WHY OPPOSING THE WAR IN IRAQ IS CONSERVATIVE - PART 2

There is one point about the Iraq War upon which I would like to specifically focus: it diverts attention and resources from where the real fight on terror should occur, and where the real perpetrators of September 11, 2001, reside. That place is Afghanistan.


I recently found this information about present-day Afghanistan - after the fall of the Taliban and the displacement of Al-Qeida:

Indeed. If anything, the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating. President Karzai remains in effect "the Mayor of Kabul," with central government control limited in the countryside, and the Taliban and Al Qaeda are back with a vengeance. More than 1,600 people were killed in fighting last year, including 99 US troops -- double the number killed in the each of the three preceding years -- and suicide bombings, once a rarity, have become commonplace. The US Embassy constantly warns staffers and visitors to avoid restaurants, hotels, and other places popular with foreigners, and has banned embassy personnel from traveling on Jalalabad Road, one of the main highways out of the city.

Karzai may have an even tougher fight on his hands in reining in members of his own government, a large number of whom have links to the opium trade. According to some observers, as many as 60% of those elected to parliament last fall are linked to warlords and the drug traffic, such as former Jalalabad-based warlord Hazrat Ali. Some governors and other officials are also believed tied to the trade.

An international donor's conference this week in London resulted in pledges of more than $10 billion in developmental assistance for Afghanistan, but more than four years after the United States invaded and overthrew the Taliban, neither the West nor the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai has figured out what to do about the country's burgeoning opium economy. Opium production has exploded since 2001, with Afghan poppies now accounting for nearly 90% of the world's heroin supply and more than 50% of the country's economy, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Source - Afghan Opium Conundrum -- Four Years On, the West Searches for Answers 2/3/06
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/421/conundrum.shtml

I did not put this information here to talk about the War on Drugs - that debate is reserved for a future date. Also, I do not question the sources greatly - I have read this information in several other credible places. Instead, I use it to highlight some key points:

-- peaceful local allies in the war on terror only control Kabul. The countryside is a mess. This leads to a fundamental question: who controls the rest of the country? Al-Qeida? Warlords? Who? And why do U.S. and coalition forces not control this territory?

-- one development in the diversion away from Afghanistan and the focus on Iraq is the exploding opium trade. Who is getting the proceeds of this illegal drug sale? I imagine Al-Qeida is getting some cut of the action.

-- About 60% of the legislature and/or government is involved in warlord-based drug trade. Let us assume that Afghanistan is not a terrorist state anymore. I think it safely can be described now as a narco-state, akin to Colombia in past years or, likely, Ecuador in the future. Don't forget folks - we (U.S.A.) helped install the present Afghanistan government.

This Afghanistan policy has to stop. It will not as long as our military focus is in Iraq.

However, Rep. Price has said we should not micromanage the president in the war on terror.

Here are my proposals:

-- call for a 120 day withdrawal from Iraq.

-- submit a resolution in Congress asking the president to shift military resources to Afghanistan until Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zuwahiri are either dead or captured.

-- submit a second resolution in Congress asking the president to have the State Department intensively investigate the present Afghan government to uncover and expose those legislators or government officials who are tied to either warlord violence or the drug trade. These findings should be shared with uncorrupted Afghan officials who, hopefully, will clean up their own government affairs internally.

Believe me folks, this is more than what Rep. Price has suggested. His view? Let the president do what he wants and spend your money where he sees fit.

Like what I posted better? Please vote Libertarian in November and Fisher for Congress.

fisherforcongress@gmail.com

Please check back here for further posts. Thanks again.

MY COMMENT TO MY CRITICS

I recently read some posts to a message service about this blog criticizing it for being un-professional in a political sense and immature. Please find below my posted response to these individuals:


To the Critics:

While I appreciate your criticism of my blog posts, and it appears to be valid, you are missing a major point: I will not be a candidate unless I get 19, 377 VALID petition signatures. This translates into approximately 30, 000 signatures, once the bad ones are eliminated. You can thank the Georgia Legislature of 1943 for that, and every other legislative session since for not doing the right thing and repealing O.C.G.A. Sec. 21-3-170.

So guess what? NO ONE is going to pay attention to me at this point. I could have on a Brooks Bros. suit, imported silk tie, high gloss wingtips, and talk like a high lord from the English Parliament. No one will address any of my issues because the odds of me being a candidate are very slim to none. I am irrelevant.

Thus, my only weapon is the way I say message. Inflammatory? Yes. Out of the mainstream? Yes. It is the only way to get anyone to pay attention. The squeaky wheel does occasionally get the oil.

