Is Karl Rove Challenging Douglas Feith for the Title?

In one of his presidential campaigns, Harry Browne said the US had a great offense but no defense. 911 proved that to anyone who had the ability to reason.

Unfortunately, there is no dearth of people who find that a difficult undertaking. Shortly after the Twin Towers went down some pundits opined how now people saw they needed big government. Okay, the leviathan that took oodles of tax money to build up a military and intelligence apparatus that allowed 911 was now to be looked for to save us. So we sent them into Afghanistan to not capture our grand antagonist. Oh, don't worry, Hilary will be there to answer the phone.

Now Karl Rove, mastermind of two not so overwhelming Bush victories and the loss of the House and Senate goes on national television to say

Well, we were not involved in the world before 9/11, and look what happened.

Now, if Mr. Rove believes that we had just a few national guard units hanging out weekends at the armory, he needs Britney Spears dad to be appointed his guardian. I'm guessing he is just being as the Irish phrase has it, glich francach caca laca (I'll clean it up, cute as a outhouse rat).

Then he went on to say,

If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don't you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy?

Maybe a recession will intervene to moderate prices, but does anyone remember the price of gasoline before we went into Iraq. I don't think our being there has caused it to stabilize.

The producers of Fox News Sunday should make Rove standup when he is on as that is the usual position of a comedy routine.

Hat tips to antiwar blog and Daniel Larison

Let Him Who is Without Sin Cast the First Stink Bomb

After the English Revolution had spent itself and Cromwell had died in his bed, England decided it wanted to be Merrie Old instead of a nation of saints. Charles II was invited home. Chuck 2 wasn't all that jolly about his dad's execution so he went about getting even with the regicides. One guy he could not kill, he dug up and hanged anyway. I doubt Ollie felt too much as he hung on the gibbet, but if it made Chucky Junior feel better then that was okay.

William F. Buckley, Jr. has passed on. There are mostly encomiums even from conservatives who had disagreed with him. They are of the, "I disagreed with him, but he wasn't all that bad," stripe. That is how ladies and gents observe the passing of anyone who at least did not kill Dumbledore. I never knew the man and have nothing to say other than we were not on the same wavelength but good luck in whatever dimension awaits you.

There is a website that I am ambivalent about. I favor immigration control for a number of reasons, partly because 911 was an immigration system failure more than anything else. I am more nuanced in my views on restriction. Still, I have found it interesting to read. The editor, Peter Brimelow, published his eulogy on the passing of Buckley and gave it the title of William F. Buckley, Jr., RIP—Sort Of. That "sort of" business says it all. Reading the article, one almost feels Mr. Brimelow feels bad he can't put the man on the gibbet before the body get too cold.

Undoubtedly, there will be many books out that will praise or pillory WFB. That would be the time to honorably stick the knife in with a review. Heck, I'm sure Mr. Brimelow could write one of those books.

Mr. Brimelow has put his character on display and it is not pretty. As the voice of humility, I've done the same. Mostly in my youth, I never passed up the chance to be less than gentlemanly and I regret it. I hope Mr. Brimelow figures it out.


The man more than anyone else who might have reason to write a mean spirited bit on Buckley's passing didn't to my knowledge. He did write a piece about the man over a year ago that viciously got back at his former boss. Actually, no. He wrote kindly about the man as Buckley started his battle with emphysema. Peter, Joe Sobran has a lesson for you on how to be a gentleman.

William S. Lind and Fools Rush In

William S. Lind's article title Fools Rush In says it alll. Mr. Lind, at the Defense and the National Interest blog, characterizes removing Kosovo from Serbia as a "crime and a blunder." Though the Neutralist yields to no one in disgust at our support of criminal acts we are more upset at blunders.

There is something about Europe and the US that WWI just has to be kept going. When George M. Cohan wrote were Over There and the lines, We won't be back till it's over over there, no one realized that it would never be over there. There must be magnets in the ground of the Balkans that keep attracting us. It's one of histories dumber attractions.

Mr. Lind says the Russkies are not amused and I don't blame them. He says they have the capacity to help the Serbs that they did not during the prior Clinton era unpleasantness. Memories are short in this life. Russia does not have to start a war to have a little fun with us. The two most complete defeats suffered by the superpowers postwar, Viet Nam and Afghanistan, saw neither patron commit ground units. It would not be without irony if we left Afghanistan because Russia started supplying, oh, I don't know, maybe something analogous to a stinger.

I don't think they really love the Taliban, but the Taliban did not invade Russia and never would.

Our forces are overextended. The opportunities for mischief are many.

Of course, there are no dearth of neocons touting the New Cold War. Of course, none of them are rushing to the colors.

Mr. Lind's proposal makes sense if there really were those magnets, but we don't have a real interest in Southeast Europe. We did not have one in 1916 either. It's too hard to say au revoir, let's just bug out. The Balkans were never worth Bismarck's Pomeranian Grenadier, they are not worth a National Guardsman.

George Friedman and the Good War

George Friedman at Stratfor reminds us that there is still a place called Afghanistan and we are still there. Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and the Good War is kind of bad form on his part. He shouldn't be bringing this up and disturbing our collective thoughts, but that's his job. If the world were perfect, Stratforians would not have much to occupy their time.

I think the gist is, we are there, it's not going to get better, and we are going to be staying. He sums it up,

If the endgame in Iraq is murky, the endgame if Afghanistan is invisible.

Still, if we are going to keep AQ neutralized, we have to keep the Taliban off balance.

The neutralist disagrees. Our position is that we shall be forced out sooner or later and we compound the disaster by staying.

We have made it clear, the war was a mistake to begin with. Maybe, if we had bagged OBL and bugged out we could have claimed something, but we didn't. The most intelligent strategy I have ever heard was best explained in a letter to the Antiwar.com letters page years ago. It was posted by George D. of the UK, "the terrorists could have been hunted one-by-one by having a special task force that deals with it, like Israel did in hunting the Nazi war criminals, without going to war with the country that provided shelter for them." Of course such a policy would need focus over a long term and could not be a TV war and no party out of power would have been able to resist accusing the administration of doing nothing.

George ends on the following note,

Thus, while it may be a better war than Iraq in some sense, it is not a war that can be won or even ended. It just goes on.

Not forever.

See our previous discussion of Afghanistan

The Neutralist Article of the Week Award

It's only Thursday, but entries are closed. The Neutralist Grand Committee met just about a nanosecond ago in executive session to award the coveted Neutralist Article of the Week Award. Over a gourmet breakfast of cold, stale leftover pizza it was decided that the winner is Justin Raimondo's Wednesday, February 27, 2008 Behind the headlines column titled, McCain, Militarism, and the Legacy of Teddy Roosevelt Will Americans embrace "the strenuous life"?

The piece is almost a history lesson of interventionism vs. anti interventionism with analysis of the economic disaster that interventionism becomes and in our case is becoming.

Just a tad of his article is here:

The policy of imperialism, far from being the cause of riches descending on the nation, was an expensive and divisive "solution" to the alleged crisis of American capitalism, one that could not be sustained then any more than it cannot be sustained now. As underscored by the costs involved in setting up and defending our newly conquered Iraqi province, our empire is not a gain, economically, but a drain – although a new, rising class of war profiteers, colonial administrators, and investment bankers underwriting the whole imperial project directly benefits from our policies. McCain is their voice and their champion.

Elsewhere in the article he quotes McCain claiming to defend civilization. John McCain would not know what civilization is if it bit him in the ass.

Congratulations, Justin. You can now tout yourself an award winning writer. You have the full weight of the Neutralist behind you. You lucky dog.

End International Welfare

Kareem Amer is in an Egyptian Jail because the religious grand poobahs of his country don't really believe too much in God. Well, they don't think that much of him if they have to scurry to do his dirty work. It's not like God has told any of faithful that KA has caused him to want them to do anything about it. My guess is God is doing okay and KA's dissing of him does not have him in a tizzy.

Hey, Egypt is Egypt and if they want to go medieval, who am I to be upset. After all, you could get in Christian trouble for heresy in the West a few centuries ago. And of course, Spinoza had a few problems with Jewish heresy as did Christ.

My problem with medieval is I don't want to subsidize it. Egypt and a lot of countries get a lot of moolah from us and they don't make us proud.

I think the jailing of KA is disgusting. As a neutralist, I am anti-intervention If they want to pull this barbarism, they should do it on their own dime.

Scrap of Paper

I forget a lot of stuff as I age, so I may be misremembering Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian War. What I recall is how the Greeks would make treaties, swearing oaths to the gods and conveniently forgetting their pious acts as soon as expedient.

So it is today. Kosovo will declare independence with at least our tacit approval even though we agreed it was to remain de jure part of Serbia when we needed to end our bombing campaign.

I suppose we knew and the Serbs knew at the time that this would happen. They saved face and Clinton did not have to suffer the expense and unpopularity of a ground campaign.

Treaties and agreements are always scraps of paper when of no value to the signatories.

