Times Change

When I was a kid, we moved from the working class inner city to the working class burbs. About a mile and a half down the hill was a village center with a movie theater. this was just before the building of big shopping plazas and about ten years before movie multiplexes. It was one screen and when our moms got tired of us in summer, we would be given the small change of admission and allowed a matinee.

That was the fifties and much of it I don’t remember. As there was a feature and a B movie on most bills and there were so many, I am vague. Amongst the boys, there was a lot of horsing around during the lesser films.

I have a distant memory of one B flick that recurs more now. It is of some uniformed men taking another man and placing him on a board and submerging him in water to get him to talk. I remember the victim as looking stolid and laconic and with chiseled features.

Not much else is recalled except that his persecutors were the bad guys and he was a good guy and he was on our side. The implication was that we were fighting against the evil in the world that would do this.

Of course, life is more complex than that. It would be ridiculous to claim our side never did anything untoward. I had an uncle whom my mom implied was a little off after the war. There were two events he might never have gotten over. One was being the only survivor on a transport ship that was sunk. The other was being on patrol and his group came across a Japanese soldier washing his clothes. The men watched him until he was finished. It would have been nothing to capture him alive. One of my uncle’s comrades aimed his gun and shot the man in cold blood. Certainly, there were more instances of such behavior. Still, they were not policy sanctioned by the Roosevelt adminstration. The Neutralist contends if FDR were the great genius he is portrayed, he would have achieved our necessary foreign policy goals while avoiding war. Still, let it be said, our record in the matter of treatment of prisoners was much better than our opponents.

I wish that could be said now. Unfortunately, we have General Taguba's report to deal with.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Amongst the practices cited,

U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

Is it absolutely necessary to torture prisoners to get necessary. If we won WWII without it, I doubt we need it during our faux war on terror. The sexual humilition thingee, well, the deathless prose of Justin Raimondo says it all,

Okay, you’re trying to get a terrorist to talk, to spill the beans about whatever vile terroristic plots he knows about, and it’s easy to imagine beatings and even electrical shocks being utilized to this end—but the key that the torturers were just having a little sick fun with their charges is signaled with all this “sexual humiliation” stuff. I mean, let’s get real—is that hardboiled Al Qaeda type over there really going to break once you break out the dildo, or will waterboarding work just as well?



An American Mom

Stratfor is Channeling The Neutralist

In our last post, On to Persia we noted that the Israelis were telegraphing their possibly intended punch. Now, telegraphing a punch is a theatric practice to let the audience know that you intend to hit the other actor. In real life this is not done. You smack the other guy quickly before he smacks you, or in the case of fans of the movie, Million Dollar Baby, she smacks you.

Well, Mr. George Friedman, impresario of Stratfor has written an article, Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch? He also noticed the Israeli's are yelling, "This time, I'm gonna do it. No, this time, I really mean it." He comes up with a few alternative scenarios but in the end thinks it's a bluff.

We tend toward this latter theory. Frankly, the Bush administration has been talking about an attack on Iran for years. It is hard for us to see that the situation has changed materially over the past months. But if it has, then either Israel or the United States would have attacked — and not with front-page spreads in The New York Times before the attack was launched. In the end, we tend toward the view that this is psychological warfare for the simple reason that you don’t launch a surprise attack of the kind necessary to take out Iran’s nuclear program with a media blitz beforehand. It just doesn’t work that way.

We hope George and Stratfor are right.

If anyone who reads The Neutralist knows Mr. Friedman, if you run into him, please let him know, we have approved him for official Neutralist Groupie Status (NGS). We don't so honor just anyone. In fact, as evidence of our esteem, we are making it Platinum Neutralist Groupie Status (PNGS)

On to Persia

So oil is up about $11 on Israeli war rumors. What would happen if there were an actual attack? I am no economist. I like to think of myself as curious about my world. Still, I am not interested in finding out if the worst case is true.

