No One Asked Me But… (August 25, 2021)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… American pundits are lamenting the fact the United States has lost the war in Afghanistan. Let me suggest that there was no American war in Afghanistan. Under the United States Constitution, war can only be declared by the Congress of the United States and Congress never declared war on Afghanistan. Let’s be perfectly clear, there were no Afghans involved in 9/11. Seventeen of the nineteen perpetrators were from Saudi Arabia and others were from Egypt. President Bush used 9/11as an excuse to attack Iraq and dispose Saddam Hussein. I am not sure the logic thereof.

The United States got sideways with the Taliban led Afghan government when it refused to cooperate with our attempt to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the leader of those who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

This is the same Afghan government the American CIA supplied with weapons and advisors to drive the Russians from Afghanistan in the late 1980’s. After the Russians left Afghanistan, the Taliban ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, eventually controlling over 90 percent of the country.

If you want to understand the American position in the Middle-east, you need to understand America has no allies in the Middle-east. Our supposed friend Saudi Arabia supports our enemy, the Taliban, with funds they receive from American oil money. The Pakistan government, a supposed ally to America, hid Osama bin Laden for nearly 15 years. The Pakistan government has imprisoned the citizen who helped America find bin Laden as a traitor, and America has done nothing to seek his release. Pakistan shut their border with Afghanistan to the American military. They, along with the rest of the Middle-east, view American troops in the area as an invading army.

Those who object to the comparison of Vietnam and Afghanistan, I would ask for them to consider the similarities. America supported a corrupt government in South Vietnam and even went so far as to overthrow one corrupt government and established another. In Afghanistan, America helped the Taliban take control of the country in 1996 and in 2001 helped overthrow that government establishing another corrupt government keeping it in power for nearly 20 years by supporting its rag-tag army against the disposed Taliban. Both America efforts ended in abject failure.

I too abhor the Taliban human rights violations most evident in their treatment of their women. However, I believe a country’s government exists only with the acceptance of the people being governed.

If the majority of a people refuses to be governed, they cannot be governed. I further believe that a country’s people need to decide what form of government they are willing to live under. I further believe it is not the role of America to dictate the form of government for another country.

One must wonder when America will learn that they cannot win a fight against an ideology. America never lost a battle in Vietnam. It never lost a battle in Afghanistan. If we lost a war, it would have to be the war on terrorism since that is what Congress agreed to in 2001. America put themselves in an lose-lose situation. The opponent did not have to win, they merely had to outlast the American willingness to waste the lives of our young men and our dollars. We can only hope that the lesson has been learned.

No one asked me but… The question is not will America become a socialist nation. America is and has been a socialist nation since the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. The question remains how socialist will America be. For what it is worth, here are a couple of theories of government. One is that people do not seek freedom, they seek comfort and safety. Another is that people deserve the government under which they live. Here are some figures about American government, do what you will with them.

Only 63% of Americans are voter eligible. There are 331,449,281 American citizens according to the 2020 census, of those 209,129,094 are over the age of 18. Of those eligible voters 155,508,985 chose to vote in the 2020 election, that is about 74%. About 26% of the eligible voters, 53,619,109, chose not to vote. 81,284,666 voted for Joe Biden, 74,224,319 voted for Donald Trump. When you add the non-voters to Trumps total, you will find that 61% of American’s eligible to voters did not vote for Joe Biden. Before you Trump supporters get too excited about this, under the same criteria 65% did not vote for your man.

It will be interesting to see what the next three years will bring in the way of moving America further from a free enterprise system of government. We have already seen a covert government take-over of businesses using COVID as an excuse to shut down business and allowing them to re-open only by permission of the government. States have taken over local schools and are dictating not only operations but the curriculum thereof.

The mid-term elections in 2022, will tell us how far America will go to embrace socialism. If in 2022, the Democrats hold the House and Senate and in the Presidential election of 2024, the Democrats hold the Presidency, it will be evident that the American people have chosen comfort over freedom. It will be further evident that the American people want their government to control them from cradle to grave as they find the comfort and safety they seek.

No one asked me but… There are those who are presently crying for the impeachment of President Biden. These are the same people who opposed the impeachment of President Trump. I would again direct them to the Constitution: Article 4, Section 2 “The President shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Sorry, folks poor judgment, is not included. Failure to listen to advisors is not listed. Remember Abe Lincoln once polled his cabinet on an issue and all disagreed with him. He counted the votes and declared “twelve nays one aye, the ayes have it.” Poor decision making is not listed. There is a greater chance that President Biden’s own party will invoke the 25th Amendment removing him from office by declaring him of mentally incompetent to fill the role of President.

Thought of the week… “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
– Frederick Douglass