Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Neo-Cons and Moral Degeneracy
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The presidential advisor for press affairs to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has an interesting op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today. Pointing out that Barack Obama’s offer to talk to the Iranian regime is nice, Ali Akbar Javanfekr pointed out that words alone are insufficient, especially if the U.S. government persists in conducting an aggressive and interventionist foreign policy.
Javanfekr specifically pointed to (1) the U.S. government’s surreptitious 1953 coup in which it ousted the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, from office and installed a cruel and brutal Iranian U.S. puppet in his stead, who proceeded to terrorize and torture the Iranian people for the next 25 years, with the support of the U.S. government; and (2) the U.S. government supported Saddam Hussein in his war of aggression against Iran, a war which caused the deaths of one million Iranian people.
What is fascinating to me is how so many conservatives, neo-cons, and liberals fail to recognize the morally degeneracy of U.S. foreign policy. It’s as if they have just resigned themselves into accepting that the U.S. Empire is now a permanent feature in American life and the life of the world and, therefore, that anything it does should automatically be considered good and moral.
I recently witnessed this phenomenon in a debate on Afghanistan that was sponsored by the Donald and Paula Smith Foundation in New York City. (The video of the debate has not yet been posted but when it is, I’ll let you know in a blog post.) If you’ll watch it, I think you’ll be as fascinated as I was by the reaction of neo-con Max Boot, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, to my charge that U.S. foreign policy is “morally degenerate.”
I blogged on one aspect of Boot’s angry reaction to my “moral degeneracy” charge immediately after the debate. That was in reference to my pointing out the apparent willingness of pro-Iraq War supporters to sacrifice any number of Iraqis, no matter how high, to achieve “democracy” in Iraq, even while simultaneously supporting the brutal non-elected military general in Pakistan who took power in a coup and who refused to permit elections in the country.
Boot reacted by interrupting me and angrily stating that he was deeply concerned about the plight of the Iraqi people. He pointed out that Saddam Hussein, the brutal dictator that he was, would have killed many more Iraqis than the U.S. government has.
Yet, during the Q&A session Boot’s response to one of the questions was fascinating and revealing. Someone asked him about the U.S. government’s support of Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. Boot blithely responded that the U.S. government was supporting Saddam to help him defeat Iran, which the U.S. government was then opposing.
How about that? On the one hand, Saddam is an evil dictator who needs to be ousted from power, even if it costs the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and, on the other hand, he needs to be supported when he’s killing Iranians as part of his war of aggression against that country.
Why were U.S. officials helping Saddam to kill Iranians? In 1979 Iranians had the audacity to oust the cruel and brutal Shah of Iran, who the U.S. government has installed into power with a coup in 1953.
Foreigners aren’t supposed to do that to the U.S. Empire. They are expected to accept the ruler that the Empire selects for them and submit to his control, no matter how cruel and brutal such control is. When the Iranian people ultimately ousted the Iranian ruler that the U.S. Empire had selected for them, that marked them for punishment, including sanctions, isolation, condemnation, animosity, war, and death.
If you ultimately watch the NYC debate, you’ll see that my description of all this as “morally degenerate,” obviously struck a sensitive chord within neo-con Boot. Throughout the debate, he mocked the use of the term, even while doing his best to ignore the substantive argument behind the term.
Contrary to the hopes of Iranian officials, the solution to America’s foreign policy woes lies not with Barack Obama. It is obvious that he is stuck in the morally degenerate foreign policy of empire and interventionism that has held our nation in its grip for decades. Instead, the key to getting our nation back on the right track — the track toward freedom, peace, prosperity, harmony, and morality — lies with us, the American people. When a critical mass of Americans finally decides to restore a constitutional republic to our land, that monumental shift in a positive direction will follow.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wayne LaPierre’s Contradictory Defense of Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In an article on CNN.com, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, reminds us of how conservatives and liberals share a common philosophical framework with respect to the role of government in our lives, a framework that poses a grave threat to our freedom.
In his article, LaPierre takes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to task for suggesting that gun control should be employed to stem the drug-war violence along the border. The thrust of LaPierre’s argument is that the Mexican drug cartels are primarily using fully automatic weapons, not the single-fire weapons available in the United States that are commonly referred to as “assault weapons.”
In the process of making his argument, however, LaPierre reveals that he, like Clinton, favors the war on drugs, the 35-year-old failed war that has brought nothing but death, torture, assassination, corruption, violence, and chaos to the United States and the rest of the world.
While correctly holding that people have a fundamental right to put a gun into their hands, LaPierre feels that people don’t have a fundamental right to put drugs into their mouths. How consistent is that?
LaPierre states, “Nobody can substantiate claims that U.S. guns cross the border ‘by the thousands’ or ‘account for 95% of weapons used by Mexican drug gangs.’ Because it’s not true.”
LaPierre is being disingenuous, however. The fact is that Mexican drug cartels are getting assault weapons from gun shops in the United States. Just last week, for example, in Brownsville a man was sentenced to 10 years in jail for purchasing 70 guns in the United States and smuggling them into Mexico. Another man from Houston was recently sentenced to 4 years in prison for purchasing 339 weapons, at least 40 of which ended up in Mexico.
Where does that leave LaPierre, given his ardent commitment to the war on drugs? It leaves him with his secondary argument — that gun control here in the United States won’t prevent Mexican drug cartels from getting their hands on guns on the black market.
But since when has that sort of argument deterred drug-war statists? After all, 35 years of harsh jail sentences, asset forfeiture, drug raids, searches and seizures, and other such measures haven’t brought “victory” in the war on drugs, and we don’t see the statists abandoning those efforts. Why should anyone expect the drug warriors to keep gun control off the table in their attempt to “win” the war on drugs?
The war on drugs is not the only area in which conservatives and liberals join forces to support measures that inevitably lead to gun control and other infringements on liberty. The “war on terrorism,” which both conservatives and liberals have wholeheartedly embraced, is another good example, As U.S. officials have repeatedly reminded us after 9/11, in the war on terrorism the entire world is a battlefield. That includes the United States and, of course, Afghanistan and Iraq. That means that the president and the military are now empowered to do everything here in the United States to fight the terrorists that they’re doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, without worrying about constitutional constraints.
And what have they been doing to combat the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq? Busting down doors and conducting searches without warrants, incarcerating people indefinitely without trial, torture and sex abuse of detainees, censorship … and confiscating guns and imposing gun control on the citizenry!
Conservative support of the war on drugs and the war on terrorism shows us that when it comes to freedom, we simply cannot depend on conservatives. Their inconsistent defense of freedom , especially their support of such anti-freedom programs as the war on drugs and war on terrorism, steadily leads to loss of freedom.
Wayne LaPierre’s support of the drug war, even while opposing gun control, is just another reminder as to why the American people should look to libertarians, not conservatives, to lead America toward the restoration of liberty and a constitutional republic to our land.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, March 27, 2009
More Drug-War Inanities
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The mainstream press is adding its two cents worth of drug-war inanities to those being issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her trip to Mexico. Both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times are praising Clinton for having the courage to acknowledge the role that the U.S. plays in the drug war. And what role are they referring to? The demand for drugs among American drug users.
Let’s examine why such praise is so darned inane.
For one thing, notice that they’re what they’re actually praising Clinton for is her blaming the drug-violence in Mexico on drug users here in the United States. In other words, when she goes down to Mexico and confesses that “the U.S.” is partially responsible for the violence in Mexico, Clinton is not acknowledging and apologizing for the U.S. government’s war on drugs. Instead, she’s blaming American drug users, the people that the U.S. government has been persecuting and prosecuting for the entire 35-year history of the war on drugs.
What Clinton did was neither courageous nor honest. Instead, it was false, duplicitous, and hypocritical. If she had gone down to Mexico and admitted that the U.S. government’s war on drugs was responsible for 35 years of death, damage, destruction, violence, gang wars, assassinations, kidnappings, beheadings, torture, bribery, corruption, and suffering, that would have been one thing. Instead, what she did was simply blame it all on the people who have had the audacity to ingest substances that Hillary and her statist cohorts have banned.
Meanwhile, the state of New York has just decided to dismantle its harsh mandatory-minimum sentences for drug users that were enacted during the 1970s. It seems that the statists in New York are finally starting to see the brutality, cruelty, and senselessness of punishing people with long jail sentences for simply ingesting illegal drugs.
But then, where does that leave us with respect to Hillary’s point — that U.S. drug users are partially to blame for the drug-war violence along the border? Is she going to propose harsher punishments to deal with those people, and if so, how’s that going to fly in New York, where they’re finally realizing how stupid that is.
The horror that the drug war has unleashed on America and the world is reason enough to call for its immediate end. But that’s not the main reason for ending it. The main reason is that it is a direct assault on individual liberty. For example, consider the mindset of those New York statists who have just reduced those harsh jail sentences for drug offenders. Sure, it’s nice that they’re being less harsh, but notice their mindset hasn’t changed in substance: They still claim the moral authority to punish people for something that goes to the heart of individual liberty — the right to ingest whatever one wants without being punished by the state for it.
What those New York statists are essentially saying is, “We are lowering the penalties for illicit drug use, but don’t forget that we control what you decide to put into your mouth. You belong to us, to society. You will do as you’re told, or we will inflict punishment on you. We don’t care whether you are ingesting these substances in the privacy of your own home. You are a drone in our national hive and subject our commands.”
