Dakota Beacon

As we stand poised to enter into another dangerous conflict at the side of allies against the enemies of freedom, perhaps in Estonia, perhaps elsewhere, a brief wire service story in the Grand Forks Herald caught my eye.  It was so short that it is worth quoting in its entirety:

BAGHDAD – About two dozen Iraqi women demonstrated on Saturday in Baghdad against a draft law approved by the Iraqi cabinet that would permit the marriage of nine-year-old girls and automatically give child custody to fathers.  The group’s protest was on International Women’s Day and a week after the cabinet voted for the legislation, based on Shi’ite Islamic jurisprudence, allowing clergy to preside over marriages, divorces and inheritances.  The draft now goes to parliament. (Reuters)

In March of 2003, just over 11 years ago now, the U.S. invaded Iraq.  We were looking for weapons of mass destruction.  I would not argue against a preemptive move to seize weapons which could slaughter millions of people in the hands of an apparently unstable and demonstrably unprincipled leader.  Once we got in there, though, we decided to give Iraq a makeover.  It was our design to create a little clone of America.  Some of our country’s most public-spirited and noble representatives went over to observe the Iraqi elections.  We all recall the ballyhoo when the burqa-clad women proudly held up their stained thumbs indicating that they had voted in an election for the first time ever.  We ran Saddam Hussein to ground in his hidey-hole and dragged him to his trial and execution.  His statue was torn down by the triumphant mobs. 

Now without the national-level bad guy of whom everyone was generally afraid, we have an army of neighborhood spies and bullies in the form of the local imams.  These local “leaders” hold the people’s lives in their hands to a much greater degree than did Saddam Hussein . . . and they know everyone’s name in their villages and where they live, and what they do and what they say, unlike Saddam.  Now we have a presumably elected parliament ready to weigh in on the question (already answered by the cabinet) of whether a nine-year-old child should be made to bear children for the disposal of a middle-aged pedophile and at his convenience.  Note that inheritance, along with marriage and divorce are in the local imam’s hands, and the child which the nine-year-old must be made to bear against her will and against her health, will be the property, in effect, of the man who uses her for his comfort or his stable. 

It is difficult to see the efficacy of our policy of “nation-building” in Iraq.  We have, if we credit the reportage of Reuters, committed some $4 billion-plus to the defeat and “rebuilding” of Iraq.  It cost the lives of 176,000 to 189,000 civilians.  How many American soldiers’ lives were lost?  How many surviving soldiers’ lives were destroyed or limbs or mental and physical health destroyed?  For what? 

Many Conservatives still cling to the NeoCon position that we need to be the world’s policeman.  They misinterpret Reagan’s “peace through strength” position to mean that we should run around remaking cultures (or what pass for cultures) that have been in place for millennia in foreign parts unknown by Americans.  Recently we nearly came into the Syrian conflict.  We were going to take out their strongman, Assad.  It just happens that the people we would have been supporting in that one are now killing - and eating - those who do not espouse their own peculiar jihadi form of Islam.  It is hard to justify America charging up the engines of war to install a bunch of cannibals in the seat of power in strategically crucial Syria.  But this is what that friend of cannibal jihadis, John McCain, would have demanded.

The right way to read Reagan’s position, I believe, is that our strength comes first.  Strength means self-sufficiency in energy resources.  Get rid of the obstacles to developing our own proven natural resources.  Don’t use energy policy to promote so-called unproven “green” businesses (which are, in fact, nothing but crony capitalism).  Our energy is an important component in our national security.  It is not a football to use in a game to promote the friends of the powerful in their grab for “green” subsidies. 

Next we should have a strong military.  This means that the emphasis should be on whatever makes it stronger and more efficient.  Not “gayer”.  The military is not there to be used for social engineering, but to protect the security interests of America. 

Next we should shut down our immigration.  There’s no point in running off to Iraq to contain terrorists if we throw open our borders and our airports to foreign nationals coming in on whatever pretext – tourism, “work”, “education”.  We have trained more than enough terrorists in our aviation schools as to how to take off but not land.  We ignore the Russian government when even they tell us we are admitting dangerous terrorists into our country.

