Topic: War
Oaths, War, And Liberty Oath Keepers may mean well, but they don't understand freedom. One doesn't advance liberty by supporting the government's wars.by Darren Wolfe
(libertarian)
Monday, May 11, 2009
On this beautiful Mother's Day an email from the HispanicLibertarians Yahoo Group landed in my inbox. It was a post titled "Troops and Law enforcement officers say not on my watch!". The entire post was this link, [link edited for length], the Oath Keepers website. At first glance I thought good for them this is a step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, further examination quickly revealed another side of this organization. While they advocate liberty and respect for the Constitution they also support the US government's imperial wars. It is not possible to be pro war and empire, on the one hand, and pro liberty at the same time. One must choose one or the other.
The pro war and pro empire side is revealed when one clicks on the links in the blog post, "Shout Our Oaths In The Tyrant's Face- Washington D.C., June 13, 2009", a call to celebrate an alleged victory in Iraq. The first link is to Gathering of Eagles. On their page titled Our Mission point number 9 states, "We will accept nothing less than total, unqualified victory in the current conflict. Surrender is not an option, nor is defeat." The freedom hating Neoconservatives couldn't have said it better. The truth is that ending an aggressive war overseas isn't surrender or defeat, it is good sense. It is the only way to live in peace with the world.
(I will give them credit for one thing, point number 7 which reads, "We vehemently oppose the notion that it is possible to 'support the troops but not the war.' We are opposed to those groups who would claim support for the troops yet engage in behavior that is demeaning and abusive to the men and women who wear our nation's uniform." This is quite true. It is the height of moral cowardice to proclaim support for the troops but oppose their mission. Those who oppose the war should do so completely and openly.)
Oath Keepers is missing a key point. The problem isn't that the military and police are being given the wrong orders, that's merely the symptom. The real problem is the fact that these organizations exist that allow such orders to be issued in the first place. I make this point about police powers in, "Drug Prohibition: Law Enforcement Is The Problem".
The answer is not to take this oath, the answer is to resign from government service. I would remind readers that this would be emulating George Washington's resignation from and disbanding of the Army after the fighting in the Revolutionary War ended. He knew better than to have a standing army.
Let me conclude with some words of wisdom on the subject from the Founders:
It is certain, that all parts of Europe which are enslaved, have been enslaved by armies; and it is absolutely impossible, that any nation which keeps them amongst themselves can long preserve their liberties; nor can any nation perfectly lose their liberties who are without such guests: And yet, though all men see this, and at times confess it, yet all have joined in their turns, to bring this heavy evil upon themselves and their country.
Cato's Letters, No. 95: Further Reasonings against Standing Armies [September 22, 1722] **************************
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
--James Madison *************************
"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty .... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
-- Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Floor debate over the Second Amendment [1789] *************************
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."
Thomas Jefferson *****************************
If we admit this consolidated government, it will be because we like a great splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, a navy, and a number of things: When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, Sir, was then the primary objectBut now, Sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country to a powerful and mighty empire.
Patrick Henry *******************************
"Avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
George Washington, Farewell Address [1796]
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You misinterpret the Gathering of Eagles mission point 9. You infer that it refers solely to a victory in Iraq. It does not. The present conflict to which it refers is the war against Islamic supremicism in which Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and other actions are merely battles. Important and necessary battles, but battles all the same.
It is an aggressive war, but the aggression has been, until recently, entirely on the part of the Islamic fundamentalists and imperialists who have waged war on western civilization for almost 1,400 years. You probably never heard of the Battle of Tours, or the Battle of Vienna, or even of the Fall of Constantinople. You might not even know that the very first entity to strike American citizens after our successful revolution were the Islamic pirates of North Africa.
We had a period of peace, for the most part, after the defeat of the Barbary pirates because the advances in science and technology of the next period almost all took place in the west while the backward regimes of Islam became a backwater in the world.
The advent of oil wealth has caused a rebirth of the Islamic fundamentalist ideology and its inherent imperial ambitions. If you look at conflicts around the world you will find most occur in regions adjacent to Islamic countries. Almost all are fomented by Islamic radicalism.
