Return to the Free Liberal Homepage

March 07, 2008

Do Muslims Really Hate Us?

Ever since 9/11, Americans have been highly suspicious of Muslims. While there a certain amount of healthy skepticism of a religion that many believe to be at the root of much of the unrest in today's world may be warranted, a new survey from Gallup sheds some light on what Muslims really think. The truth is, the vast majority of them have positive feelings about America.

Among the study's findings:

About 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical;
Only seven percent of the billion Muslims surveyed -- the radicals -- condoned the attacks on the United States in 2001;

In only a few countries did a majority say that Sharia should have no role in society; yet in most countries, only a minority want Sharia as "the only source" of law. In Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, majorities want Sharia as the "only source" of legislation;

Forty-six percent of Americans say that the Bible should be "a" source, and 9% believe it should be the "only" source of legislation;

Perhaps even more surprising, 42% of Americans want religious leaders to have a direct role in writing a constitution, while 55% want them to play no role at all. These numbers are almost identical to those in Iran;

Perhaps most important is the fact that radical Muslims gave political, not religious, reasons for condoning the attacks of 9/11. This is an indicator that it is our actions and our government's policies, not our culture that offends radical Muslims. Perhaps our leaders should take a close look at this survey?

Posted by PaulGessing at 08:03 PM | Comments (1)

January 24, 2008

The Lies Have It

Someone finally took the time to tabulate all the lies foisted upon the American people in the run-up to the Iraq War. It looks like the answer is 935. That is a lot of lying especially when you consider that just one lie could get a President impeached.

Posted by PaulGessing at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

December 26, 2007

Burying Hitler

It looks like war with Iran may be on the back burner for now -- even warmongers take Christmas off -- but they'll be back soon enough. Justin Logan over at Cato makes an excellent case for burying the Hitler analogy once and for all. After all, even if we don't go to war with Iran, some future leader will be compared to him as a means of ginning up a US military intervention.

Posted by PaulGessing at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2007

Israel: NIE Report Could Spark War

No matter what US foreign policy agencies come up with, it seems like all signs point to war with Iran. Now, the Israeli public security minister is warning that the recent finding by the CIA that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program would cause war. More troubling, according to its director, Israeli intelligence "will work to change the American intelligence agencies' view of Iran." This means that next time, if Israel has anything to do with it, the CIA will come to the "correct" conclusion about Iran's ambitions.

Clearly the US intervenes in far too many internal decisions of foreign countries across the globe, why does it seem that Israel is the only country that is openly permitted to work to influence our own intelligence decisions?

Posted by PaulGessing at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2007

Bomb Iran, bomb, bomb, Iran

One would think that US intelligence reports that Iran has not been working on nuclear weapons for several years now would be welcomed as great news and that the Bush Administration might cool the rhetoric and take some of the heat off....of course, that would be in a rational world, not Bush's. Of course, as Justin Raimondo points out, the neocons, many of whom are quite close to the Bush Administration and the Giuliani campaign oppose any effort to tone down the rhetoric.

It would seem that no matter what Iran does, some will spin Iran's actions as a reason for sanctions and threats. The question for "mainstream libertarians" like Eric Dondero and other Iran hawks is whether the average American really would support war with Iran and exactly what such a move would achieve for their security.

Posted by PaulGessing at 07:32 PM | Comments (2)

December 02, 2007

Why did libertarians support the war?

This article provides about as good an explanation as I've seen for so-called libertarians who supported the Iraq War. While it is good that libertarianism has become "cool," (this is not a new phenomenon in my opinion), a lot of these recent converts don't really understand how limited government evolves and how war is antithetical to it.

Posted by PaulGessing at 12:39 AM | Comments (2)

November 29, 2007

John Howard Deserved to Lose

Glenn Greenwald takes Howard to task not only for his failed foreign policies, but for his blatant hypocrisy in criticizing American candidates while vowing not to intervene in the domestic affairs of other nations.

Posted by PaulGessing at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2007

A Legacy of Losing: JFK, Obama and Viet Nam

Andrew Sullivan raised a question. I've got an answer.

Q: Larison doesn't see any overlap:

Sure, superficially Obama and [Ron] Paul might seem to offer some similar themes, and both did oppose the Iraq war, but Obama is essentially an interventionist at home and abroad and Paul is diametrically opposed to both. One invokes JFK, the other invokes Robert Taft. Obama thinks everything on earth is tied to our national security; Paul thinks that there are very few things overseas that are tied to our national security.

