“DO WE NEED TO BRING BACK INTERNMENT CAMPS?”
|| by RON PAUL || Last week, Retired General Wesley Clark, who was NATO commander during the US bombing of Serbia, proposed that “disloyal Americans” be sent to internment camps for the “duration of the conflict.” Discussing the recent military base shootings in Chattanooga, TN, in which five US service members were killed, Clark recalled the internment of American citizens during World War II who were suspected of having Nazi sympathies. He said: “back then we didn’t say ‘that was freedom of speech,’ we put him in a camp.”
He called for the government to identify people most likely to be radicalized so we can “cut this off at the beginning.” That sounds like “pre-crime!”
Gen. Clark ran for president in 2004 and it’s probably a good thing he didn’t win considering what seems to be his disregard for the Constitution. Unfortunately in the current presidential race Donald Trump even one-upped Clark, stating recently that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a traitor and should be treated like one, implying that the government should kill him.
These statements and others like them most likely reflect the frustration felt in Washington over a 15 year war on terror where there has been no victory and where we actually seem worse off than when we started. The real problem is they will argue and bicker over changing tactics but their interventionist strategy remains the same.
Retired Army Gen. Mike Flynn, who was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, told al-Jazeera this week that US drones create more terrorists than they kill. He said: “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just … fuels the conflict.”
Still Washington pursues the same strategy while expecting different results.
It is probably almost inevitable that the warhawks will turn their anger inward, toward Americans who are sick of the endless and costly wars. The US loss of the Vietnam war is still blamed by many on the protesters at home rather than on the foolishness of the war based on a lie in the first place.
Let’s hope these threats from Clark and Trump are not a trial balloon leading to a clampdown on our liberties. There are a few reasons we should be concerned. Last week the US House passed a bill that would allow the Secretary of State to unilaterally cancel an American citizen’s passport if he determines that person has “aided” or “abetted” a terrorist organization. And as of this writing, the Senate is debating a highway funding bill that would allow the Secretary of State to cancel the passport of any American who owes too much money to the IRS.
Canceling a passport means removing the right to travel, which is a kind of virtual interment camp. The person would find his movements restricted, either being prevented from leaving or entering the United States. Neither of these measures involves any due process or possibility of appeal, and the government’s evidence supporting the action can be kept secret.
We should demand an end to these foolish wars that even the experts admit are making matters worse. Of course we need a strong defense, but we should not provoke the hatred of others through drones, bombs, or pushing regime change overseas. And we must protect our civil liberties here at home from government elites who increasingly view us as the enemy.
Ron Paul is a former U.S. Congressman from Texas and the leader of the pro-liberty, pro-free market movement in the United States. His weekly column – reprinted with permission – can be found here.
37 comments
“but we should not provoke the hatred of others through drones, bombs, or pushing regime change overseas.”
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If we really wish not to provoke hatred, we should convert to Islam and enslave all our women. A few would resist and heads will roll, but we don’t want them to hate us.
That’s what Obummer has been trying to do for 6 years. He is having better results than he ever should.
I don’t think he really cares so much about the Islam part as much he just wants to get Michelle under control.
I’ll bet it looks like a couple of giraffes fighting over a Chiclet.
Jesus couldn’t have said it better.
I’d rather not provoke hatred by simply not drone striking/bombing them & meddling in their politics…but if you’re really determined to see your 72 virgins who am I to stop you?
Good thing you didn’t falsely equivocate, even though you were close you did stop short.
I have long thought that somewhere in “Homeland security” the coordinates for my house were sticky noted onto the side of some missile or bomb. After all I am a veteran and would consider myself a “radicalized” Christian. In any other administration people like me would be appreciated but under Obummer we are the enemy. He has already said as much. And Wesley Clark is as bad as any other terrorist.
Couple of edits for you there Will:
“Last week, Retired General and solid Democrat Wesley Clark, who was NATO commander during the US bombing of Serbia, proposed that “disloyal Americans” be sent to internment camps for the “duration of the conflict.””
