War Consumes Our Most Precious Resource

BURNET, Texas - The greatest cost of the endless and needless wars the United States is engaged in can’t be measure in dollars and cents but in the expenditure of our most precious resource, the lives of our young people, said potential Libertarian presidential candidate R. Lee Wrights.

“The greatest cost of war is the toll it is taking on our most precious resources, our young people,” said Wrights. “Every time a young American soldier, sailor, airman or marine is killed, another dream dies, another possibility dies, another prospect dies. Every time a young American is killed, another hope dies.”

One such precious resource was 24-year-old Robert J. Miller. The Special Forces soldier was recently awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. military decoration, for his action in Afghanistan in saving the lives of 22 American and Afghan soldiers.

“Staff Sgt. Miller gave his life for his fellow man, the greatest sacrifice any person can make,” Wrights said. “He should be honored, as should every American killed defending themselves or their comrades.”

“But the greatest honor we can bestow on these young people is to stop asking them to sacrifice themselves in endless and needless wars,” he said. “If we truly want to support the troops we should bring them home - now.”

“Most Americans are untouched by the war, other than having to endure invasions of their civil liberties when they try to get on an airplane,” Wrights said. “During the Vietnam war, the anti-war movement was galvanized by the images of death and destruction on their television screens. Sadly, today Americans are either numb or indifferent to very similar images coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has even acknowledged that this is not a shared cost. He told a group of students at Duke University recently that less than 20 percent of Americans know someone who has been in the military and that number is declining. Gates said that despite the “fond sentiments for men and women in uniform, for most Americans the wars remain an abstraction.”

Wrights said that America’s wars are now being fought by a professional military, the standing army that our nation’s founders feared and warned against. In his Duke lecture, Gates said that United States couldn’t sustain such “complex and protracted missions” like Iraq and Afghanistan without the dedication of “seasoned professional who choose to serve and keep on serving.”

The defense secretary also said that whatever mistakes were made in these conflicts were the result of failures and “miscalculations” at the top, not by the troops in the field. “It has taken every ounce of our troops’ skill, initiative and commitment to battle a cunning and adaptive enemy at the front while overcoming bureaucratic lassitude and sometimes worse at the rear,” Gates said.

“This is stunning,” Wrights said. “What the secretary is saying in effect is that these young people who choose to serve their country have more honor and integrity to do the right thing than the leaders who send them to fight and die. I am appalled at such callousness.”

Gates said that the wars are putting extraordinary stress on military members and their families, causing anxiety, increased domestic strife and a growing number of suicides. He said that the divorce rate among Army enlisted personnel has nearly doubled since the wars began.

“Yet neither the secretary nor President Obama offer any solutions to these problems,” Wrights said. “They piously praise the dedication and sacrifice made by America’s young men and women in uniform, yet they continue to promote policies that will cause them and their families to suffer and sacrifice even more.”

“Our military deserves better. Our military deserves a Commander-in-Chief who will honor and respect their devotion to duty by calling on them to fight and die only to defend America when we have been directly attacked,” Wrights said.

Wrights, a military veteran himself, is considering seeking the presidential nomination because he believes the Libertarian message in 2012 should be a loud, clear and unequivocal call to stop all war. He has pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be spent for ballot access so that the stop all war message can be heard in all 50 states.

R. Lee Wrights is a writer and political activist living in Texas. He is the co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Contact Lee at rleewrights@gmail.com.

Stop The War On Economic Freedom

Libertarians challenge 89 TARP-supporting incumbents in Congress

WASHINGTON - This November, Libertarian Party candidates are challenging 89 incumbent members of Congress who voted for the TARP bailouts in 2008. View the list here.

The list includes 27 Republicans and 62 Democrats.

LP Chair Mark Hinkle commented, "Few acts of Congress have evoked as much fear, ire, disgust, and disapproval from Americans as the 2008 TARP banker bailouts, passed with bipartisan support in Congress, and signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush."

Hinkle continued, "Bailer-in-chief John McCain, who famously suspended his 2008 losing Republican presidential campaign to rush back to Washington DC to vote for TARP, tops our list. He'll face Libertarian Party co-founder David Nolan in November."

[Note and correction: An earlier emailed version of this release incorrectly stated the number of Libertarians at 97.]

