Hillary Clinton's Iran-Contra Scandal

Originally published by Voices of Liberty

Back in the 1980’s, it was revealed to the public that the CIA under the Reagan administration had been selling weapons to the revolutionary Iranian government. The hopes were that the weapons sales would put the radical Islamic regime in a better disposition toward freeing the American hostages. Better yet, the funds generated from those arms sales funded the Contra rebels in their war against the communist regime in Nicaragua.

Judicial Watch published more of their hard-won documents regarding Hillary Clinton’s private Watergate scandal and 18 minutes of missing tape—excuse me, change that to 32,000 missing emails. It turns out the presidential candidate and self-appointed champion of peace and international cooperation has her own Iran-Contra scandal. It turns out that Libya was a stopping point for running guns to Syria!

When being grilled by the Senate for a massive leadership failure resulting in consulate guards and staff being killed, Clinton was asked over and over again to clarify whether it was a protest-turned-mob or an act of terrorism. Her response is infamous: “What does it matter?” Well, Secretary Clinton, what matters is that this is far from the first time lax security has gotten American diplomatic workers killed.

Instead of using U.S. Marines for their historical job of guarding embassies, or even using State Department Diplomatic Security guards, the State Department under Hillary Clinton outsourced consulate security to Libyan locals. It’s a shame that a former Senator who voted to invade Iraq in 2003 never read the 2006 Iraq Study Group Report, a U.S. government investigation that discussed terrorist infiltration of local security forces being a rampant problem in a war zone. “However, because of Libyan political sensitivities,” there were no armed Americans protecting their consulate in a war zone.

Free Syrian Army volunteers

The State Department made it seem like the U.S. government was wholly respecting the sovereignty of the new Libyan government, which issued restrictions on foreigners with guns. It’s astounding that the U.S. government would run guns from Benghazi, Libya, to rebel groups in Banian and Borj Islam, Syria, but it won’t take proper measures to protect its civilian workers in the same city. Apparently Obama’s government is all for spreading wars and raising war profits, but they won’t protect American diplomats in a war zone because of “political sensitivities.”

The documents from Judicial Watch show that Hillary Clinton was given hard intelligence within hours of the Benghazi attack. A memo from the Defense Intelligence Agency, prepared for State Secretary Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the White House National Security Council, and the Joint Chiefs, clearly stated that “the attack was planned 10 or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye Al-Libi in Pakistan…”

This memo was prepared and delivered to its recipients within hours of the attack. Repeat: Hillary Clinton knew within hours that it was a pre-planned terrorist attack. Yet for weeks she would not contradict the White House’s line that it was a protest and eventually a “single act of terror,” but that the attack by a jihadist militia in a war zone was not “terrorism.” More intelligence followed, confirming the initial memo.

In a September 13 statement on the attack, Clinton did what any good spokesman should do: strongly condemn the attack. However, she made a specific mention of the scapegoated internet cartoon video to subtly lay on it the blame for the terrorist attack. That silly video was used by the administration, Clinton included, over and over as an explanation for the “spontaneous protest” in Benghazi.

Journalist Glen Greenwald made waves when he published some of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA and government surveillance of citizens under the auspices of wartime security. In a recent Q&A session, the topic moved to Candidate Clinton, terrorism, and surveillance. Says Greenwald, “Hillary Clinton is the ultimate guardian of bipartisan status quo corruption.”

It seems as if Clinton thinks We the People are too stupid to put two and two together. She would have us believe that radical Islamic terrorists murdered American diplomats over a silly cartoon. She would have us believe that it had nothing to do with avenging a fallen jihadist commander, or the weapons being transported from Libya to Syria, or the American paramilitary black ops being run in Libya.

If it turns out that Clinton also knew about the weapons being smuggled from Benghazi to Syria by U.S. agents, she’ll have a major problem on her hands. It could even be today’s Iran-Contra Scandal, which would be even more embarrassing, as it implicates the administration of a man who was elected on promises of peace and a humble foreign policy. For more Clintonian deceit and corruption, America will have to wait and see what Judicial Watch will publish next.

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Hillary Clinton images courtesy of Voices of Liberty.  FSA image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.

