33 posts tagged “antiwar”

Dahr Jamail writes not to get taken by all the talk in talk radio.

Read his article "2007 Worst Year Yet in Iraq."

2008 does not look any better, either.

(Sending billions of dollars to dictators, like in Pakistan, is going swell too.)

***

Leaving Behind the Ideological Drug of Neoconservatism

According to conventional "left" versus "right" gibberish from folks like Mr. Rush Limbaugh, I must be some kind of commie. It is part of the neocon mindless view that "You are either with us or against us." And, my personal favorite, "If you don't like Bush or the war, move to Russia [or thereabout]."

When (if) Hillary Clinton (or O-bomb-a) becomes president, then, gosh, I hope the mainstream left-liberal uses the same kind of rhetoric against their "opposition."

Jeffrey Tucker and Thomas Woods made a good point while they were talking to each other about Woods' latest book on American history. It was about the intellectual development of a man politically. When one is very young he first finds out that there are (seemingly) two mainstream political views ("left" and "right") and then finds out one of those does not seem to fit him. Subsequently he joins the "opposite" group and assumes his views equals theirs or should equal theirs. If he is able to see through the collectivist nonsense and its slavery, he usually joins the so-called "right." In so doing, however, he takes what could be referred to as a binary view of politics. Everything becomes an "R." vs. "D." debate, in Limbaugh fashion. He sees political debate through these lenses. Thus, if someone is against the Iraq War, he then attacks this gentleman as a pinko commie and someone who is probably a Clinton supporter.

Then something opens the door to move pass this. This is something that a book by Woods can do. His 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask has a chapter showing that the three most important traditional conservatives, being Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet, had views that were, in different strengths, anti-militaristic. As Mr. Tucker said in the above interview with Dr. Woods, Nisbet was "amazing" in his critique on the subject. It is difficult to argue against that. I very much agree with Tucker's sentiments.

(As Woods says in the interview, he, as I, has some disagreements with these three gentlemen, but they were serious and intelligent scholars not to be dismissed and surely not to be forgotten, as they have today.)

For example, what "conservative" today would say this...?

All war of any appreciable length have a secularizing effect upon engaged societies, a diminution of the authority of old religious and moral values and a parallel elevation of new utilitarian, hedonistic, or pragmatic values. Wars, to be successfully fought, demand a reduction in the taboos regarding life, dignity, and property, family, and religion; there must be nothing of merely moral nature left standing between fighting forces and victory, not even, or especially, taboos on sexual encounters. Wars have an individualizing effect upon their involved societies, a loosening of the accustomed social bond in favor of a tightening of the military ethic. Military, or at least war-born, relationships among individuals lend to supersede relationships of family, parish, and ordinary walks of life. Ideas of chastity, modesty, decorum, respectability change quickly in wartime.

The great Robert Nisbet in The Present Age, one of my very favorite books. The first book I read of Nisbet.

So a book like 33 Questions can help open the door for young people to see there is an alternative to the binary view. That there were major scholars who said that militarism as such is actually not that good for conservatism (or libertarianism). That there were thoughtful men who had these views and were far from being "pinko commies." And it is this door that can lead to a young man to read someone like Nisbet or Richard Weaver. And that is where the real education begins.

What would make democratic government bring more "freedom"? So if "we" just give them the vote, they will turn into a splitting image of ourselves? Voting will just transform a people? This is an unproven and vapid assumption of neoconservative left-Wilsonism. It is also questionable to assume that democracy is a good in itself. Who says that this is the best form of government? Not the "founding fathers" of the U.S. Constitution. Not I.

You cannot just go swooping in to impose something from the top-down. I am not, exactly, understanding of how such a thing would be conservative. Things happen from the bottom-up. Such happenings, for the conservative (or the "conservative" libertarian anarchist), are the outgrowths of natural or organic institutional developments.

Saddam Hussein was obviously an evil man. He was a politician. But one thing he did do was hold together in place the many different factions. A more pure form of democracy would just increase tensions between those factions, very possibly resulting in a more tyrannical government. Under Hussein's rule there was a respect for the freedom of religion. Christians were able to live there. Today that freedom has withered away. It is no longer possible.

Iraq also had classically liberal gun laws. Think about that. Many cities in this country are hysterically against the freedom to own a gun. The only freedoms these cities support are arming the State with a monopoly of guns. (Hey, all of you left-liberals: Let's give all the guns to Bush! That would be great, huh?)

The streets were relatively safer. . . . Today chaos and violence, a great breeding ground for terrorism. Is that so arduous for neoconservatives to understand? What has been created is a caldron.

Far from turning into a paradise to end terrorism, like the neoconservatives spoke of, this war has created a setting that is nourishing the development of terrorism. The Bush administration and its top supporters in power have always had it as a higher priority to build-up, maintain, and increase U.S. Empire hegemony opposed to a policy to go after Osama bin Laden. (Or is that "Osama bin Forgotten"?) So there we have it. The government went into Iraq. And now it desires going into Iran. Almost the same kind of rhetoric and the sequence of how it is being spread, that was used during the lead-up to Iraq, is being used to justify an attack against Iran. It is deja vu.

It appears that the supposed war on terror is another distractive crusade akin to the Cold War. But of course government loves it. Its military-industrial-complex loves it. It might diminish our freedom today and our economic prosperity for tomorrow, but it benefits them. That is all they care about.

However, empire is never and was never sustainable. The dollar has been in free-fall, and the chickens will sometime or another come home to roost. A dollar backed by nothing is really a dollar that is nothing. The State loves to fight against reality, but reality catches up in the long-run. Who knows when, but it will.