What better example of a violation of fundamental rights and individual liberty than that? If freedom means anything, it means being able to sit in the privacy of your own home and engage in any peaceful, consensual activity with other adults that you wish. Ingesting the wrong substances is no different in principle than reading the wrong books. Freedom entails the right to be irresponsible, so long as one’s conduct is peaceful. The government has no moral right to punish anyone for engaging in such activity. We are not drones and this is not a hive. We are individuals with fundamental rights, rights that preexist government.
Contrary to the suggestions of the mainstream press, Clinton is not deserving of praise for blaming the violence along the U.S.-Mexico border on American drug users. She should be condemned for refusing to acknowledge that it is the 35-year-old war on drugs with which she and other statists, both liberal and conservative, have cursed our land that is the root of the problem.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Hillary Clinton’s Drug-War Inanities
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Hillary Clinton’s comments on the violence along the U.S.-Mexico border are so inane that I feel compelled to write about two government programs: the war on drugs and public (i.e., government) schooling.
On her way to Mexico to discuss the ever-increasing drug-war violence along the U.S. Mexico-border, guess whom Clinton blamed the violence on: America’s drug users and gun sellers!
How inane is that?
Pardon me, Ms. Clinton, but isn’t there also an insatiable demand for booze here in the United States? Yet, I don’t see much booze-related violence along the border. But here’s my prediction: If you people made booze illegal again, I predict that there would be all kinds of booze-war related violence, not only along the border but also all across the United States. In fact, you’ll recall that that is precisely what Prohibition did — it produced lots of Al Capone-like violence, until booze was re-legalized, at which point the violence disappeared.
Why can’t Clinton simply acknowledge that the drug war is at the root of the violence along the border? Why can’t she simply be honest and say, “Look, we understand that the drug war is causing the violence, but that’s a cost we’re willing to pay to keep our 35-year-old war on drugs going”?
The reason is very simple: If people were to see the truth, Clinton and her statist cohorts would stand to lose what matters most to them in life — power and money. The reason that statists, both liberal and conservative, love the drug war is because it helps to satisfy their insatiable demand for more power over the lives of more human beings. After all, with the possible exception of U.S. foreign policy, it would be difficult to find a government program better at producing ever-increasing government power and budgets than the war on drugs.
Here’s how this power surge works. They first make it illegal to possess or distribute certain drugs, knowing that people are inevitably going to break the law. Then they engage in ever-increasing measures to deal with the ever-increasing crises associated with people’s refusal to comply with the law: warrantless searches and seizures, Soviet-style checkpoints on highways, confiscation (i.e., stealing) of people’s money and other assets, and harsh punishments.
Then they get Mexico go crack down on the drug cartels that the drug war itself has brought into existence, knowing that the result is going to be precisely the same as when the U.S. government cracked down on the booze organizations during Prohibition. Then, they cite all the resulting drug-war chaos and crises as the excuse for more intervention, including the militarization of the border and gun control.
So, what does public schooling have to do with all this? What else can possibly explain why the American people fall for all this inanity? Public schooling teaches children to memorize, conform, and accept. Critical thinking and challenging the system at a fundamental level bring Ritalan injections. So, you end up with a nation of sheep-like adults with mindsets that cause them to nod approvingly when people like Clinton inanely claim that the drug-war violence along the borders is all because of drug users and gun sellers in America.
No, Ms. Clinton, the solution to the drug-war violence along the border does not lie in trying to satisfy your insatiable demand for more power, money, gun control, and bigger government. It lies instead in the immediate end to your beloved war on drugs, a war that has brought nothing but death, destruction, suffering, and misery.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
A Lawless Regime
by Jacob G. Hornberger
As we were pulling together today’s FFF Email Update, two points from two different articles struck me for their truthfulness and insightfulness.
Simon Jenkins writes: “This war [Afghanistan] remains what it was from the start, aggression against a foreign state intended to punish it for refusing to hand over the perpetrators of 9/11. It was later sanitized (largely by the British) as a liberal intervention to bring democracy and gender awareness to a poor people.”
Referring to the legal memos that empowered President Bush to seize omnipotent power after 9/11, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, states: “I call it ‘Fuhrer’s law.’ What those memos lay out means the end of the system of checks and balances in this country. It means the end of the system in which courts, legislature and executive each had a function and they could check each other.”
As Ratner points out, after 9/11 the president and the Pentagon assumed the power to do whatever they wanted as part of their “war on terrorism.” No constitutional checks on power whatsoever. Everything they were doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Cuba, they could do here.
That’s what the seizure, incarceration, and torture of Luis Padilla were all about. The president and the Pentagon were demonstrating that a new day had arrived in America — the day when ordinary people were subject to the omnipotent control of the military and its commander in chief. The same holds true for the illegal wiretapping and monitoring of people’s email.
What President Bush and the Pentagon did after 9/11 is simply declare the crime of terrorism to also be an act of war, at their option. That’s why they’ve been able to shift back and forth in the Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri cases. Today, a criminal defendant, tomorrow an enemy combatant. Or vice versa. Everyone, including Americans, is now subject to the arbitrary and capricious dictates of U.S. officials as to how they are to be treated as part of the war on terrorism.. That’s what the “rule of men” is all about, as compared to the “rule of law,” where everyone must be treated in the same manner.
As Ratner points out, the invasion of Afghanistan is an illegal war of aggression, just like the war on Iraq. First of all, let’s not forget that the Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war before the president can wage war. The Congress never declared war on Afghanistan. But of course, given the president’s determination that after 9/11 the Constitution could be ignored, why would anyone expect him to comply with the declaration of war requirement?
Furthermore, while pro-war supporters often refer to Afghanistan as “harboring Osama bin Laden,” that rationale for invading Afghanistan was bogus. As Ratner points out, the reason the U.S. went to war against Afghanistan was the Afghan government’s refusal to turn bin Laden over to the U.S. Not once did Bush, the Pentagon, the CIA, or anyone else provide one iota of evidence indicating that the Afghan government had conspired with bin Laden to commit the 9/11 attacks. Moreover, there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the U.S.
In fact, today the U.S. government is refusing to extradite a man with ties to the CIA named Jose Posada Carriles to Venezuela, despite a formal extradition request from Venezuela pursuant to a formal extradition treaty between the two countries. Posada Carriles is accused of committing a terrorist bombing of a Cuban airline in which dozens of people were killed, including the young members of a Cuban sports team.
Does Venezuela have the right to invade the United States for harboring a terrorist? I’d suspect that most pro-war Americans would say, “Absolutely not! And I’d fight on the side of my country if they did, and I’d kill as many bad guys as necessary to rid my nation of the invader and occupier!”
Well, that’s precisely what many Afghanis are doing — fighting to rid their nation of an illegal invader and occupier, one that has killed thousands of Afghani citizens. Yet, the illegal invader and occupier just continues killing more and more people every week.
And what will happen if friends or relatives of Afghani victims of U.S. aggression end up committing a terrorist act on American soil? Well, can’t you hear Barack Obama, the Pentagon, and the CIA announcing, “The terrorists hate us for our freedom and values and are trying to take over our country. To keep you safe, we must now begin exercising those omnipotent powers were assumed after 9/11.”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Why Not Abolish the Postal Monopoly?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The U.S. Postal Service has announced that another in its endless series of rate increases will take effect in May. The announcement raises a question that unfortunately too few Americans ever ask themselves: Why not simply abolish the Postal Service or at least repeal its monopoly on first-class mail delivery?
The U.S. Postal Service is, pure and simple, a monopoly. A monopoly means that the government has granted a legal privilege to an entity to be the exclusive provider of a particular service. Everyone else is prohibited by law from competing against that entity to provide that particular good or service.
Whenever anyone tries to enter the market in competition against the Postal Service in the delivery of first-class mail, Justice Department lawyers immediately rush to federal court to enforce the Postal Service’s monopoly privilege. A federal judge immediately issues an injunction prohibiting the would-be competitor from continuing to violate the monopoly law. If the would-be competitor refuses to comply with the judge’s order, the judge orders his arrest and incarceration, which will last indefinitely until the would-be competitor finally declares that he will no longer violate the Postal Service’s monopoly.
Throughout American history and, for that matter, British history, there has been a revulsion against monopolies. Here’s how Justice Bradley put it in his dissenting opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873):
The granting of monopolies, or exclusive privileges to individuals or corporations is an invasion of the right of others to choose a lawful calling, and an infringement of personal liberty. It was so felt by the English nation as far back as the reigns of Elizabeth and James. A fierce struggle for the suppression of such monopolies, and for abolishing the prerogative of creating them, was made, and was successful. The statute of 21st James abolishing monopolies was one of those constitutional landmarks of English liberty which the English nation so highly prizes and so jealously preserves. It was a part of that inheritance which our fathers brought with them.
Monopolies provide shoddy products and services because they know that they’re not threatened by competition. The people who work in monopolies often behave rudely or obnoxiously to customers for the same reason — they’re not worried about the customer going elsewhere. If someone doesn’t like the way he’s treated at his neighborhood postal station, all he can do is transfer his business to another branch of the same enterprise. He can’t take his business to a competing firm because, again, competing firms are not permitted to operate.
