America First: Defense Part I

Author: R. Alan Harrop, PhD

In another recent article, I wrote about the importance of putting America First (as advocated by the Founding Fathers) and ensuring that we have a strong economy not dependent of other countries for essential manufactures, medical supplies and food. This article will focus on what we should be doing to protect our country from current and future adversaries.

There were two essential principles of the America First policy of the Founding Fathers. The first was avoiding foreign wars that did not directly impact on our security; and the second was to focus on ensuring that the Western Hemisphere did not become controlled by our adversaries from other parts of the world (i.e. The Monroe Doctrine). The Founding Fathers would be dismayed that some of our leaders have increasingly advocated that we are obligated to defend other countries anywhere in the world that are threatened or attacked. This progressive, globalist idea has us acting as the world’s policeman to keep the world “ Safe for Democracy” This idea, advocated by Woodrow Wilson, has led us into many wars where we actually failed, made things worse, and as a consequence are increasingly seen as weak and not a country to be afraid of offending. This is not good for our security since it invites more aggression.

A good example, was our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the attacks on 9/11. Instead of just identifying the enemy, hitting them with overwhelming force, and then leaving; the elitist leaders of our country decided we should turn both those countries into democracies. After wasting trillions of dollars (which we don’t have) and the lives of our patriotic military personnel, we are in many ways worse than before. Iran is in ascendance and the Taliban was left with $85 billion dollars of the finest military equipment. Also, our worst adversary, China, has taken over a military airbase we built! Of course, our leaders never asked us if this is what we wanted. They just took it upon themselves since they know best. These things would never have happened if we had followed the American First principle of our Founding Fathers.

We are perceived as so weak, that a group of Houthi rebels in Yemen attack our ships and those of other countries with impunity. This reminds me of the wars with the Barbary Pirates who captured our ships and enslaved our sailors in the early 1800s. Along with a couple of allies, we hit them hard and stopped their attacks on our ships. We should do likewise with the Houthis. Hit them with overwhelming force and stop matching them shot for shot.

As far as protecting our hemisphere is concerned, China has been steadily increasing its influence over several South American countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Chile. China extends loans that then make those countries dependent on their relationship with China. For example, China has loaned over $60 billion to Venezuela some of which was used for military equipment to suppress the uprising against communist dictator President Maduro. China builds its own seaports and other facilities that can be used to offset our influence in the Western Hemisphere. This is part of China’s Belt and Road project that has the objective of controlling the global world order.

In summary, it is time for America to re-evaluate our commitments and foreign policy to ensure that we are focused on what is best for America.

Interesting Insight From Thomas Sowell

Yesterday Investors.com posted an article by Thomas Sowell with an interesting perspective on the Obama Administration.

The article opens with the following paragraph:

After reading Barack Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father,” it became painfully clear that he has not been searching for the truth, because he assumed from an early age that he had already found the truth — and now it was just a question of filling in the details and deciding how to change things.

Combined with the few bits of personal history of President Obama told by colleagues along the way, this makes perfect sense. The article points out that President Obama, when a professor at the University of Chicago chose not to mingle with the other professors. He wasn’t open to participating in the marketplace of ideas. He still isn’t. When presented with the conclusions of the Bowles-Simpson report, he not only ignored them, he didn’t even enter into negotiations to pass something that would begin to bring the federal government’s spending and deficits under control.

Mr. Sowell points out:

When Obama wrote that many people “had been enslaved only because of the color of their skin,” he was repeating a common piece of gross misinformation. For thousands of years, people enslaved other people of the same race as themselves, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Western Hemisphere.

Europeans enslaved other Europeans for centuries before the first African was brought in bondage to the Western Hemisphere.

The very word “slave” is derived from the name of a European people once widely held in bondage, the Slavs.

Facts can be very inconvenient things.

The article concludes:

Barack Obama is one of those people who is often wrong but never in doubt. When he burst upon the national political scene as a presidential candidate in 2008, even some conservatives were impressed by his confidence.

But confident ignorance is one of the most dangerous qualities in a leader of a nation.

If he has the rhetorical skills to inspire the same confidence in himself by others, then you have the ingredients for national disaster.

We have lived that disaster for the past four years.

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Things That Are Not Conducive To A Good Night’s Sleep

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research posted a report this month on the growing Hezbollah Threat in Latin America. The report is written by Roger Noriega, a senior State Department official from 2001 to 2005, a visiting fellow at AEI and managing director of Vision Americas LLC, which represents foreign and domestic clients.

Some of the highlights of the report:

Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America dates to the mid-1980s, when it began sending operatives into the notoriously lawless region known as the tri-border area (TBA)—where the borders of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet—to use it as a principal safe haven for fundraising, money laundering, recruitment, training, plotting, and other terrorist-related activities.Their activity also includes drug and arms trafficking, counterfeiting, forging travel documents, and pirating software and music. Their resulting proselytizing has led to the creation of numerous Hezbollah cells, with an estimated 460 operatives in the TBA by mid-2000.

Hugo Chávez’s track record of anti-Americanism and support for terrorist groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is well-established, but his making common cause with a radical Islamic theocracy in waging asymmetric warfare (unconventional and irregular methods used by a weaker opponent against a stronger opponent) against the United States truly speaks to the depths of his fanaticism. He has allowed Iran to mine uranium in Venezuela and has worked assiduously to undermine economic sanctions against the Iranian regime (for which Venezuela has, in turn, been sanctioned). In recent years, moreover, Venezuela’s Margarita Island has eclipsed the infamous TBA as the principal safe haven and center of Hezbollah operations in the Americas.

The report concludes:

US and other government authorities have identified and sanctioned some of the leaders of these networks, and US law enforcement agencies—led by the Drug Enforcement Administration—have made great efforts to assess and confront this threat by building cases against foreign officials and sanctioning commercial entities that provide support to this criminal terror organization. However, this dangerous network requires a whole-government strategy, beginning with an interagency review to understand and assess the transnational, multifaceted nature of the problem; educate friendly governments; and implement effective measures unilaterally and with willing partners to disrupt and dismantle their operations.

The stakes are clear. In a May 2011 visit to Bolivia, Iranian Defense Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi proclaimed that in the event of any military confrontation between Iran and the United States, “The strong Iran is ready for enemy-crushing and tough response in case of any illogical and violent behavior by the U.S.”  There is every reason to believe that such a response would utilize every weapon in Iran’s arsenal, including Hezbollah. But we do not have to wait until an outbreak of military hostilities between the United States and Iran to confront Hezbollah’s continuing efforts to consolidate its presence and expand its influence in the Western Hemisphere. The United States and responsible governments in Latin America need to act now, precisely so that we do not have to respond later.

Please follow the above link and read the entire report. The report is footnoted and contains a lot of information Americans are not hearing from the American press. We need to wake up and start paying attention.

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