Lux Lucet

Before and after in Aleppo.

The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us.

– Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States , 1850 State of the Union Address

Back during the 2012 Presidential campaign, I wrote a post critical of an article by Uri Friedman, who showed his utter disdain for candidate Ron Paul by accusing him of invoking the Millard Fillmore doctrine, which as the quote above indicates, is the application of the Golden Rule to foreign policy. Fillmore, notes Friedman, was “undistinguished” and “uninspiring” and self-evidently not worthy of emulation in any respect. Friedman goes on to write that Paul was both booed an laughed at when he presented his version of the “Golden Rule” approach to foreign policy on the campaign trail.

It is absurd to think that the Golden Rule has anything whatsoever to do with foreign policy, so opines Friedman. And not only is it wrong to suggest that it does, but it’s actually laughable. This we know because Millard Fillmore believed the Golden Rule was the standard for a proper policy and it’s just obvious that Millard Fillmore was a dunce, a boob and a fool. What is more, so are all those, such as Ron Paul, who follow him. That’s the sum of Friedman’s argument, who, as one writing in Foreign Policy, the house organ of the Council on Foreign Relations, could be said to be echoing the views of the American foreign policy establishment.

Perhaps if the accomplishments of America’s foreign policy establishment – dating back to the Spanish American War at the end of the 19th century, America’s leaders have rejected the nation’s original foreign policy of staying out of foreign wars in favor of a policy of interventionism – were more impressive, it would make sense to give ear to Friedman’s snarky dismissal of Fillmore and Paul. But after more than a century of foreign wars that seem only to set the stage for the next conflict, perhaps it’s worth asking just how much the sages at the Council on Foreign Relations actually know about foreign policy. It seems the this author that the answer is, not very much at all.

The War in Syria – It’s Origins

Involvement in the Syrian Civil War is one of the more recent iterations of America’s interventionist foreign policy and, at the present time, perhaps the most dangerous.

According to this timeline in Politico, the Syrian Civil War began with protests against the government of Bashar Assad in early 2011. The US became involved in August 2011 when then-president Barak Obama called for Assad to step down and initiated sanctions.

Now there are a couple of things worth noticing here. In the first place it is remarkable that the head of state of one nation sees fit to tell the head of state of another nation to step down. Whence comes this God-like right to dictate to other nations who their leaders ought to be? The principle of Westphalian Sovereignty holds that the internal affairs of a nation are its own business, including who runs the country.

Applying the Golden Rule here, what would Americans during the Civil War have thought if some foreign head of state told Abraham Lincoln to step down? Absurd, you say? Yes, indeed it would have been absurd, and Americans rightfully would have been offended. But such a declaration by a foreign power would have been no less offensive than Barak Obama telling Bashar Assad to step aside.

While Secretary of State, globalist Hillary Clinton was no less adamant that Assad should step aside, declaring in no uncertain terms, “Assad must go.”

Second, sanctions are a considered by many to be an act of war. Why is this? People die as a result of them. As The Intercept notes in an article from 2016, US and EU economic sanctions prevent necessary repairs to water systems causing people, ordinary Syrians, to die from dirty water, preventable diseases and a reduced quality of life.

In what has become a rather famous interview, 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl once asked Madeleine Albright, who would go on to become Secretary of State, about the horrific results of US sanctions on Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War. When Stahl asked, “We have heard that half a million children have died [as a result of US sanctions]. I means, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?,” Albright responded, “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, is worth it.”

Note well, Albright did not dispute that half a million Iraqi children had died from US sanctions, she seemed to accept that figure as accurate. As an American, I have to ask myself what I would think if a foreign power did something like this to my own country. What would you, dear reader, think of such a nation?

Maybe the Golden Rule isn’t such a laughing matter after all.

US Involvement in Syria – America Allies Itself with Jihadists

Even before 9/11, Americans were wary of radical Islamic terrorism, and their concern was not without good reason. In 1993, a group of terrorists tried unsuccessfully to blow up the World Trade Center in New York. In the wake of 9/11 we were told that a Global War on Terror was of the utmost necessity to stamp out terrorism, a war which after 16 years is still ongoing with no end in sight.

So it may come as a surprise to many that after nearly two decades anti-terrorist rhetoric – “we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” – used to justify ongoing US military involvement throughout the Muslim world, the US has allied itself with Wahhabist (Suni Muslim) terrorists groups in its fight to oust Bashar Assad as President of Syria.

It’s actually worse than that. There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that, not only has the US allied itself with ISIS to fight against the legitimate government of Syria, but that the US government actually helped to create ISIS in the first place.

