Originally Posted by clekstro

"In our federal system, all other rights and responsibilities are left to the discretion of individuals and the states (the 9th and 10th Amendments). Federalism, then, is the hallmark of constitutionally limited government in our system. Under such a system, the federal government should actually be strong where it has a constitutional mandate to govern (contra libertarianism); this same strong government should be nonexistent where no constitutional mandate exists (contra liberalism). "

The problem here is that Vi conflates strong government with a government that must have an active presence everywhere. More intelligence collecting would mean a larger temptation to intervene on the part of CIA. Global hegemony is impossible, period. The US simply cannot dump more money into maintaining and empire and analyzing every event in every country to calculate possible American advantage through sabotage, and that is precisely what is happening. Kennedy wanted to shut down CIA because they went ahead without him at the Bay of Pigs, thinking that he would be forced to invade to protect them. He was, of course, killed.

CIA intervention in the middle east and all over the world has been more interested in increasing its own power by blackmailing the government with a disaster. It's responsibility, as I was reading from a critic of the CIA the other day, is to stir up trouble so that the US has someone to fight and the military-industrial complex will continue. The rate of false-flag operations to sabotage leftists politically wanting to nationalize resources and keep US companies from effectively robbing the native population is astounding, and I don't see the logic in expanding that sort of an organization. They are not a group of analysts. They are drug runners, gun smugglers and murderers. They live and operate in a world without morals or responsibility.

The CIA starts trouble by making dirty deals with shifty people to turn a quick buck and to support another shifty group somewhere else. A group screwed over by the CIA strikes back at American interests, or threatens to out the American higher-ups (like George Bush) for their role in secret CIA operations, and they are taken out. This has been standard for the last sixty years. The government, and the people at large, must pay a pretty regular price for CIA "protection."

Vi is right here: you can't do completely without it. I just wouldn't be flushing more money down the toilet so that we can start with lives right afterwards. That makes little sense to me.

The history of the CIA makes me view Vi 's interpretation as historically naive. He has conflated CIA interest with government interest, and national interest with both of them. If there is a difference between spending money and spending it well, then Vi should recognize fraud and abuse and stop telling everybody the world is going to be killed by the newest enemies of American entanglement if we don't further bolster their status in the region by attacking them. That sort of thinking will mean the death of many more Americans for the evil business cycle of death this "necessary" agency stands behind.

No more black op wars, period. No more secret funding (Saying we spent 15 billion last year doesn't help the terrorists, just to hide abuse). No more assassinations. No more keeping drugs illegal in this country to inflate the profit that can be obtained illegally on the black market to buy guns and fund psychopaths that will kill their country's democratic institutions. I don't care if that's a libertarian position or not; the alternative is lunacy and won't make you safer but for a year or so.