Some Clarification

I wanted to clarify some things: my reference to Harry Elmer Barnes in the previous post, and my views on US troops abroad.

Since I wasn’t familiar with Harry Barnes, I looked in Wikipedia, which noted that he was a “Holocaust denier.” I then did some Google searching and found that a lot of sources label Barnes as such. Then, I see that some of Barnes’s writings and statements were taken out of context, and some expressed the frustrations of someone who tried feverishly to expose the war-promoting propaganda of his time, the propaganda of the government and the propaganda of the media. However, he may well have been a “Holocaust denier.” I found this particular page of comments by some familiar names (although we can never be sure if those are really the people in question, because on web comments, sometimes people use other people’s names) that referred to a post on a different subject. With that information combined with other info seen on Google, I have concluded that the situation with Barnes is extremely complex, especially given that the article that my post linked (that David Kramer at LRC linked), Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, was on the website of such a respectable organization as the Mises Institute. Even Murray Rothbard’s obituary for Barnes is quite informative, but doesn’t mention any alleged “Holocaust denying,” although Rothbard does state that, regarding Barnes who remained anti-interventionist and pro-peace in his opposition to the US entry into WWII despite the “flip-flop” of the liberal news media, Barnes was “denounced as a ‘Nazi’.” I trust the judgment of the Mises Institute and Murray Rothbard far more than Wikipedia’s information or various other websites.

Now, on my views of US troops abroad, I opposed the first President Bush’s Iraq war in 1990-91, and all the other foreign fiascos since then. After 9/11, and when US forces were sent to Afghanistan, I didn’t really have an opinion one way or another, because I really didn’t know what to believe. When George W. Bush wanted to go into Iraq in 2002-03, I was extremely against that. I couldn’t believe the number of people who were supportive of that, and who couldn’t see that Bush just wanted to go to Iraq to finish the job that his Dad started.

However, my thinking was influenced by events in ’06-’07. I felt that, if US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan are being attacked by “insurgents,” the US troops had a right to shoot back, or bomb back, and defend themselves. I believe in the right of self-defense. And I held that view regarding Iraq until a few months ago. However, I thought more about that, and now I have a much clearer view of that. If you are being shot at, of course you have a right to shoot back. But not if you are trespassing on someone else’s property. The property owner or resident has a right to defend one’s home, one’s property, one’s “turf.” US soldiers who are on other territories are trespassing. You can say what you want about being “at war” etc, but they really have no right and no justification for their presence on those foreign lands. And you can say what you want about terrorists, jihadists, etc. It doesn’t matter. Whether the pro-war supporters want to admit it or not, or understand this, the terrorism from the Middle-east has been a reaction to the US government’s presence in the territories of the people who live there, and it’s not the other way around. And, by the way, I must say that, regardless of this old “the government is the people,” etc., the US government is NOT the people of the United States! The US government is a group of politicians, bureaucrats, hacks, dirtbags, and gangsters. Throughout world history, the worst atrocities that have been committed, and the lies that have been told to justify them, have been committed by governments.

Happy New Year.