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FFF Email Update — May 16, 2012
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Wednesday, May 16, 2012
1993: A Fateful Year in the War on Terrorism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush and other U.S. officials immediately proclaimed that the terrorists were motivated by their hatred for America’s “freedom and values.”
Let’s examine that position in light of two important events that took place in 1993, some eight years before the 9/11 attacks.
In 1993, the United States was hit with two terrorist attacks, right here on American soil.
Let’s examine those two terrorist attacks and determine whether they were motivated by hatred for America’s “freedom and values.” Let’s also examine the actions that U.S. officials took in the wake of those two terrorist attacks on American soil.
The first terrorist attack took place right outside the national headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Virginia. A Pakistani man named Mir Aimal Kasi went on a shooting rampage along the road that adjoins the CIA, killing and wounding CIA agents who were turning their cars into the CIA facilities.
The other terrorist attack occurred at the World Trade Center, the same place that one of the 9/11 attacks would take place eight years later. One of the people complicit in the attacks was a man named Ramzi Yousef, a man born in Kuwait whose parents were Pakistani.
What motivated Kasi and Yousef to commit these acts of terrorism? Was it hatred for America’s “freedom and values”?
No. Both Kasi and Yousef clearly communicated their motives to U.S. officials, and their motives had nothing to do with America’s “freedom and values.”
In a prison interview with CNN, Kasi stated, “I was real angry with the policy of the U.S. government in the Middle East, particularly toward the Palestinian people.”
At his sentencing hearing in U.S. district court, Yousef angrily said to the federal judge: “Yes, I am a terrorist, and proud of it as long as it is against the U.S. government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are butchers, liars, and hypocrites.”
Do you see anything in those statements about America’s “freedom and values”?
Interestingly, neither Kasi nor Yousef was treated as an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terrorism.” Kasi was indicted, prosecuted, and convicted for murder by the state of Virginia, given the death penalty, and executed. Yousef was indicted, prosecuted, and convicted for terrorism in federal district court and is now serving a life sentence.
So, as early as 1993 — eight years before the 9/11 attacks — the U.S. government was put on notice of the deep anger and hatred that was welling up in people in the Middle East, owing to the U.S. government’s policies in that part of the world.
What were the things that were angering people to such a deep extent? There were several: (1) the Persian Gulf intervention, where the U.S. government killed countless Iraqis; (2) The U.S. government’s intentional destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants after determining in a formal study that this would spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people; (3) The deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children from the sanctions; (4) Financial and military support of the Israeli government; and (5) Financial and military support for brutal Middle East dictatorships.
So, what did the U.S. government do in the wake of this knowledge — that its policies were engendering deep anger and hatred for the United States? Did it reevaluate and change direction?
Nope. On the contrary, U.S. officials became more determined than ever to continue and even expand the very policies that had motivated the 1993 terrorist attacks. From 1993 to 9/11, there were, in addition to the actions cited above: (1) U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that reverberated all over the Middle East that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it”; (2) The stationing of U.S. troops near Islamic holy lands, knowing full well what effect that would have on Muslim sensitivities; (3) and the no-fly zones over Iraq, which had been approved neither by Congress or the UN, which regularly killed more Iraqis, including children.
Not surprisingly the retaliatory terrorist attacks continued between 1993 and 9/11. For example, there was the terrorist attack on the USS Cole and the terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa.
So, why didn’t the U.S. government change direction? Once U.S. officials realized, as far back as 1993 and continuously thereafter, that its policies in the Middle East were producing a cauldron of boiling anger and hatred for the United States and retaliatory terrorist attacks, why didn’t it simply put a stop to such policies?
In January 2001, nine months before 9/11, Chalmers Johnson’s book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was published. U.S. officials had to be aware of Johnson’s book, given that Johnson was a renowned scholar who had served as a consultant to the CIA from 1967 to 1973.
In Blowback, Johnson predicted that unless the U.S. government changed its Middle East policies, there would be a major terrorist attack on American soil.
Unfortunately, none of this was sufficient to cause U.S. officials to change the direction of U.S. foreign policy. Knowing full well what the risks were and acting in conscious disregard of them, U.S. officials just continued the same deadly and brutal policies that had engendered the anger and hatred that had produced the pre-9/11 terrorist attacks.
Thus, when the 9/11 attacks occurred, people like Chalmers Johnson were not surprised.
But U.S. officials couldn’t have been surprised either. For years, they had been placed on notice — orally, in writing, and through actual terrorist retaliation — of the consequences of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
So, why weren’t President Bush and U.S. officials forthright with the American people immediately after the 9/11 attacks? Why didn’t they just admit that the 9/11 terrorists were motivated by hatred for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East? Why did they come up with the false notion that the terrorists just hated America for its freedom and values?
The last thing that Bush and other U.S. officials wanted Americans to do is focus on what U.S. officials had been doing in the Middle East in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, when the Cold War came to an end. They wanted Americans to believe that the U.S. Empire had simply been minding its own business after the end of the Cold War and that the 9/11 attacks had come out of the blue.
In that way, U.S. officials could continue doing what they were doing in the Middle East and even expand it. The 9/11 attacks, for example, were seen as an opportunity to do what 11 years of deadly sanctions (and a massive death toll among Iraqi children) had failed to accomplish — regime change in Iraq involving a military invasion. President Bush and other U.S. officials knew full well that most Americans would be too frightened to challenge or question them on the WMD threat supposedly posed by Saddam Hussein.
Not surprisingly, given that it was much the same thing as before, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the U.S. government’s torture and prison camp in Cuba, would engender a continual river of rage that would make the U.S. Empire’s new “war on terrorism” a permanent and perpetual war, one that would assure ever-increasing revenues for the military-industrial complex and the CIA.
Now that the U.S. Empire has ended its occupation of Iraq and now that Americans are demanding an end to the Empire’s occupation of Afghanistan, it’s time for Americans to begin reflecting upon and reevaluating the much bigger picture — that is, U.S. foreign policy in general and specifically in the Middle East, the U.S. government’s massive empire of foreign military bases, all foreign aid, foreign interventionism, the war on terrorism, and the drug war, along with the ever-growing death, destruction, financial and economic chaos, and infringements on privacy and liberty that have come with them.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Believing You’re Free Doesn’t Make It So
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The George W. Bush Presidential Center in Washington, D.C., is holding a special event today to celebrate “the brave efforts of dissidents and activists around the world in their fight to be free.”
Wow! How exciting is that!
At least one thing’s for sure: these people aren’t going to be celebrating the brave efforts of libertarians here in the United States in our fight to be free. They wish that we libertarians would just go home and keep our mouths shut about what the federal government is doing to people not only abroad but also here at home.