A new Libertarian position on ISIS

We're now walking a fine line between the non-aggression principle and playing witness to murder.  While the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria hasn't attacked the United States homeland, neither were they ever libertarian-style freedom fighters simply trying to liberate Iraq from an occupying army.  They themselves were a conquering and occupying army trying to form a new state!

While ISIS may not be an existential threat to the United States--they don't have the power to destroy America--they certainly are an imminent threat.  They just keep growing and conquering and planting new cells in countries around the world.  Worse yet, they efficiently murder civilians at an industrial capacity not seen since the Yugoslav Wars.

I believe in blowback.  I believe that the U.S. government's actions abroad directly fanned the flames of Islamic terrorism worldwide.  However, while not intervening in future conflicts will prevent future blowback, nonintervention does nothing to dissipate the blowback that already exists.  So while the ISIS terrorist quasi-state may not an existential threat, they are an imminent threat and will one day directly attack Americans (and not in the Middle East).

I've seen what they do.  I've read the numbers of the literally tens of thousands of civilians they've murdered, including women and children.  I read the statistics of their murders and racketeering they boast about in their corporate-style Annual Report.  One doesn't need to buy into false flag propaganda to objectively match words with action, history with current events, to deduce that this terror group is here to stay until totally destroyed from the outside.

Libertarians too often hide behind the concept of nonintervention.  Well, here's the deal: no country or population ever hated the U.S. for saving people from being massacred.  They hated the U.S. for sticking around after liberation and then dictating to the people how they would live, what type of government they'd have, and what corporations they'd do business with.

This is but one reason why the U.S. government should no longer intervene in the war in Iraq and Syria.  Unfortunately, little good ever came from U.S. military intervention in the 21st century.  But intervention by individual volunteers is a different story.

Many may say that the war against ISIS, now encompassing Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Libya, is not a war any libertarian should support.  But here's my question to them: are you against a just cause and a just war, or are you specifically against the State intervening in foreign affairs?  When I say "individual volunteers" I mean that government should be left behind and individual free people should do what they know to be right, not taking anyone's tax dollars to do so.  There's a difference.

Many will say that ISIS was covertly founded, funded, and armed by the CIA.  Others say they're the Mossad's baby.  Most people accept that ISIS is the Al Qaeda splinter group--formerly Al Qaeda in Iraq--who broke away from Bin Laden's organization to wage sectarian war on Shia Muslims and establish a global Sunni state.

Frankly, it doesn't matter which government or entity is responsible for incubating this terrorist quasi-state.  These butchers need to be stopped.  As much as I loathe making this distinction, there's a huge difference between collateral damage in an airstrike that specifically targets a combatant, and deliberately beheading children for refusing to renounce Jesus.  There's a huge difference between civilians being caught in the crossfire and for the enemy to routinely march 300 civilians at a time into an open field and mow them down.

Evil exists in this world and it must be stopped by We the People, especially if our own government is at fault.

The best people to stop the butchers are: 1) the armies of the countries ISIS invaded; 2) the various guerrilla groups and citizen militias in the invaded countries; 3) international volunteer combatants, and volunteer aid workers; and 4) private security contractors hiring themselves to guard populations or assets in the combat zones.

The international volunteers fighting ISIS are heroes to me, reminiscent of the American guerrillas who individually took it upon themselves to fight the British Army from Concord to Boston.  The aid workers in this war also have a special place in my heart, reminding me of the missionaries in World War II who made it their mission to protect Chinese children from Japanese soldiers.

Keep the government out of Iraq and Syria.  Let volunteers and the private sector change the war effort from an imperial proxy war to a libertarian people's war of international liberation.  And when the day comes that ISIS is extinguished, let the international volunteers get the hell out of there and leave "nation building" to the actual nations!

