Radical Idea: Break up the military

I have an idea that will increase peace across the globe: Break up the U.S. military. Break it up! Break it up! Break it up ...

... into 50 something fractions.

That is, give each state a military (militia?) of it's own,  under the leadership of the Governor of each state.

Think about it: Every state already has a base of it's own.

Some states naturally will be better suited for some kinds of services (coastal states are bound to have Naval bases and Marines). The states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, may have superior air power.

One thing is for certain: it would be extremely tough to go to war.

(Which is a good thing.)

States would actually have to think long about whether such and such foreign leader in power is a "threat" to "security" -- long before a troop is deployed for a tour ... before a fire is shot.

State senates, state congresses, and state houses would have to determine whether it makes sense to deploy X battalion and Y Squadron overseas.

I almost said "national security" -- but there would be no national security. Rather, they'd have to figure out if so-and-so leader (an Assad, a Putin, a Saddam) was a threat to "state security." 

State governments would have to debate military budgets.

The Pentagon would be no more...

... but all of the Pentagon's secrets and joint secrets with other agencies (such as the CIA) should be released to the public before it shutters its door, and made publicly available on a website (Wikileaks can't do everything).

The police and the military would be separate. The military, by law, should be prohibited from giving military equipment to the police before, during, or after the decentralization of the national military force.  This prevents the militarization of the police.

In the meantime, the military equipment that the police departments currently own should be taken away, in a separate process.

As for overseas bases, close them down permanently.

What about Guantanamo Naval Base? Shut it down, too. We don't even own Cuba but we have a military base there.

I actually thought of this a while ago -- but this week I saw a headline that reminded me of my own idea. So ... I'm posting this now to at least be one of the earliest voices (this is, of course, without doing any research to see if the idea has been put out there before).

I could be very late myself.

UPDATE: I found the piece I referred to above, which was published six days ago. I haven't read it yet it but it is called "Decentralize the Military: Why We Need Independent Militias" by Ryan McMaken. Perhaps McMaken will come to some similar conclusions and share the same line of arguments. 

"Decentralize the Military: Why We Need Independent Militias"

Put the economic crisis in perspective

Put the economic crisis in perspective:

The government has been using stimulus to thwart a recession since I was 13.

I'm 27 now. They've been pushing off a recession for over half of my lifetime.

They've been using stimulus since 2001 and what do have they to show for it?

If stimulus worked so well, then why are there 2 million breadwinner jobs -- $50k a year -- less than 2000? Why are wages still declining?

By pushing off the recession with stimulus, they make the inevitable correction even worse.

What if we had one bad recession in 2001 and then that was it? What if we all had to toughen it out for one bad year when the economy was much stronger?

What happens now that the crisis is still forthcoming and people don't have the incomes and savings to brace for it?

Imagine if all of the people who went to college from 2001 to 2015 -- including myself -- had to make decisions to go to school based upon real price sensitivity, based upon what they could actually afford, versus enrolling in federal student loan programs? How financial freer would those people be?

The solution is to drastically cut spending, preferably Ron Paul 2012 presidential platform style by $1 trillion, end local, state, and federal bureaucracies, drastically lower taxes (no regressive flat tax, conservatives), and end the American Empire overseas and at home. Oh, and of course, End the Fed.

There's also other things that could be done but that's for another blog post. But for starters, we could legalize capitalism.

Jesus is the prince of peace; Christians are supposed to follow him 24/7

"It honestly has just astounded me in the last three decades how many good Christian kids have, without a flinch of conscience, marched off to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq or elsewhere. I don’t think they got the memo about what the Sermon on the Mount actually says on things like non-violence, love, forgiveness, non-resistance, loving enemies and the like. Jesus intended for his followers to imitate his own behavior, not that of Caesar and his legions. 

