“[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force….
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit….
[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.”
- then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, 1821 address to Congress.
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About a year ago on May 1st, 2009, I announced I would be running for Congress after returning home from my engineering job abroad in Asia. The simple message was – and still is – that by preserving individual liberties and defending peace, the end result is prosperity. When the campaign started there were no other volunteers, just myself, although there are now over 250 today. While there is no particular gender or age brackets of the volunteers, I’ve noticed that many of the most dedicated volunteers are veterans. In fact, the first volunteer, Aaron Emery, former Staff Sargeant, US Army, helped me setup and run the campaign’s interim website while he was stationed in Iraq, which was on the Facebook network before RagingDebate.com created this website. I still remember our first conversations, which were garbled quite badly.
Many have little idea what our troops have gone through over the past decade of endless war. As CBS reported, over 18 veterans die every day not from enemy fire, but through suicide. For one such story, read about Sargeant Coleman Bean of New Brunswick, NJ. While in Iraq, he saw sights such as several Iraqi civilians and children burned alive in front of his eyes. Returning home, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but was recalled under the Individual Ready Reserve and sent to a second tour in Iraq anyways. Aaron was also recalled under the I.R.R. and added the removal of this requirement when he wrote the campaigns’ veterans plank.
From nearby Emmaus, PA, Sargeant Ashly Moyer was burned to death when a bomb detonated her vehicle’s fuel tank. Watching her die was a fellow soldier, Specialist Jake Wells, who planned to propose to her. Her mother said, “She didn’t quite understand what she was doing there [in Iraq], but she was doing it because it was her job.” Moyer’s assignment was not even in a US-based unit, of the 630th Military Police Company of Bamberg, Germany. To this day, the USA stations 55,000 troops in Germany.
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America should never again go to war so carelessly, and especially never without a formal congressional declaration of war as required by the Constitution. Addressing the threat of suicide terrorism by the use of occupational, conventional armies has only worsened the situation at the extreme cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives. To defeat suicide terrorists one must capture the current generation and prevent the next generation from being created from collateral damage and blowback. Our armies in Iraq and Afghanistan are creating more future terrorists and aggression against our country. I favor the use of constitutional letters of marque and reprisal to address the threat by small bands by granting special warrants and bounties for marked terrorists to be brought to justice. This would be extremely cost-effective – or we can choose to let the “War on Terror” grind on for another 9 years as our economy crashes — what we are doing is simply not working.
It’s past time to sheathe the sword, and past time to boot the meddlesome Congress who hold sole responsibility for creating and failing to halt this economic depression.
That this federation of sovereign States conceived in liberty, America, will not become the dictatress of the world,
Jake Towne
[Other suggested reading: "Afghanistan War Plank," "Iraq War Plank," and "Guns or Health Care?"]
April 28, 2010
