California Libertarian Alliance

“The U.S. is rarely at peace. It doesn’t matter which party or which politician is in power: American military forces will be on the move, invading a Third World nation here and threatening an emerging power there.”

“In January 2009 Republican George W. Bush yielded to Democrat Barack Obama, and the U.S. government increased military spending and expanded the war in Afghanistan. If a Republican is elected in 2012, recent history suggests that defense outlays will grow further, as Washington attacks another nation or two.”

“Enthusiasm for war crosses party lines — Robert Kagan recently wrote approvingly of the militaristic alliance between “liberal interventionist Democrats” and “hawkish internationalist Republicans” — both groups which have never met a war they didn’t want to fight. However, support for peace also is transpartisan. Such sentiments are perhaps strongest on the Democratic left, which increasingly feels disenfranchised by President Obama. A smaller contingent of libertarians, traditional conservatives, and paleo-conservatives has resisted the conservative movement’s adoption of war-mongering intervention as a basic tenet.”

Doug Bandow takes on the pro-war bipartisans @ http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=689

Chris Moody reports @ The Cato-at-Liberty blog:

In a Thursday panel at Cato on conservatism and war, U.S. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and John Duncan (R-Tenn.) revealed that the vast majority of GOP members of Congress now think it was wrong for the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.

The discussion was moderated by Grover Norquist, who asked the congressmen how many of their colleagues now think the war was a mistake.

Rohrabacher:

“I will say that the decision to go in, in retrospect, almost all of us think that was a horrible mistake. …Now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars, and all of these years, and all of these lives, and all of this blood… all I can say is everyone I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now.”

McClintock:

“I think everyone [in Congress] would agree that Iraq was a mistake.”

Source (includes video):http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/03/18/gop-congressmen-most-republicans-now-think-iraq-war-was-a-mistake/

“This is not the change we hoped for. President Obama rose to power on the basis of his early opposition to the Iraq war and his promise to end it. But after a year in the White House he has made both of George Bush’s wars his wars.”

“Speaking of Iraq in February 2008, candidate Barack Obama said, “I opposed this war in 2002. I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home.” The following month, under fire from Hillary Clinton, he reiterated, ”I was opposed to this war in 2002….I have been against it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8 and I will bring this war to an end in 2009. So don’t be confused.” ”

“Indeed, in his famous “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow” speech on the night he clinched the Democratic nomination, he also proclaimed, “I am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that . . . this was the moment when we ended a war.” ”

David Boaz looks for the change we were promised, and finds that things have remained the same @ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/12/30/its-the-end-of-2009-where-are-our-troops/

“If anyone still doubted that this administration’s foreign policy would bring any kind of change, this week’s debate on Afghanistan should remove all doubt. The president’s stated justifications for sending more troops to Afghanistan and escalating the war amount to little more than recycling all the false reasons we began the conflict. It is so discouraging to see this coming from our new leadership, when the people were hoping for peace. New polls show that 49 percent of the people favor minding our own business on the world stage, up from 30 percent in 2002. Perpetual war is not solving anything. Indeed continually seeking out monsters to destroy abroad only threatens our security here at home as international resentment against us builds. The people understand this and are becoming increasingly frustrated at not being heard by the decision-makers. The leaders say some things the people want to hear, but change never comes.”

Full Column on the Afghanistan War by Rep. Ron Paul (Rep-Texas) @ http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2009/12/07/who-wants-more-war/

The Libertarian Party (LP) today expressed its opposition to the Afghanistan war plans announced by President Barack Obama last night.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director of the LP, said, “Rush Limbaugh should buy Obama a nice cigar. The liberal president has done exactly what the conservative leader wanted: escalate the war.”

William Redpath, Chairman of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC), commented, “This is further evidence that the differences between Republicans and Democrats are, at most, rhetorical. This president, whose votes made him the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, has just announced an escalation of a foreign war. His campaign promise of ‘Change’ now sounds a lot more hollow.”

Full statement @ http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/libertarians-opposed-to-new-war-plans-for-afghanistan

“Donald Rumsfeld could have given the order to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, but he let him escape to Pakistan because he was afraid of angering U.S. allies in Afghanistan. This shocking report was published Sunday in the New York Times and several other outlets and is culled from information revealed in a detailed analysis released by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the crucial days in December 2001 when bin Laden and and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were pinned down in caves high up in the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan.”

Full column by Joe Wolverton II in The New American @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/asia-mainmenu-33/2427-donald-rumsfeld-let-bin-laden-escape-into-pakistan

“What if tomorrow morning you woke up to headlines that yet another Chinese drone bombing on US soil killed several dozen ranchers in a rural community while they were sleeping? That a drone aircraft had come across the Canadian border in the middle of the night and carried out the latest of many attacks? What if it was claimed that many of the victims harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but most of the dead were innocent women and children? And what if the Chinese administration, in an effort to improve its public image in the US, had approved an aid package to send funds to help with American roads and schools and promote Chinese values here?”

“Most Americans would not stand for it. Yet the above hypothetical events are similar to what our government is doing in Pakistan.”

Full column by Rep. Ron Paul (Rep.-Tex) @ http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/003919.html

“Last week Congress passed the war supplemental appropriations bill.   In an affront to all those who thought they voted for a peace candidate, the current president will be sending another $106 billion we don’t have to continue the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq, without a hint of a plan to bring our troops home.”

“Many of my colleagues who voted with me as I opposed every war supplemental request under the previous administration seem to have changed their tune.  I maintain that a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives through the power of the purse, and as long as Congress continues to enable these dangerous interventions abroad, there is no end in sight, that is until we face total economic collapse.”

Full Column by Rep. Ron Paul (Rep-Texas) @ http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/003849.html

“After spending eight years implementing spendthrift domestic policies and destabilizing foreign policies, the Republican Party finds itself on the outside looking in. GOP leaders are seeking to refashion their domestic agenda. But they have yet to acknowledge the need for an international overhaul as well.”

“Defeat is hard. In the last two elections Republicans have lost the presidency, control of the House and even a filibuster-capable minority in the Senate. It is an electoral catastrophe greater than the 1994 Democratic congressional defeat. One has to go back before Ronald Reagan’s election to find the GOP in such dire shape.”

“A number of Republican notables recently began a “listening tour.” At least they seem to recognize the need to transform their fiscal and domestic policies. On foreign policy Republicans appear to be stuck on stupid, as the saying goes.”

Doug Bandow looks at Republicans trying to reinvent themselves @ http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10263

“A few—and only a few—prescient commentators have questioned whether the U.S. can sustain its informal global empire in the wake of the most severe economic crisis since World War II. And the simultaneous quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan are leading more and more opinion leaders and taxpayers to this question. But the U.S. Empire helped cause the meltdown in the first place.”

“War has a history of causing financial and economic calamities. It does so directly by almost always causing inflation—that is, too much money chasing too few goods. During wartime, governments usually commandeer resources from the private sector into the government realm to fund the fighting. This action leaves shortages of resources to make consumer goods and their components, therefore pushing prices up. Making things worse, governments often times print money to fund the war, thus adding to the amount of money chasing the smaller number of consumer goods. Such “make-believe” wealth has funded many U.S. wars.”

Ivan Eland exposes the burden of global interventionism @ http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2498