Perhaps one of the scariest things an American can do is actually think about the actions of the government that rules him. Each day it becomes clearer and clearer that our government is seeking to create a global empire, only loosely based on the founding principles of the United States. Fact is that our military and funds are stretched to the breaking point, and I don't know how much longer our empire-building can last before it crushes us here at home. Pat Buchanan once said, "if we don't stop behaving like the British Empire, we will end up like the British Empire." Even the most ardent leftist must admit that Buchanan's warning has worth.
On pledges of limited and responsible government, the so-called "neoconservatives" stormed into office with the support of traditional "paleoconservatives" in 2000. In fact, prior to the 2000 election cycle, the neocons were nothing more than a political obscurity with paleoconservatives such as Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, and even George H. W. Bush, Sr in charge of the party. Of course, as history would have it the privately neoconservative George W. Bush quickly emerged as a force to be reckoned with inside the Republican Party. Bush was successful because, while he himself was a neocon, he knew how to appeal to the paleocons as well.
Immigration and foreign policy are the two primary issues that divide conservatives: paleocons are strongly opposed to illegal immigration and support an isolationist foreign policy, while neocons are staunchly globalist, supporting amnesty for illegal aliens and a highly interventionist foreign policy. Hence, when running for president in 2000, Bush shifted attention away from such divisive issues and made lower taxes and the free market - two issues on which paleocons and neocons agree - cornerstones of his platform. This strategy would allow Bush to crush all rivals in the GOP primary and eventually go onto win the general election to become America's first neoconservative president.
The results have been disasterous. Within two and a half years of taking office, Bush and his neoconservative allies had the American military entrenched in a war in Iraq - a war completely irrelivent to the security of the United States. Everyone from liberals to libertarians to paleoconservatives were outraged, but with the firm grip of the neocons over the government, and dare I say the media, who could stop them?
We really do have to give the neoconservatives credit: they are absolutely brilliant politickers. Prior to the current president Bush, conservatives were often isolationist and anti-war. Indeed, the concept of limited government espoused by American conservatives makes them anti-war by default. However, the neocons have been able to change the fundamental tenants of American conservative ideology to fit their own agenda - not an easy task to say the least. Traditional paleoconservatives such as Tucker Carlson, Pat Buchanan, and Joe Scarborough have been ridiculed and isolated by the neocons for their anti-war views, forcing them into the media obscurity that is MSNBC.
Regarding the media, the neocons waged an all-out war for control over the media, demeaning the "liberal media" and placing the problems of America squarely on its shoulders. Admittedly, they had a reasonably good argument. Nine out of eleven columnists for the New York Times leaned to the left. The Washington Post didn't fare much better. The big three broadcast networks, NBC, ABC, and CBS, were all owned and operated by liberals. But was the situation half as dire as they claimed it to be? In my mind, that question is irrelivent - the neocons were successful in using the liberal media argument to unite large segments of the public in support of the more right-wing media outlets. With the rise of the neocons in 2000, more and more Americans tuned into the one facet of the media that had been dominated by the right: radio talk shows. Rush Limbaugh surged in popularity. Sean Hannity, Neil Boortz, Ann Coulter, and others seemingly came out of nowhere to dominate the radio scene. But what was most striking was the rise of Fox News. Not only did Fox News rise to compete with the "big three" networks - it surpassed them. Fox News, owned by neocon Rupert Murdoch, now gets higher ratings than even broadcast news, and trumps its cable competitors CNN and MSNBC pulling in higher ratings than both combined. A majority of the American public bought into the concept of a media controlled by liberals (whether correct or not) and gave the neoconservative movement real traction.
And thus, by the 2000 election cycle, the neoconservatives had established firm control over media and government alike. And yet, their visions of a hyper-interventionist foreign policy remained largely unknown to the public, simply because such plans would not have popular support if they were to be revealed. While public opinion was firmly with former president Clinton's domestic policy, many remained skeptical of his interventionist foreign policy in places such as Kosovo and Bosnia. The neoconservative plan to take Clintonian interventionism to a whole new level would not have been well-recieved by the American people, much less the paleoconservative base of the Republican Party.
September 11, 2001 changed all this. The President's approval rating soared to near 90%. Not only that, but global opinion swung strongly in his favour with everyone from Jacques Chirac of France to Vincente Fox of Mexico voicing strong support for Bush and his plans for a global "War on Terror." Citizens of America and of the entire civilized world wanted revenge, giving Bush an enourmous amount of political capital.
Of course, Bush chose to spend this capital on Iraq. The decision to wage war on Iraq came at a high international price - the world, particularly traditional US allies in Western Europe, quickly turned against Bush. But among Americans still bleeding over the 9/11 attacks, Bush was able to maintain just enough domestic support necessary to wage war and win re-election in 2004. After 9/11, many paleoconservatives jumped onto the neoconservative bandwagon, while others simply kept silent out of fear of being labelled "un-patriotic." The Democrats, in a state of disarray and confusion, kept silent for the same reason. Unfortunately for Bush's opposition, a clear vision (no matter how illogical and unfounded) will always beat out silence and confusion.