Gen. Clark ran for president as a Democrat in 2004…”
Did anybody ever figure out who’s side we were on in that “war”? Why were we on the side of the Muslims against the Christians ? I have never understood what went on there. But it sounds par for the course for Clark to be on the wrong side.
You are right. They were very Christian. In fact many of them still have pictures of that super Christian Adolf Hitler on their walls. Why are we supporting these murderers instead of the Christians? Gott mit uns! (God is with us!)
Adolf Hitler, the Christian, beloved of Serbia –
“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice…. And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people…. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.”
We were engaged in a fight to make Iraqi oil an honorary American citizen.
I think targeting pre-crime is a good idea. Arrest all of the people running for office for the pre-crime of screwing us blind.
+100 – comment o’the day!
I am more concerned over an America enamored by an arrogant narcissist such as Trump than by the comments of a retired general.
Trump is proof there’s something in the water.
“(F)luoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face…”
Manray, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Manray? Children’s ice cream!…You know when fluoridation first began?…1946. 1946, Manray. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way a hard-core Commie works.
Purity of Essence.
The pre-cogs agree with you.
If we didn’t let the government have full control of our lives in the first place, these people wouldn’t even exist.
Wow, Ron really stays on point with this one – we go from Wesley “The Democrat’ Clark’s idea that we lock up “disloyal ‘Mericans” to “Draft dodging” Donald Trump’s correct assessment but highly illegal response to the “Snowden Drama” to “Iron” Mike Flynn’s assessment of Iraq policy. From there we plunge into the US Senate’s inability to “keep like shit with like shit” in their current highway bill and compare the internment of Neisi to taking the passports of tax evaders (these are not people who are denied due process, SB 1813 takes the passport from “…those with adjudicated owed back and certain other taxes”)
Flynn probably has the right idea but Clark, Trump and of course Ol’Ronbo are all as full of stuff as a Christmas Goose.
According to Forbes, it is in the realm of possibility that a passport could be taken if the bill under consideration passes:
“It would add a new section 7345 to the code entitled “Revocation or Denial of Passport in Case of Certain Tax Delinquencies”.
Bear in mind that tax liens are almost automatic. IRS tax liens cover
all your property, even acquired after the lien is filed. The courts
use liens to establish priority in bankruptcy proceedings and real
estate sales. The IRS can file a Notice of Federal Tax Lien after:
IRS assesses the liability;
IRS sends a Notice and Demand for Payment saying how much you owe; and
You fail to fully pay within 10 days.
A tax lien can be a mistake.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/02/05/coming-soon-no-travel-or-passport-if-you-owe-irs/
Last I heard Wesley Clark has never been elected to any position of leadership in America. Just some more nutty alarmism for Paul.
Wesley Clark could easily find himself on the staff of a Democratic President.
That almost sounds dirty but true. Surely he on Bubba Clinton’s “staff”.
I did time in Bosnia when W. Clark was in command and always thought highly of him until this shit……………….
I’m really disappointed that he made that remark.
I still stand by my belief that we will even lose more “freedoms” if the country is run by right wingnuts.
All it’s going to take is one more big attack like a dirty bomb in Columbia, Dayton, New Haven or Sacramento. it won’t be a big city like Atlanta but a mid-sized one.
My goodness… what’s next?
Laws that forbid doing things before you do them?
When I heard that talking about a felony was a felony, I panicked, until someone explained that it was only intended to put the mafia in jail… whew… I thought they had me for a minute.
“they” are watching my blood, my urine, and my hair follicles to see if I’m qualified to work for “them,” make me take off my shoes and be patted down in order to move freely around the united states, they’re watching my emails, my spending habits, listening to my phone calls, and using my phone to track my location, track my whereabouts with “security” cameras, they aim radars at my car door to see if it sounds hollow, fly over my house with helicopters taking infrared images of my property at night, and listen to the electrical grid for usage patterns that might mean I’m growing tomatoes without a license….
well, one comforting thought – it’s still a free country.