Something that causes the strait of Hormuz to possibly close cannot be good for us. Sooner or later, it can't be good for Israel.

The Israeli's should be consulting their historian, Martin Van Creveld. His article, The World Can Live With a Nuclear Iran, in the Forward is worth a read before sending the jets to Persia. Mr. Van Creveld is right. The Islamic Republic is not much militarily and won't be anytime soon. So they make a primitive nuke. How do they deliver it.

So why worry if these guys are not much in our way. Just another, oh what is the word I'm looking for......cakewalk. True no planes will rise to meet us. Any tanks are probably rusty. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that we've talked and talked about this that the Persians are listening and thinking and may have a surprise. If it's mining the straits, well, that's not high tech and is doable.

During the Yom Kippur war, Israel ripped up the middle and across the canal. If you've read Liddell-Hart you know a frontal attack is the most difficult operation and most wasteful of soldiers. The way the Israelis were able to do this was through meticulous intelligence. It may have been one of the greatest military operations in history to overcome the problems of the direct approach and change it to Liddell-Hart's beloved indirect approach. Of course it was completely secret.

Osirak was brilliant and secret as well.

Lebanon, twice were there too many telegraphed punches. As to the looming Iranian adventure, not too much of that loose lips sink ships out there. If the Iranians are not watching and planning, they are the dumbest people ever.

Steve Sailer endorses Neutralism

Steve Sailer has come out for Neutralism at his blog and in an article at Vdare.

He makes the argument for neutralism as well as any neutralist.

Strange as it may seem to readers of the Washington Post, there are countries that essentially have no foreign policy—such as Switzerland, which has espoused strict neutrality for the last two centuries, and Finland, which was forced to delegate its foreign policy to the Soviet Union from 1945-1989—and yet are famously pleasant places to live.

The basics of a sustainable, sensible foreign policy are simple—1) Don't invade anybody; and 2) don't let anybody invade you.

Then, he identifies the groups who are most for entangling us where we don't belong,

The various foreign policy hobbyist factions can be loosely categorized as:
A What Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.

B Lobbyists, flacks, and intellectuals on the payroll, directly or indirectly, of foreign interests.

C Ethnic lobbies, such as Cubans, Armenians, and Jews.

D War Enthusiasts. These are guys who should be spending their energies on what successful hypercompetitive men normally do across this great land of ours: bribe star high school football players to sign with Old State U. Yet, because the most influential Enthusiasts typically went to colleges with weak sports programs, such as the Ivy League or the military academies, they instead funnel their enormous competitive urges into playing the Game of Nations as if the United States of America was their alma mater’s team, even when there is very little national interest at stake. Historians may someday attribute much of America's hyperactive 21st Century foreign policy to the lack of first-rate college football teams in New York City and Washington D.C. to soak up the aggressive urges of the rich and influential.

E The Stuff White People Like set, who demonstrate their moral superiority by demanding that something be done about Tibet, Burma, and a handful of other fashionable topics. They somehow know with complete certainty who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in obscure territories on the other side of the globe. Of course, after they succeed in driving out the bad guys and the good guys inevitably begin to act like the bad guys they replaced, the Stuff White People Like people lose interest and move on to the next fad.

The one group he does not identify is 'er Majesty's Government which gamed us into WWI. Of course, over the Twentieth Century and into the New Millenium, it is murky as to who was the gamer and gamee. In this century it appears we are using them a tad more than the other way. What sane government would have followed us into the land of the Kut disaster unless there were a "Special Relationship."

Also, Steve at one point seemed to have a crush on Auntie Maggie. You can still find them together at his old website.

He will never mention us, maybe because he does not know we exist, but still, we can recognize his having attained a certain maturity now that he may have lacked before.

Come Out of That Closet, Fab

In reading Fabius Maximus' post The Myth of Grand Strategy, it is obvious there is nothing grand about our national strategy in the world.

