Subscribe to RSSBattling the Bipartisan Consensus for War
Doug Bandow Campaign For Liberty Sunday, March 14, 2010 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. Right and Left recently came together for a day-long conference in Washington. Participants included this writer, editors from the Nation , Progressive Review online, American Conservative , Reason , and other publications; leftish anti-war activists reaching back to the Vietnam era and a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School; Ralph Nader; a supporter of Patrick Buchanan’s 1992 presidential bid; a former campaign aide to internet sensation Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and three members of the Paul-inspired group Young Americans for Liberty; representatives of several activist organizations, including Voters for Peace and Veterans for Peace; and writers, think tankers, academics, and organizers from across the political spectrum. The moment economics, domestic policy, or election law came up, participants disagreed. But on the central issue of war and peace the group united. While war might sometimes be unavoidable — pacifism was not on the agenda, though some of the participants might have been pacifists — it should be a last resort, a tragic necessity to protect a free American society. While war sometimes brings out the finest and most sublime human values such as courage and honor, more often it looses the basest passions and destroys what we most hold dear. Despite today’s constant celebration of all things military, Americans are best served by peace, allowing them to enjoy the pleasures and surmount the challenges of daily life. Yet today the U.S. is one of the world’s most militarized states, accounting for nearly half of the globe’s military outlays. The U.S. government maintains hundreds of military installations and hundreds of thousands of troops abroad. No other country, democratic or authoritarian, comes close to matching America’s aggressive military record in recent decades: nations and territories invaded or bombed include Iraq (twice), Serbia, Bosnian Serbs, Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, Panama, and Grenada. Threats have come fast and furious against North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and most recently …
Here is the original post:
Battling the Bipartisan Consensus for War
Counter
0 Comments
You can be the first one to leave a comment.