Five Libertarian Ideas #14 - Muslims, Mexican border, Libyan militias, Bundy Ranch

Pat Dollard's call "for Americans to start slaughtering Muslims in the streets"

Folks, just to clarify, the kind of behavior this gentleman calls for is NOT acceptable. People are being slaughtered by criminals in Chicago yet this guy wants to punish Americans for the actions of extremists on the other side of the planet. This service member's blind hatred may be and probably is tied to extreme combat PTSD from the Middle East. If so, then this man is mentally not all there and should be pitied and helped, not shunned and scorned. -4/4


Mexican soldiers invading Arizona

Mexican Army troops working for drug cartels have infiltrated American soil at least 20 times in recent years. The most recent incursion happened between lightly armed US Border Patrol agents and heavily armed Mexican soldiers. WHY are our troops protecting outposts in other countries in undeclared wars when armed criminal insurgents are criss-crossing our country's border??? -4/4

Libya, the militia state

The US/UN intervention in the Libyan Civil War brought an end to the war so quickly... the rebel government couldn't consolidate power or establish any sort of legitimacy. Now Libya is carved up by 300+ militias, at least one of which is selling oil to North Korea. Great... Oh hey, have we caught Kony yet? -4/4


Bundy Ranch standoff

If the Bundy Ranch invasion ignites a freaking armed uprising, I'm gonna be one REALLY pissed off dude. At everybody. Liberty is worth fighting for; cows and land are not worth dying for. We've had too much death and destruction since 2001. I'd much rather try Gandhi's methods for resisting tyranny than John Brown's. -4/11
　


Bundy Ranch standoff, continued

Dear God, help us all. As more federal law enforcement arrives with a military-grade arsenal, militia groups from all over are flocking to Nevada for an armed stand off. I don't want there to be any killing. Peaceful resistance has not been exhausted. I want the ALL feds and ALL the militias alike to come home to their families. -4/11

 

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Mexican soldiers photo by "BSMFBSMF" in the public domain. Militarized police photo by Tony Webster courtesy of CC BY-SA license.  Both photos obtained from Wikimedia Commons.

Acts of WAR vs. Acts of PROTEST

Pink Pistols, a conservative LGBT group, marches for their 2nd Amendment rights

One of my friends in L.A. County Oathkeepers read my last piece and commented on it.  She posed the hypothetical scenario: suppose the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas was marching up and down my street protesting, practicing both their First and Second Amendment rights by carrying fully locked and loaded weapons with them.  Would that be an act of war or an act of protest?

My immediate answer might surprise some people.  I answered that, in and of itself, a locked and loaded protest would simply be an act of protest.   This is a reference to the recent armed march Adam Kokesh was planning on carrying out in Washington, D.C. on July 4.  Needless to say, I’m incredibly glad the protest was canceled.  Kokesh and his and of merry conspiratarians would merely be carrying an act of protest, although it would simultaneously have been an act of stupidity.

For starters, D.C. has some strict gun control laws and an armed march around federal buildings like the White House or the Capitol simply wouldn’t fly.  The event would be more fittingly called “Surrender Your Gun to the Government and Get Arrested like a Dumb-Ass Day.”  Furthermore, it would have been a horrible reflection on the libertarian movement, making us look like a ban of militants and rendering us all responsible if somebody’s weapon had a misfire.

As much as I disagree with their methods or even their reasoning, as long as the Kokesh march—or an armed Muslim Brotherhood march—is carried out by people whose sole aim is to protest, then it would be an act of protest.  However, there are multiple dimensions to the scenario, and small details could greatly change the dimensions of such an event.  If the same group congregated in D.C. to protest and display loaded weapons, demonstrating their Second Amendment right but with no intention of firing, yet one of the protestors loses his cool and fires a shot, then the protest becomes an act of war.

If the same group had even the slightest intention of firing one of their weapons, especially around government buildings, then the protest was an act of war before they even arrived at the National Mall or Pennsylvania Avenue.

An armed militia in the streets of Tripoli following skirmishes

Let’s relate this concept to two examples from involving revolutionaries and our American countrymen.  The first example is the Benghazi killings in Libya, where four American diplomats were murdered by militants.  Though the official reports from the State Department claim that the Benghazi incident was a protest that sparked into a violent confrontation, hard evidence points to a militia attack.  If it had truly been a protest, then it would have become an act of war the minute the protestors got violent.  However, the protest was a farce orchestrated by an Islamist militia so they could attack the U.S. embassy.  It was an act of war before they even congregated.

