Blood Taxes

One of the realities of war is that someone has to pay for it and that someone is usually the middle-class taxpayers.  When war is far away and almost never touches upon the taxpayer individually then it passes to the background much like most of the noise coming out of Washington.  Unfortunately, it is not that simple.  If one pays taxes to a government that engages in war, then that taxpayer is just as responsible for the mayhem as the soldier firing the weapon or the CIA agent flying the drone.  One cannot fight a war without funds as we learned during the Iran-Contra hearings and nothing has changed since then.

America attacked Afghanistan on the pretense of hunting down Al Qaeda and its leaders.  Had that been our only objective, things might have gone differently, instead we got involved in nation building in a part of the world we had no business being in.  To compound this unfortunate decision, President Bush initiated a war in Iraq based on a lie.  In one sense, war was inevitable because we were killing the children of Iraq with our sanctions program and Saddam Hussein was not going to give in to our demands.  Hind-sight is twenty-twenty and looking back things look like they took a wrong turn somewhere.

President Obama was supposed to change all that but he just continued it, compounding our previous mistakes with adventures in Libya, continuing the occupation of Afghanistan and now prepping for a fight in Syria.  What goes unaccounted for is the human tragedy that takes place every time a drone strikes snuffs out another innocent life.  We console ourselves with the thought that it is taking place outside America with the notion that life is not as valuable for those people.  When we make excuses for the daily murders committed in the name of fighting the war on terror, we become enablers.  The truth is that we are enablers and we are responsible for those deaths because we pay our blood taxes and we do nothing to stop the killing.  What is even worse is the military that participates in these killings using the absurd justification that they are following orders.  I cannot even fathom following an order that required me to engage in extrajudicial assassination of someone because they disagreed with me.  If that were the sole justification for murdering people, there would be a lot of dead people in the streets.  I would rather be discharged dishonorably knowing I did the right thing.

The Obama Administration has judicial reviews justifying the continued murder of innocent women and children to fight an undeclared war against an undeclared enemy in an undeclared hostile zone.  At what point will that justification transfer to Detroit or Los Angeles because there is no difference between the preemptive murder of Americans overseas for what they may do and the preemptive murder of Americans in America.  The sad part is that our President is not wholly responsible for his actions, we are each and every day we pay our blood taxes.  As long as you pay taxes to the Federal government, you empower them to kill in your name for their own designs which has nothing to do with what we want our leaders to accomplish.  The oft heard excuse is that no one in Washington listens and I am not important enough or these people want to hurt us so we have to hit them first before they can hit us.  I guess if you were blowing up my brothers and sisters, I would want to hit you, too. As long as we continue to use drones to kill our adversaries anywhere in the world, we will continue to have new enemies created each and every day.  For those who say they cannot be responsible for what happens in Washington, you are an enabler because 60 cents of every one dollar in income taxes you pay goes to feed the war machine.

Celebrities got together to ban war diamonds to slow the pace of killing in Africa but they are doing nothing to turn off the flood of money that finances the military industrial complex that engorges itself on the blood of the innocent.  These people are worse than vampires, they are the reason we have war, they are the participants.  One does not have to pull a trigger to kill someone, one just pays a mercenary to do the dirty work.  America has plenty of willing mercenaries because that is one way to gain citizenship, kill for America, get a passport.  If you hire someone to kill someone, you go to jail, in America when a multi-national hires the military to back a coup or foment a revolution, the CEO gets a bonus.  It is time to stop the blood taxes, it is time to realize the peace dividend that President Bush stole from us, destroying our economy in the process.

The Justice Party does not support blood taxes, we support peace and dialogue.  The Justice Party does not support killing people with drone strikes outside a war zone because that is a matter for local law enforcement.  The Justice Party does not support another war in Syria or Iran just to bump quarterly profits and create jobs.  We need to stop paying the blood taxes and instead begin paying peace taxes.  The justification to go to war in Syria is that 1,000s are dying, well 1,000s are dying in Mexico yet we do nothing.  Mexico is our neighbor and instead of finding solutions to the problem we created, we prefer to go halfway around the world and solve other people’s problems.  It is time to lay down the arms and return to the United States.  Anyone that engages in the indiscriminate killing of another person is guilty of murder, that is the law.  President Obama has yet to provide a justification for his indiscriminate killing other than national interest.  How much more blood must be spilled before Justice comes to Washington?  How many more children must be butchered to sate the bloodlust in Washington?  How long will you continue to pay your share of blood taxes?  If you want Justice in Washington, then you have only one candidate able to deliver it, Rocky Anderson.

Another tragic tragedy in our war against Islam.

Why are we in Yemen killing American kids?  Does this make any sense?  Another American citizen has been blown up while barbequing with friends, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. He is the son of Anwar Al-Awaki and he was 16.  Now we kill 16 year olds with our drone strikes.  Aren’t we big and bad.

We need to bring our troops home and start making peace with the world.  Foreign policy by drone strikes is not acceptable.  If enemies are on an active battlefield the military has every right to kill them.  But these killings are not on a US battlefield and they are not being done by the US military.  Killing kids at a barbecue is beyond the pale.  I am calling for Congressional hearings to determine the involvement of administration officials in these extra-judicial killings of US citizens.  Those found guilty should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Under the constitution, every American citizen is entitled to his or her day in court.  When the government believes it can kill any citizen at will, then we are no longer a democracy.  This behavior is unacceptable by any government let alone the leader of the free world.  If Congress does not do its duty, then it is as guilty as those in the White House who are prosecuting another illegal war.

End the killing, bring the troops home.  We need to invest in our kids, not in our guns.

Support a third choice, support American Elects, support Mike Ballantine, 2012, the people’s President.

http://www.mikeballantine2012.org