Iran Incident an Excuse for War-Welfare State (Tinfoil Paul Promotion)

When U.S. intelligence agencies recently surprised the nation with their National Intelligence Estimate announcement that Iran had ceased its nuclear-weapons program several years ago, many people, including ardent supporters of the president, felt that the announcement put to rest any chance of a war against Iran.

Not so fast! After all, did the disintegration of the WMD rationale for invading Iraq dissuade the interventionists from continuing their invasion of Iraq and occupying the country and continuing to kill Iraqis for several years after that?

The incident in the Gulf of Tonkin — excuse me, Gulf of Hormuz — this past week confirms how easy it is for an American ruler to send the entire nation into war, especially given that he is now permitted to ignore the constitutional provision requiring a congressional declaration of war. If the captains of those U.S. battleships and destroyers had blown those Iranian speedboats out of the water, one can already hear Bush and Cheney proclaiming, “We’ve been attacked! We’ve been attacked! The Department of Defense is responding by defending our nation from this attack by bombing Iran. Support the troops. God bless America!”

Question: If China, Iran, and Venezuela sent a fleet of warships into the Gulf of Mexico for joint war games, how would U.S. officials respond? Wouldn’t they go ape?

Question: What’s the point of sending a fleet of battleships and destroyers into the Middle East if it’s not to poke hornets’ nests? Surely, U.S. officials aren’t claiming the Muslims are getting ready to board millions of troops onto tens of thousands of Muslim naval vessels in preparation for an imminent invasion of the United States.

Of course, in the old days, when the president was expected to comply with the Constitution, the president would have to go to Congress, which would decide whether such an incident warranted going to war against a nation. Today, the Decider decides whether to declare war, no matter what the Constitution says. Poking hornets’ nests can play an important role in that process.

Amidst all the political fanfare about “change,” if anyone was hoping for a change away from the machismo, militarism, and empire that has held our nation in its grip, last night’s Republican presidential debate confirmed that change isn’t going to come from that direction (Ron Paul excepted, of course).

What was fascinating was watching how conflicted these people are within their own minds. They first point out that yes, America is faced with economic problems. They then point out that it’s all because Washington, D.C., is “broken” and that each of them is the man who can finally fix the nation’s capital. They then say that the U.S. should continue expanding its overseas empire, especially in the Middle East. Of course, no department or agency of the federal government should be abolished.

It’s all just a mishmash of thinking that boils down to this: “Give the power of the welfare-warfare state to me. Put your faith in me.”

They just don’t get it — or maybe they do. The problem is not that Washington, D.C., is broken. It’s that their beloved welfare-warfare philosophy is broken and bankrupt in every sense of the term — morally, financially, and economically. The dollar, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, Iraq, immigration, trade, foreign policy, housing, drug war — all broken and bankrupt. After decades of welfare-warfare failure and catastrophe, the chickens are finally coming home to roost.

And all these people can do is summon the ghost of Ronald Reagan and call for “tax cuts,” no matter how much the Federal Reserve must continue to debase the dollar to finance the ever-increasing debt to pay the ever-increasing expenses of this federal monstrosity.

One of the weirdest parts of the debate came when they were praising Ronald Reagan’s “defense” buildup, which, they said, brought down the Soviet Union. Yeah, never mind that it was out-of-control government spending that brought down the Soviet Union. That just can’t happen to the U.S. Empire. After all, we’ll just continue borrowing the money from the Chinese communists!

One amusing moment in the debate was when Paul pointed out (I’m paraphrasing): “Let me see if I understand this correctly. You people want to go out and borrow millions of dollars from the Chinese communists in order to give the money to the unelected dictator of Pakistan while you’re continuing to kill people in Iraq for the sake of democracy.”

What was amazing was that you could tell from the faces of the other candidates that they didn’t see anything odd about any of that.

If America continues to move in the same direction of militarism, interventionism, war, and welfarism and if all this pushes our nation into a perfect storm of financial, monetary, and economic crises, combined with lots of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers as well as victims of terrorist blowback, Americans will be left with a sad lament: “If only we had listened to the libertarians rather than the welfare-warfare statists who took us down this road.”

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

This really made me think.

As a Ron Paul supporter, that must be a new experience. Have you ever heard of the Al Qaeda plot uncovered by Jordanian Intelligence that would have detonated some 20 tons of sarin and 17 tons of explosives in Amman back in '04? The sarin gas was determined to have originated from Iraqi stockpiles smuggled into Syria. How about Project Harmony, ever hear of that? Does Site 555 at Al Fajr in Iraq ring a bell? As a Paulistinian, you likely believe all of those were made up by the CIA out of whole cloth, right?

How about the very bellicose statements from the Iranian regime about nuking Israel? That probably would'nt bother you, considering the nature of "PLO" Paul's supporters, but, personally, I would trade the nation of Israel for the whole lot of the Arab world, any day.

The author of this piece is just repeating discredited MSM talking points. Your parrot-like affirmation of them indicates just how ill informed you are, just like your detestible hero, the racist, Jew-hating Ron Paul.

On Illegal Immigration and Border Security

Illegal immigration is on the forefront of many Americans’ minds lately and with good reason. The Center for Immigration Studies has recently reported that our immigrant population is now 37 million, up from 27 million in 1997. 1 in 3 of these immigrants are here illegally. We have a problem that has exploded in the last 10 years with no appreciable change in border security since September 11 when we were supposed to take a hard look at the problem.

We have security issues at home and our resources are running thin. Our education system is stretched, and immigration accounts for virtually all the national increase in public school enrollment in the last 2 decades. There is a worker present in 78% of immigrant households using at least one major welfare program, according to the same study. It’s no surprise then that often times these immigrants can afford to work for lower wages. They are subsidized by our government to do so.

Right now we are subsidizing a lot of illegal immigration with our robust social programs and it is an outrage that instead of coming to the United States as a land of opportunity, many come for the security guaranteed by government forced transfer payments through our welfare system. I have opposed giving federal assistance to illegal immigrants and have introduced legislation that ends this practice. In the last major House-passed immigration bill I attempted to introduce an amendment that would make illegal immigrants ineligible for any federal assistance. Unfortunately, that amendment was ruled “not relevant” to immigration reform. I believe it is very relevant to taxpayers, however, who are being taken advantage of through the welfare system. Illegal immigrants should never be eligible for public schooling, social security checks, welfare checks, free healthcare, food stamps, or any other form government assistance.

The anchor baby phenomenon has also been very problematic. Simply being born on US soil to illegal immigrant parents should not trigger automatic citizenship. This encourages many dangerous behaviors and there are many unintended consequences as a result of this blanket policy. I am against amnesty and I have introduced an amendment to the Constitution (H.J. Res 46) which will end this form of amnesty.

I have also supported the strengthening our border and increasing the number of border patrol agents. It is an outrage that our best trained border guards are sent to Iraq instead of guarding our borders. For national security, we need to give more attention to our own border which is being illegally breached every day, and yet the government shirks one of its few constitutionally mandated duties, namely to defend this country. Citizens lose twice with our current insecure border situation – we don’t have the protection we should have, and then taxpayers have to deal with the fallout in the form of overstretched public resources and loss of jobs.

The anger is understandable when it comes to illegal immigration and the problems with our borders. I will continue to fight in Congress for more effective ways to address these issues in keeping with the Constitutional mandate to protect America.

Congressman Ron Paul

You seem somewhat ill informed but I will give the time it takes me to give you this statement of Dr. Pauls. If you wish to appear more informed on Dr. Pauls positions you might read some more and you might start here

http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/index.php

You may now proceed with more juvenile ranting and name calling.

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