This is from two weeks ago. As far as I have been able to determine, we missed it at the time. -Paulie.
Dear Friend of Liberty,
The long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been back in the news recently, and we just had the bizarre spectacle of the Republican National Committee Chairman saying he didn’t like Obama’s war in Afghanistan, while the DNC chastised him for failing to support the troops.
Here are ten reasons to end the wars now. I hope you’ll take a look at some of the links.
1. American military and contractor casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2. Iraqi and Afghanistan civilian and military casualties.
3. These wars are a tremendous waste of taxpayer money in a time of extreme deficits, high unemployment and a falling stock market.
4. Invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq feeds terrorism.
5. Osama Bin Laden and his co-conspirators who attacked the World Trade Center were Saudi Arabian.
6. As Congressman Ron Paul recently said: "In Afghanistan, we are fighting the Taliban, those dangerous people with guns defending their homeland. Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s."
7. Most Republicans in Congress now admit Iraq was a mistake.
8. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s comments show that even the hawkish Republican Party can’t support this war with a straight face.
9. As James Madison said, "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." (Witness the PATRIOT Act.)
10. The U.S. military has been in Iraq over seven years, and in Afghanistan almost nine years. It’s time to give peace a chance.
(Note, the LP doesn’t necessarily endorse the organizations linked above. We encourage you to research these issues for yourself.)
Sincerely,
Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee
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“AroundtheblockAFT”,
You have identified a problem.
What are the solutions you believe most likely to succeed in overcoming this problem?
I ask because your answers may prove fortuitous: The push to attack Iran has been renewed with some vigor, and it seems to many of us that the Federal government and its friendly media outlets are using a strategy strikingly similar to the one used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
I hope you have and take the time to read these two articles:
“Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?_r=2&ei=5090&en=196b27df83cc255c&ex=1366344000&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1208876518-Qp/QHUar+JHDHAazQ6hIYQ
and “Fourth Estate: Building A Media Agenda For War”
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2340
Regards,
Charles
Regards,
Charles
“a significant number of our fellow citizens believe(d) that there was a connection between the murderous attacks of September 11th, 2001 and Saddam Hussein/Iraq, as Mr. Capozzi reminds us.”
A significant number of our fellow citizens are uninformed, therefore stooges for whatever the Administration at the moment wants to have them acquiesce to. Same for all the Democrat senators who believed there were WMD in Iraq, not because they saw them or had independent intelligence sources, but because they read the same briefings that Bush, Cheney and Powell handed them from the CIA.
Mr. Sipos and Ms. Marby,
I especially agree with the point both of you have made that the September 11th attacks were not State-sponsored acts of terrorism initiated by Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Benedict can write on his own behalf, but I did not interpret his statement regarding the nationalities of the (majority of the) hijackers as a suggestion that we should have invaded their country (Saudi Arabia), but rather as counter-point to the oft-repeated claim that we must “fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”
Certainly a significant number of our fellow citizens believe(d) that there was a connection between the murderous attacks of September 11th, 2001 and Saddam Hussein/Iraq, as Mr. Capozzi reminds us.
I will add that responding to non-State sponsored terrorism by initiating an invasion – or in our case two invasions – using conventional warfare followed by years of policing operations is inappropriate and counterproductive. In support of this conclusion I offer Mr. Benedict’s link (in point 4) and the information found by using the following two links:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011015/johnson
http://www.amconmag.com/2005a/2005_07_18/article.html
I believe that the information contained in these three sources presents sufficient reason to not only end our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but to reevaluate our foreign policy in general and change our counterterrorism “strategies” in particular.
Regards,
Charles
cm, I hear you, but I think the point would have been stronger and clearer if it said the 9/11 perps were not from Iraq. That counters the implication that the W Administration attempted to paint the Iraq War as a response to 9/11.
Afghanistan is the tougher call, since AQN was reported to’ve been based there in that time frame.
AQN’s cross-border nature makes their enterprise especially difficult to assess what the appropriate response would have been. The means to suppress their attacks on the US was not obvious, although I subscribe to the notion the Iraq War was NOT the way to accomplish that goal.
Perhaps M&R was the way to go; but we’ll never know. The salient question for me is what is indicated now? Exit seems most sensible for a host of reasons.
Is it ever appropriate to fight ideas with guns?
Thomas @ 1, EXACTLY.
For the LP to present that as one of our reasons for opposing the war demonstrates a level of ignorance about the nature of the war that is rather mindblowing.
The war started by the 9/11/01 attack is not and never was a geographically based war, so national origins are meaningless here. It’s an ideologically based war, which is one reason why it’s essentially unwinnable the way we’re prosecuting it. We’ve been treating it as a geographically based war the whole time.
So even to mention that the perps were Saudi in origin is pointless and honestly rather ridiculous unless one would suggest that we should have attacked Saudi Arabia instead, which would hardly be a Libertarian position to take.
Why did we attack Afghanistan, and specifically the Taliban? Because they were SHELTERING Al Qaeda and refusing to cooperate with us. Saudi Arabia simply was not. Whether you believe entering Afghanistan was appropriate or not, whether you think we should still be there or not, is irrelevant to the point.
Is there any issue on which all Libertarians agree?
What is relevant is that not all Libertarians agree on this matter, and pretending there is only one answer is what’s irrellevant.
Re: reason 5, that the 9/11 attackers were Saudi nationals is irrelevant.
It would be relevant if the attackers were agents of the Saudi government, but I don’t think any serious person has suggested that.
What is relevant is that the attackers were not agents of the Iraqi government.