Our “Bipartisan Foreign Policy” Is All War, No Peace

In terms of foreign policy there are no “choices” for president in 2016, or any other recent election. As has been the case for quite some time now, the Democrats will not nominate a “peace” candidate, despite the fact our nation has been waging war on various smaller countries for nearly 25 years. Bernie Sanders, while sounding about as “liberal” as any candidate ever has, is a committed Zionist, and his “independence” was such that he not only supported Bill Clinton’s indefensible 1999 military attacks on Kosovo, he had the antiwar activists, who had occupied his office in protest of his position, arrested. Sanders supported the “war” in Afghanistan, and in 2003 voted to give President Bush carte blanche authority in both Iraq and elsewhere in his undefined “war on terrorism.”

Hillary Clinton is about as big a warmonger as can be found among the “liberal” set. She supported her husband’s unconscionable 1998 missile strike on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant (later bragging that he’d been hesitant, but “I urged him to bomb”), and in 2006 was in favor of intervening again in the Sudan. This campaign was strongly criticized by Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi, who blasted it as being “for oil and for the return of colonialism to the African continent.” In 2011, Hillary would gleefully react to the bombing of Libya, which resulted in Qaddafi’s death, by exclaiming, “We came, we saw, he died.” She has been in favor of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, and like all neocons, has called for an attack on Iran. Also in favor of the drumbeats for war with Russia, she attacked Vladmir Putin as doing “what Hitler did in the ’30s.”

Respected constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley has said that Barack Obama has been worse than either Bush or Nixon in terms of launching unilateral, unconstitutional “wars” against other nations. Obama never kept his promises about withdrawing in a timely fashion from Iraq, and continues our misadventures in Afghanistan. He also intervened in Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and even rattled sabers with Vladmir Putin’s Russia. All these military campaigns, of course, somehow didn’t prevent Obama from winning a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s almost impossible to satirize something like that.

Another darling of the Left, Senator Elizabeth Warren, shares every neocon’s hostility towards Iran. As this “liberal” stated during her campaign for the Senate, “Our number one responsibility is to protect Americans from terrorism, that’s our job, so being tough on terrorism is enormously important.” According to antiwar.com, she forced her own child to join the military. Warren, like Sanders, is a die-hard supporter of Israel, and parrots all the usual talking points about the necessity of having a “Democratic ally” in the region, and how Israel has “a right to defend itself.”

So, if the leading voices in the so-called “liberal” party, the party presumed to be more predisposed towards peace, are always so gung ho for war, then how bad are the Republicans running for president? While Donald Trump has said some things I like, and is making the right kind of enemies, he went on record as supporting the assassination of courageous whistleblower Edward Snowden. Every other Republican candidate, with the exception of Rand Paul, is a passionate neocon whose fiercest criticism of President Obama is that he’s been “soft” on terrorism. Obama has bombed more Muslims than all other presidents combined, but evidently seven countries being attacked militarily isn’t enough for the Ted Cruzs, the Ben Carsons, the Jeb Bushs, or the Chris Christies.

In 2008, the Republicans nominated John McCain, perhaps the public servant more dedicated to war and foreign misadventure than any other in American history. Jimmy Carter was recently compelled to answer McCain’s criticism by labeling him a “warmonger.” Republicans and Democrats alike demand that the U.S. assume a “leadership role” in the world, and continue to pursue the failed globalist interventionism that has made us a pariah everywhere. Even the most tepid overtures of peace are met with charges of appeasement and weakness. One can only imagine what the reaction would be today to John F. Kennedy’s timeless June, 1963 speech at American University, where he pleaded for “peace in all time.”

The few presidential candidates in recent years that were overtly pro-peace were relegated to minor parties, which are given virtually no attention by the mainstream media. Ironically, extreme right-winger Pat Buchanan was one of these, consistently opposing all the recent bombings and occupations of smaller nations. Ralph Nader advocated peace, as did former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

The term “bipartisan foreign policy” is a slap in the face to the very concept of a democratic process. There is no “choice” here for the American voting public. What kind of a charade are we participating in, when in spite of the most excessive military spending the world has even seen, and a constant drumbeat for “war” for nearly twenty five years, no leader is permitted to emerge and simply point out the obvious errors of our foreign policy? Instead, they all must agree to be “bipartisan,” and to support every new military mission. At this point, U.S. presidents of both major parties can feel free to entirely bypass the constitutional requirement of asking for Congressional authorization for war. And our impotent Congress doesn’t really even protest.

If someone like a Trump would come out strongly for disengagement from the affairs of other nations, instead of actually insisting upon more meddling, it would be a miracle. Our foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster by any measure. And yet, we not only continue down this ruinous path, the only option we’re given is to increase the madness, and increase the pressure on other countries to conform to our concept of “freedom” and our way of life. Our military has become in many ways akin to a missionary force, attempting to convert foreign heathens to Americanism.

In my book Hidden History, I detailed many of the atrocities on the part of our military which Bradley Manning exposed, and was subsequently imprisoned for. A country run by honest, sane leaders would not imprison a Bradley Manning, it would honor him. It would be mortified by his disclosures, and it would vow to make certain that these horrific abuses never happened again. But instead of an honest assessment of our errors, all we get is “support the troops” and “thank your for your service.”

It isn’t “weak” to be in favor of peace. America hasn’t been attacked in a very long time. And no, I certainly don’t count the events of 9/11 as being part of a “terrorist” attack upon us, as I chronicled in my book. It is a sad reflection on our leadership that while we have become entangled in the business of other nations all over the world, we have utterly failed to protect our own borders.

So where are the peace candidates? Probably hanging out somewhere with the remaining civil libertarians, in a dark corner of this crumbling nation, unnoticed by our compliant press and probably unwanted by the largely dumbed down, devolving sheeple.

