American Foreign Policy: Clear as Mud

Once again, I apologize for my lack of posts. I've been on vacation in Alaska, Montana, and a few other places for the past month with limited time and internet capabilities. I have, nonetheless, been more or less keeping abreast of current events even though I haven't had the opportunity to write more than a paragraph on Facebook every once in awhile about the #facepalm inducing news bit du jour.

The one topic that I keep coming back to is the idiocy of our foreign policy. I don't know how much clearer it could be about how muddy and confused our actions abroad actually are. A year ago we were talking about arming and funding some so-called "moderate" rebels in their fight against Assad, supposedly the next Hitler in the making and the Emmanuel Goldstein of the day that our dear leaders wanted us to direct our 2 minutes of hate toward at that time.

 Of course, we knew then that it was folly to arm these people despite the screeches from the Usual Suspects in Congress and our news media. Independent journalist Ben Swann did an in-depth look at who these rebels are that have supposedly been vetted and approved to receive US arms. He documented before any other major news network the arming of the "moderate" FSA rebels who then would take their US supplied arms and defect to the even more radical Al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria, who were also fighting to oust Assad. In other words, we were on the same side as al-Qaeda, the same people who we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting in Afghanistan and elsewhere, in their fight to oust Syrian leader Assad. I documented this unfortunate turn of events as it was happening when I first started this blog. To say that this whole quagmire in Syria was entirely predictable is an understatement.

Now we're trying to fight a multi-front war against ISIS and the Assad regime, who is and has been fighting these uber-radicals while we were trying to take him down last year. To be clear, we're trying to partner with the same guy who was last year's Hitler to take out this year's Hitler before we eventually get back to ousting last year's Hitler again. Clear as mud, right?

But, but, ISIS is an existential threat to the US so we have to go to war this time or face being obliterated! Really? Let's put the emotion, propaganda, and hyperbole aside for a minute and get rational about this. Bruce Fein came out with an excellent piece not too long ago spelling out exactly what kind of threat ISIS is to the US.

"From President Obama on the left to Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham on the right, we are absurdly told that ISIS is a clear and present danger to Americans at home, including the installation of a caliphate to cram sharia law down our throats. Any high school student who made such an hallucinogenic assertion would receive a flunking grade. ISIS‘ military capability is at most an ink blot compared to the United States.

 We have approximately 300 deployable battlefield ships — including aircraft carriers and submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, complemented by 3,700 naval aircraft. ISIS has none. The U.S. Air Force can field approximately 6,000 aircraft with a capability of dropping nuclear bombs. ISIS has no aircraft. The United States possesses approximately 4,800 nuclear warheads. ISIS has none. The number of military personnel in the U.S. armed forces approximates 1.4 million. ISIS adherents approximate 15,000, although the number is soft. There is no agreed understanding of the earmarks of an ISIS member. The United States sports 450 active ballistic missiles. ISIS has none. The annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense approximates $640 billion. ISIS‘ annual revenues approximate $2 billion. The U.S. population approximates 320 million. The number of persons under ISIS control approximates 2.8 million. The United States occupies 3,717, 813 square miles. ISIS controls 13,000 square miles. The United States has been engaged in perpetual global warfare since 9/11, or 13 years. ISIS is 3 years old."

 Are we really terrified of being wiped out and our political system overtaken by a group of ragtag cave dwellers who have no air force, no navy, and little funding to speak of in comparison to the US? We have enough nuclear fire power to destroy the world three times over and yet we claim to be threatened by these guys? Are they brutal and inhumane in their tactics? Unequivocally, yes. But are they an existential threat to the US that demands we take immediate action in defiance of US and international law? Absolutely not.

But, but, 9/11! Oh yes. How could we forget The Incident That Justifies the Shredding of the Constitution and All Foreign Policy Actions Everywhere Abroad For Ever and Ever Amen? A commonly heard defense of our foreign policy for the last 13 years and even now for our current undertaking is that they attacked us first so we have every justification to go after them for what they did to us.

Yes, the loss of 3,000 lives on American soil is and was a national tragedy. We set out to get the perpetrators of that tragedy, who we were told was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. We were then lied into another war with Iraq. We killed Saddam Hussein and finally nailed bin Laden. After funding and training the Iraqi army for several years, we were told "Mission Accomplished" for a second time. In the meantime, we killed several hundred thousand Iraqis (estimates wildly vary with upper estimates above a million but I think we can safely split the difference between a million and only a couple hundred thousand).