Ironically, even while supporting the postal monopoly many Americans rail against big, successful businesses by labeling them as “monopolies.” Consider IBM, GM, and Microsoft, for example. As each of those businesses achieved success in the marketplace, there were cries over the “monopoly” status they enjoyed.
But those big, successful companies have never been monopolies. Why? Again, monopolies are enterprises where the coercive power of the law prohibits the entry of competitors. IBM, GM, and Microsoft grew big by virtue of satisfying consumers through the production of products that people wanted to buy. But these companies have always been subject to potential competition from other companies. If other companies began producing computers, automobiles, or software, attorneys for IBM, GM, and Microsoft could not run to a federal judge to secure an injunction that would shut down the competitors. All that IBM, GM, and Microsoft could do is try to continue producing a product that consumers wanted to buy.
In the competitive process, then, the tendency is a constant improvement in goods and services for consumers. No matter how successful a company has been in the past satisfying consumers, if it fails to continue satisfying consumers it loses market share and possibly even goes out of business. In the unhampered market economy, the consumer ultimately is sovereign.
The Postal Service says that its monopoly is necessary because without it, it claims, people in the mountains would be unable to get their mail. The rationale is spurious, however. After all, people in the mountains get their milk, bread, and other essential items without monopoly privileges being granted in those enterprises. Similarly, people in the mountains would figure out how to get their mail delivered as well.
The U.S. Postal Service’s monopoly is an anachronism, one that not only provides a shoddy, expensive product but also one that violates America’s heritage of economic liberty. America’s postal monopoly deserves immediate repeal.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Why Wasn’t Oswald Treated Like Lindh and Padilla?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Over the weekend, I finished reading a really interesting book on the JFK assassination, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass, a Catholic theologian. Its theme is that there was a high-level conspiracy involving the CIA, military-industrial complex, and FBI in Kennedy’s assassination.
Even if one is skeptical about the conspiracy, the book is fascinating in the way it details what Kennedy was doing to end the Cold War, over the severe opposition of the CIA, Pentagon, and military industrial complex. Amidst suspicions that Kennedy’s actions bordered on treason, Kennedy was engaged in secret, personal communications with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, planned to withdraw all troops from Vietnam after the 1964 elections, and was even making secret personal contacts with Fidel Castro.
Here’s what Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, says about the book:
Douglass presents, brilliantly, an unfamiliar yet thoroughly convincing account of a series of creditable decisions of John F. Kennedy — at odds with his initial Cold War stance — that earned him the secret distrust and hatred of hard-liners among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA. Did this suspicion and rage lead directly to his murder by agents of these institutions, as Douglass concludes? Many readers who are not yet convinced of this “beyond reasonable doubt” by Douglass’s prosecutorial indictment will find themselves, perhaps — like myself — for the first time, compelled to call for an authoritative criminal investigation. Recent events give all the more urgency to learning what such an inquiry can teach us about how, by whom, and in whose interests this country is run.
Among the many issues raised by Douglass is one that I’ve wondered about for years — the indifference that the U.S. government manifested toward Lee Harvey Oswald on his return from the Soviet Union.
Do you remember how U.S. officials reacted toward John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban? They arrested him, tortured him, disrobed him and displayed him naked, brought him back, prosecuted him for treason, secured a guilty plea, and got him sentenced to 20 years in jail.
That reaction to Lindh, of course, was totally predictable. Yet, when you compare what Lindh did to what Oswald did, Lindh’s actions dwindle to relative insignificance. After all, don’t forget that Lindh was in Afghanistan fighting in that country’s civil war long before the U.S. government even thought about invading the country. When the U.S. government invaded after the 9/11 attacks, Lindh just happened to find himself on the side that the U.S. was opposing.
Now, compare that to what Oswald did. He was a Marine who was stationed at U.S. Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan from which the U-2 spy plane was being flown. Oswald had a “Crypto” security clearance, which was a higher security clearance than “Top Secret.”
Retiring early from the Marine Corps, Oswald moved to the Soviet Union, walked into the U.S. Embassy, announced that he was a Marxist, declared his intention to give up his U.S. citizenship, and stated that he intended to tell the Soviets everything he knew.
Now, imagine if a former Marine walked into the wilds of Pakistan today and announced that he was going to give all the top-secret information he had about U.S. drones to Osama bin Laden. Imagine what the U.S. government would do to him if they caught him.
Indeed, look at how they’ve treated American citizen Jose Padilla, who they’ve accused of conspiring with the terrorists against America — indefinite detention as an “enemy combatant,” torture, sensory deprivation, and denial of trial by jury and due process of law.
Yet, guess what happened to Oswald when he returned to the U.S. Nothing! That’s right — nothing! No grand jury indictment, not even a grand-jury summons to force him to testify under oath as to what classified information he had given the Soviets. This is especially odd given that by this time U-2 pilot Gary Powers had been shot down over the Soviet Union. Wouldn’t you think that U.S. officials would want to know if Oswald had given the Soviets some information that facilitated that shoot-down and, if so, prosecute him to the full extent of the law?
Does this make any sense? Why wouldn’t they have treated Oswald in the same manner they treated Lindh or Padilla, especially given that the Soviet communist threat to our nation during the Cold War was much bigger than the terrorist threat today?
Of course, if Oswald was instead a deep-cover operative planted in the Soviet Union by the CIA or U.S. military intelligence, as Douglass posits, it would stand to reason why U.S. officials wouldn’t treat him like Lindh and Padilla on his return from the Soviet Union.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A Great Debate on Afghanistan
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Last night I participated in a great debate on Afghanistan sponsored by the Donald and Paula Smith Family Foundation in New York City. There were about 150-200 people in the auditorium. I assume that the video of the debate will be posted soon on the Internet and when it is, I’ll let you know. At the post-debate dinner, one of the attendees said of all the debates she had seen at the Smith Family Foundation, this was the best one.
The debate began mildly enough, picked up steam, and then ended up with the gloves being taken off. The debaters were: Larry Woodson (U.S. Army War College), Max Boot (Council on Foreign Relations), Chris Preble (Cato Institute), and Jacob Hornberger (Future of Freedom Foundation).
Since the debate will be posted online, I won’t go into the details of how things transpired. For me, one of the most fascinating parts of the debate occurred near the end. Throughout the debate Boot had chided me for describing the U.S. government’s foreign policy of empire and interventionism as “morally degenerate,” a term that he continued to mock.
As the debate was drawing to an end, I pointed out that one of the reasons that Boot and other pro-war supporters felt the Iraq occupation has been a success is been the fact that “only” a few thousands American soldiers have been killed. If, say, 200,000 American soldiers had been killed, they would likely be singing a different tune.
Not so with respect to the Iraqi people, however. Any number of Iraqis, no matter how high, could be sacrificed to achieve “success.” The percentage of dead could be 20, 30, or even 80 percent of the populace. It just didn’t matter. It would all be considered worth it.
I then turned to Boot and said, “That’s what I call moral degeneracy.”
Well, that caused Boot to angrily interrupt me and exclaim that I wasn’t the only one who cared about Iraqis, and he made the argument common among neocons that Saddam Hussein would have killed many more Iraqis than the U.S. government has.
I have always found that a fascinating rationale for the U.S. killing of the Iraqi people.
For one, no one can know with any degree of certainty how many Iraqis would have been killed by Saddam. What we do know is that he was killing people who were trying to violently overthrow his government. Yet, that’s precisely what U.S. officials are doing — killing people who are violently opposing the U.S. occupation and the regime its invasion installed into power. Both Saddam and U.S. officials have relied on the same argument — if people will just stop resisting their respective regimes, they’ll stop killing them.
Second, where is the morality in killing one group of people in order to save another possible group of people, especially when the U.S. doesn’t care how many people it is killing? Does God actually permit a person to kill Innocent Person A in order to oust a dictator who might kill Innocent Person B at some point in the future?
Moreover, keep in mind that the official U.S. policy was: Don’t keep track of the number of Iraqi deaths. It didn’t matter. No price was too high to pay for Saddam’s ouster in terms of Iraqi deaths. Thus, if say Saddam would have killed 10,000 Iraqis, 200,000 Iraqi deaths at the hands of U.S. officials would still be considered worth it. We know this has to be true because, again, the official policy was not to keep track of how many Iraqis were being killed. Again, it didn’t matter.
Also, keep in mind that even if Saddam would have been killing Iraqis, he would have been the killer. For the past six years or so, it has been the U.S. government that has been the killer. From a moral standpoint, is that a good position to be in?
Third, any supposed concern for Iraqis is belied by the fact that the U.S. government has refused to permit them from immigrating to the United States. Apparently, the idea is: we love you enough to come and bomb you and bring you “democracy,” even if it means killing few hundred thousand of you, but don’t even think of coming here to the United States to live among us.
Fourth, while pro-war supporters try to justify the Iraqi deaths by singing the virtues of democracy, in their hearts they know that democracy has nothing to do with it. After all, let’s not forget that while they were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, they were simultaneously supporting a cruel and brutal dictator in Pakistan, an army general who had taken power in a coup, who refused to permit elections, and who fired independent Supreme Court justices, actions that have played a major role into throwing that nation into chaos. Also, let’s not forget the U.S. support of such dictators as Saddam Hussein himself and the Shah of Iran, who the U.S. installed into power after ousting the democratically elected prime minister of the country.
