Before the invasion of Iraq, Buchanan wrote:
“With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavor at which Islamic people excel is expelling imperial powers by terror or guerrilla war.
They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.”
Pat Buchanan can get it wrong. He can get it really, really wrong. I was always wary of him because of his views on gay people, but one of Buchanan’s most enthusiastic supporters has been Justin Raimondo, so if he can get over it, I certainly can. I’ve come to appreciate him recently, because most of the time Buchanan gets everything right, really, really right.
Pat Buchanan, Iraq War, Justin Raimondo, gay rights
Found your blog through the political voices of women site; loved the insight about Buchanan and picked it up for Delaware Libertarian at
http://delawarelibertarian.blogspot.com/2008/03/flawed-insight-of-pat-buchanan.html
I am placing you on our blogroll. Hope you will drop by and consider doing the same.
Steve Newton
March 26th, 2008
Or how about this blast from the past by Leftist Anti-War Bush haters, and even some in the libertarian movement:
“If we invade Iraq we’ll need tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of body bags, for all the dead American soldiers and Marines.”
Death toll in the 5-year War: approx. 4000
That’s less than 2 hours on Normandy Beach. Less than 1 day’s death total for American GIs at Iwo Jima. And less than an hour for deaths at Antietam and Gettysburg.
Eric Dondero
March 29th, 2008
So-called “libertarian” sites who supposedly advocate free speech rights, have cowered with the release of “Fitna.”
We at Libertarian Republican blog are one of only a tiny handful of libertarian sites, running the Fitna video.
Two months ago, you may recall, many libertarians were screaming all over the internet about Ron Paul’s free speech rights, over his controversial quasi-racist Newsletters. Now, all those same blogs that defended Paul, are completely absent in defending Geert Wilders.
Here’s a list: LewRockwell.com, LP.org, AntiWar.com, NolanChart.com, Liberty Papers, Free Liberal, Libertarian Girl, Knappster, and of course, all the Ron Paul sites.
Reason.com has relegated it to their off-home page blog.
Some libertarians like Libertarian Republicans, believe in free speech for all. Other poser libertarians apparently believe in free speech only for certain individuals.
Eric Dondero
March 29th, 2008
Who said that quote? The link? There have been hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (mostly, presumably, innocent civilians) killed. Luckily there have not been that many Americans, although far too many as it is.
You must keep in mind as well that the types of medical technology existing in the days of Antietam and Iwa Jima and Normandy are not even in the realm of what we have today as far as keeping people alive. A friend of a friend of mine was shot last year in Afghanistan and airlifted to Germany, where he had top doctors taking care of him and making sure he didn’t lose his arm. That wouldn’t have happened even in Vietnam. The technology-adjusted ratios of deaths cannot really be estimated, I imagine, but the deaths if the Iraq War had happened in the 1940s or 1860s would be much, much higher.
I have no problem with Fitna, but there are few free speech issues where people hosting a site’s servers get death threats. In fact, I can’t think of anything comparable. Unlike you (hosting on Blogspot on Google’s servers), I have a small, non-corporate host who hosts my website as a courtesy and who really would be better off without threats of death and things of that nature in response to my hosting that video on his site. He also lives in Europe so presumably he’s closer to these crazy people making the threats. All of the above sites may have similar concerns.
These same concerns are most evident in the fact that Wilder himself had his own site taken down and then had to host it on Liveleak.com instead. There are other concerns here besides free speech.
You can see the video here:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bCrCsTMokTU
I have not seen it yet, and of course I would not deny anyone else the chance because I truly do believe in free speech. I was just on vacation last week
libertariangirl
April 2nd, 2008
Libertarian Girl … Those men would have died despite modern medicine, at least the great majority of them. It looks like, and I may very well be incorrect, that you think that war has never cured any problem. Perhaps you might research free speech under King George the Third … Libertarianism, is not pacifism.
Patrick Sperry
July 3rd, 2008
How do you know that the soldiers in the Civil War “would have died despite modern medicine”? What do you base that on? It seems patently clear to me that the opposite is true.
I think war has cured some problems, which were probably created by other wars. It’s a bit of a cycle. The problems in Afghanistan now were caused in part by us arming and helping them to fight the Soviets in the 1980s, which in turn was a result of World War II and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Personally, I think the Americans who started this country were fully justified in doing so, and they had fewer reasons than an American might have today. A stamp tax? Taxes on tea? No direct representation in Parliament? Those were petty problems compared to the ones America is now facing.
libertariangirl
July 7th, 2008