The big problem is the statist mindset, the mindset held by George W. Bush and by so many Americans — a mindset that holds that that the United States is still a free country.
I’m willing to bet that at that celebration today, after the Pledge of Allegiance is recited, everyone will be singing, “Thank God I’m an American because at least I know I’m free.” And I have no doubt that most every one of them will honestly believe what he is singing. And then they’ll thank the troops in Afghanistan and other foreign nations for “defending our freedoms here at home.”
For these people, freedom for Americans is a society in which the president wields the power to:
(1) Take anyone, including American citizens, into military or CIA custody and torture him, incarcerate him for life without trial, and execute him after a kangaroo trial by military tribunal.
(2). Assassinate anyone anywhere in the world whom the state deems a threat to the “national security” of the United States, including American citizens.
(3) Ignore jury verdicts of acquittal in federal jury trials and let the military or the CIA take the acquitted person into custody, incarcerate him for life without trial, torture him, or execute him after a kangaroo military tribunal.
(4) Attack and invade countries whose governments have not attacked or invaded the United States (i.e., wage wars of aggression against other nation-states).
(5) Initiate wars against any other nation state without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war.
(6) Establish an empire of military bases all over the world.
(7) Wage the war on drugs all over the world through the military, the CIA, and other federal agents and punish Americans with incarceration and fines for ingesting harmful substances.
(8) Tax people’s income and redistribute the money to other people — that is, enforce a massive welfare state on society that keeps people soft and dependent.
(9) Maintain a massive military-industrial complex that places an enormous tax burden on the American people.
(10) Maintain a strict, detailed regimen of taxation and regulation in society, in order to ensure that people behave correctly and remain silent about what the government is doing.
(11) Secretly search people’s homes, businesses, and banks without warrants, on grounds of “national security.”
(12) Grant full immunity to the military, the CIA, and other federal officials who torture, assassinate, execute, or incarcerate people in the name of protecting “national security.”
Of course, we libertarians reject all that statist claptrap that goes for “freedom” in the mind of the statist. We don’t live in the statist world of delusion and failure to confront reality.
The reality is that these types of powers are antithetical to a free society and inherent to totalitarian regimes.
Don’t believe me?
Check out Hitler’s regime. He and his military and Gestapo wielded all those powers.
Check out the military regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whom the U.S. military and the CIA adored and helped install into power. Like Hitler, whom he greatly admired, Pinochet wielded all those powers.
Check out the communist regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba. Castro wields all those powers.
Check out the military dictatorship in Egypt, which the U.S. military and the CIA have long supported and partnered with, not only with cash, armaments, and training, but also with a rendition-torture partnership. It wields all those powers.
Check out the military dictatorship in Burma. It wields all those powers.
For us libertarians, it’s bad enough that the statists have turned America toward the dark side, a side that characterizes totalitarian regimes. But the fact that these people promote all this as “American freedom” makes the situation that much worse.
It’s one thing to know you’re not free. It’s quite another to believe you’re free when you’re not. Or as the German thinker Johann von Goethe put it, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
We libertarians know that people who live under a government that wields totalitarian powers cannot honestly be considered a free people. We’re fighting hard to restore freedom to our land. Needless to say, the George W. Bush Presidential Center will not be featuring American libertarians at its celebration today.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Separate Banking and the State
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Have you noticed that whenever something goes wrong in life, statists call for more government regulations? How come they never seem to notice that their beloved regulated economy failed to prevent the thing that went wrong? No matter how highly regulated the activity, in the mind of the statist the fact that something went wrong doesn’t connote the failure of the regulated society but rather the fact that there is still too much freedom in society. Just enact some new regulations and then continue to do that every time something goes wrong and everything will be fine. Of course, total government control of economic activity lies at the end of that road.
The most recent example of this phenomenon involves a $2 billion trading loss at J.P. Morgan. Statists are out in force saying that such an enormous loss shows that more banking regulations are needed.
But banking has long been one of the most regulated industries in the country. Federal regulators have long had free reign over the banks, able to walk in the front door without a search warrant and closely examine the banks’ books and records to make sure that everything is safe and sound.
Yet, notwithstanding the longtime government regulation and scrutiny of banks, J.P. Morgan suffered its enormous trading loss, which statists say shouldn’t be permitted to occur. Statists say that no blame should attach to the regulations and the regulators. It’s all a consequence of too few regulations and too few regulators (i.e., too much freedom still needing to be regulated).
Americans have become so accustomed to the role of the federal government to watch over them and take care of them that many of them simply cannot imagine life under a non-paternalistic state. If the federal government wasn’t regulating banks and protecting people from bank losses, life would be thrown into economic chaos and impoverishment, say the statists.
What’s the libertarian approach to banking?
Treat it like any other unregulated business or investment. That is, leave it totally free of government control, monitoring, and regulation.
Consider the stock market. Lots of people invest their money there. Sometimes the value of their investment goes up and sometimes it goes down. Sometimes they lose everything.
Does the government protect people from losses in the stock market? No. Should it? Of course not. Most everyone would agree that that would be ridiculous. It would be carrying the paternalistic mindset to one more ridiculous extreme.
People know full well that if they invest in the wrong stock, the government isn’t going to be there to bail them out. That causes many investors to be more careful about which companies they invest in. Many of them do detailed research before investing in a stock. Others get advice and counsel from friends, relatives, or professionals. Would they do that if the government covered their stock losses? Nope.
Why should banks be treated any differently? If someone deposits his money in a bank that fails, that is no different in principle from investing in a wrong stock. Government should no more cover people’s banking losses than it should their stock losses.
Let’s assume that there is no banking paternalism and that a new bank opens up. Joe Doaks has just inherited $250,000. Should he put his money into that bank?
If he knows that the government isn’t going to cover his losses, Doaks is much more likely to do some careful research into the bank’s financial situation, just as he would likely do if he were investing in the stock market.
If he wants to play it as safe as possible, he could put his cash in a safety deposit box, where, of course, it wouldn’t earn any interest. Or he could keep it in a home safe or under his mattress. Of course, no place is 100 percent safe. There is always the possibility of theft.
But as soon as Doaks opens an account at the bank and deposits his money into it, he knows he’s placing it at risk. He knows — or should know — that banks lend the money to borrowers. If the bank makes a bunch of bad loans, it’s conceivable that the bank will go under owing to its inability to repay its depositors.
Again, how is that different from investing in the wrong stock? In a society where the government is not charged with taking care of people and protecting them from their own mistakes or from the vicissitudes of life, people will tend to do more careful research as to which banks are more viable than others. If a bank is paying higher rates of interest to depositors than others, then that might be a sign that placing one’s money in that bank might be riskier. As with the stock market, the consumers would have to decide how much risk they would be willing to take.