Before there was the fear that communism was going to take over the world. That the Soviet Union actually posed a direct threat against us. Nonsense. The former Soviet Union was an economic basket-case. It could never be anything but an economic basket-case. Many conservatives pride themselves as economically literate, but if they saw the Cold War as anything but a scam then maybe they do not champion or understand markets and liberty as much as they think. In addition, the former Soviet Union could not have lasted as long as they did if the United States did not bail out or subsidize it. And, by the way, there was also a time when the U.S. considered it a "friend."

Looking at Vietnam, for example, one sees a trading partner. One sees a country embracing more capitalist ideas. So much for the domino theory. East Asia in the next fifty years may just be the leading spot in the world because they are radically departing from us. They are embracing free markets and individualism. Now where this might lead is another question. If statism gets a hold, I then can easily make a prediction of what will happen. But, until then, the point is that they are starting to embrace what we held the flag high for----at least in terms of an idea or ideal.

It is difficult to say if Russell Kirk was for or against the Cold War. Maybe as I read more of him I'll find out. Or at least get a hint. The late Kirk did reject the first Gulf War. He spoke of the irrationality of the Middle East and the blowback the U.S. government is causing. But Robert Nisbet, I do know, was very skeptical of the Cold War. You probably could go as far as to say he was basically against it. He saw through the smoking mirrors. (Read The Present Age by Nisbet, which is hard to recommend more highly.) Though both men would have seen through the smoking mirrors of today.

The New Al Qaeda --- 'rebuilt, new younger leaders, profiles of leaders, new recruits'

Are We Safer Today? I'll give you one guess.

(Above links via ConservativesForPeace.com----check it out.)

The Diagnosis of a Dying Republic by Anthony Gregory
Article on the book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson.

Scott Horton Interviews Anthony Gregory on American Empire and Its History. Listen Here [mp3].

Pat Buchanan asks "Is Terrorism Really a Mortal Threat?"
See also his article Infantile Nation.

Justin Raimondo: "Ahmadinejad's visit revives the War Party's sinking fortunes" and how the neocon spin-doctors have used it. Read Dress Rehearsal for War.

Lew Rockwell Breaks Taboos: None Dare Call It Genocide.

[I have a habit for going a bit on a tangent, but sometimes for the good. In this free-riding entry I go over a few of the lessons that really should have been seen as it relates to 9/11/01 and where we are today. I also explain the logic behind the rise of fascism, from the frame of reference of the State, and how that applies to today's department of homeland "security." I also briefly talk about the democratization of war. I am sure there are several articles and blog entires online on 9/11, my focus might be somewhat more unique in the areas I chose to focus and zero-in on.]

“It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale – as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it – of an 'army on the march.'”
--- Murray N. Rothbard; War, Peace, and the State

***

Six years later, where are we today?

For one thing, it does not feel that it has been that long. The government and its ever-willing media make the tragic affair feel like it was merely two or perhaps three years ago. They exploit the event as much as possible for their gain, to further encroach on the liberties of the American people, and not to mention to further encroach on the liberties of other peoples of the world. Sept 11 was nothing more, for the government, than a pretext to thrust the agenda of neoconservative global hegemony, the expansion of the warfare-welfare state, and the domestic police state.

Robert Higgs is the author of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. War really is the Health of the State, as Randolph Bourne said in an uncompleted essay. History has never failed to show otherwise, as people like Dr. Higgs have shown.. It is in times of crisis and war that State power explodes. Since democratic government is all about rallying people to its causes under the illusion that “‘we’ the people” are the government, the State will do its best to meliorate its hold of power in times when people are most likely to rally together.

Many of men often talk about a so-termed “New World Order” or a “World Government,” but I exhort to those individuals that this is not entirely accurate. The powers that be see they, themselves, as the global controllers of the United States (Empire). They see themselves as the power holders. It is not as if they want to hand over power to the United Nations, unless they themselves control it. Ditto goes for the idea of a “North American Union.” Even if it be they in charge, this should not diminish any of our views of what that would mean and entail, to those truly concerned about freedom. Clearly this is of a most dangerous scenario, because it is a growth function of democratic government to mass centralize in this fashion----to centralize in a way that no classical monarchy could ever.

This is not just some cooked up rhetoric about neoconservatism and those that subscribe to this ideological creed, though. Mr. James Bovard makes the point in his excellent latest book, Attention Deficit Democracy, that the parallels of speech and written word to dictators like Benito Mussolini and neoconservative Bill Kristol, who the late Sam Francis called the “neoconservative sex god,” is very clear and vivid. There need be no dramatic hyperbole. Kristol, for example, in 1996 spoke of how the U.S. should exploit its "military supremacy and moral confidence" to achieve "benevolent global hegemony." (What is "benevolent" about that, I am unsure.) Or take William Buckley, who has called for (his very words) "a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores" to fight the Soviet Union-------only this attitude or view did not end after the Cold War.. Today, like it or not, this is what conservatism means in the modern world.

Security and Transportation

Government’s supposed job, which people say needs a monopoly over a geographical territory (but, interestingly and paradoxically, it is suggested by nearly everyone that there not need be a monopoly over the entire world, contra their logic that would suggest that), is of “protection.” Of course, government failed miserably on 9-11. It monopolized security in regards to airports and airliners. Its control gutted airliners to look after their own interests. Interests of which they have a direct and immediate concern about, unlike government which only has an indirect and secondary (at best!) concern about. They were not allowed to do the things they would have otherwise been allowed to do. Government’s banning of the airliners possessing a gun for protection is a clear example. There is a direct concern for private enterprise to protect their paying customers and to continue to do that for new potential customers. They have to respond to the free market and guard against the possibility of losses; chief among them would be the possibility of hijacking. Instead, government took this transportation industry off the gird of the market, so to speak. Failure was not punished, as in what happens to a free market enterprise that fails, but instead the State was rewarded with more power and control. Imagine, from this, the incentive system that the State has! It is of no accident that so-called government provided “services” are the areas of life that are the worst.