It is the Neutralist's belief that a neutralist foreign policy would require less scraps of paper and those we did need would be of limited purpose to serve the real needs of signatories.

Anyway, With Kosovo's declaration and our acquiescing, we advertise ourselves a scrap of paper nation.

The Neutralist Article of the Week Award

It is, of course, unfair to give this award to only one article. There have been some good ones, but it is the end of the week and this one is deserving.

Keep in mind, awardees may not wish to be honored by the Neutralist, so though we do wish to tar them with our brush as this is a lonely endeavor to begin with, we do issue the caveat.

Bill Kristol's Obscure Masterpiece is a discussion of how poor Bill Kristol did so poorly when he went up against Daniel Ellsberg on Cspan just after the beginning of the Gulf War. The show has almost disappeared from history and if I were Kristol, I'd do what I could to see that it was forever gone because, to be kind, it does not enhance his reputation.

The article would be in the running just for showing up the foolishness of one member of our political class. It clinched the award with these lines,

What this suggests about the people running America is far worse than if they were simply malevolent super-geniuses: They don't know the backstory and couldn't care less. It's as though we're riding in the back seat of a car driven by people who demanded the wheel but aren't sure what the gas pedal does or what a stop sign actually looks like.

Kristol, ivy grad, best and brightest, displayed a lack of historical knowledge and an inventiveness of an alternate history that makes the quote dead on. Neutralism is warranted as our national foreign policy ethos because we will always have the ex student government types running things and the simplest foreign policy is the best they can manage.

Congratulations Tom Engelhardt and Jonathan Schwarz.

Chickenhawks of the left, or, let George do it.

A couple of years ago, I was walking from Penn Station to the Javits Center in the Big Apple with my son of a Saturday. As we tramped along, we passed a two young men walking the other way. One, a well coiffed lad in his late teens and early twenties with the air of prosperity about him. He was wearing a sweatshirt as the autmnal temperature would have suggested. No surprise there. What caught my eye was the legend, “Save Darfur.”

I may be unfairly judging the man, but what such people seem to be telling me is, “I care, in a fashionable sort of way.” They are the chickenhawks of the left. They want to save Darfur the same way that species of the right wants to bring democracy to Iraq, through the blood of less well off men.

The make the world safe for democracy types have screwed up things in Iraq and the kumbyah chickenhawks wish to do it in the Sudan. Ah, but they would tell you they only want to help the poor and downtrodden. Well our track record in Iraq is not all that good, why would any suspect it would get better in another hot desert clime?

Why indeed. Over at the FAIR website there is an article that getting involved would muck things up. I think Julie Hollar makes the case very well and if you want more you can go over to Antiwar Radio and hear Isabel McDonald, FAIR communications director makes it clear how do gooders do bad.

If you are optimistic about do gooder interventionism, how’d Somalia work out?

Hey, don’t get me wrong, if Gerorge wants to raise a battalion from sales of sweatshirts and his own fortune, that’s okay with me. He may miss a movie and a payday as he commands Clooney’s Own, but he will have not caused someone else to die for his taste.

The Fund Raiser

The Neutralist announces a fundraiser. Our work here is for the long haul. Granted, we don't do enough of it and we steal other peoples' efforts wherever possible.

Still, we could do better. Your chief executive would probably be just as much a slacker but he could hire staff that would get something done. The Neutralist Association could become another think tank with plush offices and better food. We could send moi to Monte Carlo to investigate the foreign policy of Monaco.

Such plans do not come cheap. We will not consider donations of less than $10 million US per person. We have our pride, so please have some consideration.

If that is something you feel is out of your reach, Antiwar.com is having a fundraiser and might be interested in your mite. They do the day to day grunt work of anti interventionism.

Disclaimer, I don't agree with everything at Antiwar, but I agree with a lot. I am sure there are aspects of the Neutralist they don't share.

A Superpower Skeptic

Over at 2Blowhards I read this in one of Michael B's Elsewhere postings,

* Gavin Andreson wonders what we get out of playing the world's numero uno superpower.

So, I clicked the link and moseyed over to GavinThink. Mr. Andresen has been kind enough to permit me to copy the whole post which we appropriate as a policy statement which we can well afford as we have been able to maintain our funding level at $00.00.

Anyway we copy it below and the link is here.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Superpower Skeptic

Here's a thought experiment: would it be so terrible if the United States stopped being the world's military superpower?

What would happen if we reduced defense spending down to the level of, say, Australia (the 13'th largest defense budget in the world)? The US spends over half a trillion dollars a year on the military, Australia spends 14 billion dollars a year-- or roughly half a trillion dollars less than the US.

I was born in Australia-- it's a very nice country. As far as I can tell, Australia isn't suffering because it's not the World's Number One SuperPower. Like the US, it doesn't share any borders with unfriendly neighbors (but my mum tells me that a big worry down under in the sixties was the "Yellow Peril"-- that Chinese overpopulation would force them to invade).

Run the thought experiment in reverse-- what benefits would Australia get if it spent an extra half a trillion dollars a year and became the Worlds Greatest Fighting Force?

I know next to nothing about defense or foreign policy, so enlighten me-- besides bragging rights, what am I getting for that half a trillion dollars that I wouldn't get if we spent 20 billion dollars instead?

Posted by Gavin Andresen at 9:15 AM

Labels: Politics, Public Policy, Skeptical


4 comments:
Bill said...

The War on Terror.
7:52 PM
Gavin Andresen said...

RE: The War on Terror:

I am not afraid.

If we all stopped acting afraid and truly made this the Home of the Brave, then terrorism wouldn't work.
9:27 PM
Xenophon said...

The US military/industrial complex is incredibly powerful. Mess with that at your peril. Also, many very large business interests worldwide are buoyed up by the presence of troops in so many countries. It's quite subtle, but think of it as a sort of guarantee that US economic interests will be upheld all over the globe...oil, minerals, agricultural products, etc. It works to the benefit of the US in precisely the same way as Roman troops benefited their far-flung economic interests back 2000 years ago.
10:05 PM
Gavin Andresen said...

Anybody have good pointers on attempts to quantify how much business benefit we get from the half trillion dollars we spend?

Browsing the Wikipedia GDP per capita table, I don't see a correlation between military spending and economic productivity.

So I'm deeply skeptical that all our military spending is making US companies (or US citizens) richer...
11:48 AM

I think Mr. Gavin did a good job in defending himself in the comments and The Neutralist thanks him for the post.

Res ipsa loquitur, again, and again, and again

Hamid Karzai will soon have to decide if a court verdict in Afghanistan condemning a man to death can stand. The man's crime was insulting Islam.

The concept of God in Islam is of a fragile deity. I confess to no standing in religious questions. Attending a college where four semesters of theology were required, my greatest accomplishment was setting a record for the number of classes cut. I must observe that here in the West we have minor artists who paint The Virgin mary or put a crucifix in urine. Now, I've seen these creations and they are impressive in that they expose the silliness of the western art loving crowd. God himself seems to have been affected not one whit. Allah, as conceived by Islam seems to be horribly wounded and to make him better, the blood of Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh must be spilled.

Points of theology are not the purpose of this post, however. Rather, I must observe how stupid it is that we are propping up a regime that is even debating this point. Let us say it again, the war in Afghanistan was buffoonery from day one and will be forever. Except it won't be forever. It will not necessarily end in defeat by the insurgency. That could happen if we stay too long. No, we have already defeated ourselves.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall!

Here in Nova Anglia it is all sadness. Until last night, On Radio and in print the predictions were that the Patriots would triumph big.

Moi, I had no interest in the game. As a kid, I remember when the team was formed. Bob Dee, the man who scored the first points ever (granted it was an exhibition game) in the old American Football League spoke at our little league dinner and it was like hearing a god though I have no memory of his speech. I remember Lou Sabin, the Pat's first coach and Jimmy Colclough, first quarterback. I was a sports fanatic as a kid, but grew out of it and so should my countrymen. Sports is Oprah for guys. Still, I take no pleasure in the sad eyes my fellow Swamp Yankees will be showing this day.

This is not my purpose in this post, however. The silly provincial triumphalism is a metaphor for a greater national aspect.

There is no joy in Mudville and I've not the heart to finish the line.

Plus ça change and how stupid can we get?

If the American people can be sold the Iranian Speedboat incident as a Casus belli, then I do tremble for my country. Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com has both our video and their's and some anaysis of the audio.

Who does the neutralist believe? The question is beyond ridiculous, as if deciding between the two had any meaning.

If the little Persian Putt Putts were really threatening, well they could be blown out of the water with ease. If such tiny boats are a threat to our navy, I want a refund on all the taxes that have been paid for all the Pinafores and the contractors hung for fraud in selling such junk.

If we are ever to attack Iran, the nation must be propagandized into it. Must the shilling be so shoddy.