Finally, during the period of the brutal sanctions against Iraq, U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright openly declared that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions had been “worth it.” By “it” she was referring to the attempt to oust Saddam from power and replace him with a U.S.-approved regime, one that would be a loyal and faithful member of the U.S. Empire. If only modern-day neo-cons would be that honest.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Misplaced Anger
by Jacob G. Hornberger
It’s nice that people are angry and upset over those bonuses paid by taxpayer-bailout beneficiary AIG, but what fascinates me is the lack of anger and outrage over the really horrific things the federal government has done for the past 8 years, including the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the out-of-control federal spending, the inflation, the mortgaging of our nation to the communist regime in China, the terrible assaults on civil liberties, kidnapping and rendition, torture and sex abuse of prisoners and detainees, indefinite detentions, illegal wiretapping and monitoring of telephone calls and emails, and nullification of the Bill of Rights in cases involving terrorism.
In other words, for 8 years U.S. officials have been taking our nation down the road to dictatorship, financial ruin, and moral debauchery. Yet, all too many Americans haven’t been angry or upset with any of it. Then, along come some bonuses paid to the AIG people and everyone goes ballistic.
Consider the war of aggression against Iraq. Where is the anger over what the U.S. government has done to the people of that nation? Where are the consciences of people who continue to pride themselves as living in a nation based on Judeo-Christian values?
With the possible exception of Dick Cheney, most everyone agrees that Iraq never attacked the United States. That makes the U.S. government the aggressor power in this conflict. By attacking, invading, and occupying Iraq, the U.S. government has committed what was termed a “war of aggression” at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.
In the process, the U.S. government, operating through the troops that everyone is expected to support, has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people. Hundreds of thousands! That is a lot of dead people! Some people estimate that the number of dead might even approach one million.
Add to that the untold number of injured and maimed. Add to that the millions who have been exiled from their homes and even the country.
Add to that the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children who died as a consequence of the brutal sanctions that the U.S. government and the UN (at the behest of the U.S. government) leveled against Iraq, which not surprisingly turned out to be a major factor in the terrorist blowback that took place both in 1993 and 9/11.
Add to that the destruction of the country itself.
That’s a lot of death, suffering, and damage.
Yet, where is the anger or outrage over any of this among the American people?
Instead, the attitude among many is that the Iraq adventure should now be considered a “success” because violence is down, especially after that famous “surge.”
Many years ago, UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright declared to the world that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from those brutal sanctions had been “worth it.” Echoing that sentiment, the attitude today is that all the death, suffering, exile, and destruction resulting from the invasion and occupation of Iraq should also be considered “worth it” because “democracy” has been brought to Iraq, albeit a bit violently.
And if there is another terrorist attack on American soil, say by that Iraqi guy who threw his shoe at President Bush, everyone will be expected to again toe the official line: It’s not because he’s angry over the killing and suffering brought on by the U.S. government. It’s just that the terrorist hates America for its “freedom and values.”
Now, ask yourself this: What if the invasion and occupation of Iraq had resulted in the deaths of 200,000 American soldiers? What would be the response among Americans?
There can no doubt as to how Americans would react to such a high number of U.S. deaths. Most everyone would be so angry, outraged, and horrified that it is impossible to imagine it, especially since it was the U.S. government that started the war.
So, why is the attitude different with respect to the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives? The answer is simple: Iraqi life doesn’t have the same value that American life has. Iraqis are more expendable than Americans, at least in the pursuit of “democracy.”
In fact, in achieving “success” in Iraq, there has never been an upward limit on the number of Iraqis who could be killed as part of the costs of achieving “success.” In the minds of U.S. officials, no price has been too high to pay in terms of Iraqi deaths.
We know this is true because early on, the Pentagon made a conscious decision to not keep track of Iraqi dead. It didn’t matter. Whether the final death count was 10, 30, or 80 percent of the populace, it just didn’t matter. The idea was to simply keep killing until “democracy” was established. Then, it would all be considered a “success” no matter how many Iraqis had died.
The perversity of all this is that while they were killing Iraqis for the sake of bringing “democracy” to Iraq, U.S. officials were, at the same time, ardently and enthusiastically supporting a brutal military general in Pakistan who had taken power in a coup, who was prohibiting elections, who dismantled the nation’`s independent judiciary, and was terrorizing the citizenry, actions that have contributed to the chaos in that country today.
If only just a bit of the anger and outrage that is being directed toward those AIG executives who are enjoying their taxpayer-provided bonuses would have been oriented toward U.S. foreign policy many years ago. If that had happened, Americans today would be living lives of much more freedom, prosperity, and normality. And there would be hundreds of thousands of Iraqis alive rather than dead.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Private Property Rights Are the Bedrock of Liberty
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The state of Virginia has just enacted a smoking ban for restaurants and bars. At the same time, Virginia’s governor, Timothy Kaine, plans to veto a bill authorizing people with concealed-carry permits to carry weapons into bars and restaurants.
The state of Arkansas failed to enact a law repealing a ban on handguns in churches. Meanwhile, in Illinois, where the state has banned guns in churches, a pastor was shot to death by a gunman during a Sunday church service.
What do all these things have in common? They all involve a principle that early Americans clearly understood but one which all too many modern-day Americans have little appreciation for: the bedrock of a free society is private property. When government is permitted to infringe on private property rights, that is a society in which people are losing their freedom.
Why shouldn’t restaurant owners be free to establish their own rules on how their restaurants how going to be operated? It’s their restaurant, isn’t it? It doesn’t belong to the state, the public, the workers, or society. It belongs to the owner. He bought and paid for it. The deed is in his name.
A restaurant owner has three options: establish a no-smoking policy, a smoking policy, or sections for smoking and non-smoking. Why shouldn’t that be left up to him?
By the same token, consumers and employees are free to make their own choices. They might prefer a restaurant that allows smoking, or one that doesn’t, or one that has two different sections.
Ultimately, if consumers are orienting toward no-smoking restaurants, the market will nudge restaurant owners in that direction. But that’s a far cry from the police power of the state being employed against restaurant owners who wish to cater to the smoking crowd.
The same holds true with respect to Virginia’s ban on concealed weapons in bars and restaurants. Why not simply leave that issue up to each restaurant? Some restaurants will permit concealed weapons to be brought in and others will not.
The inanity of Kaine’s plan to veto the Virginia concealed-carry restaurant bill is reflected by the fact that Virginia law permits people to carry weapons openly into bars and restaurants. Thus, as long as a gun owner takes his concealed weapon out of concealment and carries it openly into the restaurant or bar, he’s in compliance with Virginia law.
The private-property principle is no different with respect to guns in churches. Some people find the notion of guns in churches objectionable from a religious or spiritual standpoint. Fair enough. But why shouldn’t church officials, as owners of their churches, be the ones who set their own policy? Parishioners can decide where they want to attend church.
Under principles of private property, some churches will permit concealed weapons to be brought into church. Others will have a policy that prohibits such conduct. People can then make up their minds as to where to attend church. Those who find a church’s pro-gun policy offensive are free to attend church elsewhere. Those who feel safer with such a policy can choose to attend the pro-gun church.
The problem with statewide ban on guns in churches is that it deprives church owners from establishing a pro-gun policy for their church. We can’t say for sure whether that pastor in Illinois would have been saved if people in church had been free to carry concealed weapons to defend themselves from such an attack. All we can say is that the church was prohibited by the state from establishing a pro-gun policy in which people would be free to protect themselves from murderers.
By the way, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, that shooter in the Illinois church violated the law that prohibited him from carrying a weapon into church. Presumably, all the church goers were unable to defend themselves because they were complying with the law.
If a church or restaurant establishes a pro-gun policy, does that mean that everyone will be carrying concealed weapons into such establishments? Of course not. But the fact that some people will carry actually helps to keep everyone else, including those without weapons, safer. When a murderer comes into a restaurant or church planning to do his dirty deed, he doesn’t know who is armed and who isn’t. Thus, those with concealed weapons have the element of surprise and are able to defend not only themselves but also everyone else in the restaurant or church.
By the way, while one often hears about shootings in churches, one never hears about shootings at gun shows. I wonder why.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, March 16, 2009
China’s Shot Across the Bow
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The U.S. government is sending heavily armed destroyers to the South China Sea after a standoff between five Chinese boats and a U.S. spy ship operating in the area. Before the destroyers have even arrived, however, the Chinese communist government has sent a shot across their bow, in the form of a not-so-subtle reminder that China is now one of the U.S. government’s principal creditors.
As Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao put it, they’re “a little bit worried” about the safety of China’s investments in U.S. securities. “We lent such huge funds to the United States, and of course we’re concerned about the security of our assets.”
Translation: Don’t jack with us if you know what’s good for you because all we have to do is dump all these securities we’re holding onto the market, which will make your current financial crisis look like child’s play.
To finance its military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, the last thing the Bush administration wanted to do was to raise taxes on the American people. Higher taxes tend to get taxpayers upset. So, what Bush and his people instead did is what the Obama administration is doing today: simply borrow the money. The idea was that since the debt could be passed to people’s children and grandchildren, people didn’t need to be too concerned about it.
Given that Americans lacked the savings to loan all the necessary money, Bush and his people needed other lenders, which is where the Chinese communists, who have plenty of money to lend, came into the picture. China obviously recognized the financial value of investing in U.S. Treasuries while, at the same time, becoming one of the U.S. government’s principal creditors.
