Articles by Tim Swanson

Not content with using former military officers to justify their modus operandi, or funding academic research to further their agenda, the State Department is now purchasing text ads through Google’s AdSense program.

The Bureau of International Information Programs has created, at taxpayers expense, an entire website devoted to “Telling America’s Story,” or rather whitewashing the foreign policies enacted by the administration.

For those looking for objective independent analysis, you might as well tune in to the American Forces Network, at least with them you get to hear some decent tunes between speeches by Tokyo Rose.

See also: Operation Mockingbird and Neoconservatism: a CIA Front?

Senator Everett Dirksen, a hawk during the Vietnam era, is credited with coining the sarcastic phrase.

However, forty years later, it should be updated to read a trillion here and there. For instance, one of the articles highlighted in the Viewpoints section today details the ever expanding blackhole that is the accounting system(s) used by the Defense of Defense: “The Pentagon’s $1 Trillion Problem.”

It is arguably a depressing piece if for no other reason than to serve as a sobering update to a 3-year-old SFGate report, “Military waste under fire - $1 trillion missing.”

While the details of either investigation may not surprise the readers of AWC, the fact that these problems not only continue but geometrically grow could arguably serve as yet another empirical case-study of how socialism cannot calculate. The military, a bastion for the purest form of socialism, has neither the incentive, the knowledge, nor the ability to price goods and services — let alone produce accurate records of its own nefarious activities.

In many cases it is the sole consumer of vehicles and armaments whose existence is entirely alien to the market-based world that must satisfy wants and needs by providing useful and productive services to potential customers.

And in other instances its insatiable appetite distorts the market-clearing price for commonly used goods such as oil.

Even if a unified, common accounting system was implemented, institutional inertia comprised by secret committees, kleptocratic planners, and politically-controlled technocrats will perpetually fail to coordinate a Byzantine bureaucracy that inherently cannot communicate or calculate.

And there is little reason to believe that the engine for state growth - the health of the state - will be muted or diminished in the coming decades.

See also: Socialism, by Ludwig von Mises
The Security-Industrial-Congressional Complex, by Robert Higgs

Last weekend was quietly marked by the 50th anniversary of the modern-day peace symbol. While it continues to remain a cultural icon, its history and imagery is relatively unknown.

As seen in the picture, the design incorporated symbols from the flag-signaling alphabet. The N + D were placed “within a circle symbolising Earth” where the N stood for nuclear and D stood for disarmament. Thus its creators used it to promote peace through global nuclear disarmament.

Last Saturday, half way around the world, another important political event took place in Taiwan. The sometimes-hawkish independence movement led by the DPP was defeated in the national election versus the trade-friendly KMT. One of the promises president-elect Ma has promoted is closer, peaceful trade with mainland China.

As Frederic Bastiat, Lew Rockwell and others have noted, when goods and services do not cross borders, armies will. And with $100 billion in cross-straits trade in 2007 alone, many residents felt that war with the PRC would be needlessly destructive to their enterprises and employees.

The DPP-led initiative for UN recognition also failed at the ballot box. And as the DPP stronghold is located here in Kaohsiung, an hour ago I walked down to the corner of Boai and Jhihsheng and watched workers dismantle the local “UN for Taiwan” building. And if the surrounding commercial hustle and bustle is any guide, perhaps a productive flea market will take its place in the near future.

This story comes full circle as the US Air Force was recently discovered to have accidentally sent 4 nuclear detonators to Taiwan. While this is itself a curiously negligent faux pas, the triggers are nearly 50 years old… designed for Mark-12 nuclear weapons which were decommissioned in 1962.

The state and its imperial class is the only group that gains in the event of war, nuclear or otherwise. And as cooler heads have recently prevailed, perhaps the Year of the Rat will be one of wealth and prosperity and not war and atrocities. Or maybe as Doug Bandow suggests, the crisis has only been postponed.

See also:
Taiwan: do as we say, not as we do
The Vatican still recognizes them, right?
5 Reasons Why the PRC will not Invade Taiwan shortly after the Olympics

George Bush just finished his press conference discussing his views of “progress and sacrifices” made over the past 5 years in Iraq.

Among other statements Bush attempted to counter, was an older statement from Osama bin Laden in December 2001. Bin Laden suggested that, “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”

Bush suggested that when the Arab world saw the progress and prosperity of Iraq they would eventually come to see America as the strong horse and stand united behind it.

While the Bush administration has continually changed the reasons for why the military invaded Iraq and what metrics can be used to measure “prosperity and progress” that specific analysis is for another post.