What if some banks go under, as some would undoubtedly would? Then people who have placed their money in those banks would lose it. But how is that different from investing in a company that goes belly up? How is it different from investing in a high-flying stock that suddenly plummets to zero?
Over time in a free-market banking system, the banking industry would actually be strengthened as poorly run banks went out of business. At the same time consumers would be more careful and wary about where to put their money.
Compare the free-market scenario with the paternalistic system under which we live. For decades, the federal government has protected depositors from losses while merging poorly run banks with better-run banks. Not surprisingly, that has left us with a banking industry that is shaky. Sure, the government continues to promise that if a bank fails, it will cover depositors’ losses. But what happens if there is an industry-wide collapse? What’s the government going to do then — tax everyone the amount of his deposit and then send him a check for that amount to cover his loss?
The welfare-state/regulated-economy paternalistic way of life has wrought untold damage to the American way of life. No where is this better exemplified than in the banking industry, a tightly regulated industry in which consumers have been inculcated with the notion that it’s the government’s job to take care of them.
The best thing Americans could do is free the banking industry (along with the rest of the economy) from government control and regulation, take personal responsibility for their financial choices, and prohibit the government from taking care of people.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Jim Crow’s Drug War
by Jacob G. Hornberger
After the Civil War, Washington, D.C., became a model Jim Crow city for the United States. Having supposedly waged the war for the purpose of ending slavery, U.S. officials proceeded to keep the nation’s capital city segregated all the way through the 1950s.
U.S. officials like to point to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as evidence of how enlightened they ultimately became when it came to the mistreatment and abuse of black Americans.
But does human nature really change that rapidly?
After all, not long after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was enacted, federal officials began waging their much-vaunted war on drugs, one of the most racist federal programs in U.S. history.
Moreover, knowing full well the racist aspects and consequences of the war on drugs, federal officials living today continue to wage the drug war more fiercely than ever.
In some ways, the drug war is more brutal toward blacks than segregation was. With the drug war, bigoted cops can target blacks for abuse and mistreatment and there’s no social stigma attached to it. It’s all “legitimate” because it’s all part of “eradicating the scourge of drugs from our society.”
Moreover, what better way to remove blacks from society than by putting them in jail? With segregation, bigots still had to encounter blacks within the community. With the drug war, the bigots can remove them entirely from society by carting them off to jail to serve long sentences, where no one but prison officials and other prisoners will see them.
Moreover, the beauty of the drug war, insofar as bigots are concerned, is that it provides a means by which blacks can be denied the right to vote — you know, the same right that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was designed to protect. All they have to do is convict blacks of felony possession of drugs and voila! – no more right to vote, forever.
A felony drug conviction also enables bigots to disarm blacks, given that a felony conviction means that the felon can no longer own firearms. That’s obviously not as good as a law that expressly prohibits blacks from owning firearms but it’s a close second.
In the early years of the drug war, bigots could justify the drug war with good intentions. “We just want to end the war on drugs,” federal officials proclaimed. “We just want to eradicate drugs from our society. Our intentions are entirely honorable.”
Several decades later, however, those good intentions have been buried under a mountain of failure, death, destruction, and corruption, not only here in the United States but also within Latin America.
So, why do federal officials persist in waging the war on drugs, given its manifest failure and destructiveness and the reality that it will never succeed in attaining its goal?
Two big reasons are money and power. The drug war brings big money and big power to government officials, at the state, local, and, of course, federal levels.
But a third big reason is undoubtedly the same force that drove federal officials to embrace Jim Crow and segregation in Washington, D.C., after the end of the Civil War and to continue such racist policies well into the next century: Plain old-fashioned racial bigotry, all wrapped up in pretty drug-war rationales.
To learn more about the racism of the federal government’s war on drugs, read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.
Or read this New York Times review of the book.
Or read this ACLU article: “The Drug War is the New Jim Crow” by Graham Boyd.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Put the Postal Service Out of Its Misery
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In perpetual financial agony, the Postal Service has announced that it no longer intends to close thousands of rural post offices, notwithstanding the fact that, according to the New York Times, such offices earn an average of $15,000 while costing $114,000 to operate. Apparently constituent political pressures in those rural areas have caused the Postal Service to change its mind and look for other ways to deal with its multibillion dollar shortfalls.
Why can’t we end the Postal Service’s misery by just terminating it? It’s time to not only end its longtime monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail but also to get the government entirely out of the mail business.
After all, let’s be blunt: The Postal Service is a government enterprise. Why would anyone expect it to perform like anything but a government enterprise? As a government enterprise, it’s going to be a mess regardless of who runs it and how it’s run.
In an era in which U.S. public officials are loath to consider themselves socialists, why in the world do they continue to support the Postal Service? Yes, I know, socialism connotes a situation in which the government owns all the businesses, not just some of them. But still, if public ownership of all businesses is bad, shouldn’t ownership and operation of some businesses be presumed to be bad?
Everyone knows that a private-property, free-market system produces the best of everything, especially compared to goods and services provided by government enterprises. Compare, for example, the quality of automobiles produced by privately owned companies and those that used to be produced by government-owned car companies in the Soviet bloc. There is no comparison. Those produced by the Soviet bloc were complete junk.
In a free market, with its competitive order, firms continuously strive to satisfy consumers by constantly improving products and service. Why do they do that? Because they know that if they don’t, customers are going to turn to a competing firm. Consumers are ruthless. They are always looking for better stuff at lower prices. Most of them will readily abandon a business they love if a better one comes along. Borders bookstore and Circuit City come to mind.
Of course, the Postal Service doesn’t have that concern because it has a government-granted monopoly. A monopoly is a special privilege that governments give selected firms, enabling them to be the only provider of a good or service. Everyone else is prohibited from offering the good or service in competition. If competitors try to do so and persist in doing so, the government takes them to jail.
So, how come Americans are supporting a monopoly? I thought America was supposed to stand for free enterprise and competition? Isn’t that what U.S. officials proclaim to the world?
In a time when fiscal responsibility is in short supply, it’s time to end, not reform, the Postal Service. It’s time to get government entirely out of the mail business and to embrace a free-market, competitive mail service. It’s time to deliver the Postal Service into the dustbin of history.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Hitler’s Tribunals
by Jacob G. Hornberger
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government came up with the idea of instituting military tribunals for trying suspected terrorists as a possible alternative to prosecuting them under the U.S. Code in regular federal courts. Since then, some terrorist suspects have been accorded the federal court route, others have been accorded the tribunal route, and at least one has been treated as both a criminal defendant and an “enemy combatant.”
I’ll bet lots of Americans think that this idea to establish a special tribunal to try suspected terrorists was an original one. Not so. Some 80 years ago, German chancellor Adolf Hitler did the same thing.