Reflecting the critical role that the Chinese communists now play in America’s financial future, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently visited China where she played nice with the communists, remaining silent on China’s brutal treatment of protestors and dissidents and politely requesting them to please continue lending money to the U.S. government.
Forty years ago, U.S. officials sent almost 60,000 men to their deaths in a senseless war in Southeast Asia. The deaths were necessary, they told us, to protect the nation from the communists, including the Chinese communists, who were assisting the North Vietnamese. Who would have ever dreamed that forty years later U.S. officials would have placed the financial well-being of our nation in the hands of the Chinese communists? Along with the wars of aggression, foreign occupations, torture and sex abuse, and dictatorial powers over the American people, it’s just another example of the road to economic ruin and moral debauchery that the pro-empire, pro-intervention crowd has plunged our nation.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Immigrants, Terrorists, and Omnipotent Government
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the various justifications that border-control advocates use to justify their support of regulated or sealed borders is that border control, they say, is necessary to protect us from terrorists.
The problem with this position is twofold. One, it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Two, the solution it proposes inexorably reinforces the trend toward omnipotent government in America.
As long foreigners are legally permitted to come into the United States, there will be the possibility that a terrorist will be among them. There are foreigners who come for the purpose of legitimate work and there are those who come as tourists. What would prevent a terrorist with no criminal background from falling within those two groups of people? In fact, correct me if I’m wrong but weren’t some of the 9/11 hijackers here in the United States legally?
Thus, since being kept safe from terrorists is a primary objective of border-control advocates, there is no way that they can simply trust government bureaucrats to let in only non-terrorists when they’re reviewing work applications and tourist applications for foreigners. No, if one wants to be sure that terrorists aren’t going to come here and get us, there is really only one real solution — keep all foreigners out of the United States, including tourists and people who wish to work here legally. In other words, seal the borders, just like they have in North Korea.
Of course, one might still wonder whether it’s really possible to keep out someone who truly wants vengeance — say, the father of a bride whose wedding party in Afghanistan was killed by a U.S. bombing attack. Might not such a person do whatever is necessary to exact revenge?
But another problem arises: the possibility that Americans could become terrorists. In fact, just this week the Washington Post reported that terrorists are actively recruiting Americans to join their cause. Therefore, to keep us safe from terrorists, wouldn’t the next logical step be to stop Americans from going abroad where they could be infected with terrorist propaganda? In other words, seal the border in both directions. As a matter of fact, that would also ensure that Americans couldn’t catch infectious diseases from foreigners, which is another of the fears that induce border-control advocates to want to keep out foreigners or control their entry into the country.
Of course, as the economy continues to worsen, sealing Americans in would also enable federal officials to more easily prevent Americans from taking their savings abroad, especially if exchange, monetary, or capital controls are imposed on the citizenry.
As everyone knows, right now the feds are constructing a fortified fence along the border to keep out illegal aliens. At the same time, there are increasing calls by state officials to send U.S. troops to the border to deal with drug-war violence, which U.S. officials are now saying threatens national security.
Given the fence, the hordes of DEA, Border Patrol, Customs, local drug-enforcement agents, and maybe battalions of battle-tested U.S. troops along the border, Americans might well have the opportunity to witness the spectacle of a 3-way coalition of proponents of the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, and the war on immigrants exhorting Americans to “support the troops” as they kill drug dealers, terrorists, and people who are crossing the border to accept jobs from American employers in an attempt to alleviate the desperate economic situation of their families back home.
All of this reinforces the trend toward the militarization of American society and toward omnipotent government in America. It is not a coincidence that North Korea has a perfectly sealed border and a perfectly controlled, obedient, and submissive citizenry. For those who love big government, this is a perfect recipe for it.
For those who love liberty, however, there is but one solution, one that involves getting to the root of the problems. That root is the federal government. Dismantling the government’s overseas empire and ending its policy of foreign intervention would eliminate the anger and rage that arises from all the people that U.S. officials are killing overseas, which means no more terrorists trying to come to the U.S. to do us harm. Repealing the drug war will mean no more drug cartels and, therefore, no more drug-war violence along the border. Ending border controls will mean no more mistreatment of people who are doing nothing worse than trying to improve their lot in life through contract and labor with fellow human beings as well as a more profound commitment to God’s second-greatest commandment “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Cause of Poverty
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Liberals are saying that President Obama isn’t really a socialist because he doesn’t favor complete government ownership and control of everything, which is the strict definition of socialism. Since he “only” favors massive government involvement in some things, such as education, healthcare, mail delivery, transportation, retirement, employment, airports, money, bailouts, subsidies, grants, banks, insurance companies, the stock market, occupations, the drug war, and trade restrictions and immigration controls as well as progressive income taxation and equalization of income — well, according to liberals, all that makes Obama “free enterprise” instead of socialist.
I wonder what Fidel Castro, who also favors all those things, would say about that.
Lost in all this debate on whether Obama is a socialist or not is one simple but important point: It is the dead hand of government that is the cause of America’s economic woes. That means that the more that Obama does to restore wealth and prosperity to America with his increases in borrowing, spending, and printing money, the worst things are going to get.
The situation is akin to someone suffering from arsenic poisoning. He goes to the doctor and asks for an antidote. The doctor prescribes more arsenic.
What liberals, who purport to love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged, fail to recognize is another important point: It is the dead hand of the state that is the cause of poverty. Or to be more precise, it is massive government involvement in economic activity that prevents or inhibits a society from becoming wealthy. Call it socialism, fascism, welfare-statism, central planning, inflationism, wealth equalization, or just massive government involvement in the economy, the fact remains: the heavier the hand of government in people’s pocketbooks and business activity, the poorer people will be.
Consider my hometown of Laredo, Texas. It is located adjacent to the Rio Grande. On the other side of the river sits Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. It’s actually one great big metropolitan area, separated by a river.
Yet, the standard of living of people in Nuevo Laredo is markedly lower than that of those living in Laredo. It’s a phenomenon that one cannot help but notice the minute he crosses the border into Nuevo Laredo. People in Nuevo Laredo are a lot poorer than those in Laredo.
I’ll bet that most Americans would never ask themselves that simple one-word question that they used to constantly ask when they were children, before they had it drummed out of them in those government-run schools their parents were forced to send them to: “Why?” Why are people in Nuevo Laredo significantly poorer than those in Laredo?
After all, if one travels to the American city of St. Louis, he’ll find that the standard of living of people in East St. Louis, Illinois, is about the same as that in St. Louis, Missouri. That city is separated by the Mississippi River rather than the Rio Grande. Could that be the difference?
No. The reason that people in Nuevo Laredo are so much poorer than people in Laredo is this: The dead hand of the state is much more prevalent in Mexico than it is in the United States. As bad as things are in the U.S. with respect to taxes, welfare, regulation, inflation, and bureaucracy, they are 1,000 times worse in Mexico. While we have Big Government in the United States, Mexicans have Mega Government.
That’s the reason people are poorer in Mexico than they are in the United States. It’s also the reason that people in North Korea are poorer than those in Mexico. The dead hand of the state is more prevalent in North Korea than it is in Mexico.
All this should provide a clue for liberals, who are supposedly interested in helping the poor. If one wants to raise standards of living for people, the solution is not to increase taxes, spending, borrowing, and regulation but instead to slash them, such as by abolishing the income tax and the IRS and by completely separating the economy and the state. That’s the way to help the poor.
Alas, however, liberals move in precisely the opposite direction — higher taxes, borrowing, spending, welfare, regulation, bailouts, and stimulus plans. Even worse, they continue to force children into those government-run schools where they learn to memorize, regurgitate, and conform to this destructive nonsense rather than learn how to critically analyze and challenge it.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The Drug War: An Old Mission for the Pentagon
by Jacob G. Hornberger
As the Berlin Wall came crashing down, the Pentagon was desperately in search of a mission. Given the demise of the Soviet Union, which had been the excuse for an ever-growing military-industrial complex for decades, the talk of a “peace dividend” was in the air. “What do we need all that military spending for if the communist threat is now nonexistent?” people were asking.
Wait a minute, cried the Pentagon. We can still find something to do. Just don’t cut our budget. Among the things they proposed was to help wage the “war on drugs.” Of course, that was long before U.S. foreign policy produced the terrorist blowback that resulted in the “war on terrorism” and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Given the decreasing enthusiasm for the perpetual war on terrorism and the 6-year and 7-year occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan among the American people, the Pentagon is now returning to the old mission that it spoke about soon after the demise of the Berlin Wall. That would be the drug war.
As most everyone knows, the drug war has produced untold violence on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border. Thousands of people, including both government officials and private individuals, are being killed in an all-out war between the drug cartels and Mexican law-enforcement officials. The violence has gotten so bad that it is threatening to spill over into the United States.
Not surprisingly, the crisis is causing U.S. officials, especially those in the Pentagon, to call for U.S. intervention to fix the problem. “The drug cartels are a threat to national security,” U.S. officials are exclaiming. Just recently, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, flew to Mexico to discuss rushing military assistance to Mexico. “We have a sense of urgency about this,” he said.
Meanwhile, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican, has jumped on the crisis bandwagon by calling on President Obama to send U.S. troops to the border, perhaps in the hope that they’ll wage the war on drugs in the way they’ve waged the war on terrorism — by busting people’s doors down without warrants, confiscating guns, incarcerating people without due process and trial, and maybe even torturing them into talking about pending drug deals.
