How times have changed... :-]
<DaarkSyde@home.com> wrote in message news:8qe6lvktnkfnbvk3k2d528jc7h0f5udbc9@4ax.com...
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| Foreign Policy for Tyros
| by Jacob G. Hornberger, August 27, 2003
|
|
| The Declaration of Independence
|
| In 1775 at Concord and Lexington, a small group of British citizens
| living in America took up arms against their own government, starting
| the American Revolution. Other British citizens chose to support their
| government and its troops during the crisis.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that the British Empire ruled America before July 4,
| 1776, and that the reason some of the British colonists rebelled
| against their own government was that their king was a tyrant?
|
|
|
|
| Founding Principles
|
| The United States of America was founded on the principles of
| individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited
| government. In order to establish a free society, Americans used the
| Constitution to limit the powers of their government officials.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that the Constitution does not give people rights?
| People's rights preexist both the Constitution and the federal
| government. The Constitution sets barriers to the power of the
| government in order to prevent it from taking away people's
| preexisting rights.
|
|
|
|
| Citizen-Soldiers versus. Standing Armies
|
| Americans believed that an enormous standing army in their midst would
| be one of the gravest threats to their liberty. That's why they relied
| on well-armed and well-trained citizen-soldiers to secure their
| liberty and security. Our ancestors established a republic, not an
| empire.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that the reason that Switzerland is never invaded is that
| every Swiss man knows how to fight and many Swiss families are armed
| to the teeth, in order to protect the nation from invasion? It's been
| said that invading Switzerland would be like swallowing a porcupine.
| Did you also know that the Swiss government minds its own business in
| international affairs, which is why terrorists leave the Swiss people
| alone?
|
|
|
| Our Founders and Foreign Wars
|
| The firm policy of our American ancestors was to keep our nation out
| of foreign wars, even though the world was filled with tyrants who
| mistreated their own people. The vision of our ancestors was to create
| a society of freedom to which people all over the world could come to
| flee the tyranny in their own land.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that John Quincy Adams, who was U.S. Secretary of State,
| told the House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, that America "does
| not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy?" Did you also know
| that the people of France gave the Statue of Liberty to America?
|
|
|
| The Spanish-American War
|
| In 1898, our nation took a fateful turn from being a republic to
| becoming an empire. In that year, our government decided to wage a war
| of liberation against the Spanish Empire to free the Cuban and
| Philippine people from Spanish tyranny.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that after the U.S. government defeated the Spanish
| Empire, it slaughtered thousands of Filipinos because they thought
| that "liberation" meant self-rule, while the U.S. government felt that
| "liberation" meant U.S. military rule over the Filipinos? Did you also
| know that the Spanish-American War was when U.S. government began its
| century-long obsession with exercising control over Cuban affairs?
|
|
|
| World War I
|
| In 1917 the U.S. government decided to embark on another overseas
| military adventure - entry into World War I, which involved a complex
| conflict between many European powers.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that the purpose of U.S. entry into World War I was to
| "make the world safe for democracy" and to make it "the war to end all
| wars"?
|
| More than 100,000 American men were sacrificed in World War I. One
| consequence of the war was the Russian Revolution, which brought
| Vladimir Lenin and communism to power in the Soviet Union. Another
| consequence, which can be directly attributed to U.S. intervention in
| the war, was the chaos arising from the total defeat of Germany, which
| in turn gave rise to Adolf Hitler and National Socialism.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that there is no difference in principle between
| communism and socialism? Both seek to redistribute and equalize wealth
| through the political process. That's why both communists and
| socialists - both Stalin and Hitler - embraced such government
| programs as old-age assistance (Social Security) and national health
| care (Medicare and Medicaid).
|
|
|
| Post-World War I Era
|
| Given that the consequences of World War I were so horrific and that
| so many American men had died for nothing, Americans were
| overwhelmingly opposed to ever involving our nation in another foreign
| war.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that the U.S. government ultimately changed the name of
| Armistice Day, which celebrated the end of World War I, to Veteran's
| Day?
|
|
| During the 1940 presidential race, President Franklin Roosevelt
| affirmed to the American people his personal opposition to U.S.
| involvement in foreign wars. "I've said this before, but I shall say
| it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into
| any foreign wars."