A: JFK gave us the Viet Nam "Conflict," which served no vital national interest [poor grammar (perhaps a translation issue); accurate article]. Ron Paul would prefer that the Department of Defense actually be about defense and not about offending most of my veteran friends who signed up to "solemnly swear, (or affirm), that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."

I didn't spend over a decade in the Army to build nations, police the world or install a freer election system (and they call this democracy?) than we have in the United States -- which was accomplished by the force of guns aimed at people who didn't have WMDs nor harbor bin Laden. I'll never forget the day "The Wall" fell in Germany. It was the only time I recall not being irritated by a traffic jam; people and luggage stacked up in broken-down Traubis to escape the totalitarian East was the perfect symbol that freedom had won this round.

Now we have the totalitarian West, where we remove our shoes for TSA agents in order to not recall that the concept of habeas corpus has existed since the year 1215.

An interventionist foreign policy doesn't work well for very long and the consequences are often dire. Coca-Cola, Levis and the Rolling Stones won the Cold War (to be sure, there was a military stick to the free market carrot). Instead, Obama proposes that we retry failed policy by following in the footsteps of the man who more-or-less brought us Viet Nam.

We all know how that one ended up.

Posted by StephenGordon at 05:06 AM | Comments (1)

September 15, 2007

Disagreeing with Ron Paul

I love Ron Paul. I agree with him on nearly all major issues and think that his race for the Presidency of the United States is the most important political movement this nation has seen at least since Barry Goldwater ran for the White House.

That said, I think he is taking the wrong track -- at least from an economic perspective -- in opposing the ability of Mexican truckers to work in the United States. His argument seems to boil down to the fact that US truckers are too heavily regulated to compete with Mexican truckers and that we should do away with onerous regulations first. Of course, regulations should be reasonable, but the only way politicians and industries can be deregulated is to force them to compete and thus to lobby for more reasonable regulations. Until then, the regulated will simply dictate how they are governed.

Of course, I understand that politically-speaking, free trade is relatively unpopular right now (and Dr. Paul has always been skeptical of trade agreements), so it makes sense to emphasize that point.

I discuss here in greater detail some of the reasons for allowing the Mexican trucker program to move forward.

Posted by PaulGessing at 03:23 PM | Comments (2)

August 28, 2007

Another great, but obscure anti-war classic

While looking through the list of You Tube videos featuring the great early 80s Australian pop band Men at Work I came across their great anti-war song It's a Mistake.

The video's Cold War motif is a bit dated but the songs humorous attack on the venality and foolishness of those in charge of the warfare state still holds up.

Posted by NormSingleton at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2007

Iraq = Vietnam?

Once upon a time, some in the antiwar movement compared the war in Iraq to that in Vietnam. Of course, these comparisons were quickly and sometimes harshly quashed by supporters of the war.

Now, Bush himself is favorably comparing the two and saying that we should apply the lessons of Vietnam to the current situation in Iraq. Bush actually agrees with Ron Paul to an extent, but they are starting from polar opposite assumptions. Who is right?

Ron Paul points out that we wasted the lives of 58,000 US troops fighting in Vietnam and gained nothing. We got out and now Vietnam is a trading partner. Bush is concerned that many Vietnamese will die if we leave. Both are correct but Bush fails to realize that Iraqis and Americans alike are dying every day over there. It may get worse for a time if we leave, but ultimately some form of peace will be restored.

Most Americans agree that Vietnam was not worth it. Bush would seem to be wrong once again.

Posted by PaulGessing at 07:19 PM | Comments (1)

August 21, 2007

Bush: President for Life?

Philip Atkinson, author of the book A Study of Our Decline, argues that Bush should have followed the model of Julius Caeser in Iraq, slaughtering all Iraqis who did not comply with his demands. He also argues that he should make himself "President for Life."

If you are wondering from what hole in the ground Mr. Atkinson came, it should be no surprise that he is associated with right-wing uber-hawk Frank Gaffney and his Center for Security Policy.

While Atkinson may seem extreme, I'm sad to say that many formerly "limited-government conservatives" seem to be of the mind that we should give all power and authority to Bush and the federal government in order to protect us from the threat of "Islamo-fascism."

Posted by PaulGessing at 12:57 PM | Comments (2)

August 04, 2007

Response to Randy Barnett

Recently I blogged about Randy Barnett's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal justifying libertarian support for the Iraq War. Needless to say, I was not the only one who found Barnett's logic wanting. Robert Higgs of the consistently libertarian Independent Institute responded to Barnett with a well written letter.