The German special tribunal for trying terrorists was established in 1934, the year after Hitler became chancellor. What had precipitated it was a major terrorist attack on the German Reichstag by suspected communists.
Pursuant to established German legal procedures, the government prosecuted the Reichstag Fire defendants in the regular German courts, which proceeded to acquit some of the defendants.
Hitler was outraged. How could any court acquit people who were obviously guilty of that major terrorist attack on the German government? How could any court permit terrorists to go free, enabling them to commit more acts of terrorism?
It was obvious to Hitler that the German courts could no longer be entrusted with terrorist cases or, for that matter, cases involving treason. Terrorists are terrorists, and traitors are traitors. They need to be punished, not acquitted. The regular German courts were obviously not equipped to do the job properly. It was obvious that Germany needed a special court for trying terrorists and traitors, one where the outcome would not be in doubt.
So, Hitler established a special tribunal for trying terrorism cases and treason cases. It was called the “People’s Court.” Interestingly, Hitler chose not to turn the matter over to the German military but instead kept the People’s Court under civilian control. Nonetheless, it was a special tribunal that would operate independently of the German judicial system and answer directly to Hitler.
The outcome of trials in the People’s Court was never in doubt. But German officials felt good about the process because at least people were being accorded trials before they were found guilty and punished.
The People’s Court was where German college students Hans and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose advocates were brought to trial. Why were they prosecuted in the People’s Court instead of the regular German courts? Because as German citizens, they were being charged with treason, which was encompassed within the jurisdiction of the People’s Court.
What had the Scholls and their White Rose friends done? They had published pamphlets criticizing the government’s policies, both in domestic affairs and foreign affairs. The pamphlets called on the German people to oppose their government and to restore a legitimate government to Germany.
The German authorities considered such conduct treasonous, especially since the pamphlets were published and distributed during the middle of World War II, when German citizens were being exhorted to support the troops and the war effort.
The German authorities did give the Scholl siblings a speedy trial, one that took place within a couple of days of their arrest. The trial was conducted in secret, apparently out of national-security concerns. The last thing that the authorities wanted was for Germans to hear what had been printed in the White Rose pamphlets.
In fact, the trial was so secret that when Hans’ and Sophie’s parents tried to enter the courtroom, they were refused admittance. When their mother said to a guard, “I’m the mother of two of the accused.” He responded, “You should have raised them better.”
The guard’s mindset was not unusual. It was held by the presiding judge of the People’ Court, Roland Freisler, and, in fact, by most Germans. They took the position that the Scholl siblings and their friends were bad people — traitors — for criticizing and opposing their government during time of war.
Hans and Sophie Scholl and several of their friends received the death penalty and were quickly executed by guillotine. Just before he was executed, 24-year-old Hans yelled, “Long live freedom!”
In a fascinating end to the movie Downfall, which depicted Hitler’s last days in the bunker, his secretary Traudl Junge, who had been one of the many “loyal” Germans who had failed to question their government’s policies, stated,
….I was satisfied that I wasn’t personally to blame and that I hadn’t known about those things. I wasn’t aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out.”
To learn more about how Hitler’s People’s Court operated and about the White Rose, see:
The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent” by Jacob G. Hornberger
The White Rose: The Four Leaflets
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (dvd)
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Totalitarian Show Trials
by Jacob G. Hornberger
If there is anything good about the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, it is that the American people will get to see how trials are conducted in totalitarian countries. One thing is for sure: The procedural protections found in the Bill of Rights that are employed in our federal court system here at home are nowhere to be found in the Pentagon’s system in Cuba.
Consider, for example, the right to a speedy trial. Under the Pentagon’s system, that right is just a joke. Some of the defendants have been sitting in the Pentagon’s jail for some 10 years without trial. It would be difficult to find a clearer violation of the right to a speedy trial than that.
But the Pentagon couldn’t care less. Just a few days ago, there was an arraignment, a step that ordinarily is taken within a few days of a person’s arrest in the federal-court system here at home. At Gitmo, it’s being done some 10 years after arrest.
And it’s not even clear when the actual trial will begin. My hunch is that it’ll start sometime after the presidential election — perhaps even a long time after the election. There really is no rush. There is absolutely no sense in the military mind that justice delayed is justice denied.
The reason that no one is in a rush to try the defendants is because they’re already in jail and because everyone is convinced that they’re guilty. Since they’re considered guilty, who cares when they get a trial or ever get a trial? The fact that they’re in jail is all that matters, unless of course the government wishes to bring an end to the matter by executing them. Simply lining them up in front of a firing squad without a trial and shooting them might not look too good. So, a trial, followed by a conviction and the imposition of a death sentence, makes the execution look legitimate.
In the Pentagon’s system, the defendant is presumed to be guilty and he is treated accordingly. The reason that the Pentagon tortures people at Guantanamo is because every prisoner at Guantanamo is considered to be a terrorist. The thought that any of the defendants is innocent doesn’t occur to anyone in the military. They are all terrorists and so there is nothing wrong with treating them as terrorists. How could they not be terrorists? They’re prisoners at Guantanamo, right?
The defendants at Guantanamo bear the burden of proving their innocence. It is virtually an insurmountable burden because a finding of innocence would mean that that the military has incarcerated, tortured, and abused an innocent man for more than 10 years, all the while denying him a trial at which he could prove his innocence. That would be highly embarrassing to the entire government, all three branches of which have been complicit in the man’s incarceration and mistreatment. Thus, the chances of a defendant’s successfully proving his innocence are virtually nil.
Here in the United States, every defendant is presumed innocent. The federal judge specifically informs the jury of that presumption. He also tells them that unless that presumption is rebutted by competent and reliable evidence that convinces the jury beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant’s guilt, the jury must find the defendant innocent.
Thus, even though a criminal defendant is sometimes ordered to remain incarcerated until trial in our system here at home, government officials are prohibited from torturing him or mistreating him. Why? One big reason is because he is presumed to be innocent of the charges, notwithstanding the fact that he’s in jail awaiting trial. Our system here at home recognizes that it’s not a good thing to be torturing and abusing innocent people. Of course, the other big reason is that under our constitutional system of justice here at home, cruel and unusual punishments are prohibited even after a person is convicted and sentenced.
What about trial by jury, one of the most cherished rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights? It doesn’t exist at Guantanamo. The jury there consists of military officials, all of whom serve in the organization that is charged with waging the “war on terrorism,” which entails killing and capturing “enemy combatants.” As military personnel, the members of the jury at Guantanamo also ultimately answer to their commander-in-chief, the president. Finding a defendant innocent in the face of a fierce prosecution might be a courageous thing to do but it’s also a certain way to ruin one’s career in the military.
