Tea Party Caucus members endorse Israeli attack on Iran
Josh Rogin, ForeignPolicy.com, Jul 26 2010
Now that the congressional supporters of the Tea Party movement have formed their own caucus, their policy positions are becoming easier to track. Expanding their foray into foreign policy, 21 members of the new caucus have now come out explicitly endorsing Israel’s right to strike Iran’s nuclear program. Almost two dozen Tea Party-affiliated lawmakers cosponsored a new resolution late last week that expresses their support for Israel “to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force.” The lead sponsor of the resolution was Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, one of four congressmen to announce the formation of the 44-member Tea Party caucus at a press conference on July 21. The other three Tea Party Caucus leaders, Michele Bachmann, R-MN, Steve King, R-IA, and John Culberson, R-TX, are also sponsors of the resolution. In total, 21 Tea Party Caucus members have signed on, according to the latest list of caucus members put out by Bachmann’s office. The resolution cites threats by Iranian Pres Ahmadinejad to “annihilate” the state of Israel, endorses other means to persuade Iran to stop pursuing nuclear weapons, and states the lawmakers’ support for an Israeli military strike “if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time.” Gohmert said in an emailed statement:
Members of the Tea Party caucus can and do speak for themselves, but most if not all members have strong beliefs that we should not turn on our backs on our best friends and reward those bent on our destruction. This resolution was borne out of concern for the threat, not merely to Israel, but also to the US.
Notably absent from the resolution and indeed, from the Tea Party Caucus is Ron Paul, the Texas congressman and 2008 presidential candidate. Paul, who leads the libertarian wing of the Tea Party movement, was one of only 11 members of the House to vote against the recent Iran sanctions bill, which he called “very, very dangerous and not well thought out”; in 2007 he expressed his concern that “a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.” There’s little chance the resolution, which has 46 co-sponsors in total, will see a vote on the House floor any time soon. But the resolution signals increasing interest by the Tea Party and its congressional supporters in foreign policy. Last week, a Tea Party-affiliated grassroots organization launched a nationwide campaign to build popular opposition to the administration’s nuclear reductions treaty with Russia. The group is led by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginny and it dovetails with similar efforts by former Massachusetts governor Romney. The resolution also continues a theme among Tea Party leaders, such as Sarah Palin, who are seeking to separate the movement’s domestic policies, which call for small government and fiscal restraint, from libertarian views on foreign policy, promoting instead an aggressive, unilateralist view of world affairs and unchecked military spending. Read the whole resolution here.
That is exactly why the Tea Party does not have now, nor ever wants official leaders. The tea party is only about smaller government and teaching people how to be responsible for their own lives. Government is an umpire with the sole task of keeping the playing field level for everyone involved. When the government owns a team they cannot be the officials too. Conflict of interest. We the people will no longer stand for this crazy situation.
Well, I doubt if ‘we the people’ will stay as clear-headed as that. Sarah will blow her little pipe and the mice shall follow.
If somehow an anti-government pro-capitalist program did become nationally adopted, it would have to dispense with all the large high-tech industries that most people consider essential, like the phone system, the internet, and telecommunications generally. Such things do not work properly under private enterprise, for complicated economic reasons I have explained elsewhere, even with Ayn Rand-style fantasy titans running them. Being almost entirely automated, they do not naturally generate any profit, though they will run indefinitely at zero profit and zero loss if they are properly managed. This similarly holds true for industries which, although not particularly ‘high-tech’ or ‘automated’, contain such a vast cumulative investment in fixed equipment that the proportion of labor involved in them is relatively miniscule, like the highways, the railways, and the water, electricity, gas and sewage networks, urban public transport, and even municipal housing. So the only logical thing to do is to nationalise them and pay for them out of taxes. But the steadfast and categorical refusal to admit this, especially in the USA, has led over the decades to a situation where such industries have been artificially been made profitable by state protection, and in return the state has gradually turned the large high-tech industries to its own advantage, by making them part of the permanent war economy. This is what Marx was trying to say a hundred and twenty years ago, very much ahead of his time, since automation as we know it now had hardly gotten started. The reasoning is based on the axiom that profit is only generated by the employment of fresh labor; it is not something that should be expected to gush forth of its own accord from the mere ownership of fixed plant and materials.
Well said on all points. I advocate for complete transparency with any activity that involves the public trust.
Now you surprise me. I have just outlined the basics of marxism. You Tea Party people are supposed to believe that marxism is simply another word for slavery.