Posted by PaulGessing at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

August 02, 2007

The Push to Keep Us in Iraq

While all of the momentum at the grassroots/public opinion level has been geared towards getting US troops out of Iraq and even Congress has made half-hearted efforts even if those efforts overlooked better options.

Something that has not been seen, at least outside of the Bush Administration, is the "hey, we're winning the war" attitude that was so prevalent in the early days of the invasion. That changed recently when supposed "Iraq experts" and supposed "critics of the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq" O'Hanlon and Pollack wrote an article appearing in the New York Times making the case that we "just might win" in Iraq.

Of course, as Glenn Greenwald documents so well, these two were cheerleaders for the invasion and did not criticize the Administration until nearly everyone had left the pro-war bandwagon. And, of course it is worth pointing out that the supposedly liberal Times itself was a big backer of the war and that publication only began sniping at the Administration when the war was clearly going poorly.

When it comes to foreign policy, the "establishment" unites. Hopefully the continued pressure being put on Congress by the American people can get our troops home in a timely fashion -- without them going through Iran first.

Posted by PaulGessing at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2007

Bizarro Libertarianism

It is hard for me to believe that there are still self-proclaimed libertarians out there who support the Iraq War specifically and an interventionist foreign policy specifically. Justin Raimondo has an excellent piece attacking Randy Barnett, a Georgetown professor, self-proclaimed libertarian, and warmonger

First and foremost, even if a true believer in limited government could rationalize the Iraq War, any moron who reads the Constitution can understand that Congress holds war-making power and no such declaration has ever been made. While the Bush Administrations "reasons" for going to war were transparently bad, perhaps there will be a day in the future where a president will have better reasons for going to war. My position is the same: only an actual declaration from Congress...

I'd think this concept would be pretty easy to grasp for someone of Barnett's intellectual pedigree, but maybe not.

Posted by PaulGessing at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)

June 30, 2007

The CIA: Still evil after all these years

The recent disclosure of the CIA's "family jewels" elicits an outstanding rebuke from Justin Raimondo. The only problem I have is the term "family jewels." That would certainly imply that these are cherished items that have been held for the CIA for some time. The term "skeletons in the closet" or "dirty deeds done at taxpayer expense" might be more appropriate.

Of course, I don't remember the CIA being in the US Constitution....

Posted by PaulGessing at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2007

Reason author Clueless on libertarian foreign policy

It is no surprise that the folks over at Reason Magazine fail to understand the importance of Ron Paul's candidacy and the need for a non-interventionist foreign policy in general. Granted, Michael Young is one of the more clueless folks over at Reason and this article places his ignorance on full display.

Perhaps Young, like Giuliani, should get his own reading list: the Constitution would be a good place to start followed by anything he can find on antiwar.com.

Young seems to think that the neocons were the only ones who had ideas to explain the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and that the left and libertarians had nothing by the way of explanation. This is patently false. After all, the Neocons were already in the Bush Administration waiting for something like 9/11 to happen. All they had to do was use their tremendous influence in the Administration to spin the facts in their favor.

The fact is that both left and right agree in this country that America has to "throw its weight around" and command the world as a hegemon. Anyone who has a problem with this is a pariah or even part of the axis of evil.

It would be nice if libertarians or writers for libertarian publications like Reason understood the benefits of non-interventionism, but perhaps that is too much to expect.

Posted by PaulGessing at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2007

USS Liberty

If you've never heard of the USS LIberty, this week marks the 40th anniverary of the attack on the Liberty by a foreign nation. No, it wasn't the axis of evil or the Soviets that attacked us, but one of our greatest "allies" and a client state of ours that has received billions of dollars in direct subsidies from US taxpayers.

Posted by PaulGessing at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)

Free-for-all (frfr-ôl) -- n. A disorderly fight, argument, or competition in which everyone present participates.

from Dictionary.com



supportus.png

If you enjoy our site or our print publication, please consider making a contribution today!


SIMPLE AD ERROR VIEW COUNT NOT UPDATED
Advertisement


Return to the Free Liberal Homepage


Subscribe to our list:


About the Free Liberal
The Free Liberal is an independent journal of transpartisan thought.

The views expressed herein are those of the writers individually and not necessarily those of the Free Liberal, the Center for Liberty and Community, or its board of directors.