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Monthly Archives

October 2014

From the Desk of Bob Barr

Let Erik Prince And Blackwater Take On ISIS – To Kill Them, Not “Degrade” Them

by Liberty Guard Author October 29, 2014
written by Liberty Guard Author

Like many liberal criticisms of market-based solutions to public policy problems, the idea of privatized armies is likely to conjure images of rogue mercenaries advertising in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine. However, many of today’s paid civilian soldiers are highly skilled and professional former Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Marines. They often are employed by private contractors because of their effectiveness as support staff, training instructors, security personnel, and occasionally as combat-ready operators. They are trained and ready to kill the enemy, not “degrade” him.

Such contractors have been instrumental in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; filling key positions with the State Department, the CIA, private companies, and others that the U.S. military either cannot, or will not, supplement. Most recently, insofar as responding to the rise of ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere in the region presents policy, budgetary and other conflicts for the Obama Administration, there is a new focus on using paid military contractors (PMCs) to “finish the job.”

Such a move makes sense; just as it has in other times and conflicts, dating back centuries.

The fact is, the history of warfare is replete with examples of highly successful paid armies. From the “Ten Thousand” army in Ancient Greece, to the iconic shark-faced planes of the “Flying Tigers” early in the Second World War, nations have come to rely on irregular, private armies to supplement or replace official military units. Even the elite Swiss Guard units in Vatican City charged with protecting the Pope began their storied history as 15th Century mercenaries.

Since the dawn of war, governments have used paid, private armies to protect kingdoms, carry out dangerous missions, and vanquish enemies. This reality is reflected even in the Constitution of the United States, which provides that Congress has the power to issue “Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” These devices are official governments licenses granted to private sailors to hunt down and attack enemy ships (Sen. Rand Paul’s father, former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, asserted that this power should be used today to fight piracy off the east coast of Africa).

The use of private militaries and Letters of Marque make sense on today’s battlefields, where victory is not necessarily determined by the biggest army, the most sophisticated air support, or the heaviest artillery. The modern enemy often does not wear a uniform, nor does he always fight for a single country or even a country at all. Even with the most fearsome fighting force on the planet, accomplishing military objectives in such an environment is a daunting task, long before U.S. politicians become involved.

Regrettably, our military today is led by a Commander in Chief so paralyzed by political pressure, indecision and timidity that the response to terror attacks on American citizens, such as those by ISIS, have become a waiting game for international cooperation to build in hopes of “degrading” and “managing” the attacks. The situation presented by an indecisive commander-in-chief is made worse by the infusion of hyper-partisan politics into today’s political debates in Washington. This makes success harder to define and more elusive at any rate, even as it squanders billions of taxpayer dollars on military strategies dictated by political consultants rather than field-grade officers.

It is the resulting uncertainty, in which ISIS festers and grows, that has led former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince to conclude that, “If the Administration cannot rally the political nerve or funding to send adequate active duty ground forces to answer the call, let the private sector finish the job.”

Using all-volunteer PMCs could avoid much of Washington’s political wrangling, and allow highly skilled, highly effective operators to conduct missions to destroy — not simply “degrade” — threats to America and our interests around the globe. This could be accomplished largely without leaving a job unfinished as troops are pulled from combat to meet political promises, or not given the resources they need because of budgetary constraints.

The use of American PMCs is also far better for national security than the current strategy of sending arms and money to unreliable, un-vetted and untrained “rebel” groups, whose only claim to our money and arms often is nothing more than the fact that some Washington policy makers have deemed them to be “on our side.” Those same policy wonks then watch with shock and amazement as their “allies” quickly surrender, leaving US-supplied weapons and munitions to be expropriated and turned against us by enemy forces. If we are going to spend taxpayer dollars using outside forces to fight terrorism, we might as well use PMCs who we at least can be sure are fighting for the right side.

It is true that the use of PMCs in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been without valid criticism; there were plenty of mistakes made with bidding, oversight, and accountability for misconduct during the massive and often too-quick build-up of U.S. interests in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. However, the conviction of four former Blackwater guards last week in the deaths of 17 civilians in Iraq, shows us that military contractors can, and should, be punished for failing to follow the same laws as members of the Armed Forces with whom they are working. Furthermore, as contractors, PMCs would be accountable for conduct, costs, and mission effectiveness in order to retain contracts for work. As more and more PMC groups are employed to handle military operations, the competition increases the incentive to do the best job for the lowest cost.