Under our constitutional system of justice, regular people from the community serve on juries. Our American ancestors wanted it that way. They figured that ordinary people would be less subject to improper influence and would be more likely to render a fair and impartial decision based only on the evidence. In federal jury trials, jurors couldn’t care less about how the president or the military feel about a particular defendant. Unlike the military members of the juries at Guantanamo, the ordinary people on the juries here at home render their decision independently of such concerns.
In the Pentagon’s system, the prosecutors will be permitted to admit hearsay into evidence in order to help secure a conviction. In our constitutional system here at home, that’s not allowed.
Why does our constitutional system prohibit hearsay? Because it denies the defendant the right to challenge the person who makes the statement. Suppose Joe Blow takes the witness stand and testifies, “John Doe told me that he saw the defendant blow up a bomb, killing dozens of innocent people.” How can the defendant’s attorney conduct an adequate cross-examination based on that testimony? Sure, he can challenge Joe Blow’s veracity by suggesting that John Doe never really told him that but he cannot challenge John Doe as to what Doe actually saw because Doe is not on the witness stand.
So, under our constitutional system, if the government wants John Doe’s testimony, it is required to bring him to court to testify, which enables the defense to cross examine him and challenge his veracity. Under the Pentagon’s system, John Doe’s version of events can be related through Joe Blow, thereby inhibiting the defense from challenging the veracity of Doe’s account.
Our system of justice also guarantees a public trial. That’s to ensure that everything is kept on the up and up. Not so with the Pentagon’s system. Whenever there is going to be evidence relating to the military’s or the CIA’s torture of the defendant or torture of prosecution witnesses appearing at trial, the judge is going to immediately close the proceedings in order to keep such wrongdoing secret from the American people. Apparently “national security” will be at stake if Americans discover how their government has been torturing people. In fact, preliminary indications are that the defendants might well be prohibited from even mentioning or describing the torture that they or witnesses have been made to undergo.
Why did the Pentagon set up a “judicial” system to compete against our federal court system? The answer is simple: Because the Pentagon doesn’t believe in the procedural principles that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights and applied in U.S. federal courts. Those principles, in the minds of the military, have the potential to let “guilty” people — that is, people the military “knows” are terrorists” — go free.
After all, juries composed of ordinary citizens are unpredictable. Oftentimes, they acquit people whom the government is convinced are guilty. Moreover, defense attorneys often expose grave government wrongdoing in the course of a trial.
Those problems, of course, don’t exist in totalitarian countries, where the judicial process is designed to create the appearance of fairness when in fact the outcome is preordained.
It’s appropriate that the Pentagon chose to establish its “judicial” system in Cuba, given that it so closely resembles the “judicial” system on the other side of the island.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, May 7, 2012
It’s Again Time to Dismantle the Cold War Military Machine
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In 1989, when the Soviet Union dismantled, the American people had a grand opportunity, one in which they could have dismantled the massive national-security state apparatus that had come into existence at the end of World War II for the purpose of confronting America’s wartime ally and partner, the Soviet Union. Instead, the U.S. national-security state sought out ways to justify its existence, among which were the drug war and the poking of hornet’s nests in the Middle East.
With the end of the long-term occupation of Iraq and the impending withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, along with the destruction of al-Qaeda, the opportunity to dismantle the national-security state, along with the enormous tax burden it creates and its massive infringements on civil liberties, is presenting itself once again.
So, what are the military and the CIA doing about this? Not surprisingly, they are reverting to the drug war — one of the same rationales they were using in 1989 — to justify their continued existence. According to the New York Times, the U.S. military is now expanding its operations and bringing its Iraq and Afghanistan experiences to bear in Honduras, which has become one more place in Latin America where drug dealers are operating.
According to the Times:
This new offensive, emerging just as the United States military winds down its conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and is moving to confront emerging threats, also showcases the nation’s new way of war: small-footprint missions with limited numbers of troops, partnerships with foreign military and police forces that take the lead in security operations, and narrowly defined goals, whether aimed at insurgents, terrorists or criminal groups that threaten American interests.
Here in the United States, the American people prohibit the U.S. military from engaging in law-enforcement activity, including the drug war. The prohibition is known as posse comitatus. Americans believe that it’s a bad idea to have the military, with its rigid mindset toward killing and war, engaged in law-enforcement activity. Americans have determined as a matter of policy that law enforcement should be left to the police and other civilian law-enforcement agents.
Well, if it’s a bad idea to have the military engaged in law enforcement here at home, then why doesn’t the principle apply equally to people in Latin America? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to say, “We don’t want the U.S. military to enforce drug laws here in the United States because it’s harmful and destructive to our society but we do want the military to do so in Latin America”?
The longtime natural propensity of Americans is simply to defer to authority when it comes to the U.S. military and the CIA. It’s been inculcated in them since childhood to never question the permanent, ever-lasting nature of these two institutions and to blindly accept their judgment on whatever they do to protect “national security.”
That’s a very grave mistake, especially when it comes to the freedom, peace, and prosperity of our nation. There is a reason that the Founding Fathers opposed these types of permanent institutions. There is a reason that President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the military industrial complex. There is a reason that President Kennedy began ignoring the advice and counsel of these two institutions. There is a reason that President Truman wrote that the CIA had become a sinister force in American life.
For one thing, there is absolutely no moral justification for continuing the drug war. And no, providing jobs for the military and the CIA is not a legitimate justification for continuing it. As most everyone knows by now, the drug war has brought nothing but death, destruction, corruption, and violence. Look at Mexico, where a brutal six-year drug-war crackdown enforced by the Mexican military (with the full support of the U.S. military and CIA), has resulted in the deaths of 50,000 people.
Nonetheless, the U.S. military is now doubling down in Honduras.
Secondly, the original justification for the national-security state, including the massive permanent military industrial complex and the CIA, was the communist threat from the Soviet Union, America’s World War II partner and ally. That threat disintegrated in 1989, much to the surprise of the U.S. military and the CIA. Once the justification for the nationa- security state disintegrated, that was the time to dismantle the military-industrial complex, the enormous overseas Cold War military empire, and the CIA.
Instead, the national-security apparatus cited new rationales to maintain its continued existence, including such things as the drug war, rogue elements in an unsafe world, and promoting American business interests abroad. At the same time, the U.S. national-security state went into the Middle East and poked enough hornet’s nests to produce terrorist retaliation (e.g., the USS Cole, the U.S. embassies in East Africa, the World Trade Center in 1993, and 9/11), which ultimately brought the “war on terrorism.”
There is no better time than now for Americans to begin reflecting on a major shift in direction for our nation. Nothing could be more obvious than that the system that we have now isn’t working. It’s time for a paradigm shift — one away from the doctrines of statism under which we have been operating and toward our nation’s founding principles of private property, free markets, and a constitutional republic.