According to Congressional Quarterly, twelve of these TARP incumbents are in close re-election battles (classified in the "tossup" or "leans" category). The Libertarian Party hopes to help kick them out of office. "They tried to justify TARP by claiming our economy was going off a cliff. Let's push their teetering careers off a cliff," said LP Executive Director Wes Benedict.

The twelve most vulnerable TARP incumbents in races with Libertarians:

Harry Mitchell (D-AZ, District 5)
Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ, District 8)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA, Senator)
Dan Lungren (R-CA, District 3)
Kendrick Meek (D-FL, incumbent Rep. running for Senate)
Bill Foster (D-IL, District 14)
Brad Ellsworth (D-IN, incumbent Rep. running for Senate)
Joe Donnelly (D-IN, District 2)
Roy Blunt (R-MO, incumbent Rep. running for Senate)
Ike Skelton (D-MO, District 4)
Joe Sestak (D-PA, incumbent Rep. running for Senate)
Chet Edwards (D-TX, District 17)

CQ Senate ratings
CQ House ratings

Benedict continued, "The Tea Party revolt is one potentially positive reaction to TARP. But any Tea Partier who votes for a TARP-supporting Republican is a plain old hypocrite, just as bad as the incumbent he or she is pushing back into office. Every Tea Partier should take a pledge to vote against ALL incumbents who voted for TARP, period.

"Liberals should also vote against TARP incumbents. Hundreds of billions for Wall Street bankers and their stockholders and bondholders is not what Democrats are supposed to stand for. Any liberal-leaning voter who votes for a TARP-supporting Democrat, when a Libertarian alternative is available, sends a callous message to the middle class and poor: Thanks for your taxes! Get another job if you can find one -- we want even more of your money to pass up to the Wall Street fat cats!

"Fortunately, these voters have a better option: Libertarian candidates who would have proudly voted against TARP, and who will consistently vote against other foolish, unconstitutional, taxpayer-abusing measures.

"After the TARP bailouts passed, Republicans repeatedly tried to defend their support, sometimes saying that they hadn't done a good enough job explaining it to the American people. Now the recent pandering Republican 'Pledge to America' says 'End TARP once and for all.' Which is it, Republicans? Was it a bad sales pitch, or are you trying to pretend that you never supported it? I suspect that the Republicans don't know what to think. That's a problem with many ignorant and spineless members of Congress today.

"Some incumbents have tried to make the excuse that they voted for TARP because President Bush and Secretary Paulson scared them, or because drops in the stock market made them worry. Such worthless excuses are beneath the dignity of their office. Voters should not let TARP-supporters make excuses for themselves.

"Last year, William A. Niskanen of the Cato Institute wrote this article describing five instances in which the members of Congress caved in to executive-branch hysteria, leading to disastrous consequences. (TARP is #4 chronologically.) Each time, the members of Congress failed to uphold their crucial responsibility to view all executive requests with care and skepticism.

"If all it takes is for a president to shout 'The sky is falling!' to get Congress to pass whatever he wants, then we might as well make the president a king, and give him all the power.

"In addition to the huge transfer of wealth from taxpayers to bankers, TARP created tremendous moral hazard by sending this loud message to bankers: 'Your goal is to get big, because then you can claim you're too big to fail, and you can get Congressmen to force taxpayers to bail you out for whatever stupid or self-serving decisions you make.'

"It's hard to think of another government program that did more to reward stupidity and punish prudence.

"TARP is both a short-term and long-term failure. We would be better off today if Congress had done nothing."

The Libertarian Party has 21 candidates for U.S. Senate and 170 candidates for U.S. House in the upcoming November 2010 elections.

For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.

The LP is America's third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets and civil liberties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party at our website.

No Wonder Our Country Is Going Broke

BURNETT, Texas - The war in Afghanistan may cost another 60 billion dollars and last ten more years, even if U.S. forces start leaving the country in 2011, potential Libertarian presidential candidate R. Lee Wrights said today.

A NATO training-mission document recently uncovered by the Associated Press estimated it would cost about 6 billion dollars a year to train Afghani military and police forces. Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander in Afghanistan, has said that a successful counter-insurgency operation could last another ten years.

“That means this war will cost at least another 60 billion dollars to finish a job we never should have started,” said R. Lee Wrights. “No wonder our country is going broke.”

Even with the training the NATO document acknowledges that Afghanistan will remain largely dependent on U.S. forces for security for years. The document also includes plans for large-scale infrastructure projects for “establishing enduring institutions” and “creating irreversible momentum” according to AP sources.