Rather than wait for a vacillating Administration to build sufficient courage to “manage” a crisis and to “degrade” those who do us harm, we should send in trained and motivated, paid military contractors to do the job. I suspect they would rather kill than “degrade” our enemies; which is what most Americans would prefer they do.

October 29, 2014 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Ebola Hysteria Opens Door For Government Abuse

by Liberty Guard Author October 23, 2014
written by Liberty Guard Author

If the 1931 classic film were filmed in the United States today, the villagers storming the gates of the castle would not be carrying torches and pitchforks, but instead wearing HAZMAT suits, spraying cans of Lysol in the air, and demanding that the mayor do “whatever is necessary” to protect them against the possibility the creature might harm one of them. Of course, these marching villagers would be the few who actually dared venture outside their cottages with barred doors and shuttered windows.By: Bob Barr

If the 1931 classic film Frankenstein were filmed in the United States today, the villagers storming the gates of the castle would not be carrying torches and pitchforks, but instead wearing HAZMAT suits, spraying cans of Lysol in the air, and demanding that the mayor do “whatever is necessary” to protect them against the possibility the creature might harm one of them. Of course, these marching villagers would be the few who actually dared venture outside their cottages with barred doors and shuttered windows.

So here we are, not in 19th Century Transylvania, but 21st Century America. As of writing this, there have been no new Ebola cases in the United States for several days (and the total number of cases before this can be counted on a single human hand), and most of the 48 people in forced quarantine in Dallas are once again free to go about their daily lives. Glancing at the media coverage of America’s so-called “Ebola Crisis,” it appears we may have progressed from “spiraling out of control” [WIFR, 9/16/14] to being now “cautiously optimistic” [Yahoo News, 10/20/14]. Still, it was only a few days ago that a Maine school district placed a teacher on leave for merely having visited the city of Dallas.

Lost in all of the uproar was the fact that only two people, in the whole of the United States, actually contracted the virus domestically, and both were contaminated while treating an already sick patient.

A lack of education on how the virus actually spreads, the mainstream media’s sensationalism of the outbreak to generate ratings, and mistakes of supposedly “expert” health officials, are just a few of the many factors contributing to the public’s Ebola panic. Additionally, the vacillating nature of the federal government’s response to Ebola — whipsawing between the CDC’s delayed response to the first Dallas case, to the sudden formation of an Ebola “rapid-response team” by the Pentagon — further confused an already chaotic situation.

However, it is the post-9/11 mentality, in which we are in a constant state of fear of “immediate harm,” which truly has transformed the American psyche from a people once not only unafraid of taking a risk, but who gladly assumed risk as a necessary component of forging a nation and an economy that became the envy of the world, to one more akin that of an abused puppy jumping at the sudden appearance of his own shadow.

It is this pervasive and perverse fear that makes our default response mechanism a call for government officials to do “whatever it takes” to protect us, even if that means surrendering basic liberties to get the job done; something government officials from the president down to the local police chief are all too happy to do (especially if they are awarded the expanded budgetary resources to do so).

The threat of Ebola in the United States prompted calls for the U.S. government to implement bans on citizen travel, and has resulted in the appointment of yet another Obama Czar — all because of a virus that spread to just 0.000002 percent of the U.S. population, including those who contracted it in a foreign country. Considering that the response by government to a crisis — real or concocted — is rarely rapid but always outlasts the incident giving rise to it, there certainly is more to come in the weeks and months ahead, regardless of whether there is even one more case of the dread disease.

The door to government infringement of our liberty once opened, is rarely shut.

This is exactly why the fear instilled by whatever threat plagues society at the moment is often far more dangerous than the threat itself: fear of gun violence leads to increased gun control; fear of terrorism leads to abuses at the airports from the TSA, illegal government spying of phone calls and emails, and violations of due process rights; fear of “global warming” leads to expensive environmental regulations that inhibit economic growth. Yet, even with all of these examples as evidence of why not to rush to government in a panic, we rush for more.