One of the lessons that should have been figured out with the events of Sept 11th, 2001 is that government provided “security” is not security at all! What should have been demanded is that the government get out of the business altogether.  All that has been “gained” with government getting even more involved in security is airport authoritarianism.

This does not only go for the governmental operations in the area of transportation and the security thereof. The State’s myopia fills all of the diverse departments that are supposed to “protect” us. All of them did not accomplish the task and made us all the more vulnerable. Instead of being deprived of funding, they were only expanded. Even new departments were created to add to the mess after 9/11. Departments, that for all obviousness, are nothing but pork. Today’s so-called conservatives, one thought, are supposed to condemn such government projects. The matter is entirely different, of course, and they gladly cheer on the most extravagant (in ugliness) of government programs.

Homeland “Security”

As Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo writes in “The Fatherland Protection Racket,” the pork projects that fill the department of Homeland “Security” are so visibly pork that one wonders why there is hardly the outrage against this department that there ought to be. Believing that this department “protects” us is delusional. (More on this later.)

The Rise and Reason of Fascism

Individuals qua government officials who seek power via political contra economic means, motivated by the same basic interests and desires as all other men, while at the same time under the identical economic laws and limitations, understand that the best way to facilitate government power is not through socialism. Socialism’s bankruptcy only produces bankrupt states. The former Soviet Union, while internally aggressive and oppressive to the people under it, had only consequently weak hosts to live parasitically on. This explains why, relatively speaking, the former Soviet Union was never as imperialistic or aggressive, outside of “its” territory, as the United States, which is (relatively) internally less aggressive or classically liberal. Such states, as the U.S., will therefore tend to turn into empires. The record only bears this out for today’s empire (the U.S.) and ones past.

Thus, with the above acknowledged, such political individuals will try to “harness” the abundance of wealth that is created under the “engine” of society, i.e. of capitalism. This will generally turn capitalism, under statist conditions, into fascism (i.e., anti-capitalism). In such a case, the alliance between big government and big business is amplified and enlarged. Mythical attacks in which left-liberals have against capitalism for being nothing more than fascism is utterly nonsense then, because there is a clear and definitive difference between the political versus the economic means for an individual to obtain wealth: one of taking (stealing and coercion, i.e. political) or mobbing out competition (closing the door for competition via coercive regulations, i.e. political) and the other of producing wealth (production and voluntarism, i.e. economic). Fascism is the only natural course for Leviathan Statism. One has to actually abolish the idea of coercive and monopolistic “protection” and socialist (state provided) “law and order” to get rid of the natural flow of statism and accordingly its flow to the rise of fascism.

(People will take the easier or shortest route, after all. The man that is offered $X dollars by the government will take it. The man that is offered to regulate his competitor out of business will have the urge and strong desire to take it. There is no polylogism or polyeconomic analysis for men directly working in government, either. No wishful thinking by even non-Austrian analysis can change that.)

This explains the reason of the existence of such departments as Homeland “Security” and why they are heavily protected against those who call for it to be destroyed. It also applies as well to the entire military-industrial complex.

Homeland “Security” Continued

What has the “Fatherland Protection Racket” brought? Far from protection, it is another racket of fascism. To quote DiLorenzo:

As for the pork, a few examples will give you the flavor of how out-of-control it has become:
* Boeing was given a five-year, $1.37 billion contract to equip U.S. airports with "bomb screening devices" that experts say are "laughingly ineffective."
* Northrop Grumman "landed a $350 million contract to construct a DHS data network.
* "First-responder training facilities are springing up like toadstools after a rainstorm. The Nevada Test Site . . . which trains 3,000 fire fighters, paramedics, and policemen annually, is slated to quintuple that number as the DHS money rolls in."
* The new Hampshire town of Bennington, population 1, 272, spent part of its Homeland Security grant to buy chemical weapons suits – just in case bin Laden chose Bennington as his next maximum impact target.
* Local police departments in New Hampshire will get access to "satellite television channels that transmit continuous news," courtesy of a DHS grant.
* Colchester, Vermont, population 18,000, received a DHS grant to purchase a "search-and-rescue vehicle" that "can bore through concrete and search for victims in collapsed buildings."
* Thanks to the influence of Dick Cheney, "Wyoming receives more money per capita than any other state in homeland security grants."
* And naturally, "a non-state – the District of Columbia – is far and away the biggest recipient of homeland security grants per capita," receiving more than twice as much as Dick Cheney’s home state.
* Citgo, Conoco-Phillips, and Shell received tens of millions of dollars in DHS grants for "refiner security," something they are very well equipped to finance themselves.
* The former mayor of Washington, D.C., Sharon Pratt, received a no-bid "bioterrorism consulting contract" for $236,000.
* Forty "young people" in Washington, D.C. were paid by a DHS grant to "rap and dance about emergency preparedness."

This is the reality of such wasteful programs----programs that have nothing to do with “protecting” us. From one perspective, this can be viewed as a slap in the face to the families that suffered because of the event of 9/11. They were obviously looking to the government (even if it be misguided) for the role of actually cleaning house and setting up a system of real protection. Instead, what they got was this neo-con abomination.