That necessarily entails an end to the war on drugs and a dismantling of the national-security state apparatus, including the overseas bases, the military-industrial complex, and the CIA that were brought into existence for the specific purpose of fighting the Cold War. It’s what should have been done in 1989, if not before. It should be done today. Our freedom, peace, security, and prosperity depend on it.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Resembling the Pinochet Regime
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Let’s assume that an American critic of U.S. foreign policy goes abroad and travels around the Middle East delivering a series of lectures, speeches, and articles attacking the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He refuses to support the troops, saying that when people are engaged in wrongdoing, regardless of their particular occupation, they should not be supported by people of conscience. He repeatedly calls for an end to U.S. imperialism and interventionism, including a termination of all U.S. foreign aid to dictatorships, the Israeli government, and every other regime in the world.
The president calls a super-secret meeting of his super-secret assassination commission, which has the authority to conduct super-secret deliberations on the assassination of people, including Americans. The commission determines that the American critic, as a terrorist sympathizer and a critic of the troops, hates his country and, even worse, is a grave threat to national security and therefore needs to be either captured and tortured to death or assassinated as an illegal enemy combatant in the war on terrorism.
One person on the president’s staff, however, says, “Mr. President, I think such an assassination might be illegal. Americans have the right to criticize their government anywhere in the world. If that American is killed by torture or assassination, you, the military, and the CIA might well be guilty of illegal acts for which all of you could be criminally prosecuted.”
So, what does the president do to protect himself and his troops?
He asks for a legal opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. The OPR delivers an opinion to him saying that since we’re at war against the terrorists, a war that is perpetual in nature, the president can put on his commander-in-chief helmet anytime he wants. When he puts on that helmet, the OPR attorneys tell him, he has all the powers of a military dictator, just like, say, Gen. Augusto Pinochet had in Chile. As such, he wields the power to kill anyone he deems is a threat to national security.
So, the president orders the military and the CIA to kill the American critic either through torture or assassination. His military and his CIA loyally carry out his orders and report back that they have removed the threat to national security.
When the wife and children of the victim sue the president for the wrongful death of their husband and father, the courts will dismiss the suit, holding that the president is immune from liability. The courts will hold that the president has the authority to wage war against the terrorists and that the courts will not second-guess his actions to eliminate threats to national security. Moreover, the courts will hold that the victim was provided plenty of due process during the several hours of secret deliberations by the president’s assassination commission. The courts will also hold that the president acted in good faith by seeking and securing a legal opinion from the OPR authorizing him to terminate threats to national security. Finally, the courts will say that to allow such a suit to continue might result in the disclosure of the standards by which the assassination commission makes its decisions, which would obviously threaten national security.
So, the family sues the military and the CIA for the wrongful killing of their son.
But the courts, again, will immediately dismiss the lawsuit, holding that the troops and the CIA cannot be held liable for doing their job and following the orders of their commander-in-chief. The military and the CIA are immune from all such lawsuits, the courts will hold.
So, the family sues the lawyers at the Office of Professional Responsibility, especially the ones who prepared the legal opinion stating that the killing would be legal. The courts will say, “Oh, no, the lawyers can’t be held liable because they just wrote an opinion. They didn’t kill anyone. Even if their opinion was wrong, it was nonetheless just an opinion, one that the president, the military, and the CIA were free to reject. Immunity for the lawyers too!”
Far-fetched?
Not at all. The scenario actually describes the type of society under which Americans now live. In fact, it’s not much different, in principle, from the society in which the Chilean people lived under Augusto Pinochet.
Under Pinochet, the military and DINA (Chile’s counterpart to the CIA) were taking people into custody, torturing them to death, and assassinating them. It was all done as part of the war on terrorism and the war on communism. The Chilean courts took the same position that the U.S. courts now take — that since the president, the military, and the CIA were involved in wartime operations, the courts would not second-guess or interfere with their operations.
Thousands of Chilean people were arrested, tortured, and executed, all without trials. The president, the military, and DINA had determined that they were terrorists and communists. The courts declined to interfere with their wartime operations and held that they were immune from lawsuits brought by the families of the victims.
In fact, it was during that time that the CIA worked with the Chilean authorities to execute a young American journalist named Charles Horman, who opposed the Pinochet regime and who apparently was considered a threat to the national security of both Chile and the United States.
Just like President Bush and President Obama, Pinochet sent his forces into other countries to assassinate people, including Chileans living abroad, who were determined to be threats to national security, i.e., terrorists or communists or both. One of these was a former Chilean diplomat named Orlando Letelier, who was living here in the United States and publicly criticizing Pinochet’s policies.
Pinochet’s forces assassinated Letelier and his young assistant Ronni Moffitt on the streets of Washington, D.C. Surprisingly, the Justice Department considered it to be murder, but Pinochet considered as a wartime assassination. Needless to say, the Chilean courts during the Pinochet regime took the same position that U.S. courts take today — that the president, the military, and DINA were immune from liability.
Obviously, there has been a fundamental reordering of American society since 9/11, one that now strongly resembles the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Like Pinochet, the president now has the omnipotent power to torture Americans to death, or incarcerate indefinitely without trial, or assassinate them. All he has to do is get a favorable opinion from the lawyers and have the military or the CIA do the dirty work and everyone will then be held immune from liability by the courts.
Heck, the least they could have done after 9/11 is secure a constitutional amendment that stated: “The president, the military, and the CIA will now have all the omnipotent powers to wage the war on terrorism (and the war on communism, if necessary) that Chilean military strongman Augusto Pinochet had during his military dictatorship in Chile.”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
The Military’s Exalted Position in American Life
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Ninth Circuit’s decision holding John Yoo immune from liability in Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against him pretty much confirms what I recently wrote about the exalted position that the U.S. military and the CIA hold in American society. See here and here.
The Court confirmed that when the cops are dealing with a criminal defendant, they are prohibited from illegally detaining him and torturing him and can be held liable for doing so.
But it’s an entirely different situation when one substitutes the military for the police. In American society, the military is special. They can take criminal defendants into custody, refuse to grant them a trial for years, and torture them. And there isn’t anything the victims can do about it.
Think about that. Under our system of government, the military is allowed to do things to Americans that the cops are prohibited from doing. And while the cops can be held liable for doing such things, the military, along with U.S. officials who authorized or ordered that such things be done to Americans, are immune from liability.
Where in the world does it say that in the Constitution? Doesn’t the Bill of Rights apply to the U.S. government? Aren’t the military and the CIA part of the U.S. government? Where does the Bill of Rights provide an exception to the military and the CIA?
