America First: Why we need to examine our insane Foreign policy

I am not an America hater by any stretch of the imagination. Nor are the plethora of folks calling for a re-examination of our foreign policies. But that's what we're called.

I really don't want to be against any American. I don't like being on the butt end of insults. So if there were a way to somehow explain what it is that bothers me about our foreign policy without the resultant cries of "traitor! treason! Islam firster!" I would.

One of the main problems apears to be that any "agreement" with bin Laden and his band of murdering thugs is seen to be support. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is probably true that bin Laden knows that water is tantamount to life in the desert. If I agree with this, I am no more supporting bin Laden than you are by agreeing.

When we decry any actions taken by Israel, we are "anti-semites." When Israel admitted that they had set a booby trap near an area where children played and 5 Palestinian boys died when it went off, you couldn't get near the topic without being ridiculed.

This is puzzling to me. There is nothing wrong per se with Israel and certainly not Jews, but for certain they are not perfect. For some, Israel is perfection and any criticism is tantamount to racism. Those who disagree are shouted down with such fervor it makes one pause.

American policies aren't perfect either. It is arguable for instance that John Wayne's death from cancer could be attributed to nuclear tests performed back in the 40's. Movie locations happened to be in the area where tests occurred. Many film industry professionals who worked on movies filmed in Nevada died from cancer including that great American we called "the Duke."

Why is it an indictment on all of America to bring such mistakes to light? In general, the American population has no say so in the slightest regarding these sorts of activities nor do they have much say in our foreign policy.

But as usual, it is the American population that has to accept the consequences of Policy mistakes made by the government. To say that those who object to this "hate America" is completely absurd.

I love America. And those who decry our foreign policy blunders and the theft of our hard earned money that is necessary in order to carry out these blunders also love America. We're simply tired of having to pay the price for those mistakes, while those who carry them out never have to suffer the consequences.

One of the most bizarre claims by those who are calling us "America haters" and "Islam firsters" is that terorrists are simply angry that we are so democratic as a nation and love freedom. These terrorists "hate freedom" and thus hate America and Americans. They're "jealous," in other words, of our prosperity.

This is about as brilliant an analysis as claiming that Timothy McVeigh was upset that he was no longer an employee of the federal government and thus took out his jealosy and rage on that same federal government.

The fact is, we only know what the terrorists claim. Not that it matters much. The opinions of mass murderers are not that important. Clearly however, this is not what any of the terrorists are saying. What they are saying is that they believe themselves to be oppressed by our foreign intervention.

When students took Iranian embassy employees hostage, their reason given for such extraordinary measures was American meddling in Iranian internal affairs.

The Shah of Iran was our personally hand-picked leader for their country. The CIA had, in the time period between the time we basically annexed Iran during WWII, purposefully destroyed opposition to the Shah by using tactics they had learned in South America.

None of those tactics were even remotely related to "freedom" or the principles upon which this nation was founded. They were the actions of a government that believed the Iranian people were chattle and were not worthy of chosing their own leadership.

So what happened? A number of Americans paid the price for our meddling. When we allowed the Shah to enter America to receive medical treatment, the last straw was put upon the back of that proverbial camel.

And that is not to mention the American lives that were sacrificed in a botched rescue attempt. For some, these lives are expendable. They are the price a nation pays for being a "super power." I agree with that assesment. But I don't think we need to be a superpower. I don't think we need to meddle in the affairs of other nations in order to protect our borders.

And therein lies the rub. Dying in order to defend this nation from an attacking force is national defense and is noble. Sending young men and women across the globe to secure oil fields and preserve the "American way of life" is a sick project. I for one, am not willing to lose a single American for the cynical goal of sub-dollar-a-gallon fuel for my SUV.

If that is the measure of value for an American life then you can call me an America hater all day long and I will be proud to wear that badge.

I criticize our foreign policies because they result in the deaths of American soldiers and citizens at home and abroad. In no way do I criticize Americans. In the aftermath of the Trade Center attacks, it wasn't the government that responded with such ferocity and bravery. It was the average American.

The Beaurocrats were busy playing CYA and letting us know that none of this was their fault. In the meantime, Americans came up with over 60 million dollars in cash and even more in valuable resources in spite of the fact that they are taxed to the extreme in order to pay for the very policies that helped to incubate the attacks of 9/11.

America proved it's greatness in the response to the attacks. The government proved it's complete disregard for human liberty by passing laws which violate the spirit and letter of the Supreme law of the land. Even while the fires were still burning.

America is a great nation and is full of great people. Unfortunately its leaders have no respect for its people or its laws. Pointing this out is not showing hate for anything but the lawbreakers who do so.

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To: monkeyshine
All aid is bad because it is forced from us a the point of a gun.
It is immoral. It is theft.
That's why it is proper to say that all foreign aid
adminstered by the federal government is wrong.
# 199 by Demidog
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To: Demidog
OK. From that perspective I can agree.
But you would be better off arguing against the income tax than foreign aid.
As long as my income is going to be taken from me by force (an argument I can agree with)
then I am going to defend the use of that money in areas that are going to improve
the system for our way of life and my personal prosperity.
If we can abolish the income tax, end the war on drugs, and privatize social security,
I would be more willing to scrutinize foreign aid and domestic subsidies.
But picking on the child (foreign aid) of the father (the income tax) is a silly way to go about it.
# 210 by monkeyshine
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We have to fight against the children
of the income tax too, monkeyshine.