Here is how the system works. U.S. government policy produces the conditions for a crisis, which then is used as the excuse for military intervention, which means ever-growing budgets for government officials.
For years, the U.S. government has been exhorting the Mexican government to ramp up the drug war, despite warnings from libertarians and others that doing so would only increase the level of violence.
Now that the Mexican government has complied with U.S. wishes, producing the predictable results, the U.S. government, especially the Pentagon, is now responding in the predictable way — by calling for military intervention, which means ever-increasing budgets for you-know-who.
What’s the 35-year-old drug war really all about? It’s about money and power. Let’s face it: These people are not stupid enough to believe that doing the same thing they’ve done for 35 years is going to produce a different result. The fact is that there are lots of people making big money from the drug war. And no, it’s not just the drug dealers and corrupt Mexican government officials. It’s also corrupt federal, state, and local officials on the U.S. side of the border.
First and foremost are the bribes, especially to law-enforcement people along the border who are paid big money to look the other way. But there is also the “legitimate” money that people make from the drug war — the nice salaries paid to judges, prosecutors, sheriffs, marshals, clerks, and staffs. And, of course, let’s not forget the budgets for the military and the military-industrial complex.
Oh, I forget to mention the other big money that is being made from the drug war — the asset-forfeiture crowd. Those are the public officials whose budgets have soared from the money they have confiscated and stolen from countless people, in the name of the war on drugs. Just ask African-Americans who have had the misfortune of traveling through Tenaha, Texas. They’ve had thousands of dollars taken from them by the cops, without any charges ever being filed against them. What better example of highway robbery than that?
Don’t count on public officials to willingly bring an end to the war on drugs. Like those drug cartels they’re fighting, they’re benefitting too much from it, in terms of bribes, salaries, budgets, and power. The drug-war idiocy will come to an end only when the American people finally declare that enough is enough and demand that the drug war be ended, immediately.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Barack Obama, Fake Change Agent
by Jacob G. Hornberger
If Barack Obama’s handling of the Ali al-Marri case was supposed to show his credentials as a major change-agent as president, he has flunked the test. Except for some procedural differences, his handling of the al-Marri case is really no different, in principle, than how Bush handled the Jose Padilla case.
First of all, recall the power that Bush claimed after the 9/11 attacks: the power to seize anyone on American soil, either American or foreigner, and treat him as an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terrorism.” That meant permanent incarceration in a military facility, torture and sex abuse, sensory deprivation, and isolation. No trial by jury. No due process of law.
Such power was assumed without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment. How did Bush pull it off? Simply by declaring war on the federal crime of terrorism. With that mere declaration, Bush claimed that he and the Pentagon now wielded the power to treat every suspected terrorist on American soil as an enemy combatant or as a criminal defendant, at their option.
The Pentagon imprisoned Padilla in a military dungeon in South Carolina. Why South Carolina? Most likely because that state is located within the jurisdiction of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reputed to be the most conservative federal appellate circuit in the country. In legal circles, it’s called “forum-shopping” — seeking out the court where you stand the best chance of securing a favorable ruling. When Padilla’s habeas corpus petition was ultimately considered by the Fourth Circuit, no one was surprised when that conservative court upheld the enemy-combatant doctrine.
Many people, however, had high hopes that the Supreme Court would overrule the Fourth Circuit and firmly and definitively establish that in the United States such dictatorial power is not permitted under our constitutional form of government.
Before the Supreme Court could rule on the case, however, Bush’s Justice Department engaged in some clever legal maneuvering. After claiming for years that Padilla was a dangerous enemy combatant, not a criminal defendant, Bush’s people shifted direction and converted Padilla to criminal-defendant status. Why did they do that? Because they knew, even if many Americans didn’t, that the issue was never about Padilla. It was about the American people. Bush and his people wanted the power to do to the American people what they did to Padilla. And they were willing to risk an acquittal of Padilla in federal district court to achieve that.
You see, as soon as they converted Padilla to criminal-defendant status, they motioned the Supreme Court to dismiss Padilla’s appeal, on the ground that the appeal was now moot, given that Padilla was no longer an enemy combatant. That clever piece of legal maneuvering, thus, left the Fourth Circuit’s decision intact. Bush and his people had what they wanted: a federal appellate court decision upholding the omnipotent power of the president and his military to seize anyone arrested on American soil as a suspected terrorist and treat him as an enemy combatant in the “war on terrorism.” It was a revolutionary transformation in the relationship between power and liberty, between the military and the civilian. It effectively constituted a nullification of the Bill of Rights in cases involving the federal crime of terrorism.
The government, however, still had to deal with Ali al-Marri. Although he was a foreigner, the issue in his case was the same as that in Padilla: Does the U.S. government now really have the power to seize anyone it wants here in the United States, accuse him of terrorism, and then subject him to enemy combatant treatment?
Well, guess where they incarcerated al-Marri after they converted him from criminal defendant to enemy combatant. You got it — South Carolina, which falls within the jurisdiction of that conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. When al-Marri’s case reached the full panel of the Fourth Circuit, no one was surprised when it ruled the same way it had in Padilla. It again upheld the enemy-combatant doctrine.
By the time Barack Obama, who portrayed himself as an agent of change during his campaign, became president, the al-Marri case was reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. Obama and his Justice Department decided to do exactly the same thing that the Bush people had done — convert al-Marri from enemy-combatant status to criminal-defendant status. Following Bush, they also motioned for the Supreme Court to dismiss al-Marri’s appeal.
Of course, Obama and his people were trying to leave the impression that their motive was different from that of Bush. They were trying to lead people into believing that their action was motivated by a good-faith belief that Bush had gone astray in applying the enemy-combatant doctrine to Americans and others accused of terrorism and arrested on American soil. They were trying to convey the impression that they felt that accused terrorists belonged in American courts, not as enemy warriors in U.S. military prison camps.
To buttress those impressions, they even went so far as to ask the Supreme Court to vacate the Fourth Circuit’s decision in al-Marri, a request that the Supreme Court granted. That meant that the Fourth Circuit’s decision in al-Marri upholding the enemy-combatant doctrine was now a nullity, having no force or effect.
So, all is okay, right? Barack Obama, change-agent par excellent, has restored the principles of due process, trial by jury, and the Bill of Rights to our land, at least with respect to the federal crime of terrorism, right?
Actually, no. In fact, nothing has changed at all, at least not insofar as the American people and a free society are concerned. Sure, al-Marri, like Padilla, is getting his day in court. But Bush and Obama and the Pentagon got what they wanted — the power to do to Americans what they have done to Padilla and al-Marri.
You see, what the Obama people understand, even if many Americans do not, is that even though the al-Marri decision got vacated, the Padilla decision upholding the enemy-combatant doctrine remains in full force and effect.
Did change-agent Obama denounce and renounce the enemy-combatant doctrine and the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Padilla? On the contrary, his Justice Department, like that of his predecessor Bush, expressly reserved the power. Here’s what the New York Times reported:
“While the government did not defend its power to detain Mr. Marri at present, it left open the possibility that he or others might be subject to military detention as enemy combatants in the future. ‘Any future detention — were that hypothetical possibility ever to occur — would require new consideration under then-existing circumstances and procedure,’ the Justice Department told the court in a brief filed Wednesday.”
Given that position, the Supreme Court obviously had no business granting the government’s motion to dismiss on the grounds of mootness, especially when Obama and his people are reserving the power to reconvert al-Marri to enemy-combatant status immediately after the Supreme Court’s order of dismissal becomes final or even if he is acquitted by a jury of his peers in federal district court. In such case, because of the Supreme Court’s cowardly refusal to hear al-Marri’s appeal, al-Marri would have to start all over again by filing a new petition for habeas corpus and wait about 5 years before reaching the Supreme Court, when the government could do the same thing again.
Throughout his campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly sold himself as America’s premier agent of change. Given his embrace of the most dictatorial power of all — the power to seize people and incarcerate and punish them without trial or due process — it’s not difficult to see, even at this early stage of his presidency, that Obama’s campaign pledge was empty and hollow.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Obama the Socialist
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Amidst all the devastation from the latest economic crisis, there have been some really funny moments. Among the most humorous has got to be what happened this past week with President Obama and the New York Times.
Recall that last week I referenced an article by Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson in which he expressed shock that people are actually calling President Obama a socialist because of his massive stimulus package, bank bailouts, and tighter government regulation. All this government involvement in economic activity, Meyerson says, just consists of free-market mechanisms designed to help revitalize America’s free-enterprise system. He says that it’s not socialism and interventionism that are at the root of the current crisis but rather America’s capitalist system.
Well, guess what then happened! The New York Times conducted an interview with Obama in which the reporter asked him to respond to suggestions that he is a socialist. Obama laughingly responded, “The answer would be no” and then, according to the paper, added that he was “making some very tough choices” on the budget.
And now the really funny part happens. About an hour-and-a-half later, Obama actually calls the reporter back and says that he wants to give a fuller answer on the socialist question. He wanted to point out that “large-scale government intervention in the markets and the expansion of social welfare programs had begun under his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.”
Now, if you’re not rolling in the aisles from laughter at this, then you’ve got to be either a conservative or a liberal rather than a libertarian.