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that prior to 1941, the party platforms of both the
| Democratic Party and Republican Party opposed U.S. involvement in
| foreign wars?
|
|
| Many historians now say that Roosevelt was lying and was instead
| trying to get the Germans or Japanese to "fire the first shot" when he
| spoke those words to the American people during his campaign for
| reelection.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S.
| military forces had attacked Japanese troops in China and that the
| U.S. government had frozen Japanese bank accounts in the United
| States, imposed an oil embargo on Japan, broken Japanese secret
| diplomatic codes (which permitted U.S. officials to monitor Japanese
| communications), and left thousands of American troops in the Pacific
| (on islands seized in the Spanish-American War) as "bait" for the
| Japanese? Did you also know that one of the main reasons that U.S.
| interventionists wanted to go to war against Japan was that Japan was
| bombing cities in China, an act which most of the world regarded as
| uncivilized?
|
|
|
|
| World War II
|
| In 1939, after annexing Austrian and invading Czechoslovakia, Nazi
| Germany invaded Poland. Shortly afterward, the Soviet Union also
| invaded Poland.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that the reason that Germany gave for invading
| Czechoslovakia was to liberate Germans living in Czechoslovakia from
| the tyranny of the Czech government?
|
| On September 3, 1939, Great Britain and France declared war on
| Germany, with the goal of freeing the Polish people from tyranny. On
| June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. On December 7, 1941,
| Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the United
| States. Since the U.S. Constitution prohibits the president from
| waging war without a congressional declaration of war, the president
| secured a declaration of war from Congress against both Japan and
| Germany.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that the U.S. government did not enter World War II to
| free the Jews and that very few Jews were in fact saved by World War
| II? In fact, during the entire 1930s and early 1940s, the U.S. State
| Department was filled with Anti-Semites, which is why German and
| Eastern European Jews were not permitted to emigrate to the United
| States and why the U.S. government rejected a famous ship named the
| St. Louis that was filled with Jewish refugees. By the time the war
| was over, some 6 million European Jews were dead.
|
|
| Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union totally
| smashed the Nazi military machine and regime. The Poles, Czechs, East
| Germans, and the peoples in eight other countries were "liberated" by
| our friend and ally, the Soviet Union, and enjoyed the "benefits" of
| the Soviet domination for the next 45 years.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that President Franklin D. Roosevelt entered into a
| formal agreement with the Soviet Union's dictator, Joseph Stalin, that
| provided that Poland would be "liberated" by the Soviet communists?
| Did you also know that the Soviet communists killed many more people
| than the Nazis did?
|
|
| At the conclusion of World War II, Nazi officials were brought to
| trial for war crimes before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal held that waging a
| "war of aggression" - that is, a war in which the invader had not been
| attacked by the invaded country - is a war crime and that some of the
| Nazi defendants were convicted of waging a war of aggression? Did you
| also know that the Nuremberg judges rejected the Nazi attempt to
| justify their war of aggression by reference to doctrines of "a war of
| liberation" and "preemptive attack"? Did you also know that the Soviet
| Union was a judge, rather than a defendant, at the Nuremberg War
| Crimes Tribunal, despite the fact that Soviet forces invaded Poland
| shortly after Germany did, killed 10,000 Polish officers in cold blood
| during the war, and raped thousands of German women?
|
|
| In the Pacific, Allied forces smashed the Japanese military machine
| and established democracy in Japan. China, on the other hand, whose
| invasion by Japan had produced calls for U.S. intervention before the
| attack on Pearl Harbor, was taken over by Chinese communist forces in
| 1949, who have remained supreme in China ever since. Those Chinese
| communists later helped to kill some 100,000 American men in Korea and
| Vietnam.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that more than 300,000 American men lost their lives in
| World War II?
|
|
|
| The Cold War
|
| At the end of World War II, U.S. officials immediately announced that
| it was necessary to maintain the enormous U.S. military-industrial
| complex created during World War II in order to oppose our new enemy
| (previously, Hitler's enemy) - the Soviet Union (which had arisen as a
| consequence of World War I and into whose clutches President Roosevelt
| had delivered the Eastern Europeans and East Germans).