He quotes the late Colonel Boyd (a man who oft appears to be the patron saint of his blog) as defining grand strategy as focusing,

our nation’s actions — political, economic, and military — so as to:
• Increase our solidarity, our internal cohesion.
• Weaken our opponents’ resolve and internal cohesion.
• Strengthen our allies’ relationships to us.
• Attract uncommitted states to our cause.
• End conflicts on favorable terms, without sowing the seeds for future conflicts.

One would not be remiss in thinking that we are not doing all that well on any of the above. Indeed, our great cold war victory might be explained as merely outlasting the dumbest economy that ever existed.

He then goes on to devastate the idea of an ambitious grand strategy. Thomas Barnett's esquire article The Pentagon's New Map gave a view of the hubristic FP,

LET ME TELL YOU why military engagement with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good. When the United States finally goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced disarmament of illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror. Our next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point — the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.

The only thing that will change that nasty environment {the Middle East} and open the floodgates for change is if some external power steps in and plays Leviathan full-time. … Freedom cannot blossom in the Middle East without security, and security is this country’s most influential public-sector export. By that I do not mean arms exports, but basically the attention paid by our military forces to any region’s potential for mass violence. We are the only nation on earth capable of exporting security in a sustained fashion … Until we begin the systematic, long-term export of security to the Gap, it will increasingly export its pain to the Core in the form of terrorism and other instabilities.

Fab's critique,

The Iraq War demonstrates the folly of Barnett’s ambitious grand strategy. We quickly floundered due to lack of accurate information. Our preconceptions, based on reports from exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi, proved erroneous. Our plans repeatedly proved specious, either unworkable or counterproductive. Our major tools, the State Department and Department of Defense, demonstrated an impressive degree of institutional incompetence.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Even more to the point,

At the end of his Esquire article Barnett lists those nations in the Gap, the “non-integrating” part of the world:

Haiti, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, former Yugoslavia, Congo, Rwanda/Burundi, Angola, South Africa, Israel-Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Indonesia.

Two Gap nations invaded (but not but not yet “integrated”), and only 16 more to go! Looking forward, he lists candidates for possible future action, the “new/integrating members of Core I worry may be lost in coming years”:

China, Russia, India.

As Carl Sagan would say, there are bil-li-ons and bil-li-ons of people waiting for us to liberate them from their culture.

Mr. Barnett is still in business as a consultant and is paid to make speeches. With Mr. Barnum's estimate of the population of his potential customers, he should be in business awhile. Oh, I know the Neutralist harps on the chickenhawk thingee, but we do not approve of someone who is okay with people dying for their vision and yet have never put themselves in that position. Suffice it to say, from his bio, it seems he has never gotten close to having to learn the joys of low crawling.
Fab then discusses,

Why do Grand Strategies Fail?

General Semantics also sees the world in terms of maps. It is a science of applied epistemology invented in 1933 by Alfred Korzybski. The “ABCs” of General Semantics explain why grand strategies tend to fail, and greater ambition increases the odds of failure.

A. The map is not the territory.

A map is an abstraction drawn from our experience and knowledge. The wider the scope of a grand strategy, the more abstract — the less granular– its map. Which makes it less reliable. Maps like Barnett’s include the world’s religions, political structures, and economies. No single person or small group has the necessary knowledge necessary to do more than a cartoon sketch of our complex and changing world; and even that will be riddled with errors.

B. The map doesn’t cover all the territory.

As Secretary Rumsfeld said so aptly, we face unknown unknowns –significant factors of whose very existence we’re ignorant. These can be like demographics, factors so large and slowly developing that they remain invisible to most of us. Or they might be of a dimension completely unknown to us, like the lead in Rome’s water and wine that robbed them of the IQ margin needed for survival.

C. The map reflects the map maker.

We all have biases, prejudices, and parochial views. These limit our ability to see and think broadly enough to shape a global grand strategy.

