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How Killing Libyans Became a Moral Imperative
Townhall.com ^ | March 25, 2011 | Pat Buchanan

Posted on 03/25/2011 6:33:25 AM PDT by Kaslin

"Who would be free themselves must strike the blow."

So wrote the poet Byron, who would himself die just days after landing in Greece to join the war for independence from the Turks.

But in that time, Americans followed the dictum of Washington, Adams and Jefferson: Stay out of foreign wars.

America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own," said John Quincy Adams in his oration of July 4, 1821.

When Greek patriots sought America's assistance, Daniel Webster took up their cause but was admonished by John Randolph. Intervention would breach every "bulwark and barrier of the Constitution."

"Let us say to those 7 million of Greeks: We defended ourselves when we were but 3 million, against a power in comparison to which the Turk is but as a lamb. Go and do thou likewise."

When Hungarian hero Louis Kossuth came to request a U.S. fleet in the Mediterranean to keep the czar's warships at bay, when Hungary sought to break free of the Habsburg Empire, Webster backed him.

But Henry Clay and John Calhoun stood against it.

"Far better is it for ourselves," said Clay, "for Hungary and for the cause of liberty that, adhering to our wise, pacific system and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this western shore as a light to all nations than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe."

When Hungarian patriots rose up against the Soviet occupation in 1956, Khrushchev sent in hundreds of tanks to drown the revolution in blood.

Hungary was behind the Iron Curtain, the Yalta-Potsdam line to which FDR and Truman had agreed. There were no U.S. troops on any Hungarian border. So Eisenhower did -- nothing.

Indeed, that same month, Ike ordered British, French and Israelis to end their intervention in Sinai and Suez and get their troops out or face sanctions, including the U.S. sinking of the British pound.

Was Ike an isolationist?

Until the modern era, the idea of sending armed forces across oceans to kill and die for moral or humanitarian causes would have been seen as an insult to the Founding Fathers, an abandonment of a vital American tradition, and ruinous to the national interest.

Why are we in Libya? Why are U.S. pilots bombing and killing Libyan soldiers who have done nothing to us?

These soldiers are simply doing their sworn duty to protect their country from attack and defend the only government they have known from what they are told is an insurgency backed by al-Qaida and supported by Western powers after their country's oil.

Why did Obama launch this unconstitutional war?

Moral, humanitarian and ideological reasons. Though Robert Gates and the Pentagon had thrown ice water on the idea of intervening in a third war in the Islamic world -- in a sandbox on the northern coast of Africa -- Obama somersaulted and ordered the attack, for three reasons.

The Arab League gave him permission to impose a no-fly zone. He feared that Moammar Gadhafi would do to Benghazi what Scipio Africanus did to Carthage. And Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power conveyed to Obama their terrible guilt feelings about America's failure to stop what happened in Rwanda and Darfur.

This is the three sisters' war.

But why was it America's moral duty to stop the Tutsi slaughter of Hutus in Burundi in 1972 or the Hutu counter-slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994? Why was that not the duty of their closest African neighbors, Zaire (Congo), Uganda and Tanzania?

These African countries have been independent for a half-century. When are they going to man up?

The slaughter in Darfur is the work of an Arab League member, Sudan. Egypt, the largest and most powerful Arab nation, is just down the Nile. Why didn't the Egyptian army march to Khartoum, a la Kitchener, throw that miserable regime out, and stop the genocide?

Why doesn't Egypt, whose 450,000-man army has gotten billions from us, roll into Tobruk and Benghazi and protect those Arabs from being killed by fellow Arabs? Why is this America's responsibility?

When Spain had its civil war in the 1930s, in which hundreds of thousands perished, FDR declared neutrality. A million Ibos died in Nigeria's civil war from 1967-70. No one raised a finger to help them or the million Cambodians who perished in Pol Pot's killing fields.

Since Bush I, we have intervened in Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. Had Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman gotten their way, we would have been fighting Russians in Georgia and bombing Iran.

Add up all those we have killed, wounded, widowed, orphaned or uprooted, and the number runs into the millions. All these wars have helped mightily to bankrupt us.

Have they made us more secure?


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: intervention; libya
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1 posted on 03/25/2011 6:33:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Mrs. Palin wanted this intervention, too.


2 posted on 03/25/2011 6:37:25 AM PDT by Huck (Fools make feasts and wise men eat them - Poor Richard)
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To: Kaslin

The Onbama Doctrine -

We must kill people wandering around on the ground to protect No-Fly Zone


3 posted on 03/25/2011 6:39:40 AM PDT by Iron Munro ("Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy." -- Ron Paul)
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To: Kaslin

“Add up all those we have killed, wounded, widowed, orphaned or uprooted, and the number runs into the millions. All these wars have helped mightily to bankrupt us.
Have they made us more secure?”