For example, the Fifth Amendment reads in part, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury….” The Sixth Amendment reads in part, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial….” The Eight Amendment reads in part, “…. Nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
Do you see any exception in those Amendments for the U.S. military and the CIA? Do you see any language that says, “except when it’s the military or the CIA doing these things, in which case it’s all okay”?
No, of course not. That’s because our American ancestors clearly intended to bar the entire U.S. government, not just some sections of the U.S. government, from doing these things to people, including American citizens.
The Court of Appeals observed that things are different with the military because the military labeled Jose Padilla an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terrorism” rather than a “criminal defendant” in a criminal prosecution.
Big deal. So, all the government has to do in the land of the free and home of the brave is deliver a criminal defendant to the clutches of the military, change his designation from “criminal defendant” to “enemy combatant” and the Bill of Rights is nullified.
Yeah, sure, that’s exactly what our American ancestors intended. Too bad they didn’t put that in the Bill of Rights.
It’s all one great big sham, one that federal judges are scared to death to pierce, just as the federal judges in Chile were scared to do when military strongman Augusto Pinochet, whom the U.S. military and the CIA fully supported, was doing the same thing with his military and intelligences forces during his “war on terrorism” and his “war on communism.”
The war on terrorism is just a figure of speech, one that enables the sham to be perpetrated. The fact is that Padilla, along with every other accused terrorist, is a criminal defendant. That’s because terrorism is a federal criminal offense. The only difference is over which federal agency is going to get to prosecute him — the Justice Department or the Department of Defense.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the Justice Department and the Defense Department are two different sections of the same government.
If accused terrorist were really enemy combatants in war, why would the military be prosecuting them in kangaroo military tribunals? Everyone knows that in wartime, it’s the job of combatants to kill enemy soldiers and that such soldiers cannot be criminally prosecuted for doing so. When George Patton captured German soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge, were the German POWs prosecuted in kangaroo military tribunals for murder or terrorism? Of course not. In a real war, soldiers are taken prisoner and not prosecuted.
But here we see the U.S. military prosecuting terrorist suspects for the crime of terrorism. That’s what those kangaroo military tribunals in Cuba are for — prosecuting people for criminal offenses relating to terrorism — the same criminal offenses that defendants are prosecuted for in federal court.
Yep, the whole process is a sham, one that conveniently enables the U.S. government to avoid the restrictions provided in the Bill of Rights by simply delivering criminal defendants to the Pentagon, which is held immune from the restrictions of the Bill of Rights due to its special and exalted position in American life.
Doesn’t the Padilla case provide a perfect example of this sham? They start him out under the custody of the Justice Department, which is prohibited from torturing him. They then turn him over to another agency within the same government — the Department of the Defense, which tortures the heck of him for 3 years. The Defense Department then gives him back to the Justice Department with a permanently damaged mind, owing to the three years of torture, where they finally prosecute, convict him, and sentence him as a criminal defendant.
According to the federal courts, those 3 years under military custody just don’t count because of the special, exalted place the military and the CIA play in American society. Oh, sure, if the cops had done this, they’d be held liable. But when the military or the CIA do it, no federal judge is going to touch them, just like in Chile under Pinochet.
To grasp the full nature of this great big sham, consider this: Let’s assume that a criminal defendant in a federal terrorism case is tried and acquitted by a federal jury. Ordinarily, the federal judge would order him released. Not so, however, if the U.S. military or the CIA decide to ignore the jury’s verdict of acquittal. In that case, the federal judge will meekly defer to them, permitting troops or CIA agents to enter his courtroom and take person into custody as an “enemy combatant” based on precisely the same criminal charges on which he was just acquitted by the jury. Once taken into custody, the military and the CIA will be able to do whatever they want to the guy knowing that the federal judiciary will not dare interfere with them, just like the Chilean federal judiciary wouldn’t dare interfere with Pinochet’s military reign of terror in Chile.
If that doesn’t show the supremacy that the military now has in American society, including supremacy over federal judges, I don’t know what does. By the way, the Gestapo had the same power to ignore jury verdicts of acquittal in Nazi Germany as the U.S. military and the CIA now do here in the United States.
Undoubtedly, Padilla will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Good for him. Maybe the Court will reverse the Ninth Circuit’s decision and finally expose this entire sham for what it is. I wouldn’t count on it though. The military and the CIA have become a powerful part of the U.S. government, much more powerful in my opinion than the judicial branch of the federal government. My hunch is that the Supreme Court isn’t about to take on the military and the CIA. In fact, I think there’s a good chance that the Supreme Court will even decline to hear Padilla’s case, so as to avoid having to go on record in the matter.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Conservatives Are Socialists Too
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Conservatives are having a heyday calling President Obama a socialist. What they block out of their minds is that by their own measure, they are socialists too.
In its purest sense, socialism refers to a situation in which the state owns all the means of production. Obviously, Obama doesn’t favor doing that. Thus, when conservatives call him a socialist, they are referring to the fact that Obama wants to equalize wealth by taxing the rich and giving the money to the poor. This wealth-redistribution process might well be described as a variation on the socialist theme.
But while conservatives want to protect the assets of the rich from IRS confiscation and welfare-state redistribution, conservatives cannot deny that they themselves also favor the welfare-state concept of taxing people so that the state can redistribute the money to others.
The only thing different between conservatives and liberals is the identity of the people they wish to tax and the identity of people they wish to receive the loot. Liberals love taxing the rich and giving the money to the poor. Conservatives love taxing the middle class and the poor and giving the money to the rich.
Consider, for example, state-supported sports stadiums. Here, the state taxes the poor and the middle class, especially through regressive taxation, and gives the money to rich owners of sports franchises. Conservatives absolutely love doing that.
Consider foreign aid to, say, the military dictatorship in Egypt or to the Israeli government. Conservatives loving taxing Americans and sending the money to selected pro-U.S. dictators or democratically elected government officials around the world.
Consider the bailouts of rich Wall Street firms. Conservatives love it when the state taxes Americans and gives the money to rich bankers and financiers on Wall Street, especially ones who have made poor investment decisions. Conservatives justify their socialism with the adage “Too big to fail.”
Consider farm subsidies. Conservatives love it when the IRS collects taxes from people, especially the middle class, and gives the money to rich farming conglomerates.
Consider Social Security, the crown jewel of the welfare state. It takes money from the young and the poor and transfers it to the old, many of whom have accumulated large fortunes by the time they have retired. Conservatives justify their socialism by exclaiming, “But they put it in and therefore have a right to get it back.” Not so. Under the law, Social Security is just another confiscate and redistribute welfare-state program. There is no retirement fund, and there never has been one. Social Security is no different in principle from the food stamp program, which conservatives love to decry.