..and as an American patriot, it’s my duty to have my body cavities searched, and bodily fluids examined while everything I do is recorded for posterity. I mean, if I didn’t submit to all this shit, they’d have to arrest me as a subversive – a dangerous element, and a threat to the nation.
It’s gonna be fun watching the idiots who passed all those laws to fuck with us, languishing in jail for spitting on the sidewalk.
It makes my heart go pitter patter when I see the rats get caught in their own trap. LOL
Miss Lindsey was all clutching pearls and shit when he found out they were watching *him*!
Ron Paul, I approve of his concept of a destination for the USA, not his way getting there.
Ron Paul is like gambling in Las Vegas – it sounds like a good idea – and for a little while its fun – at some point you realize that if you did that all the time, you’d be fucked.
Keep betting on the direction we are heading! Most people, not me, agree with you.
We’re heading for Republican hell… we don’t need a sleep-over in Crazy Town.
The biggest news of the day is the crash of the Chinese stock “market”. Second highest one day drop ever. Falls 8.48% when regulators stop trading of individual stocks when they fall 10%. Two thirds of all stocks reached that limit.
Commodities prices are falling and other stock exchanges are down. All those peeps who think the Chi-Coms are too smart for us are going to find out that they have screwed up as bad as the Japanese did in the nineties. The Chinese have bet big on natural resources and commodities, when the future is technology.
China has also bet big on technology.
Chinese investment in U.S. technology is having a breakthrough year, topping $6 billion in the first quarter of 2014 alone, and instead of stripping U.S. companies of intellectual property Chinese investors appear to be sustaining and adding more U.S.-based jobs, according to a newly released study from Asia Society and Rhodium Group, “High Tech: The Next Wave of Chinese Investment in America“.
Fifteen “high-tech” segments were covered in the report, including aerospace, automotive, transportation equipment, chemicals, renewable energy, financial services and insurance, business services, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, plastic and rubber, healthcare and medical devices, industrial machinery and tools, electronics, IT equipment, software and IT services and semiconductors. Half of the tech investments to date (in terms of value) have been concentrated in three sectors: IT equipment, software and IT services, and automotive equipment and components, with California by far the leading state in attracting investment. Other important states are North Carolina, New York and Michigan.
Besides market access (especially through local manufacturing), other drivers for the growing interest from China in U.S. high-tech are acquisition of technology, brands, distribution channels, and other strategic assets to improve long-term competitiveness. Another increasingly important driver is the desire of Chinese firms to increase the efficiency of their global operations by tapping the talent base and advanced institutions in the United States – assets which cannot be uprooted and removed to China.
In the first quarter of 2014 alone, Chinese investors announced high-tech deals worth more than $6 billion, including the takeovers of Motorola Mobility and IBM’s x86 server unit by Lenovo, and Wanxiang’s acquisition of electric carmaker Fisker. That is more than the previous five years combined, during which annual investment hovered at $1 billion. And while 2014 will set a new high in the technology sector, cumulative investment in technology from China is $9.1 billion from 2000 through the end of 2013, which is just one-fourth of total Chinese investment in the United States during that period. Chinese-owned companies also show a significant increase in R&D spending in the United States, from near zero in 2007 to $31 million in 2009 and to $366 million in 2011.
Longer term, the report projected that China’s overseas foreign direct investment will grow from currently $500 billion to $1 trillion to $2 trillion by 2020, and a significant share of this will build global capabilities in innovation and technology.
“the internment of American citizens during World War II who were suspected of having Nazi sympathies.”
Never happened. A few dozen were rounded up and charged some notorious loudmouths with being unregistered German AGENTS. The courts (properly) let nearly all of them out soon thereafter.
Now the racists got to intern thousands of Japanese for years, that’s true.