Rather, another question that can be asked is why Bush was willing to listen and quote some of what Bin Laden has previously said and not others.

For instance, prior to the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa, bin Laden states in his second fatwa,

For over seven years now the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors and turning its bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

The official 9/11 commission reported this kind of reasoning as one of many motivating factors behind the subsequent hijackings and attacks. Guiliani and the entire neoconservative establishment blew a gasket when Ron Paul and others mention this as evidence for blowback.

So the question now is, by what standard does Bush use in quoting certain passages? Why are some statements from Bin Laden considered legitimate and others ignored?

In addition, Bush uttered at least one non sequitur during the press conference. He suggested that since there haven’t been any further attacks, his homeland security strategy has obviously worked.

However, this fallacious reasoning is along the lines of the old story of the man banging a drum in Central Park. When questioned as to why he is banging on a drum the man replies “it is to keep the bears and tigers away.”  And because neither carnivore was in sight, his plan obviously works. (Similar to the Bear Patrol episode in The Simpsons)

Be sure to also check out “The Fear Factory” from the latest copy of Rolling Stone magazine.

The ACLU is reporting that by this summer, a million people will be on the US terrorist watch list. As of this writing there are approximately 925,000.

Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program noted that “If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins.”

All jokes about the IRS and Federal Reserve aside, gigantic dragnets like these have been historically ineffective at catching boogiemen. In fact, the FBI has complained that the NSA drowns them in dead ends, wasting everyones time, patience and resources.

Note: among others, security expert Bruce Schneier discussed this phenomenon several years ago.

See also: Nobody expects the American Inquisition.

Addendum: be sure to also check out “The Fear Factory” from the latest copy of Rolling Stone magazine.

After watching Charlie Wilson’s War, the viewer is left with the belief that the calculating congressman from East Texas essentially bled the Soviet treasury dry and as a result, the Kremlin collapsed. Yet, that is only part of the story.

While the movie is much more entertaining than Lions for Lambs (which is focused on Afghanistan today) both Ivan Eland and Chalmers Johnson are right to condemn the glorification of the state and its wars, including Operation Cyclone.

And as the political class lauds itself for this cunning war of attrition against the ruskies, they have created their very own moneypit in Afghanistan. Current estimates of maintaining the occupation and suppression of Iraq and Afghanistan is heading into orbit around the $5 trillion marker. This is a far cry from the $200 billion that got Larry Lindsey fired.

The antiwar presidential candidates may have exited but the questions still remain: who will have to pay for this? And what happens when that treasury goes dry? Who will star in the movie?

Today is a national holiday here in Taiwan. It is Peace Memorial Day which reflects upon a bloody suppression instigated by the KMT more than 60 years ago.

And while you can hear the occasional loud speaker commemorating it in the background, most of the political class is focused on the diplomatic snub a Taiwanese delegation experienced yesterday.

After being sent to Seoul to observe the inaugural ceremony for the new Korean president, the Taiwanese representatives were asked not to attend due to pressure from the Chinese delegation which threatened to boycott the event.

As I mentioned earlier this month, despite the harsh rhetoric and diplomatic threats expounded on by either party, any military confrontation between the PRC and RoC seems unlikely for the near-future. And while it is improbable that the South Korean State department will ever change its stance, this May they too will have a chance to reflect upon the anniversary of a government-sanctioned violent repression.

In the spirit of the day and towards a peaceful coexistence you may be interested in: How to Deal with a Threatening Island. It stands in stark contrast to contemporary anti-trade agitprop like this.

Volumes have been written about the (in)effectiveness of military technology and plans (e.g., Maginot Line).

The movie comedy, The Pentagon Wars, details the ludicrous design and engineering tests that the Bradley fighting vehicle evolved through.

On Tuesday, the newest Japanese destroyer collided with a small fishing boat, despite the fact that the destroyer had the latest and greatest detection equipment — provided by the US military.

While the accident is being blamed on human error this comes a year after a Chinese sub was able to surface undetected five miles from an American carrier.  This despite the fact that carrier-based task forces include a vast array of sensors (e.g., ASW) that are supposed to detect and neutralize such threats.

Thus while the taxpayer is continuously blinded and bombarded with press releases hyping seemingly worthless military-grade technology, War Nerd’s Millenium Games observations are arguably vindicated.  Or as William Lind has noted, an innovative, imaginative and low-tech enemy can overcome even the largest asymmetries.