Switzerpan and a closer look at neutralism vs. isolationism

Last week Michael Blowhard of 2Blowhards linked to the post on the progress of John Derbyshire. One of the group over there, Donald Pittenger awarded me the "It's 1928 Forever" award. He also congratulated me on “being an Isolationist (though he doesn't seem to realize it yet).” At first, I thought of finding him and confronting him with a taunt (Son, your shirt is hanging out) to provoke him into challenging me to a duel so I could choose water pistols at any distance and have my satifaction by soaking him to the bone.

Of course, neutralists know that we do not want to get into a neverending cycle of violence, for who knows what strategem he might have then employed to cause me to challenge him.

Instead, I answered him on the nature of neutralism versus isolationism.

I think we have to get a handle here on what is an Isolationist. The Japanese before Perry were Isolationist, the Swiss are Neutralist. The difference is vast.

Mr. Pittenger was not completely satisfied,

I'm not intelligent enough to grasp that the difference between pre-Meiji Japan and modern Switzerland is "vast" especially when geopolitical settings are taken into account. At the core, both countries decided to pull back their horns. Japan later became aggressive -- because they were able to. The Swiss haven't -- because they are not able to, among other factors. (And yes, I'm familiar with the Swiss military system -- it is defensive, in nature.)

Because of his comment, I feel compelled to analyze neutralism versus isolationism in a tad more detail.

Japan up until Perry’s arrival was a hermit kingdom. It did not have a neutral foreign policy, it had essentially no foreign policy. It was like a hermit living in a hut in the forest who screams and yells and throws stones when anyone approaches.

Switzerland is a good neighbor. A neighbor who does not interfere with your business, but is glad to cooperate in cleaning up after the mess left by a storm. He might even have you and the missus over for dinner and accept a return invite, but he won’t insist you change the drapes or rearrange the furniture to his taste, nor will he league with the neighbors to make you. The gulf between the hermit and the good neighbor as between the isolationist and neutralist is thus vast.

He also avers that, “Japan later became aggressive -- because they were able to. The Swiss haven't -- because they are not able to, among other factors..” This assertion is interesting and has caused me to give it some thought. Alright, you are the hermit and somebody comes up to your hut with a gun and tells you that you have no choice but to live his way. What lesson do you come up with. Maybe the only reason we’re so bad is we can be. They really couldn’t be neutralist because we would not let them be. I could argue this in greater detail, but suffice it to say, if you have a choice, be Swizerland.

Neutralism is grateful to Michael and the folks at 2Blowhards for the notice and to Mr. Pittenger as well.

Calling for Assistance

Try as I might, I can't find any information about the name change from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Tonkin.

If anyone has some information on the name change, let me know.

The Neutralist announces a contest!

Previously, the Neutralist has noted smears against candidate Ron Paul, McCain blaming him for the rise of Hitler and Heffernan trying to make him out a white supremacist. Nobody has yet tried to actually equate him to Hitler.

The Neutralist is stymied by this. Such restraint across the board from the MSM to the Neocons to Chomskyite crazies is amazing, but can it last?

The Neutralist has decided to take the bull by the horns. We therefore announce a contest. The first media person to equate Ron to Dolph will have a prescription of whatever psychotropic substance has been legally prescribed him or her paid for by the Neutralist.

Can we be more fair?

I am an accursed man, I live in interesting times

The Neutralist has no great insights into the Pakistani political world. No sage prediction. It is just more of the international game of twister we keep playing.

The comedy continues.

To the Editors,

To the editor of the New Yorker,

Dear Mr. Remnick,

I am writing to inform you of a problem your magazine may have. One Virginia Heffernan has recently had a hit piece about presidential candidate, Ron Paul, published by the New York Times. It appears that this woman's idea of what is a "fact" may be a problematic.

I believe the lass was once employed by your magazine as a "fact" checker. You may be wanting to do two things. First, check through all her work to see that she actually did the job she was assigned. Second, you might want to review your hiring procedures so that you are sure those whom you take on board for the position in question actually know what a "fact" is.

I know you will want to do this as the reputation of your publication is at stake.

All the best.

The Neutralist

John Derbyshire Wins 2007 Neutralist Award for Most Progress

I favor war against Iraq. I believe a successful war against Iraq would trigger major attitude adjustment in the Middle East, to the benefit of us and the promotion of our values. I believe it would greatly enhance this country’s security by removing a major supplier of WMD to terrorist gangs.

John Derbyshire wrote the words above for the article, The U.S. Will Not Go to War Against Iraq. The title and the date, May 20, 2002 insure that no future religious book will ever refer to him as the Prophet Derb. The article is not without interest, the man can write. Sometimes, the conclusions are stupid as above, but he has style.

Unless my memory fails me, I believe Mr. Derbyshire done a few mea culpas about the war, though I can't swear to it.

Between 2002 and his current attainment of enlightenment, he has made statements that the Neutralist would put, if forced, the label, mindlessly barbaric on. On the other blog, the voice of humility we commented on Derb in a post titled Hard as Nails

I agree with Gene Healy's agreement with Julian Sanchez's take on John Derbyshire. "his views are, often as not, absolutely vile. But he's exceptionally sharp and learned, and expresses his thuggish views without cant or sugar coating, which I suppose is a virtue. It's almost as if a team of genetic scientists took a mouth-breathing, beer-swilling, Pak-bashing specimen of pure Cockney trash and raised his IQ by 100 points. How can he fail to be interesting?"

Mr. D is in trouble with some people for giving up religion. An ability to argue Episcopal theology is absent here so others can have a go at him for that. I did read his un conversion story and it seemed reasonable enough. I get the feeling he stayed as long as he did out of filial piety or he was no longer in his comfort zone. Anyway, now that he has left his up scale (in American eyes) denomination, it may be easier to think of him as that lager lout.

No, I found something else to to discuss. Actually, he makes a pretty good case for his having that genteel thuggish side in his review of Mark Steyn's America Alone,

"I am, in fact, willing to confess myself a collateral-damage armchair warrior, who would be happy to see us trade in our inventory of smart laser-guided precision munitions for lots and lots and lots of old-style iron bombs, and fleets of great big iron planes to deliver them. Remember those photographs of mid-1945 Berlin, fragments of broken wall sticking up out of vast drifts and dunes of pulverized masonry? Now that’s rubble.

Oh, and we won that war."

That is certainly refreshing. He just loved the Hun suffering. Ooh, forgot to mention that arm sticking up through that rubble.

Of course, that his point is ridiculous goes without saying. No expert has ever suggested that conventional bombing won the war in Europe. I hate to jog anyone's memory as I know of my own early onset, but it was the Big One that ended the Pacific War.

So, okay, you might think from a neutralist point of view he's a no hoper. Now, I would not say he is actually a neutralist, it is the distance he has traveled. He has come out for Ron Paul. I called him a chickenhawk in my post above. I take that back as he came out for Ronnie at NRO online, a hotbed of neocons who can't be to happy about JD's conversion which is the biggest turn of a coat since Paul traveled the Jerusalem-Damascus Interstate.

Anyway, His article, Liberty! Liberty! is worth reading. Best line, "If those people are crazy, though, I want to be crazy with them. I’m for liberty, too. That’s why I’m for Ron Paul. And why do we have 75,000 soldiers in Germany?"

The Neutralist confers the award as stated in the title of this post and pronounces John Derbyshire sane.

New Links

Defense and the National Interest is moving to blog like their man Fabius Maximus did.

Glen Greenwald may be a lefty, but so far there is little in the foreign policy area where the Neutralist disagrees.

I doubt that we shall be really helping Mr. Bruce Schneier by linking to him, but as he linked to the Downsize DC website, well he will have to suffer the ignominy of a link from the Neutralist. He was linking to a particularly interesting article.

Will World War I Ever End?

Both Nebojsa Malic at antiwar.com and George Friedman at Stratfor have timely articles on our foreign policy foolishness in the Balkans. Basically, we are promoting Albanian independence.

The big question is why are we pushing this now as we don't have all that many cards. Here is George Friedman's take on it,

The re-engineering of the Balkans always has assumed that there is no broader geopolitical price involved. Granting Kosovo independence would put Russia in a position in which interests that it regards as fundamental are challenged. Even if the West doesn't see why this should be the case, the Russians have made clear that it is so -- and have made statements essentially locking themselves into a response or forcing themselves to accept humiliation. Re-engineering a region where there is no risk is one thing; re-engineering a region where there is substantial risk is another.

more importantly,

The Germans have neither the resources nor the appetite for such a crisis. The Americans, bogged down in the Islamic world, are hardly in a position to deal with a crisis over Kosovo. The Russian view is that the West has not reviewed its policies in the Balkans since 1999 and has not grasped that the geopolitics of the situation have changed. Nor, in our view, has Washington or Berlin grasped that a confrontation is exactly what the Russians are looking for.

George is dead on, but let us take a warning from history as given by Nebojsa Malic,

When Otto von Bismarck called the Congress of Berlin in 1878, he hoped it would resolve the Balkans crisis. It ended up destroying his alliance with Russia, and setting the stage for the Great War in 1914. Austria started that war hoping to crush the pesky little Serbia and establish hegemony in the Balkans. Serbia survived, if just barely. Austria-Hungary did not.