Here’s what happened, as any clear-thinking libertarian will tell you.
America was founded on the principles of a free market. What “free market” meant was that market activity was free from government control. That is, “free market” didn’t mean less government control or regulation of market activity, it meant free of government control or regulation.
It also meant no income tax. People were free to keep everything they earned. It also meant no welfare programs. That is, there were no government programs in which people were taxed in order to give the money to other people.
In the late 1800s and continuing into the early 1900s, philosophical attacks began being leveled at the philosophy of economic liberty. The chief attackers were the Progressives, who were copying socialist and regulatory ideas from European socialists and interventionists. Some of the attacks were successful, as reflected by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the 16th Amendment, the Federal Reserve (which caused the 1929 stock-market crash), and minimum-wage laws in some of the states.
For decades, the advocates of economic liberty were able to stem the tide. But with the stock-market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression, the socialist and interventionist tide overwhelmed America like a tsunami. Franklin Roosevelt seized upon the crisis to revolutionize America’s economic system. Seizing upon the economic principles of both the socialists and fascists, the primary mission of the federal government became taxing some to give to others and regulating economic and business activity. The era of laissez faire had come to an end.
But Roosevelt was a brilliant politician. He understood that Americans generally had a deep revulsion against socialism and fascism. So, he simply convinced them that all his welfare-statism and interventionism, including Social Security, the SEC, the NIRA, and the FHA weren’t socialistic or fascistic but instead simply free-market mechanisms to save America’s free-enterprise system.
It worked. And that’s the way it’s been ever since. No matter how many socialistic and fascistic policies were adopted over the years, they were always to be considered “free-market devices” to improve America’s free-enterprise system. The public schools, which themselves are a model of a socialist enterprise, reinforced people’s mindsets by year-after-year repetitive indoctrination: “America has a free-enterprise system. America has a free-enterprise system.”
For a while, Republicans resisted the trend, fighting for the principles of economic liberty on which America was founded. But realizing that they were unlikely to regain the reins of power by hewing to principle, Republicans finally threw in the towel and joined the socialist-fascist bandwagon. In doing so, they followed the script — that all this socialism and fascism that they were now embracing was really the free market in action.
Thus, it is easy to understand why Obama is confused, confounded, and troubled by the allegation that he is a socialist. All his life he has been taught that he’s pro-free-enterprise, that America has a free-enterprise system, that all these welfare-state, regulatory programs are free-enterprise, and, perhaps most important of all, that those free-enterprise-loving Republicans believe in all this too.
It has been the libertarians, of course, who have pierced through this life of the lie and this devotion to unreality. Unlike Republicans and Democrats, we recognize that Roosevelt didn’t save free enterprise with his socialism and fascism. He destroyed it. Thus, unlike the Republicans and Democrats, we libertarians don’t find ourselves exclaiming during the current economic crisis, “Oh, my gosh, free enterprise has failed again.” Unlike them, we understand that it’s their socialism and fascism that have failed again and that the only real solution lies in restoring the principles of economic liberty on which our nation was founded, which would include at a minimum the repeal of all welfare-state and regulatory programs and departments and the abolition of the federal income tax and the IRS.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Immigration Socialism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Advocates of the U.S. government’s war on immigrants are no doubt celebrating the 23-month sentence in a federal penitentiary that Martin de La Rosa-Loera received this week. His “crime”? As supervisor of a meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa, he was convicted of “aiding and abetting the harboring of 389 illegal aliens.” Translation: He was a plant supervisor where illegal aliens were working.
That’s right: two years in a federal prison — you know, the place that houses murderers, terrorists, rapists, and robbers.
Who did Rosa-Loera murder, terrorize, rape, or rob? Actually, nobody. In fact, unlike murderers, terrorists, rapists, and robbers, he didn’t initiate violence against anyone. His conduct was entirely peaceful. He simply supervised people who had entered into a mutually beneficial economic arrangement with the plant owners. It was an arrangement in which we can be fairly certain both the workers and the employer were benefiting from. Otherwise, both sides would not have entered into the working relationship with one another.
It’s easy for me to understand how statists would support this type of thing, but what has always befuddled me is how any libertarian could support it. After all, limited-government libertarians believe that the state should only punish people who have committed acts of violence or fraud against others. That’s why, for example, libertarians favor drug legalization, despite the welfare-state burden that drug addicts might place on taxpayers. Yet, here a man is going to jail for doing nothing more than engaging in the entirely peaceful act of supervising people who have entered into a mutually beneficial labor arrangement with an employer.
Of course, some libertarians might exclaim, “I didn’t intend that to happen when I favored regulated or closed borders. All my intentions were good. I just wanted people to have to get permission from the government before they came to take that job.”
But aren’t good intentions what liberals always cite for their welfare-state fiascoes? And don’t libertarians take them to task by reminding them that when it comes to government policies, especially those that cause harm to others, good intentions are irrelevant?
One of the interesting things about libertarians who favor immigration controls is their failure to address the core fallacy of their position: their defense of immigration socialism, specifically the socialism of central planning, and that central planning inevitably leads to interventionism, which libertarians have also always opposed.
After all, while pro-controlled-border advocates always have a myriad of reasons for supporting immigrations controls (e.g., welfare, terrorism, public schools, diseases, stealing jobs, etc.), their solution always and inevitably is one of central planning, one in which some government body, either elected or appointed, is to be given the task of deciding the correct number of immigrants, the right mixture, the job skills, the language skills, etc.
Yet, every libertarian knows or should know that central planning does not and cannot work. It is inherently defective. The planners lack the necessary knowledge and expertise to centrally plan such a complex economic arena, especially when market conditions are changing every second. Central planning always results in “planned chaos” — that is, perversion, distortions, and the like.
What happens when the inevitable central planning crises develop in immigration, like everywhere else (the drug war being a good example)? Interventionism! When immigration central planning inevitably fails to achieve its goal (i.e., no more illegal aliens), the government begins enacting an endless series of interventions to address the ever-increasing array of problems.
The laws against harboring or hiring illegal aliens under which people like La Rosa-Loera are convicted are just logical outgrowths of the failure of central planning in immigration to work. Don’t forget that hiring illegal aliens didn’t use to be against the law. It was an intervention enacted after previous interventions failed. That’s also why they’re now building that Berlin-type fence along the border and threatening to send battle-tested U.S. troops down there to enforce it. The law against hiring illegal aliens obviously hasn’t succeeded in accomplishing its aim, and so more and more interventions are needed.
Why don’t libertarians who favor immigration controls ever confront this central fallacy in their articles and speeches? The answer is obvious: The problem creates a “felt uneasiness” within them, which causes them to simply avoid confronting it. After all, how does a libertarian explain why he is an advocate of socialism and interventionism, albeit in only one important area of life, and yet an advocate of free markets in every other arena? How does he explain why socialism should be expected to work in the area of immigration central planning and not in other areas of life? How does he show that interventionism in immigration won’t inevitably lead to omnipotent government, as he argues it will in other areas?
Consider the following hypothetical conversation:
Statist: Mr. Libertarian, why do you oppose socialism in public schooling and healthcare?
Libertarian: Because it won’t work. Both economic theory and practical experience show that central planning is inherently flawed and that the free market produces the best results in peaceful economic activities.
Statist: But Mr. Libertarian, you support socialist central planning in immigration and argue that it can work in that arena. Well, if we can make socialism work in immigration, then as a can-do people Americans should be able to make socialism work in public schooling and healthcare as well. Will you join us and help us improve public schooling and national healthcare.
Libertarian: You might have a point. I’ll get back to you on that.
The fact is that God has created a consistent universe, one in which moral means produce good results and evil means produce bad results. What better way to fulfill God’s great commandment — to love one’s self and one’s neighbor — than to engage into a mutually beneficial exchange with other people, especially one in which one side consists of the very poor whose families are oftentimes on the verge of starvation? What could be worse than to embrace socialism and interventionism, no matter how valid the excuses for doing so might seem, especially when it results in the punishment of people, including the poor, who were doing nothing more than improving their respective lots in life through voluntary contract and labor?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Damn the Children
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson is agog that people are calling Barack Obama a socialist. Socialism, he says, is when the government owns everything. Apparently, such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, stimulus packages, bailouts, massive federal spending, and perhaps even nationalization of banks should simply be considered as free-market reforms that save free enterprise rather than as socialist steps on the road to socialism.
Shades of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal! You remember it, right? That was the series of government programs that we were taught in our public schools and state-supported colleges and universities saved free enterprise, right?
Never mind that Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act revolutionized America’s economic system by permitting American businesses to form cartels and set their own prices that were then imposed on the rest of the industry. And never mind that it could have easily served as a model for what was happening in fascist Italy under Mussolini, who was serving as a model for Roosevelt and his cohorts. Apparently the NIRA was just a free-market reform that helped save America’s free enterprise system … well, before the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.
Never mind that Roosevelt’s Social Security program also revolutionized America’s economic system by adopting a program that was originally proposed by German socialists. Social Security was based on the idea of using government force to take money from young people in order to give it to old people, bringing to mind the old Marxian saying, “From each according to ability, to each according to need.” But apparently Social Security was just another free-market reform that helped save America’s free-enterprise system.