The second example was covered in the last rant: the local militia at Lexington in 1775.  Though a military body, the local militiamen at Lexington assembled themselves on the village green as an act of protest.  They were locked and loaded, but their goal was not to fight the British.  Firing their muskets was certainly in their back-up plan, but that definitely wasn’t their plan of the day.  Word from Boston had already reached Lexington about the British seizing firearms.  The militiamen stood their ground, locked and loaded on the village green, in demonstrating that they wouldn’t give up their personal property.

The British response to their silent protest was an act of war.  The militia stood in a silent formation but did not have their muskets aimed at the enemy.  The enemy, on the other hand, broke the rules of engagement and fired on the militia.  That’s when the confrontation at Lexington became a battle.  The local militia participated in a military operation, but their protest was not an act of war.  Had the British kept moving, there would have been no battle or shots fired whatsoever.

Going back to the Kokesh march, it remains in my opinion a very bad idea, but so long as everything went according to plan, it would have been merely an act of protest.  Again, I’m glad it was canceled.  I see too much room in this scenario for some rookie law enforcement officer to get nervous around so many loaded weapons and possibly fire on the protestors, causing a bloodbath.  I also see ample opportunities for an armed conspiratarian to panic when the police close in, and fire at them.

A final note: as I see it, the Second Amendment is equally important as the First Amendment.  However, armed marches aren’t the best tactic for arguing our Second Amendment rights.  After all, that just makes us libertarians and conservatives look like the violent gun nuts the left makes us out to be.

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Pink Pistols image by "russavia" and militia photo by "Magharebia".  Both photos were obtained from Wikimedia Commons and are used via CC BY 2.0 license.

Liberating Syria without the Empire (UPDATED)

This article was originally published in July 2012 by Young Americans for Liberty.  It has been expanded and updated to make it relevant to May 2013.

Red stripe is government's, Green stripe is rebels'

Nearly a year has passed since the Obama administration began expressing their “deep concern” with the spiraling crisis in Syria—a crisis many are rightfully calling civil war.  The last time the DoD showed such “deep concern” over the deteriorating situation in any country was regarding Libya in 2011.  The concern over Libya was soon followed by Operation Odyssey Dawn and further intervention by the United Nations in the Libyan Civil War.  Given the track record of NATO and the United Nations, and an investigation by Senator Rand Paul revealing that the Obama administration is responsible for smuggling weapons from Libya to the Syrian rebels, it’s reasonable to assume that these powers will soon intervene officially in the Syrian civil war.

For over two years the Syrian government and the opposition have battled it out to the general stalemate renewed every day in blood.  The rebels waged the majority of offensives between November 2012 and March of this year, while the government forces have kept the score even.  In support of the Syrian government forces are many pro-Assad Shabiha militias, local militias trained by Iran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Basij, and Hezbollah.  On the side of the rebels under the umbrella of the Syrian National Coalition are the decentralized Free Syrian Army, the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front, the al-Nusra Mujahedeen, and the Syrian Kurds.  So far at least 80,000 people have been killed in Syria, nearly 40,000 of them being combatants from the loyalist army, the rebel forces, and each side’s foreign state and non-state allies combined.

Guerrillas of the Free Syrian Army seeking help from the empires of the US or NATO may help the rebels’ cause in the short run, but it will greatly stunt the sovereignty of the Syrian free state in years to come, with foreign military bases and oil rigs on Syrian soil.  It would also potentially put the US and her allies in a hot war with Russia or Iran.  Many are still calling for US intervention since the Syrian government has made a policy of massacring whole villages of Sunni Muslims, in response to the trend that the majority of FSA rebels and anti-Assad Mujahedeen happen to be Sunni.

