Posted on 03/10/2008 7:40:44 AM PDT by tang0r
While it is true that the British and Kenyan militaries combined to defeat the Mau Mau during the Emergency of 1953-1957, within a few short years the insurgency started up again - and the Brits bailed out. Mau Mau icon Jomo Kenyatta became the first president of independent Kenya in 1963.
But otherwise, you make good points!
OK, this guy was making some valid points until I read the above nit whit statement. After that, I saw no point in continuing the article.
They were and they did (unfortunately some were Taft-esque Republicans.) Charles Lindbergh was one of the biggest voices on this. The difference is we learned from history (and also those voices were a small minority that people with long term vision ignored.)
You don’t have to invade EVERY country. After the first one, or maybe two, the other countries get the point and clean up their own mess. Elementary my dear!
LOL, he really is into himself isn't he. Sign of a Bircher-Libertarian- narcissism fed off overinflated vision of moral superiority. I believe Ayn Rand put it perfectly when she stated Libertarians (capital L- Bircher Party versus Objectivist libertarian (lowercase l)) were all theory with no teeth. To quote Mrs Rand:
Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to 'do something.' By 'ideological' (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the 'libertarian' hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and (hand) the victory to your enemies.[5]
For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called 'hippies of the right,' who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.[6]
http://www.payyourairshare.org/
It looks like they may even be owners of the Pay Your Air Share scam, or at least related to it. Yep, Rand had it right when she called them ‘hippies of the right’.
Matt Harrison - Founder / Executive Director
The whole thing is done by a bunch of college kids.
Responded on the article:
It is amazing how this author misses several major points.
1. America is at risk of more terrorist attacks - but not just from the Middle East
This makes the false assumption that if these ‘invasions’ never happened and we treated this simply as a police action, the risks and threats would have been reduced. We know from history, this is not true. We have a clear history of terrorist actions by the groups in question, and that history shows they are emboldened by emasculated action on our side. Bin Laden said himself he was encouraged by our running in Somalia after the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident. We can easily see that throughout history, unanswered actions have resulted in greater future attacks.
2. Democracy doesn’t stop terrorism, policemen do
Policemen never are the best responders to an act of war. Police actions respond to individual crimes committed by individual actors. When you have a multiple state (in nation or movement sense) action against another state or group of states, you are dealing with an act of war, and the solution is not to react on a case by case basis but to cut off the head of the aggressive party. As for the democracy statement, one only needs to look at history as a guide to show that democracy (by any democratic engine) always stops aggression (not just terrorism). States that trade goods don’t trade gunfire. At the onset of World War 2, we were faced with enemies who had a religious fanaticism to destroy their enemy by any means necessary. In the case of the Eastern front of the war, this enemy was willing to commit suicide in the act and saw civilians as legitimate primary targets of action. This was not just a nation fighting a nation, this was a deep religious action on their part. What happened within a few decades after that war ended? Democracy and capitalism moved in and instead of being an adversary, they are a strong, free ally. Every past opponent in which we encouraged democratic capitalism has become an ally.
I would go one step further to even submit to you that attempting to use police action where the military (then rebuilding into a democratic infrastructure) is necessary is what fosters terrorism because it leaves the opponent under a police state versus with a control over their own future.
3. Invasion doesn’t work
Simply put, history proves this wrong. Isolationism, historically, makes one a target as interests aren’t protected.
4. Winning hearts and minds requires living people
As Patton put it, when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will soon follow. But, to put a more current note on it, it depends on who you want to ‘win over’. You will never win the hearts and minds of the controllers. Did we want to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of our enemies in the past? No, we want to destroy our enemies. Only then, can those who live under the thumb of the enemy choose their own path. Without breaking Godwin’s law (because we are talking about historical context), we didn’t want to win Hitler’s heart and mind, we wanted his, and all like minded hearts and minds, dead or unable to continue their aggression against our allies and interests.
5. Yes, they hate our freedom - but they kill us for being over there
This entire paragraph has one major flaw- it gives the moral authority on where we should be to ‘Osama’ and basically says he is the final statement as to whom can be on the land. It doesn’t address the fact that in Saudi Arabia for example (as that was specifically where Osama’s declaration referenced) we were guests and allies of that government. He had no authority to speak over or for the land where we were. The other flaw in this is if you study the full set of declarations of the jihadists, ‘over there’ (land they consider their holy territory) covers all of the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Southern Europe. At what point do we draw the line and say they do not have the authority to say who can and cannot be ‘over there’ over whomever is the actual authority over the land in question.
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