Please explain to me how their killing of 3000 of our citizens is an atrocity but our killing several hundred thousand people spread out over several countries is somehow ok? Given the level of anger still evidenced by many over the senseless murder of 3000 Americans over 13 years ago, can you not imagine the anger these Middle Easterners feel towards us over the murder of millions of their brothers, sisters, fathers, daughters, and sons over the past few decades? Can you imagine if these radicals went on air and said that the death of 500,000 Americans was "worth it" to advance their cause like Madeleine Albright so cavalierly declared back in the 90s after US sanctions were found to have been responsible for the deaths of almost 500,000 Iraqi children? If we are still incensed over the deaths of 3000 innocent Americans 13 years ago, can we not take a moment to imagine the depths of their anger and grief over the deaths of over 100 times as many people? And yet our only solution to improve the situation and assuage the anger of a bunch of backward ass radicals with barely a pot to piss in let alone a substantial army that can do any sort of significant damage to the US homeland is to keep dropping more bombs on them? How in the world do we think that is going to solve anything? Violence begets violence. It works on a macro level every bit as much as it does on a micro level. In the eyes of our overlords, though, if it didn't work the first two times and 24 years we tried it, we just need to go on trying it again. Kind of like QE, but I digress...

Which brings me to my final point. Let us recall, and I know this is extremely unfashionable but I must point it out, that our Constitution places war-making powers explicitly in the hands of the US Congress. In other words, the president, despite being Commander-In-Chief cannot unilaterally decide to send us into battle based on his say-so alone.

However, we find ourselves in a situation, yet again, where our president, this time a Nobel Peace Prize winning Democrat, is unilaterally launching bombing attacks on sovereign nations without any sort of debate or authorization from Congress (of course, he did this with Libya as well but that was humanitarian, you see, and the Constitution has an exception for war-making powers if done for humanitarian reasons. It's right there next to the "muskets and hunting" clause of the 2nd amendment).

Oh the president believes he has authorization. He has brazenly asserted that the 2001 AUMF that authorized George W. Bush to go after those who perpetrated the attacks on 9/11 somehow also gives authorization to bomb ISIS in Syria and Iraq (again) for beheading some American journalists. This is flimsy because it's been well documented that ISIS was kicked out of al-Qaeda for being even too extreme for them. Additionally, with OBL dead and most of the other leaders of the al-Qaeda branches responsible for planning 9/11 dead or behind bars, trying to somehow tie ISIS into being perpetrators or associated forces of those responsible for 9/11 is nothing more than wishful thinking on the Obama administration's part.

Fortunately for Obama and his law-bending minions, the United States Congress is nothing but a bunch of spineless windbags who are more concerned about getting re-elected than, you know, upholding their oath to support and defend the US Constitution where it clearly states that it is up to them to give authority for the president to go to war, not vice versa. But getting re-elected in November is way more important than reconvening Congress to do the right thing and debate this supposed ISIS threat and decide on a plausible plan of action, if any, and allocate what funds they might want to defeating this threat. Blank checks and blanket authorizations all the way!

The hypocrisy of people on both sides of the aisle is as thick as mud. On the left, you have the same people who were marching in the streets by the thousands against Bush's illegal wars who are now cheerleading Obama's same antics. This, of course, could have been said for his equally illegal intervention in Libya but somehow when you bundle a war in the fuzzy blanket of "responsibility to protect" then liberals don't seem to mind. They chastised Bush for the debt incurred based on his illegal wars and yet won't utter a peep about the tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars a prolonged war against the shadowy enemy ISIS might incur. Interestingly, anytime I try and point these things out to liberals all I hear back is silence or a changing of the subject. I even had a friend bring up the tired and debunked "racist" epithet in response to an article I posted from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. I swiftly replied, "Yet strangely he's the only game in town that doesn't want to keep bombing brown people. Get a new argument." Yes, off in liberal la-la-land, the man who has bombed 7 countries, all of them in the Middle East and Africa, is a savior and the one who has decried every one of the bombings is somehow a racist.

Not to be one-sided about things, the right is rife with hypocrisy in this matter too, of course. They're the ones who scream and rant every time Obama takes unilateral action in domestic matters, bypassing Congress to write executive orders, or just ignoring the laws he doesn't want to enforce. They liken his presidency to a monarchy by referring to him as "King Obama". They like to think they're taking the high road by occasionally paying lip service to the Constitution every once in awhile, like in the case of Obamacare, but boy, when it comes to foreign policy, they have no problem with Obama, like his predecessor, playing judge, jury, and executioner. Naturally, they still criticize Obama, but not on Constitutional matters. No, for them he hasn't acted soon enough or decisively enough. He's "leading from behind". He's showing weakness to our enemies. All of a sudden, the Constitution goes out the window. Constitution? What Constitution? "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!", John McCain jokingly sung to the tune of the popular Beach Boys tune, Barbara Ann.

When this newest war blows up in our face down the road as it inevitably will, you'll get to watch the grand charade of our elected officials flood the airwaves and talk about the dodgy intelligence, the weak legal basis for going to war, how expensive the war has gotten, and feign anger at the administration's handling of the war. But just remember that when it mattered most, right now at the genesis of Iraq 3.0, they were all too happy to sit on the sidelines like it was a spectator sport and avoid their Constitutional responsibility to debate and authorize any action the president could or should take in response to this regional threat. That's our foreign policy in a nutshell: clear as mud.