I owe you thanks, in fact; as often happens, a seemingly unrelated comment somehow triggers me into making another step forward in my theory. I am by no means quoting Marx; I am working out for myself what I think he was heading towards, as a general theory, when he died. But it had not struck me before that although the time-scale is much slower, the unprofitability of the big, old public utilities is due to the same cause as the unprofitability of the big high-tech industries, namely, the very low proportion of fresh labor employed.
You see, what Marx was saying, in a nutshell, is that capital-intensive industries are not naturally profit-making, because according to him only fresh labor — not the congealed labor in the machines — generates profit. This is because, again according to him, each industry, at least under competitive conditions, pays for its machinery and materials at their full value, after the profit generated by employing labor to produce them has already been extracted by the supplier who provides them. Only the labor the industry itself employs generates profit for it, because this is not paid for at its full value, but receives merely a wage, worth on average perhaps one half of the value of the work it performs. Yet each industry tends naturally towards increasing capital-intensiveness, because in the short run each entrepreneur can increase his profit by automating ahead of his competitors. But when they all catch up, the industry as a whole is employing less labor and hence generating less profit. All this, of course, is completely concealed under the play of apparent profits, produced by all sorts of market manipulation and government favouritism.
By the way, I’m very interested in Qi Gong, too
Suggestion to cure America’s ills. Maximum 2 term limits for all politicians. One term for Presidents.
Also, after serving the 8 years,no-one can lobby or work/advisor for military industry complex
Most politicians Feds. after 1 1/2 terms become multi millionair$. –Any monies made after ending term limits–must not accumulate more than salaries received. NO NO party affillition-all run independant.
That will put a damper on ashkenazism cult members :^(
ALL “dual-citizenship” must END,
there is no justification for it.
Either you are AMERICAN, or you are GONE.
I don’t think that would be practicable. It’s much too sweeping, and not really merited. You have perfectly amicable relations with a number of nationalities. You need to specify those that you do not. And you need to reach consensus on it: who are our friends, and who are our enemies, at the level of states. Demanding the impossibly general is just a way of evading the specific.
A few years ago we just called “The tea party” the GOP.
Um, having GOP crook Dick Armey and NoeCon blatherer (and crypto-Muslim) Grover Norquist as keynote speakers at their March on Washington might have been a very large screaming clue that the Teabaggers had been highjacked by the GOP last spring.
I love seeing ex-military and retirees screaming on TV talking about how we need to get rid of the government, then who would send those people their pensions and pay for their health care?
What on earth do you mean, “crypto-Muslim, Grover Norquist”? Anyway, if the US imperial elite, following its own megalomaniacal war lust, wasn’t systematically smashing up the Muslim world, you wouldn’t have any problems with Muslims.
Shows you the impossibility of cracking the “two” party system.
re: “Crypto-Muslim” Norquist, from the wiki page:
He has long been active in building bridges between various ethnic and religious minorities and the free-market community through his involvement with organizations such as the Islamic Free Market Institute, Acton Institute, Christian Coalition and Toward Tradition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Free_Market_Institute
Rather odd and obviously anti-Islamic for a number of reasons. Given that the rest of his involvement in cultural institutions are explicitly “judeo-christian,” I’d like to hear more about this “Crypto-Muslim” theory.
Nothing surprising here. Most of the Tea Party’s concern seems to be against paying any tax unless it’s for killing people. Then they’re all for it, especially if someone else is being taxed for it.
Are you kidding? The tea party is nothing more than a Republican disinformation movement. There isn’t a single political group, including Ron Paul who has the long term interests of Americans in mind. Whne will the people actually come to the realization that NOTHING is going to change until “we the people” rise up and change it to our liking.
He has long been active in building bridges..
Could be worse..could read “has long been active in body building…”
… The resolution cites threats by Iranian Pres Ahmadinejad to “annihilate” the state of Israel …
I think Ahmadinejad’s obsevation was more along the line that Israel would likely just fall over by itself because of it’s own internal contradictions and a lack of the ability or will to define itself coherently.
He is willing to defend himself against Israel but I don’t think he intends to lift a finger towards it’s demise. He, like many others will just stand on the hill and watch in amazement at what high levels of dysfunctionality can achieve.
Ahmadinejad is not important, He is just an actor. Iran’s foreign policy is determined by the permanent government of Ayatollah Khamenei. But you can’t expect US politicians to be any different; all politicians live in an infantile fantasy world of TV sound bites and so do their publics.