We now have the president and his Secretary of Defense ordering our troops and taxpayer dollars into foreign lands to stop a disease ravaging three small countries in west Africa — countries afflicted because of conditions in those nations that do not exist even remotely in our country. We have our military becoming heavily involved domestically in league with state and local governments in apparent violation of the posse comitatus law; with hardly a question raised about such actions, because most citizens accept as fact when told such activities are “necessary to make us safe.”

These actions remind far too few of our countrymen that, as warned by John Adams in the seminal year 1776, “fear is the foundation of most governments.” The corollary is that fear is the catalyst for increased government power.

October 23, 2014 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

UN Gun Grab Enters New And Dangerous Phase

by Liberty Guard Author October 15, 2014
written by Liberty Guard Author

Those wild and crazy bureaucrats on the banks of the East River are at it again. The United Nations – a bureaucracy so bloated and byzantine that it makes the United States Senate appear efficient by comparison – is poised to begin tossing legal monkey wrenches into international firearms transactions; and indirectly affecting firearms policies in the United States.

This new phase in international gun control began September 25th when the 50th country ratified the infamous Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) that was adopted formally by the United Nations a year and a half ago (and signed by our own Secretary of State Kerry in September 2013). The process itself began more than a decade ago – in the summer of 2001 – when the UN began formally debating a “Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects.”

Since the UN officially launched that piously-named, multi-year and costly “programme” shortly before the world was turned upside on September 11, 2001, the international anti-gun cartel led by the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico and other “allies” of the United States, have waited patiently for this day. With the ratification by the governments of at least 50 supporting nations, the deeply anti-Second Amendment ATT now will be subject to implementing conferences and actions with very real consequences.

Those of us in this country who understand and support the concept of “the right to keep and bear arms,” might defer any concern because the Senate has not and likely will not “advise and consent” to the ratification of this thoroughly rotten document. Problem is, the mere fact that John Kerry lent his John Hancock to the ATT makes the United States a “signatory” to it, and is cause for real concern.

The problem is two-fold.

First, virtually all of the ATT-ratifying countries (a number that already has grown to 53, and which will continue to increase as more countries succumb to the siren song of “security through gun control”) engage in trade with the United States; many receive military assistance from us and purchase armaments. Others are countries in which American hunters travel for their sport. Still, other countries in this group might at some point serve as a base in which individuals or groups hostile to the United States hide, and against which we might legitimately seek to take action. Our options in all these circumstances might be severely limited if the ratifying countries comply fully with the myriad terms of the ATT.

American firearms and ammunition manufacturers could in many instances be barred from exporting to, or importing from such countries. American hunters might no longer be able to bring firearms into those countries. And, future administrations might find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to provide defensive armaments to freedom fighters with such countries.

Secondly, because John Kerry signed the treaty on behalf of the United States, according to its terms we are obligated not to “act contrary to” its terms and its referenced and underlying documents. These foundational materials include some of the most blatantly anti-Second Amendment screeds available. Those provisions include numerous detailed gun control measures, including a mandate that all civilian-owned firearms be registered with the national government, severe restrictions on who could possess firearms and what types, and many other deeply anti-freedom restrictions.

The danger is obvious. An anti-Second Amendment administration, such as the current one led by President Barack Obama, could cite such interpretation of the ATT as a pretext for quietly ordering various gun control measures to be undertaken by agencies under its control (such as the State Department and ATF). We all are painfully familiar with the Obama Administration’s penchant for taking substantive actions without benefit of, or in actual contravention to, lawful authority. In its tortured view of executive power, citing an international treaty such as the Arms trade Treaty as justification for limiting Second Amendment rights would be easy.

Notwithstanding the fact that a majority of Senators already are on record committing that they would never vote to ratify the ATT, they and their colleagues in the House of Representatives must take proactive steps to ensure that this Administration – and any future administration – be stopped from implementing any provisions of or supported by the ATT. Our congressional committees must be far more vigilant than they have in the past to monitor ATF, the State Department, and all other federal agencies to ensure they do not take any steps through regulations or other means to implement or enforce any provisions lurking in the ATT. Failure to do so runs the very real risk of surrendering many aspects of our precious Second Amendment-guaranteed rights to a cadre of faceless bureaucrats at the United Nations and in far-flung capital cities around the globe.

