The Rag Blog

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. George Washington

Last week I wrote about the critical need for Congress to reassert its authority over foreign policy, and for the American people to recognize that the Constitution makes no distinction between domestic and foreign matters. Policy is policy, and it must be made by the legislature and not the executive.

But what policy is best? How should we deal with the rest of the world in a way that best advances proper national interests, while not threatening our freedoms at home?

I believe our founding fathers had it right when they argued for peace and commerce between nations, and against entangling political and military alliances. In other words, noninterventionism.

Noninterventionism is not isolationism. Nonintervention simply means America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the internal affairs of other nations. It does not we that we isolate ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.

Thomas Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations- entangling alliances with none.” Washington similarly urged that we must, “Act for ourselves and not for others,” by forming an “American character wholly free of foreign attachments.”

Yet how many times have we all heard these wise words without taking them to heart? How many claim to admire Jefferson and Washington, but conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy? Since so many apparently now believe Washington and Jefferson were wrong on the critical matter of foreign policy, they should at least have the intellectual honesty to admit it.

Of course we frequently hear the offensive cliché that, “times have changed,” and thus we cannot follow quaint admonitions from the 1700s. The obvious question, then, is what other principles from our founding era should we discard for convenience? Should we give up the First amendment because times have changed and free speech causes too much offense in our modern society? Should we give up the Second amendment, and trust that today’s government is benign and not to be feared by its citizens? How about the rest of the Bill of Rights?
It’s hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify interventionist policies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change. If anything, today’s more complex world cries out for the moral clarity provided by a noninterventionist foreign policy.

NEW YORK Sean Penn, the actor and occasional foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, hit the media and called for impeachment of the president in receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award fromThe Creative Coalition Monday night in New York City.

Presented since 1997, the First Amendment Award recognizes “individuals who are dedicated to the sanctity of the first amendment and its free speech provision.” Other Creative Coalition honorees last night included Branford Marsalis, Harvey Keitel, Heather Graham and Marcia Gay Harden.

In his remarks, Penn listed more than a dozen serious issues facing the country, and commented, ”We depend largely for information on these issues from media industries, driven by the bottom line to such an extent that the public interest becomes uninteresting.”

Turning to his views of President Bush, Penn said, “Now, there’s been a lot of talk lately on Capitol Hill about how impeachment should be ‘off the table.’ We’re told that it’s time to look ahead – not back…

“Can you imagine how far that argument would go for the defense at an arraignment on charges of grand larceny, or large-scale distribution of methamphetamines? How about the arranging of a contract killing on a pregnant mother? ‘Indictment should be off the table.’ Or ‘Let’s look forward, not backward.’ Or ‘We can’t afford another failed defendant.’

(NewsTarget) The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week that it has appointed four corporate agribusiness representatives to positions on the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which advises the USDA on laws that govern the $16 billion organic industry, according to the Organic Consumers Association (OCA).

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) mandates that the NOSB be comprised of a diverse group of organic experts. However, the USDA appointed four corporate representatives to fill open spots on the board.

Katrina Heinze from General Mills was appointed to the position of scientist; Tracy Miedema from Stahlbush Island Farms — a largely non-organic operation — was appointed Consumer and Public Interest Group Representative; Tina Ellor of Phillips Mushroom Farms was appointed environmentalist; and Campbell Soup’s Steve DeMuri was appointed handler.

OCA National Director Ronnie Cummings said the USDA’s appointments are a “blatant attempt” by the Bush administration to stack the NOSB with industrial farming supporters.

Via Josh Marshall, we learn that the AP is trying to find out what happens to Guantanamo Bay detainees once they are released. These are, after all, the people who were so very dangerous that we desperately needed to legalize torture, whom the Pentagon referred to as “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth.”

The AP tracked 245 of them in an investigation including 17 countries where they had been released, and found:

* Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.
* Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals — one in Kuwait, one in Spain — initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
* The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan’s reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.
* At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been “sold” for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. “We consider them innocent,” said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
* All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for “continued detention.”

The news from Baghdad is depressing and deteriorated more and more… hope is diminishing in people everyday…
When you meet an Iraqi who is living inside, he is usually sad, broken, has lost hope, and keeps repeating a sentence: Iraq is lost, and will not come back…

To the Editor:

I have a son in Iraq: the 1st Armored Division of the Army, stationed at a remote outpost near the hotbed Ramadi.

Last week his platoon lost two to injuries — one a result of shrapnel to the testicles, the other a leg wound from small arms fire.

They’re down to 15 in the platoon. Nearly every day they’re out on patrol, generally by foot. Every day, they’re vulnerable, their lives held open to the potential of death or injury.

Two weeks ago he called by satellite phone, awakening Amy and me in the dead of the night. Machine gun fire was all around him, the sound of war filling our ears and hearts with grief and fear of loss.

He wanted to tell us that he loves us, that he was on a dangerous patrol and that if anything happened to his life, he would take his love for us to his death and beyond.

He made it through that day and night. As this is written, he is still here with us. His tour was to end the first week in November but he was extended until next February.

He said that the morale of the platoon was at an all-time low.

He said that the war is creating more insurgency, rather than less.

He says that he cannot trust anyone in an Iraqi military uniform.

He said that most of the Iraq people do not want us there.

He says that this war cannot be won!

He has no faith in the politicians who sent him there.

Question, America: Whom would you listen to, the soldier in the field or the padded politician in office in reference to how this war is really going?

Ramadi, Dec 19, (VOI) – U.S. forces early on Tuesday arrested the correspondent of Reuters news agency in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, Iraqi police said.
“A large number of U.S. Hummer vehicles cordoned the house of Ammar al-Dulaimi, a correspondent for Reuters in Ramadi, and Marines raided his house and scattered his papers and equipment,” a police source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

The source said “the Marines arrested the journalist and confiscated his possessions including a camera,” adding the journalist “was taken to the U.S. base of al-Warrar in western Ramadi.”