Contemporaneously, the recent naval missile strike on the NRO satellite was only able to occur under ideal conditions: with calm seas and a pre-configured target with a known trajectory.  What was the success rate of the vaunted Patriot batteries during Operation Desert Storm?  And who was coerced out of billions of dollars to fund these schemes?

George W. Bush recently stated that America “demands clear results for the billions of taxpayer dollars it sends to Africa” and that recipients should ”set clear goals and achieve measurable results.”

This is ironic on several levels.  For years the neoconservatives at the highest level of the imperial class have all criticized the need for metrics and “objective results” in measuring the progress, or lack thereof, in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Another reason this is confusing is that neither Bush nor the Western envoys are willing to point the blame on themselves for compounding this quagmire.  Over 80% of all taxpayer-financed aid that has been sent to Africa has made its way into private Swiss bank accounts of more than a dozen dictators.  This amounted to roughly $150 billion in 2005.  (see: Where does most of that money go?)

However arguably the most blaise statement was that Bush declared that the “age of paternalism” was over for Africa — that its nation-states would have to grow up on their own.

This is ironic because after pooring billions of dollars in military aid to support various puppet states, last October, the Pentagon errected a brand new central command for the whole of Africa (minus Egypt).

If politicians were consistent about caring for taxpayer investments they would simply give the money back to the taxpayer and stop funding nepotistic kleptocracies altogether.  After all, even after being coerced into financing public aid projects, American-based private individuals and charities still manage to donate more than three times that of what the US government does – $95 billion in 2005 alone.

Thus, among other places, walking the walk may have prevented the unnecessary deaths of 19 soldiers fifteen years ago in Mogadishu.

Neither apparently knows how the federal government gained control of Puerto Rico.

In his address to CPAC last night, Romney uttered a number of false statements.  The first of which included reiterating a story from Shimon Peres who noted that,

America is unique in the history of the world. In the history of the world, whenever there has been conflict, the nation that wins takes land from the nation that loses. One nation in history, and this during the last century, laid down hundreds of thousands of lives and took no land. No land from Germany, no land from Japan, no land from Korea.

If there is any one common trait the political class in the US historically shares with its world-wide peers it is its unsatiable land-grabbing totalitarian tendencies.  Manifest destiny was and is the forceful expansion of the military state across geographic boundaries that has left whole cultures in smoldering ruins.  This ironically includes long-term US occupations of Germany, Japan and Korea where more than 100,000 troops are currently stationed.

From day one numerous US administrations waged dozens of wars across the continental plains and forcefully removed hundreds of thousands of Indians from their homesteads.  Unruly elements incited a war with Canada in 1812.  These same statists provoked and engaged a war with Mexico that ultimately settled the annexation of Texas and the Gadsden purchase (all of which was paid for by the unwitting taxpayer).  Northern aggression resulted in a decimated and vengeful South. After provoking the Spanish into a war, the US acquired the territory of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Phillipines and parts of Cuba.

And what about little Hawaii?  Its indigenous populace was subdued and its Queen overthrown by American interventionists.

But even ignoring those dusty historical footnotes how do Peres and Romney reconcile  800 military bases covering hundreds of thousands of acres in over 100 countries?  Or the inconvenient fact that US military has bombed over thirty countries since World War II?  And what about puppet states and proconsuls such as L. Paul Bremer?

Empire, what empire?  (see: Sorrows of Empire and Ruses of War)

Romney also wants to rebuild what he sees as a weakened military,

But their numbers have been depleted by the Clinton years when troops were reduced by 500,000, when 80 ships were retired from the Navy, and when our human intelligence was slashed by 25%. [...] we must act to rebuild our military might.

Romney failed to mention that despite these cuts US politicians desperately attempted to maintain its empire.  Furthermore, numerous intelligence agencies were actively investigating potential terrorist threats prior to 9/11.

Romney’s solution to these ”liberal” slashes: increase spending to 4% of GDP.

I’m not entirely sure what budget outlays Romney has been reading over the past 7 years, but the current military budget is bigger than the military budgets of the next 25 largest countries combined.  At a staggering $1 trillion, which does not include outlays for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is higher than that at any point in history.  And it has only increased since the Clinton years.

37 years ago, the Republic of China was stripped of its UN seat and relegated to geopolitical bottom feeder.

In March a group of Taiwanese politicians and reformers led by current president Chen Shui-bian plans on submitting a new membership application to the UN for admission into the general assembly. 