October 15, 2014 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Voter ID Vs. Concealed Carry – Liberal Hypocrisy Unmasked

by Liberty Guard Author October 8, 2014
written by Liberty Guard Author

“Let me be clear,” Attorney General Eric Holder emphatically declared in a 2012 speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “we will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious rights.” Holder’s remarks were a call to arms against efforts by Republicans to require that voters show identification when they go to vote. His words reflect a belief that the right to vote is so “precious” that requiring individuals to show an ID before casting a vote is tantamount to being “disenfranchised.”

However, when it comes to protecting the right to “keep and bear arms” – which, unlike the right to vote, is a right expressly guaranteed in the Constitution itself – the Attorney General of the United States is nowhere to be found. Apparently our Second Amendment rights are just not “precious” enough to worry about when governments engage in actions expressly designed to “disenfranchise” individuals from exercising those rights.

The hypocrisy is so blatant it is painful.

Currently 32 states have implemented some variation of voter ID laws to curb election fraud. Nevertheless, these reasonable requirements — well within states’ Tenth Amendment rights to implement — have been the targets of repeated Justice Department threats and legal challenges. The Department argues that simply requiring a valid ID in order to vote — the same that is required for purchasing alcohol, or attending Obama fundraisers — places an unfair, racially-biased burden that threatens the constitutional rights of minorities.

If alleged racial discrimination is the catalyst for such intimidation by the Justice Department, the Department’s silence is deafening in the face of very real efforts by state and local governments to deny and limit the right to keep and bear arms. As noted in a recent report by theWashington Times, some states — notably Illinois, for example — are effectively denying citizens their right to carry concealed firearms by placing a number of costly and time-consuming obstacles in their way; and doing it in such manner as clearly to disproportionately impact minorities and lower-income individuals.

The double standard reflected in the Justice Department’s selective assertion of concern for minority rights is deeply disturbing. Even a ruling in one case earlier this year by U.S. District Court Judge Edmond Chang concluding that “certain fundamental rights,” such as those protected by the Second Amendment, should be “outside government’s reach” and not entrusted to government stewards to protect, has not awakened Holder from his selective slumber.

The findings by the Washington Times illustrate the point convincingly. The newspaper’s research found that burdens such as expensive training and permitting procedures, coupled with lengthy bureaucratic delays in issuing concealed carry permits, hit minority and lower income citizens especially hard. In Illinois, a favored playground for gun control public officials, wealthy white residents hold 90 percent of concealed carry permits.

“There are a lot of systematic and economic barriers that make it difficult for South Side of Chicago residents, many of whom are African-American, to obtain concealed carry permits,” NAACP Illinois State Conference President George Mitchell told the Washington Times. “Some of the barriers include the high costs, time commitment, bureaucracy and the community’s distrust of the police.” The effect of these racially biased restrictions are compounded by gun control regulations that enable local law enforcement officials to deny gun permits for any reason, including many completely unrelated to an individual’s competency to own, possess or use a firearm.

Imagine if voter ID laws were as rigorous as gun regulations found in many of America’s major cities. In order to vote in such a scenario, citizens would be forced to take a day-long class (at a cost of $100 or more) about the basics of the U.S. government and electoral process. They then would be required to take a competency test (only available at inconvenient locations during normal working hours) on the current election’s issues. Finally, after paying a non-refundable processing fee of $100 to score the results, they would then be forced to wait months for the actual voter registration card — which could be rejected for any reason — to arrive in the mail. If a voter decided to seek the help of a tutor to help ensure his non-refundable processing fee was not wasted by a possibly failing grade, he would have to be prepared to shell out another $100.

The obvious solution is to immediately reform the concealed carry licensing procedures, including the power by government officials to deny permits arbitrarily. Should the stringent and financially taxing gun regulations remain in place, as no doubt liberals will argue in spite of the overwhelming evidence about the racial disparity they create, then immediate action should be taken to reduce the costs of obtaining a concealed carry license, which routinely amounts to hundreds of dollars after the costs of safety classes and processing fees that are intentionally inflated to deter applications.