(See Also: “The Security-Industrial-Congressional Complex (SICC)” by Robert Higgs)

Such government programs can never do the job of protection. The torpor of such programs can only be worse with their expansion or the implementation of additional departments (programs). Providing security, like all other goods and services, is under the reality of scarcity. The direction or allocation of any good or service can never be directed or allocated under statist conditions because there is no rational way to do so. There are no prices; no profit--loss; and so forth. Resources require as a requisite markets and by definition they are absent under statist conditions. Hence, production will always by necessity be irrational; up to the whims of government officials. There will always be “too much” or “too little” of production, with a constant state of flux between the two, and shades of the two in regards to the various tasks that these programs are supposedly designed for. Nor is there competition. The production of security, then, will be one of ever decreasing service and production, while at the same time increased costs. Instead of a Soviet Union-like government program for the allocation of food, which resulted in chaotic conditions; there will be, mutatis mutandis, these conditions for protection and security.

Osama bin Laden and Terrorism

Six years of the government supposedly going after Osama bin Laden and catching him “dead or alive,” has proven fruitless. Allegedly he was the mastermind of the event, but instead of the government putting its resources in trying to capture him; government officials have diverted their limited resources to even more reckless actions of interventionism, and have incited more levels of hate and anger against the U.S. Resources were diverted into Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and has only contributed to the problems, and possibility of another attack. It has made the region more unstable, and, unlike the propaganda from the neoconservatives, the ground is not being “transformed” into peace and light void of terrorism (so far from!), but, instead, is being filled with the squalid atmosphere much friendly for terrorism and its growth.

Government politicians, officials, and the neoconservatives working in their various “think”-tanks are once again setting the stage, before our very own eyes, for another aggressive, interventionist, and nation-“building” war in the Middle East. Although, it is hard for me to personally put down odds on such an event, others with far more knowledge than I, like Pat Buchanan, believe that the odds are sadly quite high. (Read “Phase III of Bush's War.“) Thus, far from learning from experience and history, the setting of the stage for another potential war, this time with Iran, is in the works! It is true when they say that the only thing we learn from history, is that we do not learn from it. To call this administration and President Bush mad is to put it mildly.

Terrorist organizations are stronger than before because of all of this. Indeed, as Mr. Scott Horton writes at AntiWar.com, the concept of the mass of people (a complete democratic construct of reasoning, especially in wartime) in the Middle East hating our (decreasing) freedoms is nonsensical. The increase of hatred of larger bulks of people is tied with our interventionism. They set their aims for the United States and not Switzerland or Sweden. The very first conflicts were directly involving U.S. presence; not attacks on the shores of the United States. Indeed, writes Horton, “Ayatollah Khomeini spent the 1980's railing against American culture and the entire region yawned. Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, kept his pitch straight and to the point – and it worked.” [Emphasis mine.] Bin Laden's focus has been on occupation. For example, his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places...”

The focus was, as Horton writes in his important article, on {1} bases in Saudi Arabia; {2} support for Israel (a bizarre neoconservative love affair, clinging to the love of the totalitarian form of government known as democracy); {3} no-fly zone bombings and trade sanctions, killing hundreds of thousands of people (the monster Janet Reno said it was “worth it” on TV); {4} direct support to the various dictators in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, etc.; {5} control and manipulation of the prices of oil; and {6} giving support to Russia, China and India in their wars against Muslims.

And as Mr. Horton says, “by studying every single individual suicide bomber on Earth between 1980 and 2004 – the one characteristic that all suicide bombers have in common is the presence of foreign combat forces in their country – not Islam.”

U.S. Imperialism

State wars are unjust and immoral. And will always be that. The State, despite all of the rhetoric to hide the real nature of this institution, is nothing but a “bandit gang writ large.” And as Russell Kirk wrote, "there is no tyranny more onerous than military life."

It requires quite a large leap to see how so many “anti”-abortion folks (I myself am no fan of abortion, as you could guess) are so pro-war, who give the State a complete and utter pass in literally butchering so many innocent civilians, including children and women, caught in the bombardment. How any mind, any sense of decency could do that is thankfully, thank God, beyond me. I agree with Mr. Jeffrey Tucker, “I have nothing in common with these people [the mainstream conservative of today]!” (See also “The Violence of Conservatism.”) Maybe there is something in the Republican kool-aid?

In the claimed mission to bring justice after 9/11, a majority of the U.S. government’s killings have been against innocent bystanders (“collateral damage”). In today’s “progressed” age of the democratization of war, has come the melting pot of togetherness in favor above and over the “dark ages” of making a distinction in war between combatants and noncombatants. Surely the numbers of murdered civilians by the U.S. government surpass the number of al-Qaeda. The majority of its killings have not be directed against those involved with the planning and implementation of 9/11. (And torture, is, well, A-OK too. And its use is far from being a few tinny incidents. Nor is Bush administration unconnected with its implementation.)

Of course, mentioning this in our democratic age of nationalism and left-neocon state worship is completely taboo and absolutely forbidden. Thanks go to the embodiment and exemplifier of this transition in the leftist and egalitarian French Revolution, what traditional conservative monarchist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) called a “sadistic sex orgy.” This transformation of war brought us such war crimes as the dropping of atomic weapons in World War II, where today, wrote Richard Weaver, "the word 'noncombatant' [has] almost [reduced] to meaninglessness."

Democracy and a Wilsonian foreign policy go hand-in-hand. It is the ideological cousin of democracy. So ignorant are today's conservatives, who cheer on any and all wars, of their own foundation of thought, that Russell Kirk's words on Wilsonianism is lost:

The political wisdom of the Federalists and Burke was diluted, in Wilson, by a dose of doctrinaire liberalism. In the hour of criss liberal abstraction prevailed over conservative prudence.

According to Kirk, one of the main principles of conservatism is prudence. It is obviously lost today.

