Who's in charge?



Mike Calpino

 This week we, the United States, committed ourselves to another war. We began enforcing a ‘no fly’ zone in an effort to help the rebellion, led primarily by terrorists, against a brutal dictator. And why have we decided to become engaged in this conflict? Because the United Nations said so.


Once upon a time we were a sovereign nation who would only commit blood and treasure when it was in our best interest. We adhered to a law, called the constitution, that said that only the representatives of the people, the congress, could make that commitment, and it could only be paid for if that body approved and could convince the people to buy bonds or pay taxes to support it. Not any more. Now we have a president who has no clue what to do until the United Nations, an unelected, anti-American body, tells him that it would be a good idea to put our brave men and women in harm’s way and expend billions of dollars of the Fed’s freshly printed dollars. Really? When did "we the people" choose to give up our national sovereignty and allow the United Nations determine where and how our military and tax dollars are used? I don’t remember that vote, do you?
There are two things wrong with our latest "intervention" that concern me. One is the above mentioned subservience to the United Nations. That is an organization we should have pulled out of a long time ago. In fact, it was set up in a way to put us at a disadvantage in any attempt gain support for any action we may believe is in our best interest. It is a waste of our money and everyone else’s. It is corrupt from top to bottom, it is comprised primarily of dictators and thugs and even our supposed ‘friends’ only vote with us half the time. It puts countries like Libya and Iran on the Human Rights Council and its blue helmeted soldiers often engage in the same atrocious activities they are supposed to prevent. We may complain about the stupidity and corruption in our government but the UN takes it to a whole new level. Knowing that most nations see the UN simply as a tool to bleed us of billions of dollars, humiliate us and keep us from acting in our best interests through supposed ‘international' condemnation, the last governmental body we should be taking direction from is the United Nations. I’d withdrawal from that worthless organization, pull the plug on all funding, give them six months to move out of New York and use that building for something useful, rent it out to some greedy capitalists, perhaps.

The second problem is our policy of engaging in military action in an attempt to ‘fix’ problems in nations where no national security interest, much less a threat, can be determined. Is Khaddafy an evil guy? Yes. Has he killed American citizens? Yes. Is that why we are going into Libya now? No. When we found out Khaddafy was training terrorists and actually killing Americans, that was the time to engage in military action. Ronald Reagan should have bombed that country until Khaddafy and his terrorists were annihilated and then left. We should have done the same to the Taliban in Afghanistan for their involvement in 9/11. That is a compelling national security interest. We should let it be known that no nation and no two-bit dictator can target Americans anywhere in the world with impunity. Now the world knows that we will do nothing unless the UN lets us! Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, any country that is so inclined can provide material support for terrorist activities without fear of serious repercussions. That puts a target on the chest of every American in the world, including you as you sit at your computer here at home.

That being said, what America needs is decisive leadership and freedom of action. That requires a strong, independent America, something we have not had for decades. I am not talking about our military capability which is unequaled in the world, by far. I am talking about the fact that our actions on the international stage are held hostage by our financial and energy dependence. Why is the Middle East a national security interest? Because we get so much oil from them. What if we were energy independent? What if we didn’t need a drop of oil from any nation in the Middle East? There would be no need for any military presence in the region other than a carrier group in the Indian Ocean to protect our shipping, provide emergency natural disaster relief or provide quick strike capability if we find ourselves threatened or attacked by some weasel. There certainly would be no need to intervene in a civil war, no matter how brutal, under the guise of maintaining our oil supply. We would stop our funding of terrorists by funneling hundreds of billions of dollars in the coffers of their supporters like those in Saudi Arabia. We would also stop funding the buildup of the Chinese military through the interest we pay them. We could finally return to the foreign policy of our founders who believed it improper to meddle in the internal affairs of other nations.

It is our dependence that requires our military intervention all over the world. We feel obligated to act in the interests of those to whom we owe money and the politicians need to keep the oil flowing because if it stops, prices skyrocket, people get upset, and they don’t get reelected. Until we get a handle on our financial situation and start developing our own vast resources, we are going to be at the mercy of events in the world rather than shaping them. We should be providing leadership in the world but that leadership should rarely be military in nature. Our leadership should be based on the benefits of our friendship, benefits not based on military alliances but on trade. We should be using our tariffs to reward nations that embrace our values of freedom and civility and demonstrate support and friendship to us and withhold our trade from regimes that do not meet basic standards of human rights and freedom. A strong and independent America would not have been funneling billions of dollars into Egypt to support Hosni Mubarak. A strong and independent America would not be putting up with the absurd trade relation we have with China. A strong and independent America would not need to buy anything, including oil, from nations that fund terrorism. Unfortunately, we are not strong and independent; we are broke, liable to our lenders, subject to those who provide our basic resources and terrified that at some point someone will ask too much of us and force us to actually make some hard decisions. As long as this situation exists, we will be like a reed blown in the wind, hostage to others, subject to the whims of the United Nations and we will spill the blood of our brave men and women and expend our hard earned treasure to prop up a situation that is unsustainable by definition. Who’s in charge? Everyone but us.
Mike Calpino