When I first arrived in Taipei a month ago it was impossible to not notice this plan as glitzy posters greeted visitors as we walked through the airport hallways.  These advertisements spelled out its case to the world, or at least the several thousand travellers that meandered around the luggage terminals. (see: UN for Taiwan).

Despite recently stating that there would be “heavy costs” to pursuing the referendum, it seems unlikely that the PRC would launch any military response prior to the summer Olympics.

This diplomatic issue is compounded by the fact that, as professor Geoffrey Forden has detailed (1 2 3), China is still not capable of launching a successful first strike against American military assets in space.

Furthermore, it is doubtful that the referendum will garner the necessary votes for passing, as countries voting in its favor would potentially lose both foreign aid shipments and other political capital from China (which is how both the PRC and RoC have historically paid for diplomatic recognition).

While this subject deserves more space than this post can afford, the US State Department believes that “conducting a referendum would be a mistake and intentionally provocative.”

One wonders what objective criteria secession and independence leaders must procure before they can join the exclusive nation-state club. If East Timor, Serbia, Eritrea and a dozen or so Soviet republics had what it takes, why doesn’t Taiwan?  

Perhaps it is because, as Aaron Glantz and others have noted, the US State department fears that Kurdistan or other ethnic parts of Iraq may attempt to upset the status quo under similar overtures.

As an aside, why should the US taxpayer foot the defense bill in the event Taiwan does declare its independence?  For this discussion see Taiwan, a Spark Plug for War by Doug Bandow.

Justin raised some important questions about the latest RP ad.

Regarding the 19 hijackers, while several of them applied for student visas, none of them originated from countries currently defined as a terrorist state by the State Department. The sole hijacker that applied for and actually used a student visa, Hani Hanjour, was from Saudi Arabia. All of the others used B1/B2 visas (tourism, business travel).

As the official GAO report states (pdf):

Of the 19 hijackers, 18 received a total of 21 visas for temporary visits for business and pleasure, and 1 received 2 student visas.

In short, the general concept proposed in the ad would not have prevented these hijackers from receiving visas; this, despite the fact that most of the visa applications raised numerous red flags.

Note: in the past academic year, nearly 600,000 foreign students attended classes at American colleges and universities. I am sure all of them feel comfortable knowing that they could become suspects in the near Tancredian future.

See also:
The International Student Visa Process in the Post-9/11 World
9/11 and Terrorist Travel, by the National Commission (pdf)
Customs agent: Red flags over 9/11 hijacker’s visa

At least according to a recent edit of the Wikipedia entry.

While Stephen Colbert pokes fun of these pranks, the CIA and intelligence community have ulterior motives for the community-based open encyclopedia.

The New York Times reports that a group of investigators at Wikileaks recently busted a propaganda team based out of Gitmo detention center. Based on empirical data including IP addresses, the whistle-blowing organization has uncovered systematic attacks and revisions by the military aimed to whitewash their torture activities and libel detractors.

The military agents are also accused of promoting 140 stories on the popular community news site, Digg.

This discovery also comes less than 3 months after Wikileaks unearthed conflicts of interest between academic research and the intelligence community.

See also: Neoconservatism: a CIA Front? and Operation Mockingbird

Last night I finally met one of those Paulian supporters that are currently in the military: he is a fellow Texan that attended a service academy and has been deployed to a number of theaters. And while many of the active-duty soldiers that I have met here in Seoul have been trigger happy, my officer friend personally believes that if Paul was the C-in-C, useless and deleterious deployments (such as maintaining bases in Asia) would be extinct.

Also, to set the record straight he loves his country but dislikes and is embarrassed by the governments foreign policy. But he is hardly the Michael Moore “Hate America” type.

Or as H.L. Mencken noted, “every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

See also: Iraq vets speak out against the costs of the war

Addendum: To address a number of the comments, the sole reason I mentioned the Michael Moore issue was to preemptively counter the Horowitz/O’Reilly claim that the officer probably “hates America.” Regardless as to whether it has merit, neoconservatives continue to use Moore as the poster boy of anti-American lamentations. So to set the record straight: again the officer holds none of the same domestic/economic views espoused by Moore et al.

It seems that Richard Perle has now finally admitted that the US invasion of Iraq was illegal.

While he may not have admitted that it would have still been unethical to invade even if it was legal, it is one less alpha hawk in denial about this specific point.

What about those pesky US bases that were in Saudi Arabia?  Wolfowitz has admitted they were a motivating factor for al-Qaeda’s actions.

