This is a very brief rebuttal to LewRockwell.com/Campaign for Liberty author Anthony Gregory’s blog post entitled “Republicans as Bad as Ever.” Gregory opines:
“On war, the most important issue. In the tenth year of a ridiculous, illegal, and completely counterproductive war of aggression, Justin Amash, a Michigan freshman Congressman with some libertarian leanings whom I was told to keep an eye on, joined the 97% of his party in the House voting against a completely reasonable and moderate plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
As an aside, this alone would have saved $100 billion a year. Another epic fail from the Tea Party.”
Congressman Amash, the second-youngest member of Congress and a keynote speaker at the 2011 Republican Liberty Caucus National Convention, defended his vote as follows:
Here’s the roll call for Amend. 232, which defunds Afghanistan ops. It was not a policy bill to end the war. I would support that. Instead, it cut funding to a level that Rep. Nadler (D-NY-08) claimed would allow for safe withdrawal. His word cannot be the final analysis for a new Rep., and it wouldn’t have been if I didn’t have 600 other amendments to review. I voted no. “Present” is for genuine procedural concerns.
Mr. Gregory made the same mistake that his LewRockwell.com colleague Laurence Vance made when Vance criticized the Republican Liberty Caucus in January. Mr. Gregory doesn’t understand how Congress works in the same way that Mr. Vance had little knowledge about the goals of the RLC. (Since then, Mr. Vance has learned more about us and even featured my article about Paul Ryan at his blog.)
A simple suggestion to those in the liberty movement: Please understand the topic you’re writing about before sharing your opinion. This will make you much more effective when trying to convince audiences of an opinion.
And, another suggestion: It’s more important to focus on the more than 400 members of Congress who do not share *any* libertarian principles than the 30 or so members who are actively working to preserve our country.
The politicians endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus are working to save our nation.
Let’s spend less time scrutinizing their votes and more time trying to either persuade or boot out the 400 politicians in Washington (and countless Administration bureaucrats) who have little concept of individual liberty or limited government.
On February 22nd, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Not funding a program is a way to end it. If there is no appropriation, it would not be legal to continue to spend money on it. While I would agree that we should be critical of those who are total statists, it is only natural to be more offended when an ally appears to stray from principle.
On February 23rd, 2011 at 6:59 pm
Congressman Amash was right on this issue. Libertarians and Conservatives have to admit the failure of “starving the beast” when that same “beast” just runs up huge debt, be it war or social programs.
Also, potentially depriving troops of funding when there is no strategy to actually withdraw and discuss this issue with the President is pure political posturing. If the troops were actually deprived of funding in this instance it would be putting them in peril and hoping that it would embarrass the President to action. Sounds politically stupid to me since President Obama was so embarrassed about Health Care.
A concurrent resolution is how Congress has controlled the president in the past, since the President denying that would make it a constitutional issue to take to the courts. Also We could negotiate with the President by threatening other programs beloved by him.
On February 24th, 2011 at 8:51 am
Sorry I meant to say join resolution not concurrent resolution. The War Powers Act gives congress a parliamentary procedure to withdraw it’s sanction of military force. Despite what people might say, this legislative war procedure has not been challenged before the Supreme Court and was successful in ending the Vietnam war. It is time for Congress to use it again, instead of cowardly passing the buck to the President.