Consider Medicare, which conservatives also love. It takes money from the young and productive, many of whom are struggling to start families, and uses it to cover the medical expenses of the old, many of whom are extremely rich.
There’s another aspect to socialism — state ownership of enterprises. How about the Postal Service? When was the last time you heard a conservative call for abolishing the Postal Service and leaving all mail delivery to the free market? My hunch is never.
There’s another aspect to socialism — central planning. That’s when the state centrally plans and directs a particular activity, which inevitably produces a permanent state of crisis and chaos.
Conservatives love central planning and are notorious for refusing to accept personal responsibility for the crises and chaos it produces.
Consider, for example, public (i.e., government) schooling. It’s a perfect model of the socialist, central-planning paradigm. Sure, some conservatives call for an end to federal involvement in education but they love the fact that state and local governments are centrally planning and running educational activities. They never accept personal responsibility for the damage that public schooling does to countless students.
Consider immigration. Conservatives love the fact that the federal government centrally plans this activity. They refuse to accept responsibility for the endless crises and chaos produced by immigration central planning, especially with its immigration quotas and its intrusive police-state restrictions, searches, raids, and deportations.
Consider the Federal Reserve, the federal entity that centrally plans the nation’s monetary activity. Conservatives go ballistic whenever a libertarian proposes abolishing the Fed and implementing a free-market monetary system. Conservatives refuse to take responsibility for the decades of monetary debasement and financial crises that have come with monetary central planning.
When conservatives point their finger at Obama and call him a socialist, they conveniently forget that they’re pointing three fingers back at themselves. The fact is that conservatives, by their own measure, are as socialist as Obama, if not more so.
It is only libertarians who are genuinely and consistently opposed to all forms of socialism and totally committed to a free-market, private-property, limited-government way of life.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Obama Is Right — It’s Time for Reflection
by Jacob G. Hornberger
President Obama says that the one-year anniversary of the U.S. military’s killing of Osama bin Laden should be a time of reflection rather than a time of celebration.
Indeed. Let’s do some reflecting.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials claimed that the attackers had been motivated by hatred for America’s “freedom and values.”
That was a crock, as I pointed out in September 2001. Actually, it was U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East — that is, the bad things that the U.S. government was doing to people in that part of the world — that gave rise to the anger and hatred that manifested itself in the 9/11 attacks.
Of course, that was the last thing that U.S. officials and apologists for the U.S. government’s pro-empire, pro-interventionist foreign policy wanted people to focus on. If people began focusing on the real motivation for the 9/11 attacks, that might cause them to begin discussing and debating U.S. foreign policy and then possibly moving America in a different direction.
Most everyone living today has been born and raised under a national-security state, a system in which the military-industrial complex, the massive overseas military establishment, the CIA, the NSA, and other such agencies play a dominate role in American society. We have become so accustomed to the national-security state that only libertarians and a few liberals gives its existence a second thought. It’s just a given that the national-security state must always be a permanent foundation of American life.
But let’s not forget when and why the national-security state came into existence. Its primary roots go back to the end of World War II, when U.S. officials converted America’s World War II ally and partner, the Soviet Union, into a new official enemy, one that was supposedly as threatening to the United States as Nazi Germany.
U.S. officials told Americans that despite the end of the war, it was now necessary that the United States remain on a war footing for the indefinite future. That meant that the standing army became a permanent part of the U.S. government, with ever-increasing budgets for the military and the military-industrial complex. It also meant the establishment of the CIA, which would end up involving the United States in all sorts of nefarious and sinister plots, including coups, assassinations, and invasions. It meant an FBI that would spy on, monitor and keep files on the activities of “suspicious” Americans. It meant embargoes and sanctions that would squeeze the lifeblood out of foreign citizens in the hopes that they would install pro-U.S. rulers into power. It meant massive death and destruction in Korea and Vietnam.
And it was all justified because of the national-security state’s “war on communism” — a war directed at the Soviet Union, the former partner and ally of the United States during World War II.
But in 1989, the worst nightmare of the national-security state occurred. The communist threat disintegrated. The Soviet Union went bankrupt, owing to out-of-control government spending. Germany was united. Soviet troops evacuated Eastern Europe.
The U.S. national-security state had lost its justification its existence. There was only one logical course that should have been followed: to dismantle the national-security state.
That’s not what happened, however. Instead, the national-security state decided to go abroad and poke some hornet’s nests, especially in the Middle East, knowing full well that people were likely to become very angry.
There was the Persian Gulf intervention, when countless Iraqis were killed and maimed and when U.S. forces intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants knowing the adverse effect that would have on people’s health, especially children.
There were 11 years of brutal sanctions on Iraq, which prevented those water-and-sewage treatment plants from being repaired and which decimated Iraq’s economy.
There was U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were worth it.
There was the stationing of U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, knowing the adverse effect that would have on Muslim sensitivities.
There were the deadly and illegal no-fly zones over Iraq.
There was the foreign aid to brutal dictators in the Middle East.
There was the foreign aid to the Israeli government.
It all added up to generate unbelievable anger and rage among people in the Middle East.
And it’s not as if U.S. officials were unaware of the boiling cauldron of rage and hatred. There were the terrorist attacks on the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassies in East Africa. There was the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, author Chalmers Johnson warned that unless the U.S. government changed course, the result would be terrorist retaliation on American soil. That’s what his book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was all about.
Here at FFF, we were saying the same thing, prior to 9/11. See here, here, here, here, and here
In fact, in December 1999 Sheldon Richman wrote:
Apologists for activist government never tire of telling us that the benevolent state is our protector and that without it we'd be at the mercy of monsters. It is about time that we understood that the U.S. government does more to endanger the American people than any imagined monsters around the world. How so? By pursuing its Grand Foreign Policy of meddling anywhere and everywhere. It stands to reason that if you stick your nose in other people's quarrels you will acquire enemies.
In February 2000 I wrote: “If there had been a terrorist attack [on January 1, 2000], you can be 100 percent certain that the U.S. government would have used the crisis as an opportunity to march America farther down the road to total destruction of our civil liberties.”
The 9/11 attacks was just a continuation of retaliatory attacks that had occurred before, attacks that were in retaliation for what the U.S. government was doing to people in the Middle East.
And the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were also just a continuation of the things the U.S. government had been doing prior to 9/11. They were certain to produce an endless stream of anger and hatred and an endless thirst for retaliation.
It’s time for Americans to do what they should have done in 1989 — dismantle the entire national-security state, including America’s overseas military empire, the entire military-industrial complex, and the CIA. The Cold War is over, and the policies of the national-security state have produced the “war on terrorism.”
It’s time to restore our nation to a limited-government, constitutional republic. It’s the only way to restore freedom, peace, harmony, and prosperity to our land.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.