Somehow, I don't think the lads at State or in the White house are doing an adequate risk/reward assessment

The Neutralist is posting this to bang the drum again, that an interventionist foreign policy inevitably causes more problems then it could ever solve and will eventually lead to the disaster of self defeat.

As a little note, the propaganda war against Vladimir Putin since Time anointed him has intensified with the ludicrous David Frum on Marketplace. This is the man that coined the Axis of Evil buffonery. He is after Vlad for getting rich in politics, Writing puff pieces for Presidents and American state radio is a living, but I can see where he might be jealous. He laments,

Russia, which once seemed to be evolving into something like a normal country, has retreated into enigma and authoritarianism.

Oh, gee, when was that evolution occurring? Was it that era when sharpies were looting commie property and driving all of Russia into poverty?

The man is an embarrassment.

As an aside, we oft hear of the Islamic practice of Taqqiyah which I guess might be loosely translated as lying for the cause. Such an idea is loathsome. When we ended the Bombing of Serbia, we agreed Kosovo would remain, at least de jure, part of Serbia. That was a deliberate lie. We have taqqiyah, in a subtle sort of way.

Is Tehran University Historically a Part of New Hampshire?

As you drive through the Granite State you see the words "Live Free or Die" on License Plates issued by the DMV. You now see them defiantly proclaimed by lads risking life and limb to do it. Maybe not the Battle of Bennington (The New Hampshiremen were at least armed) but it's something.

There are also some lassies holding signs about gender problems. Nothing as important as worrying about heteronorming at Hahvud. The Persian girls only have little stuff to worry about like being partially buried and stoned.

The Neutralist always subscribes to the doctrine of John Quincy Adams that "America is the friend of liberty everywhere but the guarantor only of our own." We do not wish to send the fleet and army to end the current theocracy. If we did it would taint the effort that the people of Iran must do for themselves.

Still, we admire the cause and wish it well. As a former resident of New Hampshire, and by the authority not invested in me, I hereby constitute the Order of General Stark and induct the lads holding the sign as charter members.

"Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils."

It's Alive

Yesterday, we opined that the war was maybe on hold permanently. That is, of course, to be hoped, but may not be so. Our Bourbon president has refused to rule out a strike against Iran in light of the NIE findings, saying,

"Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon," he said at the White House.

"What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?"

Yup, time to reopen the search for Judge Crater as well.

Of course our Pres is not the only one to feel the the Persians may still need some discipline. Justin Raimondo over at Antiwar.com has a ball with the NRO corneristas and others. My fav little bit, "Podhoretz has "dark suspicions," he confides, that the intelligence community is "bending over backwards" to avoid the mistakes it made during the run-up to war with Iraq. Naturally, he avoids mentioning that he, Norman Podhoretz, was just as wrong as they were, if not more so – so why, given his own Bizarro World logic, should we believe anything he says?" Do ya think Justin just might be a tad hard here? You go boy.


What most warmed the cockles of my heart this cold morning was a bit from the Antiwar blog, Ron Paul Vindicated on Iran. I have debate fatique at this point and could live without seeing another one. Still, it would be nice to at some point have the questioner say to Ronnie, "We owe this to you, if you wish, you can take a minute to gloat."

Phew

The Iranian adventure appears to be on hold, and with the clear statement of the National Intelligence Estimate, maybe permanently so.

The Neutralist is happy with the announcement that,

We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program

Isn't that lovely. Is it possible that the conclusions of our intelliegence are policy driven and policy has changed? Let us quote George Friedman Strafor article of December 3, 2007 entitled The NIE Report: Solving a Geopolitical Problem with Iran

In looking at the report, a number of obvious questions come up. First, how did the intelligence community reach the wrong conclusion in the spring of 2005, when it last released an NIE on Iran, and what changed by 2007? Also, why did the United States reach the wrong conclusions on Iran three years after its program was halted? There are two possible answers. One is intelligence failure and the other is political redefinition.

Also, from the article's previous paragraph,

The NIE release represents a transformation of U.S. policy toward Iran. The Bush administration made Iran's nuclear weapons program the main reason for its attempt to create an international coalition against Iran, on the premise that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. If there is no Iranian nuclear program, then what is the rationale for the coalition? Moreover, what is the logic of resisting Iran's efforts in Iraq, rather than cooperating?

So does someone high up say, "Today the alliance is between Eastasia and Oceania and we need an intel estimate reflecting that." Nothing so crass, I am sure.

Mr. Friedman's article goes through the problems of collecting and using intelligence. They are many and varied and reading his article will give more detail. Suffice it to say, in our overseas adventuring (not wishing to cause a hissy fit amongst those offended by calling our having troops, fleets and aircraft in all corners of the Earth imperialism)intelligence must serve policy and propaganda as well as actual knowledge of other countries intentions.

This is why we beat the drum constantly (if not frequently enough) for a neutralist national ethos. If we are less places the need for political uses of intelligence will go down, as well as, one hopes, costs and corrupting influences.

Thanks, Senator McCain

Those few of us in the not so vast neutralist conspiracy owe a debt of gratitude to John McCain. Yes, he is arrogant and cranky and wrong about most things, but I am grateful to him for making a mistake that was beneficial to the cause of not getting into stupid wars. Not that it will in the end be of too much help. Still, we must be thankful for even the small victories that come our way.

There were all the lower tier candidates being ignored on the CNN Youtube festival of silliness when McCain, without really needing to, went after Ron Paul for the sin of causing Adolph Hitler.

We allowed (Adolf) Hitler to come to power with that attitude of isolation

I suspect the congressman from Texas might not have been alive or certainly only a child at the time Dolph started to rise to power. No matter, it gave my boy Ronnie a chance to try and undim the Senator by explaining his position,

I want to trade with people, talk with people, travel, Paul explained. But I don't want to send troops overseas using force to tell them how to live.

This is a good shorthand explanation of neutralism. As to what brought about Hitler and WWII, the Neutralist has explained it all before. If you have John's phone number and want to explain it to him, you can read to him from America's greatest 20th century victory, relevant passage here,

There was WWI, The Great War. I've wondered about that name, "The Great War." It is doubtful that the lads who spent all those years in the trenches would have thought it so great. We got into it because the president at the time, Wilson, wanted to "make the world safe for democracy" by fighting "the war to end all wars." Now sober reflection - an endeavor, I used to avoid like the plague - would tell one that such comments were moronic. Certainly, history has proved Mr. Wilson wrong. Still, it led our country to send enough men over to pull the Allies' chestnuts out of the fire. Wilson, fresh from a rhetorically successful Mexican adventure gave a war message that went something like this, "Oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia." No, well close enough.

Did our country get anything out of this? Of course: war dead, left where we had no compelling national interest. Worse, while our troops were overseas, the early twentieth century version of the soccer moms managed to slip through a constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale and use of alcohol. In a way, this brought about a continuation of World War I on the home front (Let me digress a second, religious Jews were allowed wine for certain holidays. I can see the handwriting on the wall. Maybe someone will want to join me in starting a new religion with bacon and other high cholesterol foods as sacraments so we can be ready when the health Nazis ban them.)

There were other results from that "Great War" including Hitler. Yes folks, without Woody, Dolph would have probably spent his declining years raving in a Bavarian old soldiers' home. By demonizing Kaiser Bill and getting rid of the Imperial German Government we insured instability in Germany. Maybe an Allied victory did not lead to Hitler in an algebraic equation (Allied victory + German defeat = Hitler) but it is impossible to imagine the Third Reich, the holocaust, etc. had the Kaiser stayed in power after a peace of exhaustion.

Please let John know we are here for him. We don't want to see him ever again make himself look as silly.

Fabius Maximus

Over to the right, one can see a new link. It is to the blog of Fabius Maximus. He has usually been seen at the Defense and the National Interest cite also linked. I do not always agree with him or his mate William S. Lind but I always find them interesting and can always take the neutralist conclusion from their writings even when they might not be able to.

So check the lad out.

They're Taking Him Seriously

Yup, people are taking notice of Ron Paul. On the strength of a $500 donation from a white supremacist wacko Ronnie is being accused of all but Holocaust Denial at Bald Headed Geek. Daniel Sieradski is upset that the candidate is not in constant contact with him.

Look kids, if a non interventionist foreign policy scares you that much, the voice of humility will tell you how to kill my boy's candidacy the easy way. All you have to do is bring up his ideas about Social Security.

"We’ve all heard proposals for “privatizing” the Social Security system. The best private solution, of course, is simply to allow the American people to keep more of their paychecks and invest for retirement as they see fit." American voters won't be scared about Ron Paul's thoughts on the gold standard, but they do get worried when you tell them they might not be getting a "free" check no matter how inflated the currency it is paid in.

This method of attack is also dishonorable. Still, it is preferable than using up the term anti-semite. Reserve that for people who really deserve it.