Further, I am running as an angry citizen - not as a politician. I have no hopes, dreams or aspirations about making a career out of running every 2 to 4 years, or becoming a semi-professional Libertarian candidate. I will make this run, and then fade off into obscurity. If you want a professional "politician, " go recruit one to run.

Finally, what do you have to fear about the drug legalization movement? It is evident from your posts that you do. We won't be "mainstream" unless we drop the issue? This issue sets us apart. It also shows Libertarians' fear of government intervention, and respect for the individual to make decisions that affect him- or herself only. Dropping this issue because of the fear of public backlash will make Libertarians look both weak and like sell-outs: we'd compromise our values for political expediency. That is how both the Democrats and Republicans got into trouble in the first place.

I appreciate the feedback--

Jay

WHY OPPOSING THE IRAQ WAR
IS CONSERVATIVE

(W)e cannot reject as unfounded the judgment of the military authorities and of Congress that there were disloyal members of that population, whose number and strength could not be precisely and quickly ascertained. We cannot say that the war-making branches of the Government did not have ground for believing that in a critical hour such persons could not readily be isolated and separately dealt with, and constituted a menace to the national defense and safety, which demanded that prompt and adequate measures be taken to guard against it.

…exclusion of Muslims was deemed necessary because of the presence of an unascertained number of disloyal members of the group, most of whom we have no doubt were loyal to this country. It was because we could not reject the finding of the military authorities that it was impossible to bring about an immediate segregation of the disloyal from the loyal that we sustained the validity of the … order as applying to the whole group.

That there were members of the group who retained loyalties to Islam has been confirmed by investigations made subsequent to the (order).

But hardships are part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships. All citizens alike, both in and out of uniform, feel the impact of war in greater or lesser measure. Citizenship has its responsibilities as well as its privileges, and in time of war the burden is always heavier… But when under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.

Anybody want to take a guess where these statements came from? A speech from Vice President Cheney? An address by Justice Thomas to some bar association? A recent proclamation by our president?

All these guesses are incorrect. These statements came from the 1944 United States Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. United States. I just deleted the references to Japan and Japanese, and inserted Islam and Muslims in those places.

For those of you who are not students of history, Korematsu ranks with some of the worst decisions unttered by the Supreme Court. This decision made legal the evacuation of all U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry from the whole West Coast, and legalized their internment in concentration camps in the western deserts.

Amazing how matters come full circle, aren't they?

Here we are again - sixty years later - watching politicians do flips and backbends around and over the Constitution to justify blatantly illegal and unconstitutional acts by the federal government. Domestic spying by the National Security Agency on U.S. residents? Please...

Conservatives should agree that the Founding Fathers were the greatest and best sources to research on extent of executive power. James Madison, in Federalist No. 48, made the following observations on how the legislative and executive branches should watch each other to make sure all branches behave constitutionally:

But in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited; both in the extent and the duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired, by a supposed influence over the people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.

We no longer have the branches watching over each other, as the Founding Fathers intended. Executive authority is growing because of the lack of constitutional checks and balances.

Rep. Tom Price does not believe in executing his constitutionally delegated duty of overseeing the Executive Branch in its war in Iraq. Remember - he believes we should not be "micromanaging" the president.

Fortunately, voices of reason will previal. Even in Korematsu, not all the justices concurred, as seen by Justice Murphy's statements:

At the same time, however, it is essential that there be definite limits to military discretion, especially where martial law has not been declared. Individuals must not be left impoverished of their constitutional rights on a plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support. Thus, like other claims conflicting with the asserted constitutional rights of the individual, the military claim must subject itself to the judicial process of having its reasonableness determined and its conflicts with other interests reconciled.

Moreover, this inference, which is at the very heart of the evacuation orders, has been used in support of the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy. To give constitutional sanction to that inference in this case, however well-intentioned may have been the military command on the Pacific Coast, is to adopt one of the cruelest of the rationales used by our enemies to destroy the dignity of the individual and to encourage and open the door to discriminatory actions against other minority groups in the passions of tomorrow.

We have the power to re-institute reason in the federal government. Vote Libertarian in the November elections.

BIG SHOUT-OUTS!!!

The Fisher for Congress Committee would like to extend our fullest support to the following businesses:

BRANCH BANKING & TRUST (BB&T) - this financial institution said that it would not loan money to any business for use on any project where land was taken via eminent domain from a private citizen. Thank you for standing up for private property rights.


GOOGLE - Google told the Department of Justice to go pound sand when DOJ wanted all of Google's user-search records in an unfettered "fishing expedition" to search for terrorists (allegedly). I know some people will point to Google's leniency with the Chinese for having a search engine in the People's Republic. I do not have a problem with this - if Google wants to do business in China, they have to abide by Chinese rules and laws. However, Google recognized that, in America, there is still due process. Way to go...