This is not to say that every muslim is a radical or a terrorist. Most people in those countries would like nothing better than to live their lives, raise their families in peace and safety, and enjoy the fruits of human progress. Unfortunately they often do not get that chance. We are providing that opportunity in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It is not clean nor painless, but if they can hold onto the freedom we've fought to give them, they will be our allies in spreading freedom in the rest of the Islamic world.
Dan Maloney NY State Coordinator Gathering of Eagles
I often thank people for their comments, not this time. You're too condescending. Let me reply in kind.
You've probably never heard of the Crusades nor of the European conquest of most of the Muslim world during the 19th century. You don't seem to know that the US supports Israel & many dictators in Muslim countries. (End retaliatory condescention.) To say that all the aggression lies with the other side is silly. The West has attacked & intervened in their part of the world as much as, if not more than, they have in ours.
The "period of peace, for the most part" that you refer to was actually the period of greatest Western imperialism.
Moving along to point 9. It doesn't say Iraq, nor did I take it to mean just Iraq. All the other places you mention are not "Important and necessary battles", they are imperial wars. The US is trying to maintain or extend its dominance. The sooner they end the better.
This is not to be mistaken for support for Islamic fundamentalism or blindness to the repressive nature of the regimes in that part of the world. They are bad, they're also not our problem. What most supporters of the war, yourself included, are blind to is the nature of the US govt & its goals. The govt here isn't trying to free anybody, they want to control them. The "democracy" practiced here that we also export is a sham. Elections have become a means of duping people into supporting the govt rather than a means of people controlling it. The Founders warned us:
"It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism." --Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
********************************
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for,..."
--Thomas Jefferson
To conclude this comment, the points you're making are exactly the ones the neocons made to justify their aggressive wars, well, after the WMD lies were exposed, that is. They don't stand up to scrutiny.
"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own... She well knows that, by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the color and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlets upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit".
"But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
On September 11, 2001, they made themselves our problem. Almost three thousand of our citizens in New York, including my friends and nearly my brother, were killed because the Islamists decided to bring their hate to our shores. The monster came here to destroy us in whatever way it could. It will do so again if it can.
You can stick your head in the sand and spout all the inane pontifications you like, but that will not change the fact that democracy and western civilization are diametrically opposed by Islamic supremicism. And the Islamists are militant in their intent to destroy them.
Oh, and about the crusades, interesting where you set the way back machine when you start referring to history. How do you suppose those countries became islamic to begin with? What happened to those Christians or Zoroastrians or Hebrews or Animists or any other religion that lived there before? Did they just all decide one day that Islam was the one true "Religion of Peace"?
Maybe you should ponder that the crusades might have been a response to the Islamic aggression that overran the middle east to begin with. After all, they did begin after Jerusalem was conquered by the Islamists.Perhaps that is an irrelevant, inconsequential and inconvenient fact in your version of history.
I suppose, in your view, the battles of Vienna and Tours were also Western aggression against the poor misunderstood Islamic masses as well.
As for the 19th Century, there is a major difference in the way the western powers treated the people in those areas and the way the Islamists treated them during their earlier conquest. Perhaps you might ponder why those areas remained Islamic. Maybe the western powers didn't impose an imperialistic ideology disguised as a religion upon them? In hindsight it might have been better if they had.
Regardless, the fact remains that we are in a struggle to preserve the values of freedom and democracy against an implacable foe. It is a fight to the death for only one can survive. I prefer our side to win.
Posted By: Kent McManigal
Date: 2010-01-20 09:33:30
Dan, you say "On September 11, 2001, they made themselves our problem", but, according to the government's official story, those who committed that evil act died in the process. Remember? The act was not the act of a "country", but of individual aggressors.
The "values of freedom and democracy" you espouse are actually mutually exclusive concepts. You can have one or the other; not both. This is the true fight to the death. Yours is an illusion.
I also prefer my side to win, but going around the world killing and destroying, and thereby creating new generations of people who mistakenly hate Americans for the destruction the US government causes, could make my side, the side of liberty, lose. That is why your "way" is wrong and dangerous.
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