Civil Liberties & Power

This would take an entire new entry to go through everything here, but I find it humorous how the conservative of today claim to be for economic liberty, but see civil liberties as fundamentally different. Government that invades us economically is bad, but government that invades us in our privacy is somehow not bad or relatively not as bad. As if they be two separate issues or birds, detached from property rights! (Talk about polylogism!)

Restriction of power or "limited" government is a foreign idea to President Bush and neoconservatives. If it be Bush using “sticky notes” a.k.a. signing statements, to rewrite a law to whatever suits his command and fancy, or the power to declare martial law. Or we could be talking about warrantless wiretapping for our “protection.” Habeas corpus, a constitutional right? Well, not according to the Bush administration. . . . . Who will protect us from these so-called "protectors!?" (So-called "protectors" who will even take the guns away from people, and practically put into place a police state, during a crisis, à la New Orleans.) Suffice to say, the record of abuses is long. All I can recommend is for people to buy a couple of books by James Bovard, who does such good work in this department.

Is There More to the Story?

I personally do not believe 9/11 was a complete “inside job” by the government. I have not seen evidence to convince me of that. However, interesting anomalies and questions have arisen. They should be looked into. Debate is healthy and it should be encouraged and not censored. Also, all of the records that government has should be released on the matter. When government creates a black void, that void will be filled with conspiracy theories----some maybe correct or partially correct or completely false.

I certainly, however, do not say that we should support the official story that government has spoon-fed us. Instead of white-wash commissions and other sorry excuses, government should be demanded to open up the books, at the very least.

Is there more to the story? Yes, there is a very good chance that there is more to the story. My guess it is more in the “middle ground.” Only one who is badly informed (kiddy cons) about government and history would think that there could not be more to the story. See Robert Higgs' "Another 9/11 – in a Long Series."

[Word War II is case-in-point. President Franklin Roosevelt promised (in the politician’s dictionary it has a different meaning) the American people that he would be "neutral" and stay out of the war, but behind the scenes did everything he could to get into it. Moreover, the U.S. and Britain government decoded their marine code (JN-25), monitoring the coming Pearl Harbor attack. While fascist FDR promised not to get involved and respect the put-into place Neutrality acts, he was engaged in a kind of "cold war" with Japan. {Supporting China, by selling them military equipment (so much for neutrality); increasing naval military outfits; renouncing U.S.-Japan Commercial Treaty of 1911; implementing an embargo and freezing assets (in particular oil, something much needed----a very provocative act asking for trouble); allowing U.S. pilots in the China air force; etc. The U.S. crippled Japan. Either they would have to give up, talk with the U.S. (an impossibility with FDR not allowing talks), or attack.}]

[In this sense, WWII was not much different compared to WWI. Wilson, too, did everything he could do to get involved. Of course, the ideological war of spreading democracy, maybe something we should take note of today, back-fired completely. Hitler could never have arisen if it not for Wilson.]

See FDR, Pearl Harbor and the U.N. by John V. Denson

2001 . . . 2007

Six years later, we are ever more vulnerable, helpless, and defenseless. Anyone, if they wanted, could just walk through the artificially created open borders. Airport security is not only a shamble, but a laughing stock. Terrorists, six years later, are ever larger in number, have increased support from the Middle East public, and are ever more capable in engaging in terrorist acts (indeed numbers have skyrocketed in the Middle East). Killing and bloodshed is also, obviously, higher than ever. The U.S. government continues on its expansion of imperialistic actions. Needless to say, or at least it should be needless to say today, it has just been an utter disgrace. This is not even to mention the atrophy of liberties at home.

I agree with what former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter says, it is not so much that the American people are waking up, but that we are not winning. The American people, far from tired of empire, only are against it if it appears to be failing. How much government intrusions into our lives, families, churches, and communities will the American people stand? And how much innocent bloodshed will the American people stand? With presidents from Wilson to FDR to Bush, I think we know the answer. To quote the great Joseph Sobran: "Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves."

***

Being generally on the pessimistic side when it comes to political matters (one must remember that there is more to life than politics), there still may be some hope that things may change. The cycle of relatively great freedom to tyranny is cyclical. States rise and fall. Civilizations rise and fall. My personal feeling is that the only possibility of the U.S. empire ending is in bankruptcy, joining the rest of the bankrupt empires of past in history. And then the cycle starts again. However, one thing to note is that during a major economic crisis (even catastrophic ones) an even more despotic government can emerge, as the ignorant and power-seeking erroneously fault the free market for the dilemma. But, then again, capitalism might win out. The more complex and diversified the market becomes, the more it requires social peace free of coercion. (But will the State allow capitalism to get that far? Capitalism is no longer capitalism today.) Well, history will judge. I hope Ron Paul is a sign.

Mr. Sobran is of course brilliant. Read his latest piece available online, "The Nixon I Didn't Know," by clicking here.

"Hey, Neocon": Paleos are winning on the web.
(Plus see A Few More Thoughts)

Paul Gottfired talks about his new book, Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right . . .

--- The Neoconning of the American Right at LRC.
--- Buy Making Sense Of The American Right! at VDARE.
--- My Book at TakiMag.

Lew Rockwell on War Without End.

Justin Raimondo: Vietnam, Again.

War With Iran? It has already started, says Raimondo.

An Acid Trip Gone Bad by Fred Reed.

A Political Theory of Geeks and Wonks by Jeffrey Tucker (Which are you? Geek or Wonk?)

"Fair Tax" Scam.

Who Was Bastiat? ---- Jeffrey Tucker Interviews Mark Thornton For the Answer.

(I did take the time to watch this, despite a slow connection. Great interview! And a very nice look inside the wonderful Mises Institute and its, from all I have seen, delightful atmosphere and, dare I say, culture.)

