Justin Raimondo: Conservatives Challenge Obama Over Libya

[low preference guy]

Interesting article.


Indeed, the freshmen tea partiers and Ron Paul supporters aren’t the only ones questioning the Libya "rescue" operation. Haley Barbour, a pillar of the Republican establishment of some considerable girth and weight, is not only asking "What are we doing in Libya?" but is also questioning our ten-year Afghan crusade, and wondering aloud why we can’t cut our bloated military budget. Indeed, Tim Pawlenty, the neocons’ favorite GOP presidential candidate (to date), was quick to attack Barbour for entertaining such heresy.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/03/24/conservatives-challenge-obama-over-libya/

[sailingaway]

Rand is on this week w/ Rumsfield this weekend. Should be interesting.

[Anti Federalist]

JR almost always manages to hit it out of the park.


Ever since the Kosovo war – indeed, since this web site’s very inception – Antiwar.com has been plugging away at the conservative pro-war consensus as an ideological distortion, and pointing to an alternative view which holds that limited government has to mean limited involvement in the affairs of other nations. You can’t have a Republic and have an Empire at the same time. You can’t hope to cut back the power of government if that government must have the funding and the executive flexibility to send US troops anywhere in the world without a by your leave either to Congress or to the long-oppressed taxpayers who are footing the bill.


That message is finally beginning to sink in. No, we aren’t taking exclusive credit for this sudden awakening: it’s the result of years of work by many people on many different levels, but Antiwar.com has, indeed, been a major factor in this remarkable shift, and I don’t mind saying so.


Let David Weigel, the turncoat former Kochtopus employee who smeared Ron Paul as a "racist," cite the irrelevant Alan West all he wants: he and his newfound "progressive" buddies have an interest in denying the reality of a new movement on the right that opposes foreign meddling by the US government as well as Washington’s meddling with our healthcare. Having defected from Team Red to Team Blue, Weigel makes a living off the discredited and archaic "left-right" paradigm, which insists that everyone on the right is a Neanderthalish rube just itching to get him some Muslim scalps: citing him hardly helps Larison’s case.


The constitutionalist-libertarian movement initially energized by Ron Paul’s heroic efforts has grown well beyond the organizational confines of Paul’s Campaign for Liberty and its growing and very active youth section, Young Americans for Liberty. A broad, grassroots movement has arisen that not only embraces the economics of freedom long championed by Rep. Paul, but also insists on the Paulian insight that our foreign policy of global intervention is an obstacle placed in the path of taking back our old Republic. Their horror at the presidential supremacism exhibited by President Obama as he goes to war without a vote in Congress is rooted in a principled opposition to Big Government per se, and in a recognition that imperialism is inherently hostile to their vision of a free America.

[Rothbardian Girl]

I sure hope Raimondo isn't falling for any sort of bait here. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but some of this opposition to "Obama's war" from the right smacks of mere pandering because they sense a shift in the country's mood, and because Obama has a D behind his name. Should we really be encouraged by these people? I'd like to see some of their voting records before I pass a judgment on them.