Nothing a neutralist would disagree with.

He then gives us a strategy that we shall annotate,

America’s Need for a Humble Grand Strategy

The point of this essay is not to compare our performance with an impossible perfect ideal, but to suggest that humility is appropriate when conceiving a grand strategy. Because, of course, we always have a grand strategy — our collective policy with respect to the external world — either by design or default. Perhaps we should consider building our grand strategy on lower, more solid ground. Consider these four principles as the foundation for our grand strategy.

1. Respect for other peoples, their values and beliefs. We speak of multiculturalism, but often act to impose our “universal values” (aka human rights). First show respect by not being near them.

2. Reluctance to use our power and awareness of our limited wisdom. Amen

3. Defense in preference to offense. Yup

4. Defense is inherently the stronger posture, and more appropriate for a hegemonic state like America. A kinetic and unpredictable hegemon disturbs other States — both friends and foes — exacerbating the natural tendency for other States to ally together against a it. It will get better if we drop the hegemon pose

5. Firmness in response to clear threats. A Neutralist Foreign Policy will cut down on those threats. We are okay with hitting back hard.

Game theory shows “tit for tat” to be the most effective strategy in many games. Our system of international law, going back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, justifies military action only in response to an attack by another state — not preemptively. The Iraq War is another lesson in the wisdom of that policy.

He quotes William S. Lind to finish,

So long as we are on the grand strategic offensive, threatening to impose our ways on every one else through military force, we will be defeated regardless of how many battles we win. Like Germany in both World Wars, we will generate new enemies faster than we can defeat old ones.

I liked his article. I just wish he would follow it to its logical conclusion and use the N (Neutralism) word.

This Guy is Fein By Me

Alan Bock's April 19, 2008 article, Prosecuting No-Threat Stumblebums is worth reading for its examination of the government's policy of encouraging losers to conspire against the US and then arresting them and trumpeting how Holy Mother State then saved the day.

The Neutralist is especially grateful to Mr. Bock for pointing us to Mr. Bruce Fein.

Mr. Bock quotes from Mr. Fein's advice to the next president as published in Slate,

End the ‘war on terror' as a legal paradigm. International terrorists are criminals, not warriors. The next president should see to it that terrorists will be captured, interrogated, prosecuted, and punished according to civilian law. The United States is not at war with international terrorism. The next president should ensure that we do not brandish the weapons of war in lieu of traditional law enforcement against international terrorists.


Mr. Bock complements those "Fein" words with a few of his own,

Haven't we lived in fear of phantom threats long enough?

Of course I could not resist clicking on the link to Mr. Fein's article. His beautiful words sent cold chills up and down the Neutralist's spine.

Withdraw all U.S. troops from foreign countries. The Declaration of Independence explains that the purpose of government is to secure unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States was not created to build an empire, to aggrandize government, or to purge the planet of nondemocratic regimes. Accordingly, the next president should announce that we are withdrawing all U.S. troops from foreign countries and that, hereinafter, all the nation's military resources will be devoted to building missile, electronic, and other defenses against potential foreign attacks. The United States lacks the wisdom necessary to spin modern democratic gold from centuries of despotic flax by military force or otherwise. Iraq and Afghanistan are clear proof. Further, the United States has no moral responsibility for the destiny of persons outside its jurisdiction who pay no taxes to support the government and pledge no allegiance to the republic.

He got even better,

Torture should be categorically renounced. President Bush has hedged on whether he would torture suspected al-Qaida detainees in hopes of extracting intelligence. There is no evidence that torture works. The Defense Department and the FBI renounce water-boarding, and intelligence veterans concur that information derived from torture is worthless. Moreover, if the United States tortures, the risk of torture to our own captured soldiers climbs exponentially. The new president should categorically renounce torture. It cannot be justified pragmatically. And no civilized nation stoops to imitate the savagery of its enemies.

Indeed, the whole article is now on our index of required reading.