Download The Bastiat Collection [PDFs]

Volume I & Volume II
And Buy Here.

Iraq War's Deadliest Bombings Kill 500

Tuesday: 572 Iraqis, 6 GIs Killed; 412 Iraqis Wounded

(Via Scott Horton's Stress Blog and AntiWar.com.)

More brute force is not going to cool down Iraq; quite the opposite. It will only intensify the situation. More brute force leads to more brute force. And it is this that also plays right into the hands of terrorists that want to get more recruits.

As Ron Paul says, the same people that have been telling everyone how much of a "cakewalk" the Iraq War was going to be, have been shown to be utterly wrong in all respects. These same people that have been wrong from day number one are the people that tell us that we cannot leave Iraq because the consequences would be more dire compared to if the U.S. government’s military stayed in for some unknown amount of time until "victory," whatever that may mean, or "stability" occurs.  Why should we place much value in what they say?

We should instead listen to those who were right from day one in regards to the Iraq War. The presence of American troops in Iraq only inflames the situation and increases the growth of terrorist organizations. Nor do any occupier have any right to be there.

It is better late then never, but let's bring the troops home! Let's support Ron Paul's effort in this task. There is not be found a more consistent and pure voice of the anti-war movement; be it in the Republican or Democrat parties.

See Also:

The Paleo Blog's "Al Qaeda --- Stronger Than Ever (as if we did not know that)"

Plus check out James Bovard's "Breaking Bush’s Resistance": "A pending court case could expose the administration’s torture regime." Click here. (See also on this his most recent book, Attention Deficit Democracy.)

Once upon a time a leading conservative scholar named Richard M. Weaver wrote a book in 1948 called Ideas Have Consequences. It is a short book, but very dense philosophically. One reason he wrote this book was in disgust of the use of atomic weapons in World War II. This event, he believed, was part and parcel will the loss of any moral sense. Weaver laid out his case that people have abandoned any sense of "logical realism" to find transcend truths. Rather we have "nominalism" and thus nihilism. Moral truths and rectitude vanish in such a climate. Decadence fills the culture. This move produces wars with no restraints.

Here Richard Weaver comments on the atomic-bomb project and the use of such weapons:

At Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a force of seventy thousand persons labored at an undertaking whose nature they knew little or nothing about; in fact, wartime propaganda had been so effective that they took pride in their ignorance and boasted of it as a badge of honor or as a sign of co-operation-----in what? It is just possible that a few, and I should be willing to say a very few, had they known that their efforts were being directed to the slaughter of noncombatants on a scale never before contemplated, or to a perfection of brutality as we have defined the term, might have refused complicity. Perhaps they would have had some concept of war as an institution which forbids aimless killing; perhaps they would have had a secret feeling that the world is morally designed and that offenses of this kind, under whatever auspices committed, bring retribution; in any case, it is just possible that a few of these anonymous toilers would have given a thought to the larger responsibility. It was rumored that among the world's elite concerned with atomic research that there were a few who declined to participate in an operation so contrary to the canons of civilization. . . . Imagine the modern state considering a referendum to conscience! The bomb was an unparalleled means; was this not enough? Just so does modern industrial and political organization, which is irrational hierarchy, make the citizen an ethical eunuch. If Thoreau felt, in his time, that it was a disgrace even to be associated with the government, what would he have felt in this? These corrupt bureaucracies are contemptuous of the people, in whose name they so piously speak.

Would such a learned man get a forum today at the various mainstream conservative outlets?

A year or two ago I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh celebrating dropping the atom bombs. It was a sick spectacle.

. . .

Truth is the first thing that must be extirpated in war. It cannot be allowed to get in the way of any government's war. Hence the public must be purged of truth and any objective morality. In its place must be a whipped up war nationalistic spirit. Myths of greatness and infallibility push aside objective observations. And if there is any evidence of some kind of emotional connection between a high percentage of people to their relationship with statism, war patriotism and the myths that surround that patriotism would be very high up on the list of evidence. In plain sight this was seen in the lead up to the Iraq War. For example, Charles Goyette, a talk radio show host in Phoenix, Arizona, was one of the lone voices bringing a anti-war message during this time. He was called everything from "hating America" to being a "terrorist lover." Mr. Goyette was one of many people who were attacked by this "war spirit," so to speak. (Read "How to Lose Your Job in Talk Radio" by Charles Goyette.)

This war nationalism and the myths of war, particularly in the United States, was written about by another leading scholar in conservatism. His name was Robert Nisbet, a sociologist and historian. A flip through his last two books (among others) reveals his thoughts on what the intellectual basis of conservative thought is on questions of war and peace.

He believed that World War I was the genesis, or at least when this myth came to a forefront, of the view that the United States government cannot lose in war. It derived from the false assumption that the U.S. government "almost single-handedly, won the war," wrote Nisbet in The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America. This is the "Great American Myth."

The Great American Myth gave birth to other myths: Can Do, Know How, and No Fault, myths which abide to this minute in America and yield up such disasters as Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Lebanon, and Grenada.

A few pages later he wrote this:

Add to what has thus far been said about the Great Myth and American Know How the attribute of No Fault, and we have the myth fairly well identified. Presidents, secretaries, and generals and admirals in America seemingly subscribe to the doctrine that no fault ever attaches to policy and operations. This No Fault conviction prevents them from taking too seriously such notorious foul-ups as Desert One, Grenada, Lebanon, and now the Persian Gulf.

It is this that one has to overcome to try to persuade men that the conventional wisdom is often wrong of matters of war and state. Life too often shows that it is the unconventional wisdom that has the truth on its side. So it does in the infinitely immoral and unnecessary, since Japan wanted to surrender before the event, dropping of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II.