Richmond, Virginia in April 1865

However, there are two pressing reasons why the US government should not get involved (at least no more than it already unofficially is).  First, the US government has no moral or ethical standing to intervene in the civil wars of foreign states, given its conduct in the American Civil War.  The Lincoln Administration waged war on the Southern States not for the noble purpose of freeing slaves, but rather to maintain territorial integrity of the federal government.  Any slaves that were freed during the war were freed only in order to hurt the Southern war machine while slaves in Northern states continued to languish in bondage.  Furthermore, the US war machine blockaded all Southern ports in order to cut the Southern Confederacy off any foreign aid or intervention.  Most Southern guerrilla fighters, when captured or upon surrendering in 1865, were not treated as enemy combatants but as criminals in violation of martial law and were summarily executed by US soldiers.  Worse yet, a documented minimum of 50,000 civilians are reported to have died from the “collateral damage” from the total war which the US waged on the Southern population.  Farms large and small were burned in order to deny Confederate troops of any food source whatsoever.  Starvation was rampant.  The US Army burned and destroyed paths miles wide in Sherman’s March to the Sea.  Atlanta was burned to the ground.  Vicksburg and Petersburg were besieged and bombed indiscriminately for months, regardless of the likelihood of civilian casualties.  Richmond in 1865 looked like Berlin in 1945.

The second reason is that US intervention in recent Middle Eastern civil wars has not ended well for the United States.  Twice has the US intervened in the Afghan Civil War (which has evolved in distinct phases since 1978).  The first time was a CIA operation for the Mujahedeen against the Soviet Union and the Afghan Communists, in which the nominally unified Mujahedeen were armed with stinger missiles and a variety of other light weaponry.  The second time was October of 2001 as the American War in Afghanistan was initiated in order to rout the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  Unfortunately, this conflict within the War on Terror had the effect of decentralizing Al Qaeda through birthing regionally-based Al Qaeda groups throughout the Middle East, while the old guards of the original Al Qaeda have found refuge among the Pakistani Taliban.  Furthermore, the pulling of resources from the initial 2002 victory in Afghanistan to wage the Iraq War gave the Taliban ample time to rearm, regroup, and entrench themselves ever more deeply among their countrymen who grow weary of the foreign occupiers.  To add insult to injury, many of the weapons provided to the decentralized, only nominally unified Mujahedeen have been used to attack and kill American and allied Afghan troops.

Free Syrian Army troops being transported in a civilian truck

The other, more recent civil war in which the US, NATO, and UN have intervened is the Libyan conflict.  What the civil wars in Libya and Afghanistan have in common with the present situation in Syria is a decentralized, only nominally unified opposition of rebels waging war against an unpopular regime.  The Afghan Mujahedeen and Libyan opposition were allies in fighting against their respective unpopular regimes, but never did the various factions unite under one government or command structure.  Following the overthrow of the Afghan Communist regime, the Afghan Mujahedeen returned to factionalism and fought a multisided civil war until the Taliban won out (and subsequently fought the minority Northern Alliance).  Following the official end of the Libyan Civil War, low-level civil war persists to this day as rogue militias fight against the new Libyan government, fight against each other, and periodically kill American diplomats.  Given that the Syrian opposition is no more unified or organized than the Afghan Mujahedeen or the Libyan opposition, it’s entirely reasonable to conclude that civil war would continue in Syria even after the possible overthrow of the Assad regime.

The best way for the Syrian free forces to tip the balance of the civil war in their favor would be to imitate the course of action taken by the government of Sierra Leone during its civil war.  By 1995 the psychotic guerrillas of the Revolutionary United Front had advanced to within 20 miles of Freetown (the Capital), waging a terror campaign the entire way which involved forced conscription of child soldiers, routine execution of civilians, and a practice of pacifying the civilian population via hacking off the limbs of innocent bystanders.  The desperate government hired the private military company Executive Outcomes (for $1.8 million a month, paid by the International Monetary Fund) to drive back the RUF, retake all towns, villages, and mines held by the RUF, and to destroy their main base of operations.  Within a matter of months Executive Outcomes had taken back territory lost to the RUF, destroyed the enemy’s main base, and forced the RUF to admit defeat and sign the Abidjan Peace Accord.  Civil war in Sierra Leone only resumed when the UN and IMF pressured the government to expel Executive Outcomes.

Various examples in recent history show that there are good uses and bad uses for mercenary companies.  A bad use would be hiring Blackwater to operate in crowded areas without any legal repercussions, thus giving them carte blanche for violence (e.g. Baghdad Bloody Sunday).  An objectively good and even noble use of a PMC would be one such as Sierra Leone’s hiring of Executive Outcomes to neutralize an insurgency infamous for hacking off the legs of recently “liberated” civilians.  This solution could easily be applied in Syria.