Steven LaTulippe tells us why we should not bug the Muzzies

Steven LaTulippe has an article posted at Takimag (November 7, 2007) that channels the thoughts of the neutralist. In Let’s Sit Out World War IV He gives reasons why the US should bug out of the Middle East. We agree and though it is not exhaustive in discussing all our geopolitical problems, it is dead on in the area it does cover:

America does not border the Islamic world. It has a statistically insignificant Muslim population that is better assimilated than that of any other Western nation. America is bounded on its east and west by vast oceans and to the north and south by two militarily weak and predominantly Christian nations.

The irony resides, of course, in the fact that despite these blessings, America is the nation doing most of the fighting against radical Islam.

When analyzing the likely course of these civilizational struggles – and plotting a strategy for America to deal with them – one must also recognize another important fact: The ultimate outcome of Islam’s civilizational wars has already been determined. Radical Islam is not a viable paradigm upon which a modern society can be built. It is destined, like communism before it, to collapse from within. The trajectory of political Islam can already be seen in Iran, where it first came to power. As a governing system, the Islamic Republic has been discredited in the eyes of the masses and survives mostly by repression and manipulation. Economically and culturally, it is an utter failure.

Furthermore, radical Islam is not now, nor will it ever be, a civilizational threat to America. Nor will it conquer the world or overturn modern civilization. These goals are simply beyond its capacity

When these two ideas are considered together (i.e. the lack of geopolitical conflict between America and Islam, and the inevitable collapse of Islam as a political ideology), America’s most prudent path becomes obvious: The United States should withdraw from the Middle East and declare itself a non-belligerent in Islam’s civilizational wars. In so doing, America can avoid the casualties and ruinous costs of wars which have nothing to do with our national survival.

Given the immediate proximity of numerous, ancient enemies (and the many bloody divisions that exist within the body of Dar-al Islam itself), the Muslim combatants will not long bother themselves with a non-threatening nation on the other side of the planet. America’s tragic involvement in these wars was wholly the product of our wrong-headed, interventionist foreign policy. When that provocation is removed, so will the cause for enmity.

While obviously beneficial to America, this strategy leaves open the issue of what will happen in the aftermath of our withdrawal.

In all probability, the civilizational struggles between Islam and its neighbors will progress along their natural trajectories.

And what would those trajectories be? Well, when the West had nothing to worry about as regards the non west, we managed to slaughter each other in the two big Twentieth Century conventional intramural contests. Maybe the Islamic world can return the compliment and show us how they can kill each other in fourth generation contests amongst themselves. Or, maybe, without us there, they will stabilize and built a great international civilization. Maybe not. We do not predict the outcome, but believe the world would be no worse and ourselves much better under Neutralism.

We might feel differently if the nations of the region possessed carrier fleets. As it is, all we need do is not let in lads who want to go to flight schools with a non landing curriculum and overstay visas along with a general tightening up of immigration policies and practices.

That Guy Murphy Must Have Worked At State

His law, "What can go wrong, will" should be memorized by all the geniuses there.

So we hardly get over containing the Turkish intervention brouhaha and now there is the Pakistan neo coup.

Of course, many of the brainiacs over at foggy bottom probably view this as an opportunity rather than a crisis. Breathes there a Georgetown or Kennedy School graduate with soul so dead that they can't whip up an op ed for Wapo or NYT in a trice?

Of course, surely there is someone ahead of the game who is already working on the book rights for Who Lost Pakistan.

Stratfor on Iran

George Friedman over at Stratfor has written an article titled War Plans: United States and Iran. In his first paragraph, the words I found most interesting are,

A possible U.S. attack against Iran has been a hot topic in the news for many months now. In some quarters it has become an article of faith that the Bush administration intends to order such an attack before it leaves office. It remains a mystery whether the administration plans an actual attack or whether it is using the threat of attack to try to intimidate Iran -- and thus shape its behavior in Iraq and elsewhere

So the well informed (after all it is his business to be in the know) Mr. Friedman is not certain that the attack is going to happen. This, pour moi, is cause for some optimism.

Most of his piece is a discussion of what the shape of an attack could take and the drawbacks. There is no dearth of negatives and Mr. Friedman takes the time to point them out. It is starting to get cold up here in Nova Anglia so he is at his most scary when he states,

consider the Iranian response. Iran does not expect to defeat the U.S. Air Force or Navy, although the use of mine warfare and anti-ship cruise missiles against tankers in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz should not be dismissed.

So heating the old homestead should increase in cost if the Persians get some mines out and a few lucky hits, eh. Actually, they don't even have to do that, according to George,

A campaign against economic infrastructure would take some 4 million barrels per day off of the global oil market at a time when oil prices already are closing in on $100 a barrel.

Which means that all those wishful thinkers who believe that the Iranian people are just waiting to see the regime end and will be grateful to the Great Satan should think about Mr. Friedman's follow up,

Such a campaign is more likely to drive a wedge between the American people and the American government than between the Iranians and their government.

Tellingly, he says,

The United States is stretched thin, and everyone knows it.

Especially the Iranians. They have not budged and they don't appear scared. My guess is (and George seems to agree) they've done their homework and when they hear us huff and puff and threaten to blow the house down, their reaction could be something like, "yeah, you and what army?"*

George ends with this,

The United States could have defeated North Vietnam with a greater mobilization of forces. However, Washington determined that the defeat of North Vietnam and the defense of Indochina were not worth the level of effort required. Instead, it tried to achieve its ends with the resources it was prepared to devote to the mission. As a result, resources were squandered and the North Vietnamese flag flies over what was Saigon.

The danger of war is that politicians and generals, desiring a particular end, fantasize that they can achieve that end with insufficient resources. This lesson is applicable to Iran.

What is unsaid is the level of commitment we would have to make. Massive increase in defense spending (really, offense spending) and a draft. That is not on. From a neutralist point of view, this is a stupid idea. Truly, to anybody with an intelligence above minimally conscious, it should be a bad idea.

Mr. Friedman's article is well worth your time.

*I know, I've used this before.

More Phony Soldiers

"According to a Houston Chronicle analysis of the third-quarter finance reports, Ron Paul once again leads in donations from those who list the military as their employer. He is followed by Barack Obama, and then by John McCain." Thus reports Eric Garris at the Antiwar.com blog.

What the heck is going on here? Have libertarians been sneaking past recruiters? Or do real soldiers support ending the war? Gee, maybe there are no phony soldiers, just phonies with microphones.

Message to Rush Limbaugh

Sir,

A warrior like yourself cannot let this pass. A fellow by the name of Ricardo Sanchez is going around claiming to be a lieutenant general. Not only that, he proclaims that The U.S. mission in Iraq is a "nightmare with no end in sight."

Rush, a true warrior like you cannot let this stand. Expose this fellow for the phony soldier he is.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Hat tip to antiwar.com.

A Non Report Card On The War

Interesting article at Defense and the National interest discusses a presentation by LTC Kilcullen, the Ozzie wunderkind of counterinsurgency. The article author, Fabius Maximus (for any neocons reading, that's a pseudonym)thinks the light colonel is explaining to his audience why we are losing even though that is not his stated purpose.

Anyway, Fab gives us the goods:

A well-intended but colonial attitude might be unavoidable in these wars. In Vietnam we spoke highly of our loyal South Vietnamese allies, our “little brown brothers.” Forty years later we treat the Iraq government with a similar friendly contempt, which its own people see and imitate. Their rebellion to foreign occupiers (like us) is a natural, if counter-productive result.

He describes a “Kiss of Death” syndrome” on slide 22. This powerful label also applies to our relationship with local governments under current COIN doctrine when we get too helpful. We take control, which diminishes the government’s legitimacy, which strengthens the insurgency, which incites us to try harder, which starts another cycle.

The government becomes seen by many of its own people as lackeys or even quislings, only regaining legitimacy by opposing us – as they do today over symbolic issues like the role of Blackwater, or passive aggressive behavior (e.g., failure to pass the oil exploitation legislation we require).

I think that "Only gaining legitimacy by opposing us" says a mouthful.

Fab wonders if Kilcullen is having his audience on. I hope he is as the alternative is that a very smart man is intentionally stupid.

Message from Greg Cochran: Just Hop on the Bus Gus

At least that's the impression one gets from the September 24th, 2007 American Conservative Magazine's front cover. Mr. Cochran's article can be summed up in one word, Go!

The article is worth reading because of the way your man elaborates on the go statement. He writes well,

Politicians, for the most part, have accepted statements about withdrawal requiring anywhere from one to two years. They want to be “responsible”—that’ll be the day. Some may have calculated that slow withdrawal might better disguise defeat and thus be more politically palatable, but I don’t think many are that Machiavellian. I think instead that, with a few honorable exceptions, they’re profoundly ignorant of war and thus have to blindly accept anything the professional military says. That ignorance is, of course, one of the reasons we got into this mess in the first place. That goes double for columnists: in pundit-land, a military expert is someone who thinks that the phalanx is cutting-edge technology.