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that in previous wars, America had dismantled the
| standing army needed to fight the wars, discharging its soldiers back
| into the private sector?
|
|
|
|
| Korean War and Vietnam War
|
| As part of the new fight against Hitler's old enemy - communism - some
| 100,000 American men were sacrificed in foreign wars in Korea and
| Vietnam.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that many interventionists actually believe that while
| Americans should take credit for all the good things that foreign wars
| and foreign interventions produce, Americans are not morally
| responsible for the bad consequences because, they say: (1) U.S.
| officials have good intentions and (2) because the adverse
| consequences come long after military victory, which is why
| interventionists did not accept moral responsibility for the rise of
| Adolf Hitler after World War I, the triumph of communism after World
| War II, and the September 11 terrorist attacks after the Persian Gulf
| War.
|
|
|
|
| The Postcommunist Era
|
| In 1991, the Soviet Empire came to an end and the Berlin Wall came
| crashing down, peacefully. After suffering for some 50 years under the
| Soviet Union's World War II "liberation" to which President Roosevelt
| had consigned them, East Germans and Eastern Europeans were finally
| freed from the yoke of that communist "liberation."
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that during the Cold War most interventionists did not
| advocate invading East Germany and Eastern Europe and bombing and
| killing them in order to free them from the Soviet tyranny to which
| FDR had delivered them and instead preferred to leave them free
| themselves peacefully on their own?
|
|
|
|
| The Saddam Hussein Era
|
| In 1990, one of the U.S. government's principal allies and agents
| during the Cold War, Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq, went
| independent and invaded Kuwait without permission of the U.S.
| government. That invasion began a U.S. obsession with Saddam Hussein
| that resulted in more than a decade of U.S. foreign war, foreign aid,
| and foreign interventions against Iraq.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that during the Cold War, the United States and other
| Western nations furnished biological, chemical, and components for
| nuclear weaponry to Saddam Hussein, with the intent that he use the
| weaponry against the Iranian people? That's why the U.S. government
| was so certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - Saddam
| didn't return all that they gave him.
|
| The Persian Gulf War, which undid Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait,
| produced many adverse consequences: the deaths and injuries of dozens
| of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis; massive
| ever-increasing spending for the U.S. military-industrial complex; a
| 13-year trade embargo against Iraq that cost the lives of some 500,000
| Iraqi children; the enforcement of the so-called no-fly zones, which
| produced additional Iraqi deaths; and the September 11 terrorist
| attacks in New York and Washington, which cost the lives of 3,000
| Americans and which accelerated the move toward a total police state
| in America.
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that President Bush has intentionally, knowingly, and
| deliberately disregarded the provision in the U.S Constitution that
| grants to Congress the power to declare war? Did you also know that
| the president takes an oath to protect and defend the Constitution
| when he assumes office?
|
|
| In March 2003 the president initiated another foreign war against
| Iraq. So far, the invasion has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of
| American soldiers, the deaths and maimings of tens of thousands of
| Iraqis (including both civilians and ordinary soldiers), the
| destruction of billions of dollars in property, the loss of billions
| of dollars of museum antiquities, the deaths of UN officials, the
| uncontrollable expenditure of billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer
| money, a magnet for terrorists everywhere who hate U.S. foreign
| policy, along with all the future perverse consequences that will
| inevitably flow from the war. (Bear in mind, however, the
| non-responsibility principle that interventionists maintain about
| foreign wars: Supporters of foreign interventions can take credit for
| the good consequences of foreign wars but are not morally responsible
| for the bad consequences because U.S. officials mean well and because
| the bad consequences come after the day of military victory.)
|
|
| Did You Know?
| Did you know that a phrase that could easily describe the
| foreign-policy philosophy of interventionists is: "Perpetual war is
| the best way to attain perpetual peace"?
|
|
| Congratulations! You've now completed Foreign Policy for Tyros. That
| means that you know more about U.S. foreign wars than any of your
| friends and relatives! Why not surprise them at your next dinner
| party?
|
| Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
| Foundation and co-editor of The Failure of America's Foreign Wars.
| Send him email.
|
|
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|