The Syrian National Council could grant legal permission for a PMC to operate within Syria in order to fight the loyalist army and arrest Assad.  Furthermore, the hired PMC—fully accountable and answerable to the Syrian National Coalition—could take on the dual mission of fighting the Assad regime while training the Free Syrian Army to be a professional fighting force with a central chain of command under the Syrian National Coalition.  With the PMC taking on a heavy burden of the fighting, part of the Free Syrian Army would be free to establish its integrity by putting into check all the temporarily allied, potentially rogue militias.  This would help ensure that the overthrow of the Assad regime would not be followed by more civil war as has been the case in Afghanistan and Libya.  Finally, as the newly professional Syrian National Army demonstrates its ability to preserve stability in the newly free Syria, the PMC would return to its home base in its home country.

Such an intervention, applied from within by a local government as opposed to being imposed from without by a foreign empire, could tip the scales in the balance of the Syrian opposition, bring a speedier end to the Syrian Civil War, and preserve the sovereignty of the Syrian Free State while keeping foreign empires at bay.

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Syrian double flag, Free Syrian Army, and Richmond images are in the public domain and were obtained from Wikimedia Commons.  Executive Outcomes book cover courtesy of Amazon.com.

So Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton Walk Into a Hearing...

Your typical Foreign Relations Committee hearing when chaired by Rand Paul

So two people who want to be President of the United States walk into a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing; one is a Democrat and the other a Republican.  One plans to be heard while the other plans to do the hearing.  However, it turns out that rather than the Democrat be heard while the Republican does the hearing, the current Senator from Kentucky delivered an exceptional rhetorical falcon punch to the Democrat until-recently-Secretary of State regarding her questionable leadership over the embassy in Benghazi.  Realistically, it was more of a Dragon Ball Z-style mega punch by Senator Paul through the body of ex-Secretary Clinton.

“Had I been president at the time, and I found that you did not read the cables from Benghazi, you did not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post.”

Ouch!  The standard operating procedure is to offer one some ice for that burn.  However, ex-Secretary Clinton should be content with procuring some ice either through her health care benefits as a federal employee or she could even settle for ObamaCare as tirelessly campaigned for by her former boss’ administration.

At this moment in time I feel it quite appropriate to make the case that a Paul presidency would take great strides in divorcing the ill-begotten marriage between government dollars and private sector health care which is responsible for driving the prices of health insurance and health care sky high.  Dr. Paul was even instrumental in establishing eye clinics in Kentucky that catered to patients without medical insurance.  Furthermore, Dr. Paul subscribes to Austrian economic theory, a school of economics whose leading thinkers have been providing ideas for privatizing health care completely and in a way that makes care and insurance easily affordable.  (See Mises.org and search “health care” because I’m too lazy to explain myself when others have already done it so well for me.)

Returning to the wrestling-style smack down of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, it’s beyond redundant to state that Senator Paul thought Secretary Clinton handled the Libya situation poorly.  Defenders of Secretary Clinton may criticize Senator Paul for being overly critical or even for being partisan.  However, there is nothing partisan about Senator Paul’s views on foreign policy, including Libya.  Let’s flash back to the filibuster speech he delivered on the Senate floor on September 21, 2012.

“We gave money [to] dictators, from Saddam Hussein—who was once our ally receiving billions of dollars—to the Mujahedeen who were radical jihadists, but at the time we didn’t mind if you were a radical jihadist if you were our radical jihadist, because they were opposing the Soviet Union.  But the Mujahedeen eventually became the Taliban who are now our enemies.

“According to [scholars] Corey and Ryan, the world’s worst dictators have received $105 billion under the guise of official developmental assistance.  Instead of helping the poor, the assistance is aiding the ability of the dictators to remain in power.  In fact, it keeps them in power long enough that it enflames the populace that we end up having to... [go back] because of war.

