Tom Cotton: The Most Dangerous Man In America

What if I told you the greatest threat to our liberties lies not in the Democratic Party but rather in the GOP?  What if I told you that the people who lash out against ignorant people for voting are the very ones that elected this tyrant into office?  What if I told you the same folks that condemn liberals for postulating arguments rooted in emotion continue to give blind support to this man entirely because of the emotional appeal?

Senator Tom Cotton is an anathema to our founding principles and a threat not just to America, but to the entire world.  It is a travesty that the supposed “liberty lovers” of Arkansas gave this guy a job in Washington for the next six years.  Despite calling the U.S. invasion of Iraq a “just and noble war,” Arkansas voters still came out in droves to elect the lawless Cotton into office.  Cotton won in a landslide against incumbent Senator Mark Pryor, which is ironic considering Pryor is perhaps more conservative than Cotton.

Despite being elected into office by Tea Party conservatives, Cotton is anything but conservative.  Not only is Cotton unable to recognize our blatant failures and crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he also wishes to expand the war efforts into Iran.  He has quickly become a GOP favorite after penning off a “brave” and “daunting” letter to Iran a week ago, informing the third-world country that any deal President Obama strikes with them will immediately become void the day he leaves office.  Although claiming he wrote this for the cause of our national security, it seems as though he was actually just appeasing special interest groups.  Tom Cotton pushes the war propaganda, endangering the lives of millions of people, all to make a nice profit.  Cotton received a whopping $1 million from Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel just days before his November election.  Also, “just 24 hours after his notorious letter to Iran became public, Cotton was the guest of honor at an event hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association, a lobbying and professional group for defense contractors.”

Disrupting peace negotiations with threats of war, regardless of how you feel about the man negotiating, is wildly dangerous.  And throwing our taxes towards increased aggression before even giving peace a chance is not a cause the taxpayers ought to tolerate.  Remember, the current Iranian regime was created by the United States in the 1950s.  We need to humbly take a step back and recognize the damaging effects of our past foreign interventions before again blindly intervening in foreign affairs.

Yet the guardians of liberty that claim to love facts wittingly ignore the reality of unintended consequences.  They also despise President Obama for his ardent support of the NSA’s data mining of American citizens, yet are strangely enamored by Senator Cotton who gives candid support to the program as well.  If conservatives love the Constitution, why then do they support a man who champions a program deemed to be unconstitutional?  Like President Obama, Cotton also supports the use of drone strikes.  However Cotton takes it a step further than Mr. Obama by insisting that the program ought to be expanded.  Despite the fact that he supports everything they claim to hate, some prominent conservatives on Twitter called on Senator Cotton to run for president after he sent off his fiery letter to Iran.

The following image was circulated around social media by conservatives.

Dana Loesch even called anyone who thinks Cotton is a traitor a “despicable life form.”

Senator Cotton repeatedly shows contempt for the Constitution, which only enumerates his own lawlessness.  What separates his lawlessness from other politicians is that his worldview will get a lot of people killed.  Iraq was a third-world nation that never aggressed the United States nor was ever capable of doing so.  They barely even had the means necessary of defending their own nation.  Yet that did not stop President Bush from illegally invading the country without a declaration of war from Congress.  Senator Cotton not only justifies Bush’s lawlessness that killed nearly 200,000 people, but wishes to repeat his mistakes in Iran as well.  Cotton believes we need to ensure a “replacement with [a] pro-western regime.”

All lawlessness aside, if the United States did go to war with Iran, we would literally be cheering on ISIS.  Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan have all fallen into the hands of Al-Qaeda since US intervention, and the same will inevitably happen to Iran if we were to dismantle their government.  If we were to go to war with ISIS, the tables would be flipped and we would be cheering for Iran.  ISIS and Iran are mortal enemies, which is why we cannot interfere in their affairs.  His neocon buddy Marco Rubio has a hard time discerning this basic truth, so one has to wonder if Cotton can distinguish between ISIS and Iran either.  By going after one enemy, we are implicitly helping the other, as was the case in Iraq.  And going after both is not only illegal but also impractical.  If Tom Cotton truly seeks to weaken the ayatollah’s power in the region, as well as ISIS’ influence, he would let the two collide head-on and diminish each other’s forces.  By opting to intervene, Cotton would create a monster far greater than what we see today.  The warmongers fear that ISIS’ small army of 40,000 will bring about armageddon, however in reality, it is Cotton’s proposed intervention which would bring about global chaos.

Tom Cotton claims that we are at war, but if that is the case, then who are we at war with?  And who declared us to be at war since Congress never passed any declaration?  In the United States, you are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, so Islamic terrorism is hardly a threat to our nation.  This irrational fear of Islamic terrorists is precisely the emotional appeal that gets conservatives to support hawks like Cotton.

Not only is Cotton blind to the letter of the law when it comes to war, but he is also ignorant to the nature of due process.  Despite the Supreme Court ruling five times that indefinitely detaining Guantanamo Bay prisoners without trial is unconstitutional, Cotton believes that “We should be sending more terrorists there for further interrogation to keep this country safe.”  He followed this up by saying, “As far I’m concerned, every last one of them can rot in hell. But as long as they don’t do that, they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.”

This begs the question, how do we know the men we are sending to Guantanamo are terrorists if it has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers?  Is it simply because we have labeled anyone our military captures in the Middle East as being a terrorist?  By calling these prisoners “terrorists” without first giving them fair trials, Cotton is unilaterally declaring himself both the judge and the jury.  Ignoring the natural rights of these men in essence renders our own rights as void, and Senator Cotton is hardly a bastion for freedom.  In 2006, Cotton sought to prosecute two New York Times journalists for espionage.  Abraham Lincoln once jailed over 40,000 journalists and political dissenters for speaking out against his administration.  A Tom Cotton presidency would hardly spell out anything different.

Just a week ago, Tom Cotton took to the Senate floor for the first time in his life.  It took him less than a minute to invoke Adolf Hitler, arguing that because Hitler once existed, we need to increase our defense spending.  55% of our discretionary spending already goes towards the military.  In addition to this, we spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined.  Yet according to Tom Cotton, “The world is growing more dangerous and our defense spending is wholly inadequate to confront the danger,” and he proposes INCREASING our already egregious military spending.

US intervention abroad has been a colossal failure.  If intervention is necessary to sustaining peace and security, then I would like someone to please point out to me where there is peace and security in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen.  Tom Cotton is inconspicuously blind to reality and wishes to expand upon our catastrophes, which will in turn endanger the lives of every single American, as well as anyone Senator Cotton labels as a terrorist.  When the GOP regained a Senate majority this past November, Ron Paul warned Republican control would mean more wars and more boots on the ground.  It seems as though his prophecy may unfortunately come true.

US intervention is precisely what led to the September 11^th terrorist attacks and is also what gave rise to ISIS.  Those who are fearful of another attack on our soil need to understand that increasing our global intervention increases our vulnerability here at home.  It is for this reason that the policies of Senator Tom Cotton need to be fervently opposed.  Considering leading conservative voice Erick Erickson calls Tom Cotton “the most powerful man in Washington,” we have great reason to be weary.  The best security a nation can have is not big government, but a free people.