And one shouldn’t forget the memorable 1994 interview with Dick Cheney regarding the potential quagmire of invading Iraq:

Via Robin Tovson.  See also: Rudy’s Reading List

Like Born on the Fourth of July or Platoon, “Lions for Lambs” had the potential to be a great story-telling adventure with timely political commentary. It even had an ensemble cast of A-list veterans.

But like the very war and zeitgeist it attempts to critique, it too fails to execute as planned — the writers could simply never figure out which direction it should go. So they dug a foxhole and filled it with windbags.

Robert Redford’s performance amounts to little more than a pro bono PSA for bureaucratic “feel-good” chicanery in the form of executive-level community-service corps.

He spends no less than ten minutes extolling the virtues of volunteering for the state or “doing something,” a feat only surpassed by Bush’s own shenanigans during the 2002 State-of-the-Union (see: USA Freedom Corps).

For instance, Redford’s character(?) attempts to motivate a cynical student by giving him a half-baked project conjured up by previous starry-eyed pupils. In their ne’erdowellery, every American would be required to participate in one of three government organs: join the Peacecorp, join the Americorp, or enlist in the military. Thus fulfilling Kennedy’s statolatry: what can you do for the state?

Tom Cruise plays himself (with a faux title of senator) and uses dialogue seemingly written by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Karl Rove. His spin-doctoring abilities, verbal maneuvering, and sound-bites are bar-none.

While Meryl Streep’s character raised numerous objections to the senatorial demagogue, her timidity reeks of a Colmes-esque punching bag. A mostly meek, spineless reporter that only hints at the thesis detailed in “War Made Easy.”

Cinematically, I couldn’t figure out who I was supposed to hate, love or what popular cause to loath, therefore I’d give it a 1.5 out of 4.

Not only was the dialogue tiring but the acting was unrealistic (especially in the flashback scenes in the college classroom). Overall, it felt more like the straight-to-DVD release of Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis of Evil than a chemically developed drama such as Letters from Iwo Jima.

The Spotlight article for today offers a somber and foreboding analysis of The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.

It certainly gives me warm and fuzzy feelings inside.

Be sure to check out Andrew Napolitano’s latest book “A Nation of Sheep” (here is a review by Thomas DiLorenzo) in which he critiques and details numerous totalitarian acts.

Napolitano also discussed many of the themes and ideas at the FFF conference this past summer, parts 1 2 3 4

Below is a recent radio debate between John Gibson and Napolitano over the book:

See also: These Days, Everyone Dares Call Everything Treason

After Al Gore won the Peace Prize I mentioned that he did next to nothing to dismantle or even criticize military intervention during his terms as a senator and Vice President.

Yet, despite his fawning over a government controlled “green” world, neither he nor the rest of the political class have done anything to stymie the worlds largest oil consumer: the Department of Defense.

And unsurprisingly, despite substantially higher oil prices, “the needs” of the military will go undeterred for the foreseeable future.

While doubtful, perhaps the constant sight and smell of petroleum has played a roll in the brain trauma of these 20,000 unreported casualties.

Via LRC. See also:
How about banning tanks, jet fighters and submarines?
The Most Non-prolific Advocate of Peace 

Hot on the heels of historically low recruitment numbers, the Army is now reporting its highest desertion rate in nearly 30 years.

One wonders if stop-loss, prolonged tours, and the decimation of cultures and ethnicities has any bearing on a soldiers emotional fortitude and mental wherewithal.

This also comes at a time of an extraordinarily high suicide rate among veterans, whom “are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.”

It’s a good thing that the Establishment is taking good care of servicemen.

At least, according to Fox and Friends:

See also: Do as we say, not as we do

Via LRC

According to the AP, it seems that the Army has been ineffective at recruiting new targets, the lowest in 34 years.

This is one of the motivating factors for why members of the Establishment are promoting the Dream Act.

Perhaps their next move will be drafting prisoners into the ranks. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time an empire erected a slave army.

Earlier this week Lew Rockwell pointed out an ironic condemnation from Bush’s press secretary, who was lambasting “foreign fighters in Iraq.”

This bellicose statement came a day after Ecuador’s president announced his refusal to renew the lease of an air base to US forces.  And to add insult to injury, he mentioned that the Pentagon could continue stationing troops at the base on the sole condition that Ecuador be allowed to erect a military base in Miami.

As a result, if you didn’t know it was from The Onion, this would arguably complete the hat trick: Serbia Deploys Peacekeeping Forces To U.S.

