Ryan Price's Soapbox

Recently the drums of war have been getting turned up again as the US looks at the possible prospect of going to war with Iran. It recently got me thinking because I caught an episode of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC which she was actually covering America’s seemingly abnormal obsession with war. Since when did the US and its citizenship as a whole become comfortable and unaffected by not one but TWO wars which have been ongoing for the last decade.

The problem seems to arise from the fact that since the 1970’s, the people in power in the executive branch and the legislative branch have made it easier to go to war than it use to be. Our founding fathers never intended to have this military industrial complex that exists now. When the US had to declare war, it was congress who voted on sending our families to wars in foreign lands. Back in World War II, war was something that affected families. It affected families because so many people went to serve versus the minute number with have today. This evolution of how we view war has put us on the wrong track, has tarnished out image world wide as the country who supported freedom where ever.

The Iran-Contra scandal which is thought of being a scandal about a cabal of zealots gone slightly rogue that maybe Reagan knew something about. I think what’s really important about Iran-Contra is that, in trying to save Reagan’s neck, his administration came up with this very radical notion of executive power. Then fast forward to Iraq in 1991, Kosovo and Bosnia in the mid 90’s, and under George W. Bush – Iraq and Afghanistan. Even under our current president Barack Obama, an unsanctioned war in Libya allowed us to be involved in the conflict for a few months under the War Powers Act (which by the way should never have been passed for this purpose alone). The reason why most of us have simply forgotten or become desensitized to war is because it does not affect the population like it did 50+ years ago. We are surely on the wrong track and we are doing our soldiers a huge disservice but going on these endeavors overseas under the pretense of fighting terrorist and preventing another 9/11 from happening. Roughly half of the American people have not felt any effects of the nation’s involvement in two separate wars much less know they are still ongoing.

Each successive administration has made all of these little accommodations that let the president do more in the national security arena without getting political permission, without having to make the case for it, without having to make the case to Congress, without having to face the public that may disagree with it. They’ve come up with ways to do more and more stuff unilaterally to the point where our national security policy isn’t much under democratic control anymore.

It’s time we started rolling back all these policies that have given both upper branches of government this power, public support should be a huge factor on if we go to war or not, and the President should not be the sole person deciding if we go to war , it should be Congress which decides regardless if the conflict is small or large.

Unless you have lived under a rock for the few months and even more recently two weeks. Most of you now know who Julian Assange is, the founder of WikiLeaks, the site responsible for the Iraq/Afghan War Logs leak and more recently the US Diplomatic Cable leaks. What has leaked thus far in terms of the cables is remarkable and sheds light on a lot of questions the people of the free world. A few of these include:

• Considering an eventual collapse of North Korea – American and South Korean officials have discussed prospects for a unified Korea should its troubles and political transition leak to an implosion from within.
• Bargaining Guantanamo Bay prisoners off to other countries. Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama. Other countries included Kiribati who was offered incentives worth millions and Belgium was told it was a low cost way to attain prominence in Europe.
• Corruption within the Afghan government – a case where their vice presidents was caught with $52 million in cash.
• Chinese hacking effort directed at Google’s systems in China. Chinese hackers have reportedly been breaking into government computers of western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses as far back as 2002.
• Gray area on Terrorism efforts – Saudi donors remain a chief financier of Sunni Militant groups within Al Qaeda. Qatar’s own security service was hesitant to act against terrorist for fears of appearing aligned with the US and provoking reprisal.
• Arms deliveries to militant groups – It has been found that Syria has been supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon and has amassed a huge stockpile of weapons since its 2006 conflict with Israel.
• Secretary of  State informed agents to conduct information gathering on UN diplomats – gathering information about personal happenings with diplomats all the way down to getting their credit card numbers.
• General consensus that Iran needs to be dealt with and US urged to attack them by other Arab nations in the neighborhood.
• China thinks North Korea is acting like a spoiled child and questions its relationship with the rouge nation.