It seems to be raining Greg Cochran lately. The Neutralist is okay with that. If our budget were larger, ah, if there were a budget, we would commission him to write for us.

Watch for the glossy print version of The Neutralist, coming within a millennium.

We have been remiss in not including The American Conservative in our links and that shall be remedied immediately.

If Greg Cochran Is Not A Neutralist, We Will Pretend He Is Anyway

It all started over at the 2blowhards website. One Friedrich von Blowhard posted a piece wherein he quoted the frontrunning candidates' foreign policy views that had the effect of letting them make themselves look foolish. Whether or not that was his intention it worked so well he titled it:

Where's Snow White? We've got the Dwarves...

One Greg Cochran left a comment:

There is no threat out there that can be usefully addressed by a larger ground army. In fact, there's not much of a short-term threat out there at all. Except the threat from within: crazy people. That one is serious, as always.

You have to have physical power to be a substantial short-term threat, and jihadists don't have any: not one tank, not one jet, no money, no industrial base, no scientists. Oh, and I forgot, no _country_, no state. No nukes and no prospect of getting any. Shit, if they had the entire Arab world under their imaginary caliphate, they'd still be weak as a kitten: the contemporary version of the Ottoman Empire.

In the longer run, someone without physical power can sometimes make a difference (i.e. cause trouble) with ideas: but of course the Moslem world doesn't have any. "No major invention or discovery has emerged from the Moslem world for well over seven centuries now." They haven't even managed to come with up with fast-selling bullshit like Marxism or psychoanalysis. _I'm_ likely to cause more of that kind of trouble than all the Moslems on Earth without even trying.

This is essentially the Neutralist analysis and therefore we appropriate it, giving proper credit to its author.

As if that were not enough Mr. Cochran submitted to questioning from Michael Blowhard. Mr. Blowhard characterized Greg Cochran as:

It's eerie how right his predictions have been, and it's impressive that he arrived at them not from some uninformed political point of view but from a practical, fact-driven, and down-to-earth one. No one can accuse Gregory Cochran of being a sentimental, knee-jerk leftie, let alone a frisee-munching, Manhattan-dwellin' metrosexual, that's for sure. Cochran looked into the facts, he assessed the facts, and he reached conclusions that have so far proven to be 100% correct.

The interview, in two parts is worth reading. Our takeaway was provided by Steve Sailer quoting the Blowhard interview in his blog:

2B: As far as Mideast policy goes, how could we do better than we do?

Cochran: I think we have little chance of running a practical Middle East policy. The political class is ignorant and / or crazy (and also lazy) and seems to enjoy being manipulated by groups whose interests are not closely aligned with those of the United States. For example, Bush Senior had Prince Bandar try to prepare Junior for the world stage. Why the hell would anyone pick a fat Saudi thief as a political science instructor? Why not someone on our side? And when Rudy has Norman Podhoretz as a foreign policy adviser -- Norman who wants to invade Arab countries that haven't even been discovered yet -- well, I tremble for my country.

2B: So what's the right general course of action for the US as the world's premier power?

Cochran: Do little. Stay strong -- although this can't possibly require the current high level of military expenditures. If I were picking an actor to represent the right policy, it'd be Jimmy Stewart -- a nice guy that you never, ever want to threaten. A mix of "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Winchester '73."

2B: What are some basic things that you wish more Americans understood about the mid-east, and about their own government?

Cochran: 1. Iraq is a Seinfeld war -- a war about nothing. 2. The Mideast isn't that important. 3. The people running the country have no idea what they're doing.

Steve Sailer wrote in his own blog comments

Well, at least Prince Bandar isn't dumb. And that Ahmad Chalabi guy, with his Ph.D. in Math from the U. of Chicago, is downright smart.

Figuring out a foreign policy that's in the best interest of America ... a job Americans just won't do anymore!

I have been reading Mr. Cochran's astute comments for years now. I've always been impressed by his agreement with my viewpoint:) He expresses it with a better analysis than I could. He knows the science, and even some of the insiders.

I explained how I knew in a prior posting

I'm sorry, I was against this war from the beginning. I knew it was a fraud from well before day one. How you may ask could a nobody from a backwater know such a thing. I was born and raised in a state unexcelled for its culture of corruption. Politicians from Louisiana could learn a few tricks. A lot of it is done without any bribery. No, it is done much more smoothly. first, someone starts mentioning un met needs. Then, the newspapers have articles that morph the un met need into a crisis. State reps and senators start using phrases like " we need to do it for the children" and "the kids are our future." Soon enough there is a new state agency and cronies are being hired all over the place.

It was a little bit different with the war drumbeat. First, we have Iraq mentioned as part of the Axis of Evil. Then, do we remember the Anthrax scare? I do. I remember pundits hot for action, for others of course. As I live up on a hill, I can get Boston stations on the car radio. One talk show host, Jay Severin was shilling for the war big time. One afternoon he breathlessly intoned that it was reported that the anthrax involved in the letters had the footprint of an Iraqi lab and that if it did have that footprint, then, "We are at war with Iraq." Cut to a break.

The anthrax scare faded away but the drumbeat continued. I remember some peacenik type acquaintances talking about going down to New York for a march and hearing them hopeful about stopping the juggernaut. I remember telling them that the people who want the war, can have the war and that is that. Of course that was discounted, but that is life. If common sense had ever prevailed in this country, the slogan would have been, Forget the Maine. Contriving a war has a history here.

Some of the propaganda was so obviously stupid that it embarrasses me as an American to think it was said and quoted. Condoleeza Rice's remark about the smoking gun turning out to be a mushroom cloud was, maybe, the worst. A few unfortunates might have believed that Iraq was somewhat near the bomb, but no one suggested they had any inkling of a delivery system. So, Condi, how were they to get it to a target? "Quick Achmed, get it on to the donkey cart, we will get it on a cargo ship as part of a shipment of dates and when it gets to New York Harbor, it gets set off. I volunteer you, Achmed, for this important mission."

Anyway, it does not matter how you attain your "Neutralismo," only that you get there.

Guilt by Association

So the apples are being harvested here in Swamp Yankee Land and I'm headed over to a local orchard to buy some. Actually, I more interested in their unbelievably delicious cider donuts, but will eat apples as well to salve my conscience. Pressing the seek button on the radio, I came across a station with a women holding forth about the recent Bin Laden video. The hostess, one Monica Crowley, was making fun of the Democrats for having OBL's foreign policy as a campaign strategy, even though, as your man pointed out they have not kept the promises.

Okay, Monica, let's go over this slowly, OBL's minions, as far as we know, attacked us and baited us into a war that turned out to be a loser. Then we thought up a war against Iraq and that is going just as swimmingly. The people of the United States allowed control of the Congress to pass to a party that implied it would do something intelligent about the war. That party is doing its best now to make itself look as bad as their sworn enemy George W. Bush. I am not the greatest admirer of our electorate, and I have no truck with the Democrats as I regard them as no more than a cargo cult masquerading as a political party. No matter, voting Dem was less stupid than voting Republican this time.

Now work with me Monica. That OBL slickly endorsed the donkey's campaign policy and chides them for not making it work, does not mean he is wrong.

This is like the trick that was pulled on Walt and Mearshimer. Call David Duke and ask if he agrees and then tab W & M as Grand Kleagles.

Okay, Monica, I assume you believe that 1 + 1 = 2. You know what, David Duke does too. Maybe you want to call him and order a sheet. I bet the Dalai Lama counts the same as DD, though his holiness does not believe it is real. I suspect Alan Dershowitz counts that way as well. Alan, Dave you have so much in common with Monica.

OBL was being glich francach caca laca (Irish saying translated as cute as a shithouse rat). He would portray himself as Thomas Jefferson if he thought he could confuse us. That does not make Thomas Jefferson wrong. Wake up Monica. I'd love to catch him and see him tried and hung, but El Jefe Maximo Jorge W blew that. I don't see not finding him in another five years while losing American lives in the Afghanistan or Iraq as all that productive.

Monica, like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh et al, pretends to be a conservative. I don't claim to be conservative, but I do follow a conservative line in foreign policy. Major General Smedley Butler said it all this in a speech in 1933,

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

Monica, this is conservatism. Spreading democracy, which we are not doing, is not.

If you decide to set aside your statist baggage, and embrace this, you too can be a conservative in foreign policy. If David Duke wants to set aside his racial baggage, he is welcome also. Heck, if Al Sharpton wants to set aside his racist baggage, come on in. if Al the Dersh wants to drop neoconnery, he's our man. It's not a big tent yet, but it could be.

Steve Sailer, the last holdout

Steve Sailer just can't seem to leave Vietnam. He is going to end up like those two Japanese holdouts in the Philipines found decades after the war if he doesn't let it go. Give it up, Steve, we need you here.