In this goal I'll use (primarily) Mr. John V. Denson for help...

In his article "The Hiroshima Myth" he writes:

The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945.

It is true that Japan government was not willing to surrender unconditionally. They were not willing to give up their Emperor. "The Japanese religion," writes Denson, has "the belief that all the Emperors were the direct descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu."

Denson quotes a passage of a book called The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperocitz, which I will excerpt:

We have noted a series of Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief William Donovan reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested, even at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender might well be the only serious obstacle to peace.

...At the center of the explorations, as we also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of OSS operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the CIA). In his 1966 book "The Secret Surrender", Dulles recalled that "On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo – they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people." [Emphasis mine]

It was "documented by Alperocitz that Stimson reported this directly to Truman." To continue:

Alperovitz further points out in detail the documentary proof that every top presidential civilian and military advisor, with the exception of James Byrnes, along with Prime Minister Churchill and his top British military leadership, urged Truman to revise the unconditional surrender policy so as to allow the Japanese to surrender and keep their Emperor. All this advice was given to Truman prior to the Potsdam Proclamation which occurred on July 26, 1945.

And here is Gary G. Kohls in "Whitewashing Hiroshima: The Uncritical Glorification of American Militarism":

Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, said in his war memoirs, "I Was There": "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages." And General Dwight Eisenhower agreed. [Emphasis mine.]

Gary Kohls talks about the destruction:

An estimated 80,000 innocent civilians – plus 20,000 young essentially weaponless Japanese conscripts – died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing. Hundreds of thousands suffered agonizing burns, leukemia and infections for the rest of their shortened lives, and generations of the survivor's progeny inherited horrible radiation-induced illnesses, cancers and premature death. What has been covered up is the fact that 12 American Navy pilots, their existence well known to the US command, were incinerated in the Hiroshima jail on Aug. 6.

The 75,000 Nagasaki victims were virtually all innocent civilians, except for the inhabitants of an allied POW camp near Nagasaki's ground zero. They were incinerated, carbonized, then evaporated, by a scientific experiment carried out by obedient, unaware soldiers. The War Dept. knew of the existence of the POWs but, when informed, simply replied: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (atomic bomb mission code name) remain unchanged." [Emphasis mine.]

Japan would have surrendered, if the U.S. agreed to let them keep the emperor. But in the end this is exactly what happened. The terms of surrender were exactly how the Japanese government wanted it to be! Dropping the bombs was needless bloodshed and frankly evil.

John Denson closes with this:

Now that we live in the nuclear age and there are enough nuclear weapons spread around the world to destroy civilization, we need to face the fact that America is the only country to have used this awful weapon and that it was unnecessary to have done so. If Americans would come to recognize the truth, rather than the myth, it might cause such a moral revolt that we would take the lead throughout the world in realizing that wars in the future may well become nuclear, and therefore all wars must be avoided at almost any cost. Hopefully, our knowledge of science has not outrun our ability to exercise prudent and humane moral and political judgment to the extent that we are destined for extermination.

I recommend you all read the above two articles for more details. Here is further online reading:

• Remembering Hiroshima by David R. Henderson
• The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story by Gary G. Kohls
• A Military Chaplain Repents by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
• Hillary, Hiroshima, and Hubris: Justifying mass murder by Justin Raimondo
  

After seeing a LRC Blog entry, I was reminded as to why I find Hillary Clinton so repulsive. She combines all of the worst elements of a leftist-statist-neocon with an absolute shrill character of a power hungry politician. (You cannot top, errr bottom, that easily!) Perhaps only in democracy could such a person be a requirement in the conquest of high political office. Maybe this is the reason why, I would venture to predict, she really will become the next imperial president. (As I typed here in response to an article, she or whoever will be the next president will almost certainly be worse then Bush------if one could even imagine or visualize such a thing.)

On the blog Norman Singleton links to a piece in which Singleton concludes that she "combines neocon foreign policy and support for 'Patriot Act' style crackdowns on civil liberties with Michael Moore-style socialism."

Thinking about this topic, led me to reflect about how much a true Kool-Aid drinking Bush supporter would have to admire and love Hillary Clinton. Such thought is probably not possible for Bush fans, though, because to most of them politics is a game of "Republican Good, Democrat Bad." Nonetheless, the parallels are there. It would take a consistent and honest Bush fan to see it.

The only complement that I might be able to give to some of the leading neoconservative 'intellects' would be that they are at least open about their true colors (at least some of the time). If it suits them, they will jump ship. 1992, for instance, that is what happened. They jumped ship to Clinton. Don't be surprised if it happens again.

On the topic of Bush's statism and how, all-in-all, it is not so different then Hillary Clinton, we can start on domestic politics...

President Bush's Medicare drug prescription program might as well have been called Hillary-Care. Imagine the Democrats trying to pass such a bill. It would be almost impossible, but with the Republicans it became possible. As Bush was trying to pass this bill, his administration intentionally falsified the cost so that it would be past. Unsurprisingly after it was signed, the true cost started to come out. A whopper, $1.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years! Here we have an enormous expansion of government. Another day in Washington. Ho hum.

I remember when I was in High School. At this time I was first getting interested in politics. I was talking with my favorite mathematics teacher who also happened to be the person that ran or supervised the Republican Club. I never joined but thought about it. I asked him: "How can I support Bush? His drug bill could just be called Hillary-Care." I do not remember his exact response, but it went something like this: "Well, he has to comply with the wants of the public in a democracy." So, I guess to him, democracy is what conservatism means. Whatever the majority mob says must be done to their will and must be righteous. While I liked him very much (despite my disagreements), now that I picture him he really is your stereotypical Bush guy. If you saw him and looked for those stereotypical characteristics, you would instantly see that. I wonder what went through his head when I told him that I like Pat Buchanan and thought Buchanan was a (relatively) better model of conservatism. Anyways, my opinions have much evolved and developed since then (and they still are developing), but at least I was never really a full-blown neocon.

