The American Military

As I'm sure you're aware, Memorial Day occurred a few days ago. Although most Americans treat it as just another day off of work/school and a great day for a picnic, many also take their time to show their respects in one form or another for those Americans who died for our country. After reading numerous posts from my Facebook friends such as "Thank you soldiers for protecting our country" or "Today we remember those who gave their lives to protect our way of life" or "without our brave military, our country wouldn't be here".

This is where I get controversial and piss people off.

I will agree that at certain times, our military has been necessary to ensure the protection of our country, our freedoms, and our people; however, the majority of the time, I believe that our military is not used for this purpose. The last time that our "way of life" was in jeopardy due to military forces was probably WWII. What about 9/11 you ask? Great question. Although Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both attacks on American soil that killed large amounts of Americans, I see enough differences (who attacked, worldwide circumstances, and overall danger of the threat) to justify WWII, but not our present situation in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq is an even more ridiculous predicament. The war was begun as a preemptive move against Hussein for supposed WMD's. I don't know what you think about that whole situation, but I am of the persuasion that Bush/Cheney were aware that the information was falsified.

Anyway, my point here is to explain my opinion that I do not support war that is unjust, and although I respect individual soldiers for sacrificing their time, energy, and sometimes lives for our country, I wish our country would not use people's willingness to serve to advance unjust goals.

The wars in the Middle East need to stop now. The public is unaware of a lot of the stuff that is going on over there. In Iraq, we have and estimated 100,000 civilians killed due to violence, and about 4,400 American soldiers. In Afghanistan, we have thousands of soldiers killed as well. Still not sound bad enough? The US has been conducting drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004 to "eliminate" top Al-Qaeda leaders. As of March 2009 (after 5 years of conducting these strikes), it was reported that 'we' had taken out 9 of the top 20 Al-Qaeda leaders. Unfortunately, over 1000 civilians have been killed as well.

Honestly, I don't understand why our nation's leaders can think that going into these countries and killing civilians will help stop the formation of terrorist groups. Honestly, it probably just pisses them off more. It pisses me off.

I've gone off-topic a bit. Basically, my point is that I feel hesitant to glorify the deaths of American soldiers when I feel that (not necessarily through their own fault) they are assisting in an immoral, and unjust cause. Whether it's in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, our soldiers are not out there "protecting our way of life" or "ensuring that our freedoms exist". They are assisting in the systematic destruction of other peoples' ways of life. I hope that those who have served, serve now, and will serve in the future will always question what they are doing and why they are doing it. That may be against military protocol, but I don't care. I think one should always question the status quo and whatever it is that they are taught. War is only excusable when it are absolutely necessary to protect our own lives.

And if you aren't mad yet, I also support draft-dodgers.

Welcome

Well, hello there. Welcome to my blog. After much procrastination and excessive amounts of laziness, I have finally decided that I really ought to start a blog. I've always thought that blogs were best for sharing the mundane parts of everyday life (aka useless), and although this will be partially true for this blog, I think I will focus the majority of my posts on explaining and defining some of my political views, and in doing so, will hopefully keep it interesting--if only for myself.

I, having long considered myself a Libertarian, can probably define my political beliefs using the basic understanding of what constitutes a Libertarian, namely: Smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom (this is actually the Libertarian Party's slogan). Now, don't stop reading here, because this is where it gets interesting. You see, although I consider these three facets as the basis of my opinion of what the role of government is, I also understand that no matter what I want and believe is best for the country/state/populous, it is guaranteed that some number of people, whether it be an individual, group, political party, or everyone else in the country, will disagree with me. Of course, this same idea applies to everyone else as well. No matter how many "conservatives" there are, there will always be a large number of "liberals" to oppose them. The same goes for any other political ideology: Libertarian, socialist, neo-conservative, anarchist, communist, fascist, etc. Understanding this, I tend to be more "moderate" than your average libertarian. Rather than stand unmoving on my admittedly slightly-radical political beliefs, I find that compromise will end up with better results in the end. In explaining this, I'm reminded of the Hegelian Dialectic, wherein two opposing thoughts/ideas, the Thesis and Antithesis, are resolved through an intermediate ground -- the Synthesis.

The final thing which I feel like I need to explain is that I believe in solving problems. Our country (our entire world, actually), has A LOT of problems. Whether those problems are economic, diplomatic, environmental, biological, ethical, etc., doesn't matter. It is part of my personal belief (this is more of my philosophy in general, rather than just political. Perhaps I will expound sometime in the future) that the human race is "morally" obligated, as a whole, to solve these problems. To allow problems to exist is self-defeating to humanity. For this reason, when there is a problem within our nation, I believe that it needs to be dealt with in the most efficient way possible, while avoiding creating even more problems. A quick example: the BP oil spill. Although the Libertarian Party would disagree with me here, I think that the government needs to take a more active role in the cleanup of this tragedy. The LP argues that the reason for the disaster occuring in the first place was because a limit on liability for oiling companies allowed for an increased level of moral hazard (BP and Transocean were less careful than they would have been if they knew they would be fully liable for any disasters which they might cause). Sure, that may have been a big reason why this happened in the first place, but the bigger problem is what do we do now that this disaster has occurred? Unfortunately for us Libertarians and those Conservatives who prefer free market principles, there really is no GOOD solution to the problem that doesn't involve the government using its broad power. Individual companies simply don't have the resources to handle the problem entirely, and the problem is far too extensive to just ignore it. In this case, I think the best way to solve the problem is for the government to take an active role in the cleanup Yes, this is not a Libertarian answer, but to me, it is the most rational and practical answer.

This has turned into a much longer rant than I originally intended, but I hope you know have a decent understanding of my basic political beliefs. One of my main intentions of this blog is to cover some of many "problems" existing in our country and around the world and give my opinion on them. Other posts will simple give my opinions on other important subjects. Some of my opinions will surprise you, some of them will anger you, and some of them will delight you.

My next post will probably cover Memorial Day and some of my thoughts about it.

Thanks for reading!