoting a New York Times article, "American troops have helped make Afghanistan safe for Chinese investment."
The same thing has also happened in Iraq. We are leaving that area with a government that is joined at the hip with Iran and everyone else reaping the benefit of what is jokingly called capitalism.
It is amazing that when western governments, including our own, talk about what is best for the people, it is sold under the banner of capitalism but ends up being a monopoly for the elite and socialist control over the people.
Every decision by our State Department comes back to haunt us in the long run. This is particularly true when it comes to our policies on immigration -- or what some may say is our lack of a policy. But even the lack of a policy is a policy in itself.
Illegal immigration is a serious problem. Legalizing the illegal will not change the havoc that this immigration has caused any more than decriminalizing crime will make it go away.
In the case of our State Department, they have exacerbated the problem of massive illegal immigration with massive legal immigration. This has been done by not only accepting refugees from around the world, including the nations we are at war with, such as Iraq, but from disaster areas such as just happened in Haiti.
We have no problem with the idea of immigration or immigrants, as long as it is done at a moderate level and there is no burden placed on the American taxpayer. However, these immigrants have been subsidized since they have no jobs, housing, or medical care. They have been brought in on American aircraft and resettled all over the country, putting stresses on not only the immigrant populations themselves, but also on the host communities.
The problems that have come about and will ensue as a result of illegal and legal immigration are obvious to anyone taking a look at the situation and drawing out the lines. There can be no question that it will, in the long run, cause tremendous strain on local community governments, change local voting demographics, and cause religious and cultural problems leading to a Balkanization of America.
We are already seeing that in some communities immigrants are not assimilating and have their own publicly supported schools since they do not want their children to mix with American children. Minnesota alone has 30 such schools among the Somalis and Hmong.
These problems are not unknown to those in the State Department who have formulated these policies. Again, they are not stupid, or ignorant, nor are these things a result of accidents.
Our own State Department is at war, more with the American people than those they profess to be fighting overseas.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5857-the-state-department-qepic-failq