When I look around, I see more than just one violation.
If I just concentrated solely on one major violation,
50 more would slip by un-challenged.

The small violations are actually more important
to our freedom than that large income tax parent.
Small violations, while they may seem "not as important"
as larger crimes, happen much more frequently.

That frequent violation of our rights
gets people used to the violations,
and they begin to assume that rights are not inviolate,
and that there are things we "would be better off arguing against."

There is nothing as important as our individual rights.
Individual rights are freedom.

The Waco Before Waco
By Richard Poe

With the exception of Geraldo Rivera, most Americans seem to have grasped, by now, that responsibility for the Waco massacre goes all the way to the top. Even so, we cannot pin the blame solely on Bill and Hillary.

The militarization of U.S. policing has proceeded unchecked through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Indeed, one of the earliest Waco-like incidents occurred on May 13, 1985, long before Bill Clinton was even a blip on the political radar screen.

That day, police emptied 10,000 rounds of ammunition into a house in West Philadelphia, in a ninety-minute period. They fired Uzis, shotguns, M-16s,.50-caliber machineguns, Browning semiautomatic rifles and M-60 machineguns. A 20mm antitank gun was also on hand, though police claim they never fired it.

Later that day, a canvas satchel containing four and a half pounds of C-4 plastic explosive was dropped on the house by helicopter. The ensuing fire consumed not only that house, but sixty others, leaving the neighborhood a smoking ruin.

At whom was all this firepower aimed? The targets were four men, three women and six children -- members of an anti-government, urban survivalist cult called MOVE.

Police say the cultists shot first, after lawmen tried to arrest four of them. But Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor inadvertently cast doubt on this claim when he testified that the first shots came from automatic weapons. MOVE had no such weapons; only two shotguns, two pistols and one.22-caliber rifle.

In any case, all MOVE members in the house were killed that day, except for one woman and one 13 year old boy.

Back in 1986, I attended the trial of Ramona Africa - the lone adult survivor of the MOVE house - and wrote a cover story about the massacre for the East Village Eye. In that article, I suggested that the scorched-earth tactics used against MOVE were a trial balloon, designed to test public reaction to a new style of ultra-violent policing.

My theory rested partly on the fact that federal agencies had encouraged and facilitated the MOVE massacre behind the scenes. The FBI, for instance, provided C-4, a military explosive forbidden to civilian police. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms provided permission and tax waivers for other military weapons.

Most curious, however, were the "reforms” enacted in the massacre´s wake. Arguing that the slaughter had resulted from random bungling by overzealous cops, Mayor W. Wilson Goode announced a sweeping reorganization supposedly aimed at increasing the professionalism of Philadelphia police.

Goode´s proposals ranged from the creation of an elite counter-terrorist strike force, to the establishment of unprecedented liaisons with federal law enforcement agencies, to training for police at military facilities, and even to anti-terrorist schools and "crisis management” training for city officials by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

In short, Goode called for more of the very same medicine that had caused the problem in the first place; outside meddling from federal goons.

Years later, in 1993, federal "crisis management” once again made headlines, this time in Waco, Texas. Parallels between the MOVE and Waco massacres read like guidelines drawn from the same tactical handbook.

In both cases, last-minute offers to negotiate were ignored by lawmen. In both cases, fires were deliberately allowed to burn out of control. Both at Waco and at the MOVE house, people trying to escape the flames were forced back inside by gunfire. Even more startling, lawmen in both cases claimed that the cultists had set fire to themselves. In the midst of a civil suit brought by MOVE survivors and relatives, Lt. Frank Powell suddenly anounced that the fire had been deliberately set by MOVE members, not by the bomb he dropped.

"They chose their own end,” Powell told reporters on May 1, 1996. MOVE members had doused the roof with flammable liquid, then torched it, Powell said.

His claim - which contradicted the findings of the city Fire Marshal and the mayor´s MOVE Commission - evidently did not impress the jury, which awarded Ramona Africa and relatives of two other MOVE victims $1.5 million in damages. If the MOVE bombing really was a trial balloon, it was evidently a successful one. The media accepted the story of bungling, overzealous cops. Public outrage was confined to ineffectual liberal handwringing, much of it centered around the irrelevant fact that the MOVE victims were black.

Is Waco another trial balloon? Have the feds upped the ante this time, with a blatant use of Delta Force commandos, a higher body count, and a "whiter” list of victims (about half the Waco dead were Anglo, the other half mostly black, with some Mexicans and Asians)? Very likely. If we fail to challenge this latest atrocity, even ghastlier Wacos may lie ahead.

Richard Poe is a freelance journalist and a New York Times-bestselling author. His latest book is Wave 4 (Prima, 1999). Poe´s Website can be found at RichardPoe.com

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