"Or you are abominably wicked;
You are a toad."
And after I had thought of it,
I said, "I will, then, be a toad."
- Stephen Crane -
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"What the fuck are we still doin’ in Iraq? Can somebody tell me? Have we killed everybody? We some goddamn bullies. We be on CNN like ‘say our name bitch, say it, say it three times or we gon’ come over there and kill everybody…Don’t believe we’re gangsters?’ Tell me what the Iraqi uniform look like. Don’t worry, I’ll wait… ‘cause we ain’t never seen them muthafuckas! We ain’t killin’ their army, we’re over there killin’ them. We over there killin’ niggas in sweat pants, tanks tops, flip flops and a cowboy hat. They get on the news and they act like we ain’t even over there killin’ real people. They don’t get on the news and say ‘today we killed 4 men, 3 women and 2 children.’ They use words niggas can’t readily identify. ‘Today we killed a group of insurgents.’ Niggas be at they house, like ‘I don’t even know any muthafuckin insurgents. You can kill all them muthafuckas; I don’t have not one insurgent friend.’"
- Katt Williams
(Source: vanessazn, via disobey)
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On Not Dropping Bombs in Places We Don’t Understand
This was originally posted on my blog, here. It has commenting capability if you’d like to leave a longer reply without reblogging.
Q. I’ve just recently stumbled onto your blog, and though I’ve considered myself a libertarian for many years, after reading your positions on foreign policy I must admit I’m not quite there….How do you reconcile the very virtuous and very practical philosophy of limited meddling and lessened militarism with what I cannot help but think is — in many cases — an also virtuous and also practical involvement? Inefficacy aside (and I wholly wish we were able to do better, more, and faster) can we really, in good conscience, turn tail on southeast Asia? Can we really bail on the good guys in the Middle East? Pragmatically, can we get out of what have really become our global obligations — without making things worse? Thank you ahead of time. I’ve very much enjoyed your take on the state of things, your quality of thought, and exceptional writing. — John, from the internet.
A. This is a fairly common objection I hear to the libertarian philosophy, especially from those coming from a hawkish background on the right or a strongly humanitarian background on the left. They’ll be with me until I get to foreign policy, and then it’s something along these lines: “Noninterventionism definitely has some good points on paper, but it won’t work in the real world, where we have diverse national interests to protect and a moral obligation to defend those under attack.”
As you put it very well, American military involvement in the internal affairs of other countries can often look like a noble — even necessary — goal.
I’d argue that a closer look reveals it is neither. Three points:
1. How do you reconcile the very virtuous and very practical philosophy of limited meddling and lessened militarism with what I cannot help but think is — in many cases — an also virtuous and also practical involvement? Well, I begin with the acknowledgement that I am not omniscient and the government definitely isn’t either. Also, neither of us can see into the future.
This may sound like I’m trivializing the question, but it’s actually very important: We never know all the factors involved in a military intervention, which makes it difficult if not impossible to know if our involvement is virtuous or practical.
Take our history in Afghanistan as an example. During the rise of the brutal Taliban regime in 1996, the New York Times reported, “the Taliban emerged from the chaos of a war between American proxy warriors and Soviet troops, and is still supported by the arms network of American allies created to challenge Soviet power.” Of course, less than a decade later the US government once again got involved in Afghanistan to remove the very same Taliban, and we’re still there today. In the middle of the Cold War, intervening in Afghanistan against the Soviets seemed like the obviously right choice: It would allow self-determination, halt the march of communism, and keep the Evil Empire in check. Now? Maybe not so much.
Unfortunately, lessons like this are easily forgotten. With each drumbeat marching us into a new war, we quickly forget questions which steadier heads might ask about the motives of those calling for war, the clarity with which we’ve identified the good guys (if there are any), or the likelihood our involvement will even help. Dropping bombs into messy situations we very clearly do not understand will never be virtuous or practical, no matter how much we wish it might be.
2. “Inefficacy aside…” Perhaps unfortunately, inefficacy can never be an aside when lives are at stake. After all, isn’t saving lives what might impart some virtue to interventionism? Moreover, even in good economic times, the United States do not have unlimited resources to waste on failed interventions.
I only need mention “Iraq” and “Afghanistan” to conjure nightmares of inefficacy. We’ve been at war in these two countries for a decade, spending trillions and creating new enemies daily. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians have lost their lives, and their blood has been like Miracle-Gro for terrorist networks.