Mr. Fein is one of the principals of the American Freedom Agenda. He was also with the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration.

Mr. Fein, this is not your lucky day. We have decided to inflict on you the prestigious article of the month award.

Unprecedented Award of Article of the Week for two pieces. To the same writer!

Burkeman1 has scored twice. We therefore have no choice but to award the Article of the Week twice whether he wants it or not.

In Enemies Everywhere, he tells the American right to get over their paranoia. The world is not about to overrun us. In his writing, we don't know if he intended to make the case for neutralism, but he did. After all, if they are not coming to get us, there is no reason for us to be going overseas to get them.

In A Debate Parameter of Lies: Hillary and McCain on Iran. Burkeman writes about a show I've never seen to make a point very well,

In the cartoon show "The Boondocks" there was once an episode in which two "wigger" characters (one a distant parody of George Bush) rob a conveinance store at gun point staffed with an Arab clerk. A security guard stumbles upon the robbery and pulls his gun on the two bandits in the middle of the robbery. The Arab clerk has his hands in the air and is unarmed. The security guard orders the robbers to lay down their guns at which point the two wiggers insist they were being robbed by the Arab and that he has a gun.

The security guard, perplexed looks at the Arab holding up his hands and responds that he doesn't have gun and repeats his demand that they lay down their weapons and surrender. At which point the robbers insist again even more stridently that this "Terrorist looking mutherbleeper" has a gun! The guard- nervous- looks again at the Arab clearly holding up his empty hands and repeats that he sees no gun. The robbers again say the Arab clerk has a gun and tell him to look more closely. The guard, scared, and out gunned and intimidated by the two robbers, hesitates and says "I don't see a gun though!" To which they reply simply, slowly and even more loudly- look again, He has a gun! At which point the guard says "well maybe . . ." The scene goes on like this for a good 5 minutes until finally the worn out nervous guard agrees against his own plain sight that indeed the unarmed hands in the air Arab clerk has a gun and they proceed to all fire upon him.

Perhaps the most devastating allegory I have seen of the runnup to the Iraq war ever put in simple stark terms. A true delight (even if most of the rest of that cartoon series is unwatchable black nationalist twaddle) and a rare example of unambiguous moral clarity on the Iraq war.

I was reminded of that episode upon reading of recent statements of John McCain and Hillary Clinton concerning Iraq. The same pattern is being repeated. A wholly false parameter of "debate" about Iran has been setup that the two fraud sides pretend to debate over when there is actually no factual basis, at all, for their positions. And our "free press" simply allows them to prattle on with zero challenge.

Burkeman1 explains it more, but this is enough for us.

We must warn Burkeman1 that he is on thin ice here. Two articles gets two awards. If he ever does the trifecta we shall be forced to make him a Fellow of the Neutralist Institute.

Actually, The Surge is Working, in a subtle sort of way.

Retired Colonel Douglas MacGregor makes the point that the reason for the Surge was to get Americans to the November elections without talking about Iraq. I agree with most of what the Colonel says. I am not sure about his thesis above, but I don't say he is wrong.

Can't say the dots completely connect, but Gavin at Gavinthink says,

I'm tired of hearing about the war. It has been discussed to death over the last five years, with the Left saying that we shouldn't have done it in the first place, and the Right saying that we HAD to do it (and that either Unforseen Circumstances have made it go poorly, or that the Administration made some "unfortunate" decisions along the way).

Now, I can't say if the surge is causing that attitude, but if Gavin who lives in Amherst, MA (but is not a typical Amherst cool aid drinking type), a town where you can always find a peace vigil whether you want to or not, has a hard time discussing the war, one must suspect the effect would be greater elsewhere.

To his credit, Gavin does still talk about the war.

An interesting interview with the Colonel is here.

We give Col. MacGregor our interview of the week award, even though we are not sure of the date and don't absoulutely agree with everything. Colonel, you will just have to live with the shame of being one of our awardees. Congrats.

