Issued today by the Libertarian Party National Chair:
The Libertarian Party denounces last night’s strikes on Syria.
Purportedly these strikes were a retaliation for the release of a chemical agent which wounded and killed many Syrians earlier this week.
The use of chemical agents against civilians is abhorrent but, according to news reports, the cause of that chemical release is uncertain. It is believable that the Assad regime could have purposefully caused it but when war and peace are at stake, as they are now, we must not jump to conclusions, no matter how natural they may seem.
The situation in Syria is very complex. There is no clear, straight-forward path to peace. Additional air strikes will just kill more people and further inflame an already highly volatile situation.
For decades, the United States has pursued a foreign policy based on the idea that we can play policeman for the world. Time and time again we have seen this fail. Sadly, our intervention into Syria will be no different.
Launching missiles into Syria risks pitting the US against Russia in a proxy war. There is no way in which a proxy war can be beneficial for humanity, the United States, or Syria. Such a war will only elevate Russia on the world stage, further destroy Syria and Syrian lives, and cost the US many American lives and resources.
If the President wants to help the Syrian people, he should facilitate more refugees entering the United States to find safety here rather than demonizing them and hampering their escape from the dictator who is slaughtering them.
Since World War II, American foreign policy has been highly interventionist. This has dragged our country into many wars and conflicts that were not in the best interest of the American people. These wars and conflicts have cost many thousands of lives and billions of dollars and have not made the American people any safer. Our military is very powerful but these issues are too complex to be solved by military might.
The Libertarian Party calls for an end to interventionist foreign policy.
Specifically, the Libertarian Party recommends ending American military aggression in Syria and the rest of the Middle East. Our actions there, while meant to reduce terrorism, instead often serve as a rallying cry for terrorists and facilitate terrorist recruitment.
Nicholas Sarwark
Chair, Libertarian National Committee
Not a bad contribution to the issue and no doubt well intentioned. But this part was pretty stupid:
“Launching missiles into Syria risks pitting the US against Russia in a proxy war. There is no way in which a proxy war can be beneficial for humanity, the United States, or Syria.”
On the contrary, the writer forgets to bring up the plain fact that any war involving Russia is going to help restore the status quo that was, before the fall of the Soviet Union.
Somehow even the libertarians seen to lose track of the fact that the Arabian peninsula was a relatively *peaceful place before the fall of the S.U. which coincided with Bush1’s war against Iraq for control of ME oil resources.
What real and honest person who is against war would not want to see Russia stand up with a real threat of nuclear retaliation against the US if it continues to persist? Why put off the inevitable and sacrifice more millions of lives to US bombing?
* with the exception of Israel’s aggression
The status quo that was before the fall of the Soviet Union was not beneficial for humanity; nor was it beneficial for the United States or Syria outside of their political class.
You’re off topic and so I don’t care to argue the point. If you desire a rebuttal in detail then let me know.
For now, all you need to understand is that the US grabbed the opportunity to run roughshod over the ME, coincidentally coinciding with the fall of the S.U.
And now war will be opposed as it hasn’t been during that period of time because Russia and China are now capable of standing up for their share of the ME.
I think you understand that quite well but if you have any questions, watch the video with Tulsi Gabbard.
It’s flawless in it’s truthfulness!
It was a lot better for the people of the ME and those people were out of that political class!
Unless you thnk that all those Arabs died from lead poisoning in the literal sense!
“If the President wants to help the Syrian people, he should facilitate more refugees entering the United States to find safety here rather than demonizing them and hampering their escape from the dictator who is slaughtering them.”
There’s just no way a libertarian can say something without saying something uninformed and stupid. That one is an insult to all people with the mental capacity of more than a garden slug.
So consequently the libertarian party fails in a place where they obviously can’t afford to fail. Doesn’t anybody proof read this crap before it’s exposed to the light of day?
Bases on the statement you quote, the followup should have been “There’s just no way a libertarian can say something without saying something irrefutably correct.” Did your spell-check go on the fritz or something?
The point was, the author fell into the propaganda ploy of blaming the dictator for what his country is doing.
What is our point? If your libertarian party would grab the opportunity to repeat that which Tulsi Gabbard had the courage to state, they would be doing something very useful that nobody of good intentions could criticize them over.
If they don’t know how to get the message right then they could just copy her word for word because her message was flawless. Jumping to the conclusion the way this one does on the ‘dictator’ slughtering is defusing any effort we are making toward demanding a UN investigation of the incident in order to correctly place blame.
This is your biggest mistake you’ve made in my opinion since I’ve been reading your opinions. It seems to me out of character and I can only suspect that you were motivated by anger toward me. Give it some thought.