If only for the sake of putting the emphasis on the right syllable, Christians ought to be going out of their way to distinguish themselves from their more bellicose neighbors and friends. They ought to be setting a better example of the more excellent way of loving one’s neighbors, even one’s enemies, and I’m pretty sure when Jesus said love your enemies he didn’t mean love them to death at the point of a gun. 

 For me this means three things at the personal level: 1) I can’t serve in the military, except perhaps as a medic or maybe a chaplain, although I am not even sure that might not be too much of a compromise; 2) it means I must spend my life on positive Gospel tasks, not negative destructive ones. My focus and life style and views must be entirely different from that of perhaps the majority of Americans on these matters; 3) it means that I must support those Jesus says are blessed— the peacemakers." 

 Ben Witherington III, "The Prince of Peace - Part One"

Palestinian Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church on Syria and U.S. intervention

Via the Catholic Herald:

In a statement published on the patriarchate’s website, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal pleaded with the United States and its allies to be cautious and think again before taking any military action. 

“Our friends in the West and the United States have not been attacked by Syria,” he said. “With what legitimacy do they dare attack a country? Who appointed them as ‘policemen of democracy’ in the Middle East?” 

“Why declare war when UN experts have not yet delivered the definitive findings on the chemical nature of the attack and the formal identity of its agents?” the patriarch asked. “We witness here a logic reminiscent of the Iraq war preparation in 2003. Do not repeat the ‘comedy’ of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none.”

So add Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal to the list of moral leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and former Congressman Ron Paul who have recognized the United States Government as some sort of international "policeman." (click italics for videos)

Buchanan: Why y'all all 'wee-weed up over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?"

Pat Buchanan asks:

How is America, with thousands of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, scores of warships in the Med, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, bombers and nuclear subs and land-based missiles able to strike and incinerate Iran within half an hour, threatened by Iran?

I don't know. You tell me Pat.

Iran has no missile that can reach us, no air force or navy that would survive the first days of war, no nuclear weapons, no bomb-grade uranium from which to build one. All of her nuclear facilities are under constant United Nations surveillance and inspection.

Say what?

Yet, according to the Christian Science Monitor, Bibi first warned in 1992 that Iran was on course to get the bomb — in three to five years! And still no bomb.

Yup, I blogged about that article in 2011.

And Bibi has since been prime minister twice. Why has our Lord Protector not manned up and dealt with Iran himself?

Answer: He wants us to do it — and us to take the consequences.

 Bibi's vision: U.S. as aggressor and the fall guy.

Shia Iran has influence in Iraq because we invaded Iraq, dethroned Sunni Saddam, disbanded his Sunni-led army that had defeated Iran in an eight-year war and presided over the rise to power of the Iraqi Shia majority that now tilts to Iran. Today’s Iraq is a direct consequence of our war, our invasion, our occupation.

Buchanan: Infantile Conservatism || Human Events

[Editor's Note: I took liberty with the quote in the headline. Pat's statement which I quoted from isn't in a form of a question.]

Drudge: Where Are The Policeman Of The World?

Is a Nuclear Deal With Iran Possible?

Patrick Buchanan making sense on Iran:

What would cause anyone to believe Iran is willing to negotiate?

There are the fatwas by the ayatollahs against nuclear weapons and the consensus by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies in 2007, reaffirmed in 2011, that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

Even the Israelis have lately concluded that the Americans are right.

Nor has the United States or Israel discovered any site devoted to the building of nuclear weapons. The deep-underground facility at Fordow is enriching uranium to 20 percent. There are no reports of any enrichment to 90 percent, which is weapons grade.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has lately mocked the idea of Iran building a bomb in the face of a U.S. commitment to go to war to prevent it:

"Let's even imagine that we have an atomic weapon, a nuclear weapon. What would we do with it? What intelligent person would fight 5,000 American bombs with one bomb?"

Ahmadinejad did not mention that Israel has 200 to 300 nuclear weapons. He did not need to. The same logic applies.

And then he says something even I didn't know before:

And Tehran seems to be signaling it is ready for a deal.