Boston Radio Chickenhawk Reports the Surge is Working, again

Michael Graham, Boston Radio Chickenhawk (WTKK 96.9 FM, 9AM to Noon) while listening to General Petraeus tells us that the surge is working. I wasn't listening too closely as the war is always going swimmingly according to him. Maybe it is, but how we can tell from the Petraeus snapshot when he was saying it was going well before the surge which if it was, why the heck was el surgeo needed?

Maybe Mr. Graham might want to read someone else's testimony like the left wing anti military General Odom's testimony.

He could read the words of Anthony Cordesman who formerly served as National Security Assistant to dovish Senator John McCain. (hat tip Parapundit)

Nah, your man has been shilling for the war for a long time and will not stop. Hey, a few more deployments for the stopped loss cannon fodder and enlist the cat IVs and it will work.

Support those troops, Mike, especially the ones who gave money to Ron Paul. Think they might have been making a statement.

As I wrote before,

"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 mongers won't change that.

I Don't Know About Waterboarding, but The Torture of Logic is Happening Apace.

The Israeli Water Guy is an interesting fellow. He has lived in a few places and speaks a number of languages. He has many posts about interesting social and historical subjects. He also should be sent to the Hague for criminal torture of logic.

You see, he thinks the Iraqi war an improvement over sliced bread. Mr. Greg Cochran is more impressed with sliced bread. The IWG responded to Cochran's indictment of the profitability of colonial involment with the words, "From where gcochran got the bizarre idea that wars should be profitable? What is it, a business operation? I am starting to agree with mencius that Prof. Cochran's neurone count has been declining lately."

Ah, well, what would be the point of colonialism but for the gain of the colonialist power? It never happens as Greg made the point, but no intelligent person really believes that spreading civilization silliness. Anyway, a nation that watches reality shows is not in a position to spread civilization.

The whole thing started on the 2blowhards website with a back and forth between Cochran and Mencius Moldbug. Now it is my opinion that Greg did better, not because Mencius is unable to present his position, it is just when you come down to it there is nothing there to defend and he has to do the song and dance like bringing up Egypt. To believe in the war and the lies that led to it leaves you in a, well, I can't think of a charitable way to put it.

Of course, I'm not all that interested in being charitable to your man. After coming out the worst in the fray, he deigns to comment,

Finally, Greg Cochran and I had another altercation about Iraq at 2Blowhards. I really take no pleasure in this sort of thing. Cochran has obviously lost a step or two - it's like beating up an old man.

Nerve he has, class he lacks, unless of course his tongue was in his cheek.

He does mention being 34 yo. Believeing in, letting alone defending fairy tales at that age is sad.

Gen. Odom wins The Neutralist Testimony of the Week Award

Below is the testimony of retired general William E. Odom on Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We bestow on him the uncoveted Testimony of the Week Award for the common sense and clarity of his words.

We have a quibble. Below Gen. Odom states,

The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region.

We fully agree, but then he goes on,

The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq.
Regional stability is devoutly to be wished, but, if he means it as anything less than the prelude to our instituting a complete neutralist foreign policy, then we disagree. Any FP that ties us to the labyrinthe of the mid east, let alone all other areas for other than the period necessary to completely disengage will just lead us back into a never ending one more intervention situation. The temptations are too great.

In high lighting the absurdity of current American foreign policy, the money quote is,

one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.

As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.

It is surprising this is not in The Onion.

We do wonder if the General is not channeling The Neutralist,

Also disturbing is Turkey’s military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.

We made the same point in the post, Our Bestest Buddies, The Turks, Or Is It The Kurds? back on Ausgust 2, 2007. Of course, we know the General had the score all along, but we are needy.

Please read his worthwhile words spoken to people who will probably not listen.

TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ

By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.

2 April 2008

Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it
was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.

I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.

Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.

More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.

No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.