Modern Morality and the Value of Life

The mainstream media has turned the killing of an African lion named Cecil into an explosive international story. The hunter, who paid Zimbabwe some $55,000 for the right to bring back such a trophy, was identified as Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Social media has been abuzz over this for days; Palmer received death threats and the most extreme of the “tolerant” haters online were literally demanding his scalp.

Lost in the reporting of this story are some disquieting facts. First, Zimbabwe has been cast in the unlikely (and wildly inaccurate) role of outraged victim. For those who might have missed it, Zimbabwe is run by 91 year old dictator Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980. As has been reported in the alternative media, Mugabe delights in giving extravagant parties; his recent birthday party cost a reported $1 million. While animal activists and modern “liberals” of all sorts were mourning the loss of Cecil the lion, they managed to ignore the fact that Mugabe consumed what was referred to as a “zoo” at that party. Included among the delicacies was a baby elephant. Evidently, there aren’t any liberal tears being shed over the death of this innocent creature.

Among Mugabe’s birthday presents, just a few months prior to the death of Cecil the lion, was a stuffed lion, to be mounted as the dictator’s personal trophy. Local wildlife conservationists called the party “obscene” and described the celebration as “totally unethical.” And yet Social Media was silent. They also protested about all this taking place in the midst of “collapsed public hospitals, clinics and rural schools” in the impoverished African nation. Zimbabwe’s per capita GDP is the third lowest in the world, and the average wage for a Zimbabwe citizen is a paltry $253 per month. As a headline in the Minneapolis Post described it, “Cecil the Lion Had a Better Life Than Most People in Zimbabwe.”

Yet in spite of the embarrassing state of their downtrodden nation, Zimbabwe officials had the gall to demand that the United States extradite Palmer back to them for some suitably Third World style of “justice.” Palmer’s defense, which has fallen on predictably deaf ears, is that he relied on local guides and had no idea the lion he killed was a well-known local favorite. A petition urging that Palmer be delivered into the hands of this corrupt dictatorship had garnered some 175,000 signatures as of the end of last week. More than 500,000 had signed such a petition on Facebook. I don’t know if Palmer is lying or telling the truth, but the old “innocent until proven guilty” thing seems to apply here.

The country that has expressed such outrage over this one particular dentist has become, under the leadership of Mugabe, one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Zimbabwe regularly exploits its wildlife and natural resources, as illustrated recently when they captured more than 60 wild elephants to ship to overseas zoos in China and elsewhere. Safari Club International actively promotes trophy hunting in Zimbabwe, and as indicated by the princely sum the unfortunate Walter Palmer paid to the government there, Mugabe and his cronies obviously enjoy profiting from the enterprise.

The International Business Times recently reported that research shows people are twice as likely to give money to save a dog than to save a dying child. As they note, “an estimated 21,000 children die from the consequences of poverty” around the world every day. And, in fact, every year Americans alone kill some 360 lions. So what makes this one particular lion so special? Why the massive news coverage? Why all the impassioned outrage? And why do so many human beings now apparently value the life of animals more than they value human life?

During this same time period, there was a rash of undercover videos filmed, of Planned Parenthood officials, seemingly caught admitting to the marketing of human fetal tissue. The response on the part of our demented establishment was to suppress the videos. This is, of course, symbolic of what we see everywhere now in our culture, from Edward Snowden to the victims of bullying in schools. Whistleblowers are always the ones targeted for retaliation, and punished more severely than the wrongdoers they expose.

Recent studies suggest that an increasing number of college students support the concept of after-birth abortion. In other words, the willful murder of human infants. There is no semantics to be argued here, no debate about exactly when “life” starts. When a baby is born, life has clearly started. And a growing number of human beings, most of whom are undoubtedly outraged over the death of Cecil the Lion, are okay with that. The fact that a group of alleged “medical ethicists” associated with Oxford University could openly proclaim that parents should have the right to kill their newborns because they are “morally irrelevant” tells us just how far we’ve fallen as a civilization.

As far back as 2008, CNN recognized this phenomenon, in a story headlined, “Do We Care More About Animals Than Humans?” As we’ve seen in an untold number of instances, perhaps best exemplified when shoppers at a West Virginia Target completely ignored 61 year old Walter Vance, after he collapsed in the store and died, we seem to be feeling a decreasing empathy for our fellow humans. Animals, on the other hand, seem to evoke entirely different, more powerful feelings. We certainly see this in women, especially, who sometimes treat their dogs and cats like the children they often don’t have. By design or otherwise, we are dealing with redirected maternal instincts there.

I have never had a desire to hunt anything, let alone go on an African safari. It was certainly sad that Cecil the Lion died at the hands of a hunter. But the death of any member of the animal kingdom has to be considered as less significant than the death of any human being. Without society recognizing this seminal rule of human civilization, our moral compass becomes really skewered. Carrying this to its logical extremes, we risk becoming like Naomi Watts’ character in Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong; ready to protect a giant, threatening beast, who has killed an unknown number of human beings, and willing to risk our own life in the process.

The U.S. Senate, in the wake of all those disquieting Planned Parenthood videos, still was unable to stop taxpayer funding of this organization, whose founder, Margaret Sanger, is remembered for quaint sayings like “the most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” Does anyone really believe that if taxpayers were responsible for any costs relating to the marketing of baby animal parts that our spineless politicians in both carbon-copy parties would fail to stop that funding?

So rest in peace, Cecil. But in the wake of the overblown media coverage surrounding the death of Cecil the Lion, let us never forget all the human victims of war, poverty, oppression, and injustice that lose their lives needlessly every day, of every year, all over the world.