According to the United Nations' watchdog agency, Iran recently converted more than one-third of its 20 percent enriched uranium into U308, or uranium oxide, a powder for its medical research reactor.

Is a Nuclear Deal With Iran Possible? | CNSNews.com

Mr. Obama, Are you Really Christian?' Syrian Man after Criticizing U.S. Foreign Policy

Patrick Buchanan on Ron Paul in 2007: He is "no TV debater" but "was speaking intolerable truths"

Ron Paul is no TV debater. But up on that stage in Columbia, he was speaking intolerable truths. Understandably, Republicans do not want him back, telling the country how the party blundered into this misbegotten war.

Patrick Buchanan, But Who Was Right -- Rudy or Ron?

Video: Martin Luther King on being the 'policeman of the world'

Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God. Men will beat their swords into plowshafts and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore." I don't know about you, I ain't going to study war anymore. ~Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go From Here? (1967)

Ron Paul: Iran Would be Justified in Closing Strategic Waterway in Response to Sanctions | CNSnews.com

Kudos to the author for not branding Ron an "isolationist":

As Iran ratcheted up its rhetoric Thursday about closing the Strait of Hormuz, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul revisited his earlier criticisms of Western policy towards Tehran, adding that Iran would be justified in cutting off the strategic waterway in response to sanctions.

Paul’s views on Iran and other foreign policy issues – essentially a noninterventionist, anti-war approach – have sparked clashes on several occasions during the GOP presidential primary season, and are attracting growing scrutiny as the Iowa caucus looms.

Ron Paul: Iran Would be Justified in Closing Strategic Waterway in Response to Sanctions | CNSnews.com

Michael Barone implies Dems switched shoes with GOP on military interventionism

From 1917 to 1968, the Democrats were the more militarily interventionist of our two parties. Since 1968, they have been the party more likely to oppose military intervention. That transformation, whatever you think of it, was the work of the peace movement.

Michael Barone, Tea Partiers, Like Peaceniks, Upset Political Order

Jonah Goldberg on Isolationism

From the NRO:

“Isolationism is a very complex historical label that is almost always used either in ignorance (often well-intentioned) or part of an ideological agenda.”

Jonah Goldberg, Don't Call It Isolationism

Interventionists Ready a Media Lynching for Ron Paul by Michael Scheuer

Mr. Paul, of course, never blamed the United States for the war the Islamists started and are now waging on the United States. What he did say is merely what is true beyond any credible challenge: Our growing number of Islamist enemies are motivated to attack us because of what the U.S. government does in the Muslim world and not because of how Americans live and think here at home. Mr. Paul bravely and clearly delivers this essential message to U.S. voters, and as long as he tells this truth he will receive the venom and slander of the above mentioned people and organizations.

Interventionists Ready a Media Lynching for Ron Paul by Michael Scheuer

Howard Buffett on Militarism

Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by coercion and tyranny at home. Our Christian ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and guns. Persuasion and example are the methods taught be the Carpenter of Nazareth, and if we believe in Christianity we should try to advance our ideals by his methods. We cannot practice might and force abroad and retain freedom at home. We cannot talk world cooperation and practice power politics.

Howard Buffett, the father of Warren Buffet.

Scheuer: Obama an Arrogant, Racist Interventionist

I'm just the messenger.

Obama and other recent U.S. presidents are out to teach foreigners to elect good men, as well as to help elevate our uncivilized little brown brothers to the heights of our near-perfect secular (semi-pagan) democracy. Whether those little brown brothers want to give up their faith, tribalism, patriarchal societies, family structures, societal mores, or ethnic distinctiveness is irrelevant. Mr. Obama and his predecessors know what is best for all of them, and U.S. policy will be to impose it on them at all costs, even if we have to intervene and kill many of our little brothers — and perhaps uselessly waste the lives of many of our soldiers and Marines — to bring about this sublime culmination.

Michael Scheuer, It is sad, but President Obama is an Arrogant, Racist Interventionist