In Libya, yes, American forces helped depose a ruthless dictator, but the new government may be strongly influenced by Al Qaeda, the very organization we’re fighting just a couple countries away. You mentioned the “good guys in the Middle East.” Are you certain of who they are? Certain enough to stand by that choice for even a decade — or just the time it takes to fly from one country to the next? And if you are, do you really believe our government will help them if there’s nothing to be gained in the process?
On the humanitarian front, interventions have been as dubiously successful as they have been moral. Look at the humanitarian crises of the last 50 to 60 years and tell me if there’s a clear pattern of intervention saving lives and producing lasting peace: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq/Kuwait, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Somalia. A quick Google search will quickly indicate that there is no real consensus among those who study the outcomes of intervention as to whether or not interventionism is a net positive for peace and human rights.
3. “Pragmatically, can we get out of what have really become our global obligations — without making things worse?“ Let me pose a slightly different question: Pragmatically, can we maintain our global obligations without making things worse?
Just over half of American soldiers now agree that “the use of military force to fight terrorism creates hatred that breeds more terrorism,” a rate which is echoed in the general public. They’re on to something.
The mirror our government and media have given us is warped: The way we view ourselves and our militarism — benevolent if imperfect, pure in intentions if confused about facts, and ultimately a net force for good — doesn’t square with either policy realities or the perspective of the rest of the world. Unsurprisingly, people in other countries don’t like to be occupied any more than we would.
Would abandoning our self-assigned obligations result in some negative effects? Yes, absolutely. It would be unrealistic to deny that. But continuing on our present course is not without consequence either. And based on our history, what our enemies themselves are telling us, and our limited resources and knowledge, I’d contend that the more practical — and indeed more virtuous — option is to change course, and change it fast.
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The Federal Reserve Secretly Funds Illegal Wars
Since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, the New York Federal Reserve has been shipping tens of billions of dollars to the government and central bank of Iraq, ostensibly for reconstruction and resumption of governmental services after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Between 2003 and 2008, over $40 billion in cash was secretly shipped in trucks from the New York Federal Reserve compound in East Rutherford, New Jersey to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, where they were then flown by military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport. In just the first two years, the shipments of dollar bills weighed a total of 363 tons.
But much of that money was stolen, misappropriated, and simply lost. Despite Congressional hearings and reports, official inquiries from Washington to Baghdad, an investigating special inspector general’s office and Department of Defense, nobody knows exactly what happened to the bulk of the money. Likely destinations of the stolen fiat, secretly printed out of thin air to fund the US government’s illegal war and occupation in Iraq, went towards intricate contracting schemes, corrupt Iraqi and American officials, and brash, blanket appropriations in war torn Iraq.
(Source: libertyidaho, via hipsterlibertarian)
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In Focus: In Iraq and Libya, same ends, different paths
Like the U.S. military manhunt for Saddam Hussein, the search for the fugitive dictator Moammar Gadhafi took seven months. He finally popped up, like his Iraqi counterpart, from an inglorious hiding place and is now dead.
The similarities end there.
How President Obama helped bring about the end of a long-standing American antagonist in Libya captures in microcosm the vast difference in the way he and his predecessor, George W. Bush, have employed diplomacy and military power against their enemies.
Both approaches resulted in the removal of longtime U.S. nemeses who had enjoyed a few years in Washington’s favor. But Bush’s invasion cost nearly $1 trillion and more than 4,400 American lives, while Obama’s more limited intervention highlighted a national security strategy that emphasizes global burden-sharing, and secretive tactics and technologies whose legality has been questioned. The NATO airstrikes on Gadhafi’s convoy Thursday included a missile launched from a U.S. drone aircraft.
“Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives,” Obama said Thursday in a brief Rose Garden appearance.
Obama’s technocratic approach to governing has served him far better in foreign policy, where facts, expert appraisal and intelligence often trump ideology, than it has in domestic politics. At a time of severe economic uncertainty at home, the achievements abroad, including the killing of Osama bin Laden in May, have not translated into political popularity.
Because it doesn’t matter at all how many civilians died in Libya, actually, the fact that civilians even died doesn’t matter at all.
What is this madness?
War is war is war. Drones vs troops doesn’t change the fact that a war is a war, and that wars bring nothing but death and destruction.
This, my friends, is newspeak at its finest.
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"Peace is hard."
- Barack Obama, commenting today on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I’m sure peace is hard, Mr. President, but I’m also sure that peace does not entail sending drones to a foreign country to bomb it. I’m sure it doesn’t entail sending troops to foreign countries to kill their citizens. But that is something that is extremely hard to not do.