But scattered amongst various ideologies across the political spectrum, there were still a few voicing strong and steady opposition to the war. Among the paleoconservatives, Pat Buchanan had continued to criticise the President's foreign policy. Ted Kennedy led the opposition from the left, and Ron Paul (congressman from Texas) spoke out against the war from a libertarian standpoint. The seeds of opposition had been planted, and the popularity of the neoconservative movement would slowly begin to unravel. From the war's outset, these three (among a handful of others) launched a persistant, albeit unorganized, opposition. Public opinion would not change fast, but over the course of three years (from the beginning of the Iraq war to the 2006 mid-term elections) public support for the war would bomb out and opposition would surge. Old paleoconservatives such as Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough would soon join Buchanan in opposition to the war, hoping for a shift in the GOP back to the traditional paleocon ideology of isolation. But perhaps most importantly, years after the war had begun the Democrats finally united against it, offering their own clear vision in opposition to that of the neoconservatives. While an illogical clear vision always defeats confusion and waffling, a logical clear vision (nearly) always defeats an illogical one. And thus, at the Congressional level we saw the decimation of the Republican Party and its neoconservatives at the hands of the anti-war Democrats during the 2006 mid-term elections. September 11 is becoming more distant by the day, with the fear factor used by the neocons years ago becoming more and more irrelivant. Even amongst the three leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, all are skeptical of the way in which the Iraq War has been waged. However, it is worth pointing out that only third-tier candidates such as Sam Brownback and Ron Paul are actually against the war in principle. Never the less, the hayday of the neoconservative movement in America seems to be over.
By now it should be obvious that I am an enemy of the Iraq war, as well as the neoconservative hyper-interventionists behind it. As stated earlier, Constitutional objections, moral objections, and practical objections all come into play. The preamble of our Constitution summarizes the role of the American military as to "provide for a common defense" of the nation. How is the war in Iraq anything other than offensive? Even the hawks now admit that we are in there only for the sake of the Iraqi people - if we are to pull out, chaos will ensue and thousands of innocent Iraqis will be killed. To that I say thousands of Iraqis are being killed regardless of our military's presense. In this way, the Republican neocons have attempted to place blame on any repercussions of withdrawal squarely on the opposition, when indeed the blame lies with those Republicans who have gotten us into such a perdicament in the first place. Further, the power to declare war lies firmly with the Congress, according to Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. And yet Congress has flat-out ignored this clause in our Constitution, instead choosing to hand the decision to wage war to the President via the Iraq War Resolution of 2002. Murky waters at best. Over the past several yeras, Congress has voluntarily ceded its own power unconstitutionally to the executive, yet very few in Congress seem to care. Even under the current Democratic leadership, there is a refusal to acknowledge their Constitutional power to end this war, opting to play dumb by passing non-binding, useless resolutions against the war to appease the angry public. Such strategies are incredibly transparent.
With over 3,000 American soldiers, hundreds of British soldiers, and dozens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, the moral objections are perhaps the strongest. I think the numbers speak for themselves; more Americans have been killed in Gulf War II than on September 11. Perhaps the most absolutely horrific aspect of the war has been the life-changing injuries that tens of thousands of soldiers have returned home with. Soldiers come back with missing limbs, third-degree burns, and snapped necks. As far as American casualties are concerned, the only significant difference between Iraq and Vietnam has been the brilliance of modern-day medicine and the role it has played in saving the lives of so many. However, the injuries sustained by these survivors are some of the most horrific ever seen. We absolutely must end the unnecessary carnage now.
If moral and Constitutional objections fall on deaf ears, then perhaps practical reasoning will not. First let me make clear that the war has not cost the federal government anything. To say so is misleading - the federal government merely borrows and taxes to pay for things. The government does not live in the real world. No, this war has cost US taxpayers over two trillain dollars. Direct taxes certainly haven't been going up, so how is the government paying for this? By taking out loans and printing more currency to help repay said loans. For all the Republicans who claim to be against tax hikes and yet support the war, I ask this: do you realize that every time the federal reserve prints more money to pay off debts incurred due to the war, inflation goes up and the purchasing power of Americans both rich and poor goes down? A closet tax increase, essentially. Not to mention our government's second favourite way of re-paying debts: the income tax. Nearly half of all revenue collected via the income tax goes to paying off interest on the national debt. Eliminate the deficite and you can slash the income tax dramatically. The neocons don't want you to realize that the only difference between them and so-called "tax and spend liberals" is that rather than tax and spend, they spend then tax. If America doesn't pull out of Iraq soon, we will go broke. It is that simple.
Primarily based on the reasoning presented above, the vast majority of the American public now see the truth about Iraq. Unfortunately we are not out of the woods yet. Bush still has nearly two years left in his term, and Congress shows no signs of initiating an impeachment process. Without the support of the American people or Congress, Bush and the neoconservatives now realize that they must work in secret to achieve their goals of total globalization. Indeed, along with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, Bush has been engaged in secret meetings without the supervision of Congress with the goal of creating a North American Union and a united currency - the Amero - modeled after the system in Europe. But I will save the details for the second part of this essay. I leave you with this as a preview:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3tg8suvwS3o
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