Also disturbing is Turkey’s military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.

Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.

Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense.

The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.

As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.

Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government’s troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.

Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.

This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki’s military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.

I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.

How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.

To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.

The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran’s policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.

No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president’s policy has reinforced Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.

Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim.

A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don’t make sense.

First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.

Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the “domino theory” in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it.

The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.

Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies’ interest.

I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.

Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.

The Neutralist Policy on Tibet and Eric Margolis Is Awarded "Best Article of the Week" Whether He Wants It Or Not

As Chairman and only member of the Neutralist Association of The US, I deem it policy that I avoid expressing my personal feelings. Still, I do have them. One of them is that personally, at heart, I am a secessionist or at least a decentralist. The more power that accretes to an imperial center, the less well off a nation.

So, I am for Israel out of Palestine and Palestine out of Israel. England out of Ireland and Ireland out of England. France out of Brittany. Russia out of Chechnya and Independence for Lower Slobbovia.

As to our own unpleasantness 1860-1865, I am glad the South is still part of the US, but I can't think of a constitutional reason that secession was illegal. Of course if it can be proven that the men who approved the constitution burned holy cards in their hands as they approved it, then I would concede the point. We Nortenos forget the Hartford Convention or that the Empire State specifically reserved the right of leaving in their ratification.

Having said that, here is the official statement of The Neutralist, It should be the policy of the American Republic never to involve itself in disputes of other political entities as to what constitutes the official territory under government.

Notice the period at the end of that statement. That's it period. We again reiterate Adams that America "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy" as well as the Irish proverb that only a fool gets involved in the religious wars of churches to which he does not belong.

Having reiterated the policy, we recommend the article by Eric Margolis, HOW TO RESOLVE THE TIBET CRISIS It is quick lesson on how we got to where we are and where are we going. We tend to forget that India is just south of Tibet and may have interests that do not coordinate with China's. The Tibetans are oppressed by China. It could not be otherwise no matter how well intentioned the uninvited guest may be.

His suggestions are wise, but will probably not be heeded. This is sad, but "face" is big in Asia. Heck, it's big here to, we just pretend it isn't.

Our First Ever Presidential Rankings

I am moved to set up our Presidential Rankings after watching Jim Rogers on Youtube suggest closing down the Fed and firing Bernanke.



Mr. Rogers is entertaining, but that is not the real reason for including the video. Dear CNBC, I am available as a commentator. I can put on a fake downmarket Brit accent and sound as stupid as the commentators (their accents aren't fake, but they do sound stupid). Granted, I don't look as good as Maria, but she doesn't look as good as she used to.

But I digress. Rogers is decrying the socialization of the losses. I was wondering if we really do need a fed. I did some imperfect research. According to a goldbug, Howard Katz, the Fed is our third national bank. We have done without a Fed before. Mr. Katz opines that the Fed serves not our interests, but those of a few.

I am not an expert in economics. As a Polish American major at a reserve intelligence school I attended (don't laugh) used to say, "I have all my money in cash." In the next few years, I expect to be getting a W-2 from the blood bank as I shall have to find tuition resources for my kids.

Still, I have some opinions about the Fed. One rationale for its existence was to make sure we did not have those old panics and crashes. How did that work out from 1929 to WWII?

Thus to our ranking. Two prezzies who go up in value are Andrew Jackson and US Grant. Jackson for vetoing the National Bank Charter extension and Grant because he vetoed the Inflation Bill which would have been the 19th Century equivalent of Helicopter Ben throwing money out the window. Grant had the excesses to deal with of a war he did not start but did more than anyone other than Sherman to end.

I specifically put these men above Madison, Polk, Lincoln, McKinley, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Bush and Bush. Why? If these lads were so great, they would have been smart enough to figure out how to avoid a war. J&G were at least not warmongers.

In our rankings, avoiding war gets you extra points.

Admiral Fallon Resigns

The adult has left the building.

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.