No.


4 posted on 03/25/2011 6:39:41 AM PDT by quesney
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To: quesney

“Mrs. Palin wanted this intervention, too.”

She’s wrong. We’ve strayed way too far from what the Founders intended, including Washington’s Farewell Address.

And look where it’s gotten us.


5 posted on 03/25/2011 6:40:48 AM PDT by quesney
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To: Kaslin
Pat Buchanan is extremely adept at making the worse appear the better cause through carefully crafted logical and historical fallacies.

He knows it would take five times as many words to refute this column as it took to write it.

It's interesting how the weak, ineffectual and petty John Quincy Adams has become the blame-America-first faux right's favorite "Founding Father" (and yes, I know he was not a Founding Father).

6 posted on 03/25/2011 6:42:10 AM PDT by wideawake
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To: Kaslin

They’ve set a precedent which I fear will come back to bite us in the azz at some later date. Imagine the Unions and the Lefties here stirring up so much trouble that the cops have to take some action. Will the UN order NATO troops into the USA...


7 posted on 03/25/2011 6:42:40 AM PDT by bronxville (Sarah will be the first American female president.)
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To: Kaslin

It has been since 1801.


8 posted on 03/25/2011 6:42:58 AM PDT by null and void (We are now in day 792 of our national holiday from reality. - It's 3 AM, where is the 'president'?)
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To: Kaslin

Pat is only half right.
He should have watched Glenn Beck last night.


9 posted on 03/25/2011 6:44:20 AM PDT by onyx (If you truly support Sarah Palin and want to be on her busy ping list, let me know!)
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To: Kaslin

Rockefeller made $200 million in WWI and their gains have only increased since. War is good for the banksters. Perpetual war is even better.


10 posted on 03/25/2011 6:45:09 AM PDT by bronxville (Sarah will be the first American female president.)
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To: Huck

Governor Palin was not inside the information loop and she wouldn’t have gone to the UN. DUH.


11 posted on 03/25/2011 6:46:59 AM PDT by onyx (If you truly support Sarah Palin and want to be on her busy ping list, let me know!)
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To: Huck

To which I would respectfully ask “So what?”. If Republicans are going to respect the Constituion only when it is convenient, I want no part of them either.


12 posted on 03/25/2011 6:49:17 AM PDT by Pecos (Liberty and Honor will not die on my watch.)
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To: Kaslin
Have they made us more secure?

Some of them have...the humanitarian wars haven't.

13 posted on 03/25/2011 6:50:16 AM PDT by Siena Dreaming
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To: Kaslin

The more we intervene, the worse it gets. They use us to do their fighting for them, then they turn on us and attack.

Who looks stupid in this picture?

No good will come from any of this.


14 posted on 03/25/2011 6:50:45 AM PDT by dforest
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To: Kaslin
And Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power conveyed to Obama their terrible guilt feelings about America's failure to stop what happened in Rwanda and Darfur. This is the three sisters' war.

"Harpies" is a better word.

A Racist, a Marxist, and a Jew Hater.

Great......just great.

15 posted on 03/25/2011 6:51:04 AM PDT by SkyPilot
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To: Kaslin

I don’t like Pat, but occasionally he is right.


16 posted on 03/25/2011 6:53:56 AM PDT by LowTaxesEqualsProsperity
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To: onyx
Governor Palin was not inside the information loop

So you're saying she ignorantly advocated intervention?

17 posted on 03/25/2011 6:55:23 AM PDT by Huck (Fools make feasts and wise men eat them - Poor Richard)
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To: Kaslin

Imbecile. Without the help of F R A N C E in our war of infependece er would have beem toast. Remember Lafayette?


18 posted on 03/25/2011 6:57:53 AM PDT by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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To: SkyPilot

Four sisters

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2689846/posts


19 posted on 03/25/2011 6:57:53 AM PDT by Huck (Fools make feasts and wise men eat them - Poor Richard)
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To: Huck
"Mrs. Palin wanted this intervention, too."

RINO NEO-CON Alert..

Her Presidential Candidate in 2008 was a huge supporter of Islamists in Kosovo.

RINO's and Neo Cons observe the dhimmitude, they love rushing into countries to save Muslims, but turn a blind eye and say nothing, when Islamists are killing Christians and burning churches. Proven fact: Kosovo, Ethiopia, Eygpt,Turkey, etc.

20 posted on 03/25/2011 7:02:22 AM PDT by gitmogrunt
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