Madison was right

While I await a letter from President Obama, he delivers Libya. I am appalled.

When I wrote President Ford (berating him for his pardon of Nixon – which in retrospect I think was prudent,) I received a direct and relevant response in less than two weeks. When I wrote President Reagan, after my trip to Nicaragua, I received a formatted, non-responsive acknowledgment in less than three weeks. I have yet to receive any White House response to this:

The Honorable Barack Obama
The White House

Dear Mr. President:

I have been with you for three years and still am though my enthusiasm waxes and wanes as you play out the lousy hand you have been dealt. But, I am not with you on Afghanistan. Afghans deserve not one more drop of American blood, not one more dollar, neither military nor civil; they have nothing to give us in return.

Their behavior amply justifies abandoning them:
• Karzai’s firing of public prosecutors who get too close
• Rampant election fraud on all sides
• Karzai’s suspension of election board investigations and attempted suspension of parliament
• Channeling of aid, military spending and drug revenues into private hands
• The looting of Kabulbank and siphoning off public funds to Dubai
• Government take-over of internationally supported women’s shelters and in so doing betrayal of the safety and anonymity of those sheltered
• Pressuring NATO to release detainees linked to the establishment despite the malfeasances uncovered

Afghans have no strategic assets to offer – the most illiterate, impoverished, underdeveloped nation in all of Islam. They are only a strategic burden for those who would embrace them as “ally.” Afghanistan is a tribal kleptocracy poised between the 14th and 21st centuries and unwilling to live solely in either.

Abandonment as policy? Certainly it is rife with difficulty given the neighborhood, but isn’t it far better than wasting lives and treasure in a fruitless quest for some will-o-the-wisp stability and comity?

Please, please use their self-destructive behaviors to justify our turning about and focusing on useful, promising endeavors here at home and elsewhere in the world.

Sincerely,

And now Libya.

My brother-in-law, who has long advocated a Dept. of Peace, dredged up this quote from one of our most farsighted founding fathers:

“Of all enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war…. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
James Madison, Political Observations, April 20, 1795

Madison would would be appalled at our military-industrial complex.

I have become very alarmed at our standing military with its “training” tentacles infiltrating standing armies throughout the world. It is we who trained and vouched for the Egyptian generals who now are cautiously protecting their self-interest and braking the move to representative government. It is our army who trained and armed the Saudi army now repressing Bahrainis. Pinochet’s boys, the Indonesian army that wreaked havoc on East Timor, the Korean army that slaughtered the people of Kwangju Island -- all trained by US Army counter-insurgency teams. And now Petraeus – Obama's counter-insurgency guru -- assures Congress that all is going well in Afghanistan.

But all is not going well. And even though the professionals were reluctant to embark on Libya, Madison’s warning is proven out once again: a powerful (by virtue of arms) Executive capitalizes on a continuous string of foreign turmoils, invokes “national interest” and “humanitarianism” and keeps his nation in thrall to debt, constraints in the name of security, and domestic turmoil.

Am I getting paranoid? Perhaps. But isn’t it time to close foreign bases, reel in and disband our secret JCET teams, and replace the 70-year old American Empire built on military assistance with one built on civil freedoms, competitive innovation, and exemplary representative democracy? Maybe my brother-in-law is right; maybe it is time for a new Dept. of Peace.