That’s something I’ll be putting to a test.
One of the ways to measure it would be to have a look at it’s popularity.
I agree with you completely, the solution to these cancers are for the hearts of many more people to change for the better and target their own lack of action.
The last thing we need is a flood of ME refugees. Europe has that problem now.
Washington policies created the refugee flows, it’s time you accept responsibility for them (and/or stop the destabilization of the ME).
Agree on the ME. But I do not accept that it is just for those of us that have opposed the interventions from the start to pay for the conquences. The American State essentially took my money by force to create chaos in the ME. Those that support the right of the State to do that are the ones that are responsible. Many of those people gain from their support of the State in other ways. Until people recognize this is wrong, there will be no real advance in the human condition. Athough I would settle for ending the carnage of US foreign policy as the number one priority. Including ending such things as economic sanctions. The one Iraq resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi infants. Trump talks about babies….. what about those that support these policies and the infants that have died at the hands of US policies???
Just before the midnight deadline for Saddam to surrender to the coalition overlords, the only places open in Baghdad were gun stores and gynecologist clinics because aerial bombardment, according to U.S. and British statistics from World War 2, causes miscarriages and premature births. So the Ultra Right Extremists were faced with two of their most cherished issues, Guns and Abortion, being challenged. Fortunately for them the outcry about those issues was drowned out in the jingoistic war drum beating. Maybe if others will pick up our megaphones and point out crap like that, say, for instance, a Congressman who already has a reputation for not being a conformist suck, were to put it onto the agenda. I mean, if two hot issues like that were suddenly thrust into the dialogue, and by somebody who’s better at the art of persuasion, who knows?
It’s like everybody in the ME has a rifle, which our 2nd Amendment spokesmen keep loudly assuring us that it’s a counterbalance to tyranny and dictatorship, but hasn’t stopped it in Syria or Iraq. At least according to ‘our’ government. The other one, spontaneous abortion aka miscarriages, caused in large part to U.S. Air Force and Navy rockets and other munitions being delivered on a daily basis….
I know the War Parties hate any mention of babykilling unless it’s an accusation against the enemy du jour.
And in the States, the anti-abortion lobby, gun lobby and War lobby are heavily populated with the same faces. Throw in the anti-immigrant caucus and you still get the same names and faces.
Actually the far right has been anti intervention for more than a century. Robert Taft, for example. The “Old Right”. Progressives, on the other hand, have largely been pro intervention and pro war over the same period. Those that have a shallow, government fed knowledge of history come up with claims like yours. Suggest reading real history based on fact.
I picked that as the war party all around me, in Colorado and previously in Texas, has been the ones who call themselves Conservatives. AKA the “religious right” which are neither. Birth Control is as far into their agenda as gun control. There’s still protests in Arlington Texas where some real idiots are petitioning in the street to be allowed to over-ride the property rights of a national chain of coffee shops, standing on the side of Cooper Street, holding signs in one hand and machine guns in the other. Actually AK47s are their choice, Cheaper Than Dirt (a Fort Worth store) has had many discount sales of the AKs and clones. If you go past where their cars are parked, count how many anti-birth control, anti-islam, and Bush-Cheney bumper stickers. They’re particularly loud, abusive, under-educated and, yeah, they fit the modern label of “conservatives”. They get a lot of fawning attention from the RNC. Consistently. They feign christianity, or maybe truly believe Jesus tells them to kill other people. It works out the same.
Supposedly Trump is “anti-intervention” and Robert Taft’s daddy was prominent in the very interventionalist “banana republic” imperialism, as president and as federal judge. I guess the definition of “intervention” means different things to different people
President Taft also presided over the U.S. instigated “revolution” in Hawaii. There was a lot of that going on and apparently crossed party lines. Pres. Wilson ordered the assassination of Emiliano Zapata and Warren Harding ordered the hit on Doroteo Aranga aka Pancho Villa. Both because they brought down the U.S. puppet regime in Mexico. And that kind of intervention has been going on, especially with our Latin American neighbors. Reagan and Bush Sr had huge ties to the Salvadoran hit squads, sort of an outsourced Bureau of Assassination.
Point being, they had and the surviving members of their Cartel still have the guns, abortion and warmongering issues. And, yes, the issues can be brought into play. I mean, we have a war happening right now and I say, let’s use every avenue to stop it.
Or at least try.
I’m reminded that the flood of refugees into England, from France and The Netherlands and Norway and Poland etc during World War 2… were mostly soldiers. Civilians had no real chance. What if Canada and Mexico closed their borders immediately after martial law is implemented in the U.S.? Mexico certainly would have reservations about it, the last wave of U.S. ex-pats cost Mexico a third of their land mass.