These are just a few of the major ones – out of the 250,000+ cables 267 have leaked so far and are coming out daily. If you’d like to see the rest it is available here I have put together a rough list thanks to Wikipedia and divided by country.

US Diplomatic Cable Leak PDF

Now, on to the real question of this post: Is this considered terrorism or free speech. As embarrassing as it is from an American point of view. This information shows how things are conducted in private out of the public eyes then made to appear like something else when it’s given to the public. While I personally might not like the founder of WikiLeaks , the world needs to know these things. It makes us look bad when our own are doing intel gathering on UN Diplomats as if we can’t trust anyone. Most likely nothing will be brought up on Julian Assange because he is protected by press laws the real person who’s going to lose out on this is Pvt. Bradley Manning who leaked both the War logs and these diplomatic Cables. It’s disheartening to see that somehow after everything we’ve gone through in the last 9 years we haven’t learned anything – humility, respect, dignity and trust. All things the world leaders should think when they meet with Americans. Instead we see this cat mouse game where we are lying and insulting the very same diplomats that we are suppose to be working together with to get things done. We are threating out allies to sweep things under the rug as to not make us look bad and make threats to pull aid if anything does happen. This isn’t the America I grew up in, America doesn’t lie…cheat…and insult its friends. If anything I hope more information comes out….maybe then US leaders at home and Abroad will conduct themselves in a more respectful manner and be more open with its people. We are entitled to know what our elected officials are doing, if you want to go about hiding the truth from the American people, we can find other representation. I’ll leave with this:

Freedom of Information and the freedom to know what your government is doing is necessary to uphold and maintain freedom. The minute we silence people from bearing the truth…is the minute we lose that freedom…and freedom of speech and press is finished and thus…our nation.

Health Care Bill Passes Senate on Christmas Eve:

As most of you were out shopping for last minute Christmas gifts, our wonderful law makers in Congress were busy passing the Health Care Reform Bill by a margin of 60-39. Now It moves on to the House where they have to add their pieces and attempt to have it pass there as well as in the Senate in order for this to go into effect. Now trust me I don’t hate health care reform because there are honestly things i like in the bill. I think the denying of coverage for pre existing conditions is absolutely Un-American and should have been fixed years ago. Believe it or not there are people who keep their jobs and hate it for years simply because they need the health care to either pay for a child or spouse that might be sick.

Taking the super wealthy to pay for this is simply not an option. We need to find better ways besides taxing those who work their butts off in order to make 100k+ a year. The fact that it is going to save us 130 billion dollars and in a decade 1 trillion is simply not true. First off, that is under the assumption you push people off Medicare/Medicaid if not and both plans still exist them we have effectively added 1 more government run program to add to the debt.

Here’s a tip to Congress, instead of trying to BUY votes, try working together as a collective whole! Act as a congress of one not 60.

Attempted Terrorist Attack over Detroit:

When stuff like this happens, it tells you that our security still has numerous holes in it and that we are letting our guard down. This should be a big wake up call that we are by no means out of the woods by a long shot. The people on that flight should be counting their blessing that the guys leg got cooked and not the plane exploding in the sky over Detroit. Second of all, where was our wonderful intelligence on this, HIS OWN FATHER warned the Embassy about this in Yemen. Now granted this was not within our borders but we should expect our allies to have their security bumped up or at least at the gates with American destinations have tighter security getting on the flights. Our problem now is not solely directed at Afghanistan, its global and we best start paying attention because when we don’t and we take our eyes off the ball…that is when we’ll have another horrific attack on the scale of 9/11.

Protests erupt in Iran again:

Most of you remember the Iranian Elections earlier this year and the massive protests that erupted and subsequently claimed the lives of many young Iranians. While our president stood idle and turned a blind eye to it the rest of the world was standing behind them and urging them to claim the torch and bring them the freedom they have been denied for years. Well again, protests have broke out again and it seems more and more like we don’t care. Iran would not be a threat if the world pushed out the repressive rulers that abuse human rights and kill those who go against them. Iranians want the freedom and peace that the west enjoys…why is it so hard for us to give it to them!?

Ryan Price -