I realize that this is a fairly explosive charge but there have been a lot of articles from reliable sources over the years that have indicate the US government has played at least a passive, and perhaps an active, role in fostering ISIS. One of the most explosive examples of this was an interview given by General Michael Flynn – yes, that Michael Flynn, the one who was named as President Trumps National Security Advisor and was removed from office on the charge of making a false statement to the FBI within a very short time after Trump’s inauguration – who stated that the Obama administration willfully ignored his agency’s (The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)) warnings about the possible establishment of a radical Salafist (Wahhabist) principality in Syria, the group we now call ISIS.

This author has long been of the opinion that the controversy leading to Flynn’s being charged by the FBI was bogus and represents the Deep State’s successful attempt to rid the Trump Administration of anyone who would oppose its interventionist agenda in Syria and elsewhere.

In addition to there being a good deal of testimony tying the US to ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria, there is a logical case that can be made for this as well.

ISIS is fighting against the government of Bashar Assad to over throw it, and so is the US. It stands to reason that the two sides would work together.

If US foreign policy were based on the Golden Rule of treating others as we’d like to be treated, it’s doubtful the US would find itself working alongside jihadis to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria. Maybe the Golden Rule isn’t so much nonsense after all.

The US Shoots First, Asks Questions Later

On Friday, April 13, 2018 US, British and French forces attacked Syria as punishment for Assad’s supposed gas attack on his own people which reportedly led to the deaths of more than 40 people. The only problem is, no independent proof 1) that there was a gas attack, and 2) that Assad is responsible has been provided.

Given the history of revisionism by the US government surrounding earlier alleged gas attacks by Assad, there is good reason to doubt the facts of the case of the latest one as they are currently being reported.

For example, in February Defense Secretary James Mattis admitted that the US has no evidence that the Syrian government has used Sarin gas on its citizens. Yet it was the supposed used of Sarin gas that prompted the US to launch a Cruise Missile attack on Syrian in April 2017.

As Ian Wilkie noted in his Newsweek column, Mattis did not qualify his claim, meaning that both the 2013 Ghouta incident and the 2017 event in Khan Sheikoun, both cases where Assaad supposedly gassed his own people with Sarin, “are unsolved cases.”

On a similar note, recall the claims by the US government leading up to the 2003 Gulf War that Saddam Hussein was hoarding weapons of mass destruction that he was poised to unleash on America at any moment. Only a preventive invasion of Iraq could stop the madman.

You may recall also that after the overthrow of Hussein the US government failed to find so much as a rusty cylinder of nerve gas, let alone a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. The entire scare was a fraud.

Due process is a principle of criminal justice found in the Bible. For example, in the Law of Moses we find that judges in a criminal case are told to make a “careful inquiry” regarding the statements of witnesses (Deut. 19:18).

If you or I were accused of a crime, we certainly would want to have our day in court to clear our name. And if we were tried and convicted on a rumor we would feel a sense of outrage at the injustice.

If we believe in due process for a single person, is it too much to expect the federal government to apply this same principle in matters of foreign policy? To do so is simply to treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated. That is to say, it’s the application of the Golden Rule to foreign policy.

In Conclusion

In his must read article on foreign policy titled Truth and Foreign Policy, John Robbins wrote, “One of the major sources of disorder in American foreign policy is the failure even to discuss, let alone answer, this fundamental question [How do you know?] in any satisfactory way.”

Robbins walks the reader through the most common approaches American foreign policy experts use when attempting to assess an issue. He mentions experience, common sense, philosophy, success, intuition, and nature as sources of guidance for American foreign policy experts and concludes, “All the secular answers that have been given to the question, ‘How do you know?’…are not answers at all. They simply disguise our ignorance.”

“But,” as Robbins goes on to note, “there is an answer to the question that can stand up under close examination: the Bible,” which among other things, “teaches us how to live peaceful and civilized lives on Earth.”

“In matters of foreign policy, the guidance of Scripture is indispensible,” concluded Robbins. And indeed it is.

Even Uri Friedman, the fellow who back in 2012 wrote so dismissively about Millard Fillmore and Ron Paul, recently admitted in a tweet that “Moral philosophers are at a loss” concerning what the US should do in Syria.

I humbly suggest they, and he, take seriously the words of Christ, “Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Were they to do that, it would be clear what the US should do in Syria, namely, stop interfering in the internal affairs of an independent nation, drop the sanctions, and remove all US military forces from the country as soon as possible. That, at least, would be a good start.