Were this any other issue, the level of bias against the poor and minorities in concealed-carry permitting would have Leftist bloggers, government lawyers, and liberal politicians marching in the streets, and calling for the heads of “racist” Republicans and NRA Members. The fact that this President and his Attorney General remain deaf, dumb and indifferent to the blatantly discriminatory anti-Second Amendment actions by liberal state and local governments, even as they rail against voter ID laws, is testimony to the constitutional hypocrisy that is at the very core of this presidency.

October 8, 2014 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Government’s Demand For Data Truly Is Insatiable

by Liberty Guard Author October 1, 2014
written by Liberty Guard Author

The launch of the new iPhone 6 late last month set a record for Apple, selling 10-million units in the first three days. In spite of the record-setting sales, it was not long before consumer enthusiasm for the new technology dulled with reports of alleged problems, including a potential for bending if sat on for long periods; a phenomenon quickly dubbed “Bendgate.” The release of the iPhone 6 presented another, more serious problem for a much different demographic: government snoops.

Rather than continuing to be the rope in a tug-of-war between consumer privacy and warrantless government requests for consumer data, Apple smartly took itself out of the game altogether. The techno-giant did this through its new iOS 8 operating system which Apple claims makes it not “technically feasible for [Apple] to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices.” Not surprisingly, Apple’s movedid not sit well with government officials who not only see surreptitious surveillance as their duty, but a right no citizen should have the power to impede.

The surge in technological innovation over the last few years has raised the stakes in this fight, highlighted by the recent Supreme Court rulingRiley v. California in which the Justices clearly noted the differences in searching paper files versus digital data. However, the federal government’s efforts to undermine the development and use of devices or programs (such as encryption keys) that protect citizens’ communications against government snooping, goes back more than two decades.

In 1994, for example, Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which forces telecommunication carriers and manufacturers to modify their digital communications platforms and hardware in order to facilitate the government’s ability to surreptitiously monitor communications made over those networks. The original version of CALEA, which pertained primarily to telephone communications, was expanded in 2004 to include internet traffic and VoIP services. Even this did not slake the government’s thirst for access to information.

In 2012, the FBI began pushing for even greater access to even more digital technology — messaging services and email — complaining that it was “going dark” because rapidly-advancing technology was making it too difficult for its agents to conduct electronic surveillance. Like CALEA, technology companies would be forced to build “back doors” into programing code to facilitate electronic eavesdropping; failure to comply with the rules would result in $25,000 per-day fines. The Obama administration strongly backed these new rules, but plans to present legislation to Congress were delayed after blowback from the Snowden-NSA revelations; still, the “going dark” mantra is repeated regularly by FBI officials.

Concerns with the current and proposed rules regarding access to digital data go beyond personal privacy. Infrastructure modification requirements — either to existing networks or to those being built — come with a residual price tag and compliance costs that consumers ultimately will bear. Moreover, as the Electronic Freedom Foundation notes, these rules give the FBI and other federal agencies “veto power over proposed innovations to the Internet in order to make spying easier.”

Not content to limit their efforts to legislation, the Feds also continue behind-the-scenes efforts to undermine methods of encryption as well as the ability of private citizens or companies to be able to encrypt their communications against the government.

Last September, ProPublica and the New York Times released a damning report about the NSA’s multi-billion dollar, decades-long war on private encryption. According to the article, based on more of Edward Snowden’s leaked documents, the NSA “deployed custom-built, superfast computers to break codes, and began collaborating with technology companies in the United States and abroad to build entry points into their products,” thereby making private encryption effectively useless at keeping the prying eyes of government out of digital communications. In fact, this has long been a goal of federal law enforcement agencies going back to at least 1994, when Uncle Sam proposed mandating use of the “Clipper Chip” to override private encryption. This illustrates clearly that no matter how much information government gains, it always seeks more.

The implications of the debate are far-reaching, especially as technology continues to advance, and the value of digital information transmitted across the communication spectrum increases. The leak of private photos of celebrities is but the latest example of how data security is intimately tied to personal privacy rights. Allowing government unfettered access to any data stored or transmitted digitally, which is its ultimate goal, permanently surrenders control of this information to anyone with this “back door” access – good guys, bad guys or simple voyeurs.

This is precisely what Ayn Rand foresaw and understood when she said more than half a century ago, “When you take away a man’s privacy, you gain the power to control him absolutely.” She saw the future and it is here.

October 1, 2014 0 comment
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