Let's look at the last paragraph of his article, What's the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy?,

The NVA tried a tentative offensive in December 1974, following the Democrats midterm election triumphs, found that the US wouldn't provide air support, so launched a massive offensive in March 1975. The South Vietnamese collapsed about as quickly as France in 1940.

Now, if a tentative offensive is begun in December and the crusher launched in March, what was the ARVN doing in between? I don't think they were starved for equipment as I remember all the stuff the NVA captured after the fall of Saigon. If the South was going to survive, it would always be as some kind of welfare case. We are better off gone.

In a prior article, Vietnam, he makes this claim,

Today, with American air power so unchallenged, it seems strange that the Democrats didn't want to allow air support of the South Vietnamese. After all, a couple of decades later, a Democrat President got involved in an internal dispute of negligible significance to America, and bombed Yugoslavia into ceding control of its internationally-recognized Kosovo province, at minimal cost in lost aircraft.

Actually, the FRY had ceded this before the bombing. what caused the war to start was their rejection of this paragraph in the Rambouillet Agreement,

NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations

The war ended when NATO (i.e. us) surrendered on this point. If anyone thinks being able to stay in occupation in the Balkans, let alone the Middle East is a victory, well, good luck with that.

A One Paragraph Lesson in International Relations, or this guy will never be teaching at the Kennedy School

Over at The Black Sea Today's post is a quote of a great travel writer. The takeaway I got is that the Middle East, is and for us will always be toxic. Wasting lives and treasure there is goofy. But enough, I steal below.

The Levant
"These countries were so small! One of the more marvelous atrocities of our time was the way in which the self-created problems of these countries, and their arrogant way of dealing with them, made them seem larger, like an angry child standing on its tiptoes. They were expensive to operate, too; they had vast armies; they indulged in loud and ridiculously long-winded denunciations of their neighbors. All this contributed to the illusion that they were massive. But no, they were tiny, irritating, shameless, and vindictive; and they occupied the world's attention way out of proportion to their size or importance. They had been magnified by lobbyists and busybody groups. Inflation was the theme here, and it was just another tactic for quarrelsome people to avoid making peace."
--Paul Theroux, The Pillars of Hercules

Steve Sailer, Neutralist?

Steve Sailer has an article at his blog titled, Vietnam that discusses American military adventures from recent history. Now, I would guess Mr. Sailer does not consciously think of himself as a neutralist, but his screed makes the case The Neutralist made in America's greatest 20th century victory. I don't think that Mr. Sailer realizes he is making it, but we appropriate where we can and do not care how many innocent reputations are ruined by association. As we do not gather vast traffic, iSteve need not overly worry.

Mr. Sailer discusses Vietnam and Korea as well as Kosovo. He really does not come to the conclusion as to what we got out of those adventures, which is of course nothing. Well, it is of course The Neutralist's contention that we got something out of Vietnam. We got to leave.

His final paragraph makes another neutralist point,

In contrast, Islam has virtually no appeal to anyone above the lowest orders of society if they weren't born into a Muslim family. There is no single Islamic superpower to provide direction to the squabbling Muslim states, and most of these governments are more or less averse to the extremists. Even taken together, all the Muslim states in the world have only a small fraction of America's military might. For example, there is no Muslim aircraft carrier. Technologically, Pakistan is 50 years behind America in the development of nuclear weapons, and the rest lag even farther.

Any problems we have with militant Islam are immigration problems. It cannot be said too often, 911 was an immigration failure. We were not attacked by a carrier fleet. A jihad army did not land Normandy style. We are essentially fighting ourselves.

Bush to America, "I Broke It, You Bought it"

Well, he didn't exactly say that. These were his words, "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people', 're-education camps' and 'killing fields'."

Now unlike most Americans, I do not believe George is a dummy. As noted previously, I think he is smarter than he is given credit for. This attempt at manipulation is as cute as all the cool people who are trying to shift us into Darfur and as believable. When George Clooney raises a battalion and leads them into the Sudan, he will get some cred. There is nothing our current commander in chief can do to gain any.

Well, he could tell the truth.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, I come before you to take full responsibility for what can only be called a disaster. There were no weapons of mass destruction, the intelligence was flimsy and contrived. The regime was changed but the dynamics of Iraqi politics have not changed and therefore I cannot say we can hope to leave a stable democracy in place. The constant death and mayhem that takes place in Iraq today, could accelerate. This is my fault and I apologize to the you my fellow citizens and to the Iraqi people and our allies."

No, I know that's not going to happen. I just hope no one buys the real statement of President Chutzpah. I never go into Pottery Barn and I resent being blackmailed into paying for stuff I did not drop.

Oh, and if anyone in the FBI is reading this, there is a nutcase named Stu Bykofsky who is lamenting our lack of national unity and thinks he knows a way to get it back. You want to keep an eye on flight training schools and costume stores that might stock Arab headgear. The lad does not sound all that stable.

Our Bestest Buddies, The Turks, Or Is It The Kurds?

I guess it was about a week or two ago, I saw a small Yahoo News article headlined "Turkey massing‭ ‬140,000‭ ‬troops." It seems there are Kurds in Turkey who are not happy about being Kurds in Turkey and would have that area of Turkey not be Turkey. Needless to say, the Turks are not in agreement with this idea. They also do not care for the fact that the Kurds who have used certain violent tactics to express their feelings can cross the border into an area of Iraq referred to as Kurdistan and attain effective sanctuary. So, the Ankara government has sent troops ready to cross said border to catch and not release Kurdish proponents of the Not-Turkey Thesis.

This is a bit of a mess for the nation that claims leadership of what is sometimes called the Free World. We have had a longstanding alliance with the Turks going back to the early postwar era when an American fleet called in at Istanbul to signal the Soviets hands off. The Turks reciprocated by sending men to stand with us in Korea.

Our relationship with the Kurds has been a bit different. If I wanted to use a word to describe how we have treated the Kurds, I would not rule out betrayal. Henry Kissinger used them to pressure Iraq in the seventies and dropped them when he had struck the deal he wanted. Now we are friends again with the Kurds and they are building a modern state with a market economy. You only need read the gushing reports from neoconnish reporter Michael Totten, here, here and here. His Middle East Journal articles portray the Kurds admiringly and seem to suggest we plight our troth to them. Of course, Mr. Totten does not paint his picture, warts and all. The Kurds may be closer to modernity than Shia and Sunni, but they still have some bad habits.

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the quaint practice of Female Genital Mutilation. It persists in Michael Totten's ultra advanced Kurdistan. To be fair, many Kurds are facing the problem, but the government can be touchy on the subject, "The [Kurdish] Ministry of Human Rights hauled us in for questioning," says Assi Frooz Aziz, coordinator of WADI's Germian medical team. "They accused us of publicizing the country's secrets." Hey, even we can be rather shy about our blemishes, but the Kurds do need a tad of work on that open government thing."

So there we are, the benevolent hegemon, hunkered down in Iraq having to do what all imperiums have to do eventually, decide whom to betray. It's a no brainer. Stratfor has an article in their free service that tells us just how strong, both militarily and economically, th Turks are in the Middle East. Also, it is not in their character to wet their pants when someone, including us, barks at them.*

So according to Robert Novak, we've done a deal with the Turks. In order to forestall the invasion, we'll cooperate in setting up the Kurdish separatists. Well, I for one am not surprised. We have some good experience in Kurd betrayal. It's been done before and will be done now and will probably be done again. After all, the Turks have options. The Kurds have only us.

Just another mess to clean up.

Hat tip to Justin Raimondo at Takimag.

*I don't remember the book's title. It might have been "This Kind of War," Anyway, it describes an engagement in Korea where the Turks were about to be overrun. The officers threw down their caps and said they would not retreat behind them alive and led their men into the Chinese. They were of course destroyed. I think the book continued with a comment about how the PLA did their best to avoid the Turks after that.

Hot Off The Digital Press-Ron Paul Is The Only Candidate Who Can Win The Election

Don't take it from me. In the immortal words of the late Jean Shepherd, "I don't make the news, I just report it." Well, I'm reporting what someone else is reporting. Stratfor, the intelligence service that a lot of the heavy hitters pay big bucks for has a piece today, Gaming the U.S. Elections where they prove that no Democrat or Republican can win the election. Imagine, Ron Paul is not nominated and we have four years without a president. Ooh, that does send cold, sensual chills all up and down my spine and is probably the only thing that one can contemplate better than Ron Paul winning.

Enough digression. Let's look at the relevant passage.

no sitting senator has won the presidency since Kennedy. The reason is, again, simple. Senators make speeches and vote, all of which are carefully recorded in the Congressional record. Governors live in archival obscurity and don't have to address most issues of burning importance to the nation. Johnson came the closest to being a sitting senator but he too had a gap of four years and an assassination before he ran. After him, former Vice President Nixon, Gov. Carter, Gov. Reagan, Vice President Bush, Gov. Clinton and Gov. Bush all won the presidency. The path is strewn with fallen senators.