“The only ‘irreversible momentum’ we’re creating is the irreversible momentum driving America deeper and deeper into debt,” Wrights said. “And the only ‘enduring institutions’ we’re creating is the enduring institution of a welfare-warfare State that supports corrupt governments under the guise of fighting terrorism.”

Wrights said he’s troubled by comments Petraeus has made about the withdrawal of American troops, which is supposed to begin in July 2011.

“He seems to be hedging his bets,” Wrights said. After nine years of war, Petraeus said that it is just now that the United States has the organization and people in place to fight a counter-insurgency operation.

“The general is reputed to be an expert on this type of warfare and has said it can take years, even decades, to wage successfully,” Wrights says. “So if we are just getting started now, it could take ten more years to ‘finish the job.’ That’s unacceptable.”

Wrights is also troubled by the fact that the general refers to July 2011 as the date “when a process begins, the pace of which is determined by conditions on the ground.” Petraeus characterized the process as a “thinning out” of U.S. forces, rather than a “turning over” of security for their own country to Afghanistan’s citizens and authorities.

“We have already endured one war where the generals and politicians kept telling us they were seeing the ‘light at the end of the tunnel,’ but that light never got any closer,” Wrights said.

Petraeus recently spoke out against plans by a Florida minister to burn the Qur’an, saying that the action would put American troops in danger.

“What is a greater danger to American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen is keeping them in a war we should not have started in the first place, helping prop up a corrupt government,” Wrights said. “If we truly want to keep our troops safe, we should bring them home now.”

Wrights is considering seeking the LP presidential nomination because he believes the Libertarian message in 2012 should be a loud, clear and unequivocal call to stop all war. He has pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be spent for ballot access so that the stop all war message can be heard in all 50 states.

R. Lee Wrights is a writer and political activist living in Texas. He is the co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Contact Lee at rleewrights@gmail.com.

Permalink

Shockingly Pro War

For Immediate Release
Thursday, September 2, 2010

Libertarians: Obama is shockingly pro-war

WASHINGTON - Following President Obama's "end of our combat mission" speech, Libertarian Party chairman Mark Hinkle released this statement:

"President Obama needs to stop lying. In his speech, he repeated the ridiculous and false claim that the U.S. combat mission is over in Iraq. He seems to think that if he keeps talking about the war in a nice way, then the war isn't really happening.

"Unfortunately, even though President Obama is the one person on Earth with the authority to withdraw the U.S. military from Iraq, he has chosen instead to keep over 50,000 troops there, risking their lives, and bleeding American taxpayers.

"The Republicans in Congress are just as bad. They have consistently failed to own up to the terrible financial impact of these wars, all the while claiming that they want to cut government. They want to nit-pick Obama's past statements about the war, but in fact they should be showering him with praise for doing exactly what they want.

"This war has been a shameful failure from the beginning. But even if the U.S. military could impose a sustainable modern democracy on Iraq, it would in no way be worth the hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of American lives, lost in the process. The Bush-Obama War in Iraq has done nothing to safeguard the rights of Americans -- on the contrary, it has probably made Americans less safe, and certainly poorer.

"The purpose of the U.S. armed forces is to defend the territory of the United States, not to re-engineer foreign societies.

"Contrary to his rhetoric before being elected, the president has proven himself to be shockingly pro-war. In addition to sustaining the American war presence in Iraq, he has greatly escalated the War in Afghanistan. Just like his predecessor, Obama believes that government force is the answer to everything."

The Libertarian Party platform states under "3.3 International Affairs": "American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world. Our foreign policy should emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements. We would end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military and economic aid."

For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 202-333-0008 end_of_the_skype_highlighting ext. 222.

The LP is America's third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets and civil liberties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party at our website.

Is The Federal Government Hopelessly Lost?

Carried To War...

"The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight."

A. J. P. Taylor

Swatting Flies While Vultures Pick Your Bones

“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

- Benjamin Franklin

Two tragedies occurred on September 11, 2001. The first was horrendous in nature that claimed the lives of thousands of Americans as it unfolded before our very eyes on the television screens of the world. Time after traumatic time we viewed the film of one of the tallest structures on the face of the earth crumble into a smoking mountain of rubble. A nation was in shock and the whole world mourned the innocent lives snuffed out at the hands of a few men that needed nothing more than box cutters to cause the greatest terrorist catastrophe in the history of mankind.