FISHER'S STANCE ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

At the outset, I want to make one point explicitly clear - I do not use the phrase "undocumented immigrant."

Why? Because I have no idea why any illegal alien entered the country. They may be here for a three day stay to absorb the new aquarium in downtown Atlanta, or they may be here for a good job and to live out their remaining days.

We do not know what any illegal alien's intended purpose is because they never bothered to enter the country legally and state such.

That said, I oppose illegal immigration in all forms. A nation that stands on the verge of paranoia from terrorists cannot tolerate a sieve-like border policy.

That said, I have a fool-proof solution to the immigration problem. Hold employers civilly and criminally accountable for the illegal aliens they hire.

My opponents will not go that far. They speak of guest worker programs, enforcing existing laws, etc. However, none of them discuss putting a real burden on employers with tougher and stronger sanctions. I do, and I will if elected.

In criminal law, if person "a" commits a crime, and person "b" either agrees with or aids and abets the crime, we call that a conspiracy. Employers commit a conspiracy to violate federal immigration laws when they hire illegal aliens.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I do not advocate making laws harder on illegal aliens. I think the laws in place are sufficient to detain and deport them. The laws just have to be enforced. Also, illegal aliens are simply filling a void that is created by employers. Employers need to be held accountable.

Once employers are convicted for hiring illegal aliens, they will stop hiring them, period.

And once employers get the squeeze, then a real discussion can begin between all interested parties about immigration reform that addresses all essential issues.

Now, I will hear the cry about $6.00 per pound tomatoes, and $20.00 per pound beef. I reject these calls outright. These nay sayers ignore the power of the free market to come up with innovations and new ways of addressing problems to correct skewed prices. Innovations will come - the inspiration needs to be there, however. That will never occur under the present border policy.


Send questions or comments to:
fisherforcongress@gmail.com

REP. TOM PRICE - STILL FULL OF POO

Anybody catch Rep. Price on 640 A.M. WGST the morning of February 1, 2006? He appeared on the Denny Schaffer program and, from the sounds of it, Denny had extra saliva going during this fest of boot-licking.

Not one pointed question asked during the whole interview...

Tom was on touting all the great things he and the GOP were going to do after Pres. Bush's State of the Union address:

Rep. Price's Earmark Identification Legislation - Tom said that bills are getting bogged down with earmarks that add greatly to the layouts and expenditures. Yes, this is true. His solution is to pass a law requiring legislators to put their names on any earmarks they add to bills. Rep. Price claims it is sometimes "very hard" to identify who put the earmarks in a bill.

Huh?

I have to object - it is not rocket science to figure out who put in an earmark. Let me use an example. Let's say federal money is specified for a grain silo museum in Crookston, Minnesota. I am taking a wild guess that it was either: a.) the U.S. representative or b.) one of the two senators from Minnesota who put that money in there. I doubt very highly that a politician from North Carolina gives one hoot about a musuem in Minnesota. Alright - let's even go so far as to say that the North Carolina politician did put the money in. I would bet dollars to donuts that he or she did so for some "quid pro quo" with the Minnesota politician, so the Midwest legislator is still the most culpable suspect. See Rep. Price? Even Inspector Clouseau could noodle this one out.

Hey Tom, I have a novel idea - if a bill has too many earmarks of dubious origin - DO NOT VOTE FOR THE BILL!!! JUST SAY NO TO MORE SPENDING!!! I know that is hard for you, as shown by your vote of approval for that disgusting transportation bill. Try it once - voting no might grow on you.

Another great comment from Rep. Price was that the earmark legislation bill is needed because "sunshine is a wonderful disinfectant." I was driving at this time and, fortunately for the souls around me, I was stuck in yet another Georgia Dept. of Transportation - induced traffic jam. Under other conditions, I might have driven completely off the road and taken others with me.

Without a doubt, the one federal government issue that needs massive disinfectant is the War in Iraq. Between Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons in Eastern Europe, deaths in detention, Abu Gharib, and $8 billion that has simply disappeared from the Iraq reconstruction effort, Congress should be screaming for more oversight of this.

But who is leading the charge to make sure Bush can do whatever it is that he wants to do in Iraq? Yep. Tom Price.

This is taken from a news story in the Marietta Daily Journal written by Aaron Baca:

However, Price said he is wary of recent efforts in Congress to put more pressure on the president concerning Iraq. Congress, he said, spends too much time second-guessing the president.

"We shouldn't micromanage," he said.