After more than 70 years of Roosevelt’s welfare-state revolution, the socialistic system he foisted upon the American people is besieged by crisis. And what do the statists say about this? Oh, it’s not their beloved system that has failed. Instead, it’s all because there hasn’t been enough government control, enough federal spending, enough printing of money, and enough redistributive programs — despite more than 70 years of this junk.
When you stop to think about it, what else do they have? Just like decades of drug-war failure, they can’t afford to let even a smidgeon of doubt enter the minds of ordinary Americans. If that were to happen, that could spell the death knell of America’s tragic and disastrous experiment with socialism.
So, they have to pull the same fake and false nonsense that Roosevelt did after the Federal Reserve caused the 1929 stock-market crash. They have to convince people that it’s all the fault of too much economic freedom and not enough socialistic and regulatory programs. All that’s needed, they tell us, is more control, more socialistic programs, more spending, more borrowing, and more printing of money, and, voila!, happy days are here again.
And how are they going to accomplish this magic act? The same way Roosevelt did — just spend, spend, and spend some more. They’re going to spend the nation into wealth and prosperity.
Don’t taxes have to be raised to match the spending? Not at all, well, unless they tax the rich and we all know how evil the rich are. This is where the magic comes in. They just go out and borrow the money. But won’t all those loans have to be repaid in the long run, perhaps even by printing gobs of paper money?
Oh, we don’t need to worry about the long run, the statists tell us, because in the long run we’re all dead. After all, aren’t Roosevelt and his ilk dead? Yes, but of course the problem is that their children and grandchildren who they damned in the long run (i.e., us) are very much alive and now having to deal with the long-run consequences of FDR’s socialistic folly.
So, the idea is that we should just party away and do the same thing to our children and grandchildren. Borrow the money, spend it, print it, and party on. Like Roosevelt and his cohorts, in the long run we’ll all be dead. Damn our children and grandchildren. That’s their problem.
Seventy years ago, Americans fell for the socialistic scam, causing them to support a revolutionary change in America’s economic system. We can only hope that after experiencing decades of taxes, interventions, regulations, welfare, debt, inflation, and crisis, a critical mass of Americans will stand up and join us libertarians in saying, “No more. It’s time to reject FDR’s socialist revolution and restore the principles of economic liberty on which our nation was founded.” Perhaps some of those children and grandchildren they’re now damning with piles of debt will join us.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Is It Now Okay to Talk about Hitler’s Assumption of Dictatorial Power?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I know that it’s been considered improper to bring up Hitler in the context of what the Bush administration did for the past 7 years, but I wish someone would explain to me how Bush’s powers, as now revealed by those secret legal memos, were different from the dictatorial powers exercised by Hitler after the terrorist attack on the Reichstag in 1933, soon after Hitler became chancellor.
The purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to place constraints on the exercise of power. Yet, it’s now clear that for the past 7 years Bush wielded the power to ignore all constitutional restraints on his power as part of his “war on terrorism.” Since the president wielded omnipotent power over the American people, albeit secretly, how is that different from the omnipotent power that Hitler wielded over the German people?
As it turns out, for the last 7 years the U.S. military has wielded the authority to do precisely what it has been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan: engage in military sweeps here in the United States, bust down people’s doors without judicial warrants, and take Americans into custody as “enemy combatants,” denying them any constitutional protections or due process of law. How is that different from the power wielded by the Gestapo and the German military over the German people in the 1930s?
For the past 7 years the U.S. government has wielded the omnipotent power to secretly wiretap telephone conversations and email communications of the American people. How is that different from the power that the Nazi regime had over the private communications of the German people?
Sure, pro-tyranny advocates might respond by saying that Bush didn’t abuse his powers, while Hitler did, but doesn’t that miss the point? The point is not whether America has had a more benevolent dictator for the past 7 years than the German people did under Hitler. The point is that both the German people and the American people were living under some form of dictatorship — a type of political system in which there are no constraints on the power of the ruler. Remember: dictatorship entails the existence of omnipotent power, even if such power isn’t always being exercised to its full extent.
The cases of Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri do reflect the exercise of the omnipotent power wielded by Bush and his military forces over the American people for the past 7 years. Padilla is an American citizen and al-Marri is a foreigner. Both were arrested on American soil and given the enemy-combatant treatment — i.e., indefinite incarceration for years, denial of due process, denial of trial by jury, and touchless torture in the form of isolation and sensory deprivation.
For the last 7 years, Bush and his military have wielded the power to subject all Americans to the Padilla treatment. Why would that not be considered dictatorship?
How could the existence of such power not operate as a suppressive element within the press, especially when those legal memos expressly subordinated the First Amendment (and the Fourth) to the war-on-terrorism power of the president.
The terrible irony is the parallels between Hitler’s assumption of omnipotent power and Bush’s assumption of omnipotent power. Immediately after the terrorists attacked the Reichstag, Hitler secured from President Hindenburg the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended most civil liberties in Germany. Immediately after the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11, Bush secured the issuance of legal memos from his Office of Legal Counsel that authorized him to subordinate the civil liberties of the American people to the omnipotent power of the president and the military.
The excuse that Bush used to assume his dictatorial power was the same excuse employed by Hitler to assume his dictatorial power — that the country was now at war — a “war on terrorism.”
Never mind that terrorism, like drug violations in the “war on drugs,” is a federal criminal offense subject to criminal prosecution in federal district court, not an act of war.
Never mind that the 9/11 attacks, just like the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the terrorist attack on the USS Cole, and the terrorist attacks on the U.S embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, were direct blowback from U.S. foreign policy.
Never mind that U.S. presidents from at least as far back as Reagan and continuing through Clinton were battling terrorism without assuming dictatorial power.
And never mind that the Constitution does not even provide the president with the power to suspend civil liberties during times of real war.
As Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel suggested, why let a good crisis go to waste, especially when it can produce omnipotent power for those who thirst for such things, whether in Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba, or anywhere else?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Another War-on-Terrorism Success Story in Afghanistan
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Another war-on-terrorism success story comes out of Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been battling The Terrorists for some 7 years (and, if things go according to plan, will be battling Them for at least another 7 years). Heavily armed U.S. troops entered a village in Logar Province in the dead of night, raided a “compound,” and shot dead two men.
U.S. officials claim that the two men were Terrorists and, therefore, that they had the right to shoot them as part of the U.S. government’s Global War on Terror. Army Major Todd Polk, who took part in the raid, explained how one of the dead man’s actions during the raid confirmed that he was in fact a Terrorist: He “had an AK-47 in his hand and was trying to get away. If he were innocent, he would have sat there.”
The problem is that the Afghanis living in the area don’t quite see things the same way. According to the Washington Post,“By midmorning, hundreds of angry people were blocking the nearby highway, burning tires and shouting ‘Death to America!’ By mid-evening, millions of Afghan TV news viewers were convinced that foreign troops had killed an unarmed man trying to answer his door.”
Abdul Ghaffar, a truck driver who lives in the village, stated, “We are afraid of the Taliban, but we are more afraid of the Americans now. The foreign forces are killing innocent people. We don’t want them in Afghanistan. If they stay, one day we will stand against them, just like we stood against the Russians.”
U.S. officials say that the problem wasn’t with their military action but instead simply a public-relations problem. The Terrorists were able to get their version out to the public before the troops were able to. As Major Polk put it, “”I know we did the right thing, but the Taliban kicked our butts on the response. Next time, we just have to be faster putting out the truth.”
What will it take for the American people to finally demand an immediate exit from Afghanistan (and Iraq)? Every day that the U.S. occupations continue in those two countries is one more day in which U.S. troops are killing more people, which of course means the greater the likelihood of terrorist blowback here on American soil. While that will good for Big Government in America, how in the world can it be good for the American people, who will continue to see their freedoms infringed upon and their economy ravaged as a result of out-of-control federal spending?
Alas, my hunch is that the only thing that will motivate the American people to finally say “No more” to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan will be a military disaster in which lots of U.S. troops are killed, which, in my opinion, is a rather pathetic way to “support the troops.” It seems to me that everyone would be better off if we “supported the troops” (and ourselves) by bringing them home immediately. After all, if they haven’t killed all The Terrorists after 7 years, what is the likelihood that they’re going to kill them during the next 7 years? (The 35-year-old drug war might come to mind.)
But let’s count our blessings here at home. The feds might now have the omnipotent power to seize and incarcerate American citizens as enemy combatants in the Global War on Terror. And, sure, the feds have been ignoring The Constitution as part of their GWAT, especially with respect to Fourth Amendment prohibitions against illegal wiretapping and other unreasonable searches. But at least they’re not yet busting down people’s doors and shooting Americans dead here at home. Well, except for those well-armed drug-war SWAT teams.
Postscript:
I highly recommend Bruce Fein’s op-ed “Criminals Not Warriors” in today’s Washington Times. Fein takes the same position that we here at The Future of Freedom Foundation have consistently taken ever since the 9/11 attacks: Terrorism is a crime, not an act of war. Permitting the feds the option of treating terrorism as either a criminal offense or an act of war has been a horrible and disastrous mistake.
If you haven’t seen the speech Bruce gave at our conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties,” please take the time to do so; it is one of the best speeches you’ll ever see.
Finally, Bruce will be speaking at our Economic Liberty Lecture Series on April 6 at George Mason University. See the details in the FFF Email Update. If you’re in the D.C. area, I hope you’ll join us for what is certain to be another great speech.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.