That being the case, the Democrats appear poised to commit electoral suicide again, with two northern senators (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) in the lead, and the one southern contender, John Edwards, well back in the race. The Republicans, however, are not able to play to their strength. There are no potential candidates in Texas or California to draw on. Texas right now just doesn't have players ready for the national scene. California does, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is constitutionally ineligible by birth. In a normal year, a charismatic Republican governor of California would run against a northern Democratic senator and mop the floor. It's not going to happen this time.
Instead, the Republicans appear to be choosing between a Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, and a former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. Unless Texan Ron Paul can pull off a miracle, the Republicans appear to be going with their suicide hand just like the Democrats. Even if Fred Thompson gets the nomination, he comes from Tennessee, and while he can hold the South, he will have to do some heavy lifting elsewhere.

The Edwards hypotheses fails as he is really no different from Thompson. They are essentially the same grade phony. If one has a problem, the other has the same.

Thus, unless the Republicans want to commit suicide and leave the nation executiveless for four years, their only choice is Ronnie.

How come only guys with the name Ron can save that hapless party.

Ron Paul is the only real neutralist and the only one who can win.

The mind of the War Blogger

I have before cited the blog Al Fin. His war blog is Abu Al Fin. It is an excursion into a realm of happy talk about our current unpleasantness, the so called war on terror. Mr. Fin had a post called “Iraq in Vivid Complexivision.” This is, I assume, a neologism of his own invention. Now, I tend to think that someone who needs to use an exotic way of expressing themselves is trying to obfuscate. So does the term have any meaning. I'm not sure. He did answer my comment where I did not ask for a definition with his own comment that might give some clue,

“I am sure you can see far enough beyond the one-dimensional media coverage of Iraq to understand that the terms "winning" and "losing" fail to describe the complexity of the engagement in Iraq.

There are an incredible number of interests being promoted and represented in the Iraqi theatre of operations. Yet the media fails utterly to portray the complexity of the conflict(s) there.

My point of view has little to do with "winning" or "losing" in Iraq. I suspect that arabs cannot be reformed from their bloody-mindedness. Even more ominous, is the demographic theory dealing with the "young male bulge" theory of national and international conflict. I suspect that there is an incredible amount of prognostic potency in that theory.

So, think in "complexivision." There is a lot to learn. I'll try to present sides of the issue that the media studiously ignores.”
So boil away all the verbiage above and you get 'it's complex so we have to stay.' Yuh. I thought this a bit meaningless. I just guess I'm an either you won or lost type of guy. Staying because it's complex is just LBJ's hunkering down. Hardly a strategic vision."

Still, I wanted to be fair so I asked him a question,

“I've got a "complexivision" question for you. Is it more important to keep diddlin' in Iraq or to secure our nation's borders?

Also, if the amnesty is passed, will there be any point to Iraq?”
His answer,"

“It would be better not to conflate Iraq with illegal immigration.”

Ah, yes. The event that started us off on all these adventures was perpetrated by pilots who took off from carriers off the coast of NY and DC. No, it was immigration failure that let the perps of 911 in. Now I am happy to blame Bill Clinton for his goofiness in giving away the store, but our current maximum war leader wants everyone in the world to come here, so no help there. You score the easy points first and securing the border and fixing immigration is the first step, not the last. Maybe, Simplivision (a neologism for Occam's Razor) would help our friend.

I also asked him,

“if you have the grand strategic vision that you can express in a word other than complexivision, please go for it.”

His answer,

“Iraq, it is proving very useful for training US marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen for the expanding world jihad. What you see in Gaza and Lebanon (and Iraq) today, you are certain to see in European cities tomorrow.”

Ah, if you have the border secure, the Jihadis will fight each other because they can't get here. Anyway, if past is prologue, those trained military will have been wasted by the ongoing leadership incompetence, spending years in VA facilities or working for Blackwater. My hope is that they get to enjoy their pensions whole and live easy like the warbloggers. As time goes on, more and more of the new enlistees will be CatIVs and the less intelligent. Using them as cannon fodder will be counterproductive and, as they will be less competent, even closer to murder than the current misuse of our military is now.

And then of course he took refuge in an ad hominem,

“Of course, if you don't think the jihad is worth worrying about, then there is no need to prepare, and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi may make sense to you. In that case, I cannot be of help to you.”

Actually, I don't think wasting well trained infantry against people whose death solves their salvation problem and lessens their countries unemployment burden is a good idea. Fighting a war that favors the strategy of the enemy is hardly grand strategy at its best. If he believes that, no one can be of help to him. Anyway, he should phrase it now to include Lugar and Warner with Nance and Harry.

He asked me about my military experience. I told him of my inglorious Vietnam Era service. I asked him his. He did not answer the question, but accused me of rambling and closed the comments.

So what do I make of such people. He may have shut off debate because he was bored with me. Fair enough. Still, he had no real answers. He is a smart lad, so to be so willfully wrongheaded takes effort. This so called War on Terror is so obviously a scam in the same manner as the War on Drugs with a lot of privatized profits and socialized costs that to believe in it, an intelligent person has to be getting some benefit or has to torture logic brutally in his own mind.

I have a problem with his skating on the question of his military service. Now is this important? I believe so and eventually, I shall devote a whole post on the chickenhawk thing. If you are going to cheerlead for the overseas adventures, and you have never put yourself at risk, there is a high degree of hypocrisy as was seen in the song and dance of the exposed Jonah Goldberg. If Al is a veteran of active service in the combat arms or blogging after going off duty in in the Sunni Triangle, he has my abject apology. If he is just a cheerleader, well, res ipsa loquitur says it all.

Anyway, my comment that got him started was,

"Yep, we're winning. Winning now. Winning next month, Next year, two years from now. Five years from now. Maybe longer.

Then we shall leave, having accomplished zip."

All the happy talk from the war bloggers won't change that.

Kosovo, Gee is that still around?

Well, yes. Stratfor.com on one of their free intelligence reports* discusses Kosovo and how it is rearing its head, ugly or otherwise. George Bush wants to wrap it up by giving the Former Yugoslav territrory independence. The Serbs are opposed, but who cares about them.

Well, someone does. That someone has nukes, hydrocarbons and a bone to pick. Russia has seen the US meddle in its "near abroad" for awhile now and, according to Stratfor, they have an opportunity to push back. Bismarck may not have thought the Balkans worth a Pomeranian Grenadier, but Merkel and her homies don't think it is worth one cold winter's day. Maybe George is out by himself on this one.

So George, after a few years of tapping the hornets nest, has to worry that maybe the swarm might decide it is time to do some stinging of its own.

Putin does not embody the spirit of Thomas Jefferson. I may not want him for president of my own country, though other than Ron Paul, the current crop of candidates is worthless. I can see how Russians might see him as their best bet.

I recommend Stratfor's article and I also recommend that Vladamir bring his own chef to Kennebunkport.

Kosovo, another interventionist non success.

*The Neutralist Institute has not seen any increase in its current endowment of $0. Therefore, Stratfor's free service is all that can be afforded at this time.

Words of Wisdom and Folly

I am now living in slow mo with almot no energy from a viral infection. Therefore thievery is all I am capable of. The Black Sea has kindly accomodated me. Please read below.

Words of War

"They made a desert and called it peace."
--Tacitus

"Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice."
-- Spinoza

"There was never a good war or a bad peace."
--Benjamin Franklin

"I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward."
--George Washington

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country."
-- Hermann Goering

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
-- Adolf Hitler

"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."
-- Joseph Goebbels

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
-- William Colby, former Director of the CIA

"War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it
causes is beyond telling or meaning; but war was our condition
and our history, the place we had to live in."
--Martha Gelhorn

"War is a catalogue of blunders."
-- Sir Winston Churchill

"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
--Sir Winston Churchill

"Regardless of whether we say so publicly, we will go to war, because Saddam sits at the center of a region with more than 60 percent of all the world's oil reserves."
--Anthony H. Cordesman, Senior Analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

“I don’t think the neocons really give a shit what happened in Iraq and the aftermath. I don’t think they thought it would be this bad. But they said: Look if it works out, let’s say we get Chalabi in, he’s our boy, great. We don’t and maybe there is some half-ass government out there, maybe a strong man emerges, it fractures, and there’s basically a loose federation and there’s really a Kurdish state. Who cares? There’s some bloodshed and it’s messy. Who cares? I mean, we’ve taken out Saddam. We’ve asserted our strength in the Middle East. We’re changing the dynamic. We’re off the peace process as the centerpiece and we’re not putting pressure on Israel.”
--Retired General Anthony Zinni

"We've got the basic strategy right. . . . Our objective is victory, and that's the road we're walking down. . . . It may not be popular with the public. It doesn't matter, in the sense that we have to continue to do what we think is right, and that's exactly what we're doing. We're not running for office; we're doing what we think is right."
--Vice President Dick Cheney

War is not nice."
--Barbara Bush

"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a 2 million dollar missile at a 10 dollar empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."
-- George W. Bush