[Of secondary note in regards to these neoconservatives and democracy, as I browse around the World Wide Web, I still see some "conservatives" talking about how bringing "freedom" to Iraq is the cure, as if "democracy" were akin to "freedom" or even to conservatism. Their philosophy, overall, seems to parallel---be similar to---Rousseau. Conservatism, property understood, however, is the opposite of Rousseau's vision. It is in the line of tradition of people like Edmund Burke. I guess Raimondo's phrase "Bizarro Conservatism" comes to mind.]

Another example we could use is Bush's education bill. To hear the talking heads of radio defend it as some kind of "accountability" bill that will fix education is a joke. If we could only time travel back to, say, 1996 to see what they were saying then. What we would hear is that, surprise--surprise, they were instead for getting rid of the Federal government's education department altogether. It shows how much "principle" these folks have. Bush broke the record in the Big Government in education. Again, we might as well have a Bill or Hillary Clinton in charge. Bill Clinton, the sorry man that he was and still is, at least never expanded the government as much as our current "limited government conservative."

Enough of that (we could go on). How about foreign policy...?

During these years Hillary Clinton has tried her best to be a "centrist." The only problem is I am not sure what kind of "centrist" she is trying to be. I suppose a "centrist" left-neocon.

Her support for the Iraq War is unquestionable. She can now, with the tide of the American people so against it, pretend innocence or stupidity, but no one should buy it-----no one on the principled antiwar left does neither do the principled antiwar right.

Add with this her calls for permanent Iraq bases and her attempt to out hawk the Bush administration when it comes to Iran.

Clinton has accused the Bush administration of (her words) "downplay[ing] the threats" of Iran. So here we have someone who has tried to out warmonger the Bush administration when it comes to Iran. We "cannot take any option off the table," Clinton said. Iran "is a danger to Israel." (As if it is "our" job to defend Israel.)

This is not to mention being the wife of a husband who, writes Thomas Woods, "dispatched the military overseas forty-four times during his eight years" compared to "only eight times in the previous forty-five years." In fact, Hillary criticized her husband for not bombing soon enough or long enough Belgrade.

And as Justin Raimondo wrote in his hard-hitting article "Hillary the Hawk" in The American Conservative, she praised her husband's 1998 bombing of Iraq. "She," writes Raimondo, "boasted that it was under a Democratic administration that the U.S. [her words follow] 'changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change' and took credit for the bright idea of putting Ahmad Chalabi, convicted embezzler and known liar, on the U.S. payroll."

So are they so different? Nah. They are more alike in politics then not. Maybe she can be a bit more socialistic (in rhetoric only), but if she just cooled that down, the Republican Party might as well nominate her. She is probably going to win the presidency anyway.

Reading Material:

• Hillary the Hawk: The Democrats’ Athena only differs from Bush on the details by Justin Raimondo
• Hillary Clinton, War Goddess: She wants permanent bases in Iraq – and threatens war with Iran
  
• The Biggest Medicare Fraud Ever by James Bovard
  
• A Child Left Behind by Daniel Ernst

Antiwar radio host Mr. Scott Horton guest hosted on Charles Goyette's show today (7/24).

Interviews Conducted With:

1. Dr. Gordon Prather --- Iran's nuclear program
2. Juan Cole --- Translates some Farsi
3. Philip Giraldi --- Iran and al Qaeda, US-friendly terrorists and the Nuke option
4. Robert Dreyfuss --- Badr vs. Sadr and US support for Iran in Iraq
5. Gareth Porter --- Iran behind the bombs killing our guys in Iraq and Afghanistan?, Gen. Bergner and the Stovepipe, The peace offer of 2003
6. Justin Raimondo --- The Neocons, their motives, the Old Right and Ron Paul
   

I listened to most of it live. Unfortunately the audio connection between Scott Horton in Texas and the KFNX radio studio in Arizona was bad. I am sure you will hear that in the MP3's. But it is still worth the listen.

Download and Listen: Hour 1 | Hour 2 | Hour 3

Jeff Tucker Interviews Lew Rockwell
Audio [MP3] ~ They talk about Rockwell's visit, with Ron Paul, to Google.

Ron Meets Google
Watch YouTube Video

Ron Paul's YouTube Interview
Watch YouTube Video

Justin Raimondo On Ron Paul at TakiMag.com
"Ron Paul: The Conscience of Conservatism"

33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask
More Articles and Sneak Peeks at Thomas Woods' New Book.
Book Preface - "What the History of the Bathtub Can Teach Us"
Plus "Were American Indians Really Environmentalists?"

Pat Buchanan on War
Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan asks: "Is the United States provoking war with Iran, to begin while the Congress is conveniently on its August recess?" . . . "[S]omething smells awfully fishy here," writes Buchanan.
See "Tonkin Gulf II and the Guns of August?"
And "This Is How Empires End"

Plotting Martial Law
"Working for the Clampdown" by James Bovard.

Justin Raimondo Goes After So-Called Pro-War "Libertarianism"
"Bizarro 'Libertarianism':  Fake libertarian legal scholar crawls out of the woodwork to attack Ron Paul's antiwar stance"

Gary North on The Evil of Envy
Read his superb LRC article here.
In addition to great commentary by North, this might benefit the menace of what is known as the religious left.