Energy self-sufficiency, a strong military focused on protecting our country and people and an immigration policy that prevents terrorism rather than promotes it – these are the ingredients of the strength which promotes peace.  Can you imagine a Putin moving on Ukraine with a President Reagan at the helm?  It would be highly unlikely.  Can you imagine North Korea’s maniac leader threatening us or our allies?  (And can you imagine Nancy and her mother in China reorganizing their menus and setting them straight on their hotel accommodations?)

Regarding our foreign adventures, they would never have been deemed necessary had the Bushes and the recent Democrats stuck to our own business and not tried to meddle beyond our strict national interest.  Iraq is but one example.   No doubt the NeoCons have more work they’d like to undertake.  More governments they’d like to set up for the peoples of other countries.

It appears that we can take one of two roads:  1.  We decide to stay home, work on being so strong and formidable that no one wishes to stir our anger, keeping terrorism far from our shores through refusal to allow anyone in absent a thorough investigation, on a one-at-a-time basis and be so financially secure that we can afford to do so, or 2.  Do what the British did for about 300 years – take our resources and use them to build an empire that we control.  Forget about elections – install viceroys and administrators of our own and commandeer those nations’ resources for our benefit to make it work out financially.  It might well improve the conditions in those countries.  After all, possibly the old British Empire, had it controlled Iraq, would have put the kibosh on the Iraqi cabinet’s evil plan to turn little nine-year-old girls into baby-making machines and “comfort women” for middle-aged Shi’ite pedophiles.  In that sense, it might be worth it. 

But Americans have never had a taste for building empires.  At least not beyond our own shores.  When we controlled the Philippines following the Spanish American War it was a brief tenure.  When we occupied Japan after World War II we couldn’t wait to get out and let the Japanese have their country back.  We even stood back and let other countries (Russia) move in when we defeated Germany. 

Perhaps this is good, perhaps not.  But it remains that we must not try to have it both ways.  Either we should become a world empire on which the sun never sets, run by Americans for America, or we should abandon any attempts at “nation-building”.  We should make this decision and then, either way, we should strengthen our military, shore up our economy by getting out of debt, and close our borders.  We don’t need immigration any more.  When someday we think we do we can open to it again. 

But the story of the scant 24 women protesting against the plans of the hideous Shi’ite clergy to make dams of little girls and enslave them, after the grossness of 180,000 dead civilians and $4 billion in cost of war, supposedly to “civilize” Iraq, says all that needs to be said here.  Many Conservatives turned away from Ron Paul when he counseled against this kind of exercise.  Paul was right on this one. 

No, we did not ask for nor deserve 9-11.  It was a vicious and unprovoked attack.  Iraq had little to do with it – our friends in Saudi Arabia and some of the Saudi pilots trained right here had more to do with that.  But we didn’t attack the Saudi’s, did we?  Instead we went after supposed WMD’s in Iraq and then decided to go after Hussein as our mission.  What did we accomplish?  I disagree with Paul when he says we more or less “asked for it” in 9-11.  But I think I agree completely when he says we have no business, no national interest, and no right to “nation-build”, to “observe” elections or set them up, to provide services to this end.  One American life is too much to lose in this kind of scheme, one American dollar too much to spend.

As we go forward against Putin’s Russia, it should be with caution and only in America’s national interest.  For this reason we should be careful and sparing with involvement with international treaties which could pull us into these situations.  I am all for a free and independent Estonia and a free and independent Ukraine.  That said, America should go no further than necessary to stop the Russians.  Can we do it?  Sadly, we are in such financial and social disarray and so ill-prepared in 2014 that Russia is likely to proceed in what they feel are their interests and they ARE empire-builders and always have been.  That is the path they have always chosen.  The only thing that prevents them from acting out is America’s quiet strength and resolve, not a bunch of edicts from Obama making our military into a social experiment, not a lazy and worthless Congress which will keep voting to spend money we do not have on foolish social programs, fake “education” and crony buddies.  We will likely have war through weakness rather than peace through strength, and that kind of war is seldom won.

With Iraq, as we have seen, the winners were the Shi’ite clergy and the fanatics now in the cabinet; the losers?  Well, let’s see . . . Saddam Hussein, the United States . . . and the little nine-year-old girls who just want to pick out their own husbands some day, or at least wait until they have a chance to grow up first.