Great...Tom Price will abandon his constitutionally-delegated job to oversee the executive branch, but he'll be sure to identify whoever requested money for a highway overpass in Nebraska.

HEY TOM - THE BLANK CHECKS AND FREE PASSES HAVE COME TO AN END.

VOTE LIBERTARIAN IN NOVEMBER 2006!

REP. TOM PRICE
HIS CLAIM THAT HE IS "CONSERVATIVE" IS FULL OF POO

Recent tragic events that have occurred in the Gulf region have given us a great opportunity to refocus our efforts to end wasteful government spending I am committed to identifying and cutting wasteful Washington spending.

“Washington is not accustomed to fiscal discipline. Finding savings and prioritizing programs is necessary if we are going to gain control of our national debt. While all Americans have shown compassion for the victims of recent natural disasters, we must exercise this compassion in a fiscally responsible manner. We must not stick our children and grandchildren with the tab.

-- Rep. Tom Price (Statement issued from office on fiscal discipline)


That's right - I said it. The good representative is full of poo. He claims to stand for fiscal discipline; however, his voting record indicates otherwise:

Price voted YES for the Transportation Equity Act (also known as the Highway Bill). The cost to you and me: $286.4 billion dollars.

Price SUPPORTS legislation to keep the monstrous Medicare Prescription Drug Plan alive. Cost to you and me: who knows? The original estimate was over $400 billion dollars. The NEW estimate is $724 billion dollars.

Price voted YES for each and every spending expenditure going on in Iraq. The cost of this boondoggle: in excess of $70 billion dollars per year.

Price voted YES for the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The cost of this program: $16 billion dollars.

The amounts above total over $1 TRILLION DOLLARS in new spending.

A "conservative" is defined as "marked by moderation or caution." There is nothing moderate with this spending.

People of the 6th District - we can no longer afford Rep. Price. We can no longer afford the two parties who rule the roost.

There is a better way - vote Libertarian in the fall elections.

PETITIONING & AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

We got the "official" number from the Secretary of State of Georgia- Jay Fisher needs 19,377 valid signatures on his petition to get his name on the ballot for November 2006.

I am happy to report that the campaign staff of Fisher for Congress completed their first day of petitioning in the Sixth District. A huge gold star goes to Clay Buckalew for getting 26 valid signatures in under 2 hours. Everyone put forward a great effort.

I want to thank every person who at least heard my petition pitch, and an even bigger "thank you" to those who signed my petition.

However, there were some lines I heard that gave me pause and cause for alarm. Please remember - I told every person I met that I only needed a petition signature to get on the ballot. This was not a promise to vote for me. I heard from one man that he was a registered Republican, and he thought my petition would have more "validity" if it was signed by independents or third party advocates only. I heard from another guy who claimed our society was "Orwellian" enough, and he did not want to sign anything where his name and number were listed (no, I do not think he was a paranoid schizophrenic). There was even a man who asked if Libertarians were the party that advocated "pot for eveyone" and "people would be running naked down the streets."

Then again, I was given hope by the African immigrant I met who was getting his citizenship in April, was then going to register to vote, and so badly wanted to sign my petition. He practically begged me to come back so he could add his name to the paperwork and take part in the process.

C'mon people...sign the petition.

LINKS TO MY FRIENDS

A lot can be learned about a candidate from the organizations with which he affiliates. Here are some of my friends and allies:

National Libertarian Party -
The only true alternative to the two major parties, and the only party that advocates a true conservative position.

Georgia Libertarian Party -
Georgia's Libertarians actually have a large following statewide. Let's keep the momentum going, and become THE party in Georgia.

Cobb County Libertarian Party -
Chairman David Chastain and the rest of the party officers run a great outfit in my home county.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition -
These men and women are some of the bravest people I know. They either formerly or presently work in law enforcement, swear to uphold the law, and take part in a drug war they know is a failure. However, they also know they have a constitutionally-protected voice, they face scorn from their peers, but they still advocate for sensible change of the nation's drug control policies.

Institute for Justice -
A great outfit that advocates for Libertarian causes in court. They are at the forefront of fighting eminent domain abuse.

Electronic Frontier Foundation -
Keep cyberspace and the net free of government interference.

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership -
Support the Second Amendment! This organization dares to ask the question: "What if there were a few well-armed Jews in Europe during World War II?"

Atlanta Judo Academy and
Alliance Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu -
Every person has the responsibility of taking care of him- or herself and their loved ones. These outfits provide great instruction in how to do just that.

Reason Magazine -
Their motto is: "free minds and free markets." Enough said.

Send questions or comments to:
fisherforcongress@gmail.com