The second tragedy was more subtle as if it were a tremor following a major earthquake. The first tragedy is bad enough so that the second hardly seems like anything to be concerned about at all. However, I am afraid this time the aftershock is far worse than the quake itself.

While the first tragedy on that fateful day in early autumn claimed the lives of a few thousand unfortunate Americans, the second has claimed tens of millions. The terrorist achieved exactly what they set out to do. By killing only a few thousand citizens, along with themselves, they were able to send untold millions into such a panic that they have turned their backs on the very things this great country was founded and built upon. Lying buried beneath the tons of stone and steel that once was the World Trade Center, along with thousands of innocent Americans killed, are those precious American siblings — Liberty and Freedom.

The tragedy that we now face as a nation is the State’s manipulation of the effects of fear. Fear that causes people to act and think in ways they never would in its absence. Fear that turns brother against brother and allows politicians to rob citizens of their riches and freedom. Fear that causes citizens to willingly sacrifice their liberty before the great god Security, promised them by a government that seeks to enslave them. A government that uses fear as a deflection in the hopes that citizens will not notice the real terror that is produced by the parties that control its Houses. The State uses fear to keep you distracted swatting flies while the vultures pick your bones.

Now, I can hear the screams from the hawks already. They are screeching blatant lies such as, “You are un-American,” and, “You say, Aha! This proves that America is altogether evil.” Some will even go as far as Mr. Scott on our message board and accuse me of hating America. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is my love for this country, and the liberty and freedom that are her foundation, that prompts me to write of the atrocities of the State. It is my affection for our beloved Constitution that commands me to call attention to the actions of unscrupulous politicians in their attempts to destroy its meaning. The flies of fear will not distract me while the vultures of CONgress pick my bones!

I have been castigated lately because I refuse to support Mr. Bush’s War on Terrorism. Because I disagree with the hawks, I have been told I am un-American, un-Libertarian, ignorant, a terrorist sympathizer, and that I lack compassion. So, I will ask you the same thing I asked Mr. Scott in our discussion forum, “What makes you think we can win a war against a phantom called Terror?” We have NEVER won one of these wars before, so why will this time be different? We have waged war on Poverty since the sixties, and people are still poor. We have engaged the evil enemy Ignorance since the seventies, and still our children cannot read. We have gallantly fought the demon Drugs for decades, and all we have done is fund terrorist organizations in other countries. And you expect us to believe that the US will stamp out terrorism? You are comforted by the effort; I am appalled at the lack of results. You believe the lie, and I speak the truth. These are our differences.

We are told the mission of the War on Terrorism is two fold. To capture or kill Osama bin Laden specifically; and, to generally rid the world of terrorists altogether. The first will be easier to accomplish than the second, because just like America’s other phantom wars the mission of ridding the world of terrorism is impossible to achieve. I don’t think even the staunchest war hawk really believes that we can possibly stamp out terrorism. The difference I have with them is they find comfort in the government’s effort while I remain suspicious of the State’s hidden agendas that practically everyone acknowledges. It should throw up some pretty big red flags when CONgress passes into law a bill that takes the Bill of Rights and feeds it to a paper shredder, without even reading the damn thing! Ron Paul says the bill wasn’t even printed for his colleagues and himself until AFTER the treasonous law was passed and ready for the president’s signature. It looks like CONgress is not immune to the fear themselves. Why else would you do something so foolish as to vote to enact a law that you had not read? This is what the vultures were doing, Mr. Scott, while you were busy swatting all those flies.

I know it is a hard truth to accept, especially for those of us that cherish America and the “grand experiment” handed down through every generation of a nation from her founders. It is the love for liberty and devotion to freedom that has perpetuated a way of life that before America was unknown to mankind. The only way that “way of life” will be passed on to the next generation, is if we stay ever vigilant to preserve its very nature.

Before she died in 1961, American newspaper columnist Dorothy Thompson wrote:

“When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.”

This is what concerns me. This is why I remain skeptical and untrusting of the State at war. The most dangerous threat to our freedom is allowing the fear of the world to blind us to the terror we face at home. Stop swatting at the flies and pay closer attention to the vultures. Enough is enough!





Originally published in Liberty For All February 7, 2002.



R. Lee Wrights is a writer and political activist living in Texas. He is the co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Contact Lee at rleewrights@gmail.com.