“Why is there such a widespread anti-Americanism?  Because we propped up and gave money to so many despots, to so many dictators…  Why are we seeing people burning the American flag?  Why are we seeing such great unrest in 30 different countries?  Because our foreign aid and our military aid has propped up dictators who become over decades despotic, autocratic, who torture their people, prevent freedom from occurring, and then there’s a backlash [against us].

The particular context of this speech was cutting foreign aid to Pakistan, Egypt, and Libya.  Like his father, retired Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Paul is ideologically opposed to foreign aid just as the founding fathers were.  His use of these three unstable countries as a gateway to cutting foreign aid is particularly clever, in my opinion at least.  The reasons he gave for cutting foreign aid to these countries essentially boils down to the following: the government of Pakistan has only made half-assed efforts to a half-assed approach in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, extremism and civil strife are rampant in Egypt, extremists in post-war Libya killed American diplomats without ever being held to account for it, and American intervention in foreign affairs—especially in middle eastern countries torn by civil war and civil strife—only breeds hatred and ill will against America and Americans (hence the angry mob murdering the diplomats in Libya).

Had Senator Paul (or his father) been President, not a dime of American government money would have gone to the extremists infiltrating these governments, there would have been no Americans killed in Libya because there would have been no American presence there, and there would have been no incident over which to relieve Secretary Clinton.  The sad irony is that leftists are going to dislike Senator Paul even more now that “he was mean” to Hillary Clinton, even though Paul’s view that America shouldn’t police the world or tell other countries what to do is sharply in contrast to Clinton’s view yet very much in line with the left’s views of a humble foreign policy.  Oh well, the left’s hypocrisy doesn’t make Rand any less cool.

The best part for me in witnessing all of this is knowing that Senator Rand Paul will run for President in 2016.  This is especially sweet because Hillary wants to run as well—it’s no secret she’s wanted to be President for a long time—and the combined embarrassment from the leadership failure in the “Benghazigate” scandal with Senator Paul’s grilling only serves to shatter Clinton’s dreams of being POTUS while solidifying Paul’s foundation.  Because I’m currently killing downtime on a military base in the middle of nowhere, I will now entertain myself by applying Senator Paul’s awesome burn to the following film scenarios:

Star Wars: Had I been king of Alderaan and found out you ignored the beacon signals about the Death Star, I would have relieved you of your post.

The Lord of the Rings: Had I been Lord Elrond and found out you ignored the mystical signs that the Nazgul were hunting Frodo, I would have relieved you of your post.

Star Wars again: Had I been a general and found out you ignored the message signals informing us that the Empire was going to attack the rebel base on Hoth, I would have relieved you of your post.

Harry Potter: Had I been head of the Order of the Phoenix and found out you, as headmistress of Hogwarts, ignored the owl letters regarding death eaters onto the castle grounds, I would have relieved you of your post.

Star Wars yet again: Had I been Admiral Ackbar and found out it was a trap, I would have relieved you of your post.

Full Metal Jacket: had I found out you were not under sniper fire in Vietnam nor in Bosnia/Kosovo, I would have relieved you of your post.

Star Trek the Next Generation: Had I been head of the galactic federation and found out you ignored that giant Borg cube that flew by the Enterprise, kidnapped Captain Picard and turned him into a cyborg, I would have relieved you of your post as Number One.

The Sandlot: Had I been your father and found out you lost the Babe Ruth autograph ball in the Beast’s yard, I would have relieved you of your post.

Star Wars in real life: Had I been Steven Spielberg or Francis Ford Coppola and found out you were going to make prequels to the Star Wars Trilogy, I would have relieved you of your post.

Perhaps the only thing sweeter than seeing Senator Paul destroying Democrats would be witnessing him spearheading the effort to purge the neocons from Republican Party leadership.  Honestly, with friends like the “conservatives” who went out of their way to bring down Ron Paul’s candidacy, who needs enemies?

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USMC photo 090214-M-4150N-112 is in the public domain. Rand Paul photo by Gage Skidmore and used via CC BY-SA 2.0 license.  Both images obtained from Wikimedia Commons.  If FUNimation wouldn't be inclined to sue my pants off for using Dragon Ball Z fight stills, I would have used them in a heartbeat.