This is hardly news considering how it takes nearly a trillion dollars to maintain an empire (1 2 3), but what part of fiscal conservatism does this represent: Bush is the biggest spender since LBJ?

And if you look closely at the fine print, those numbers do not even take into account the long-term obligations and entitlements that someone has to pay for the welfare handouts — which were also increased during his tenure.

Apologists will of course probably suggest that he has the back-bone and wherewithal to spend when others would just cut and run.

That, and 9/11 changed everything.

See also: Is Bush Now a Budget Cutter?

According to Jan Oberg, he has arguably contributed nothing in the way of what Nobel originally envisioned, the criteria being: “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

But then again, neither did Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat, so at least he is in good company.

See also: The Most Non-prolific Advocate of Peace

For those unfamiliar with the service Wikileaks, it is essentially an “uncensorable” repository for whistle-blowers and investigative reporters across the globe.

And just like its spooky brother, the CIA, has been exposed for defrauding journalistic and academic integrity, perhaps unsurprsingly, so too has the NSA.  According to Slashdot:

Wikileaks is reporting that the CIA has funded covert research on torture techniques, and that the NSA has pushed tens or hundreds of millions into academia through research grants using one particular grant code. Some researchers try to conceal the source of funding, yet commonality in the NSA grant code prefix makes all these attempts transparent. The primary NSA grant-code prefix is ‘MDA904′. Googling for this grant code yields 39,000 references although some refer to non-academic contracts (scolar.google.com 2,300). The grants issue from light NSA cover, the “Maryland Procurement Office” or other fronts. From this one can see the broad sweep of academic research interests being driven by the NSA.

See also: Operation Mockingbird and Betrayal of the American Right

I recently had the chance to sit down and watch the critically acclaimed “War Made Easy.” In short, it is a devasting critique of the Fourth Estate, its lack of independence and objectivity — and how it has been compromised and utilized as the mouthpiece of the political class.

The editing is superb, as it simultaneously blends the rhetoric both pundit and politician used in selling not just the recent invasion of Iraq, but all of the invasions over the past 40 years.

Throughout the film, author Norman Solomon (who penned the original book by the same name) masterfully illustrates the giddy, collectivistic mindset that embodies the perpetrators of these crimes. And certainly exemplifies Robert E. Lee’s somber dictum: It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.

Your brain on war

While George Orwell examined the perversities surrounding a policy of “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” and Murray Rothbard eloquently demonstrated the same fallacy, by invading the world, Solomon builds and expands upon the corpus.

Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bremmer, O’Reilly; the entire neoconservative fraternity is captured in the heat of the moment and exposed for the charlatans they are (Mencken would certainly approve). How can one forget the morbidly poetic “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns”?

While it poignantly ends with Martin Luther King’s then-controversial “A Time to Break Silence” it arguably adds legs to a memorably germane theory.

A few choice quotes from the documentary:

- Don’t just think of yourself, America can’t just be selfish. It makes bombing other people ultimately seem like an act of kindness, of altruism.

- If my motives are pure then the fact that I’m killing people may not be too upsetting as a matter of fact, it may indicate that I’m killing people for very good reasons.

- Actually war becomes perpetual when it becomes a rationale for peace.

- They became in a sense part of the invading apparatus. You didn’t have embedded reporters with people being bombed, you only had embedded reporters with the bombers. And it was through the eyes of the invaders that so much of the reporting was done.

- It sees the eyes of the Americans, through the eyes of the occupiers rather than those who are bearing the brunt of the war in human terms.

While not entirely surprising, over the weekend, the Iranian parliament “voted to designate the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Army as terrorist organizations.”

In part they claim that the clandestine unconventional warfare tactics that the CIA and Special Forces use to infiltrate and subjugate areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan is tantamount to terrorism.  In addition, they would like the UN to “intervene in the global problem of U.S. prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and secret jails in other countries.”

As a result, the popular cliche “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” will undoubtedly be thrown into the echo chamber over the next several weeks.  However is this not merely another case of the pot calling the kettle black?

The initiation of force is arguably unjustifiable by any organizaiton, whether it is the nation-state or religious cult. Thus, the bigger issue is that war itself is terrorism with a bigger budget. 

And as Robert Higgs has noted with the ratchet effect, war is the health of the state (as observed by Randolph Bourne) – therefore the only victors in future invasions, “police actions,” or terroristic acts are members of the political class and military-industrial complex (i.e., the state).

Not content with letting the House rattle its bellicose sabers, by a 76-22 vote, the Senate just passed a measure that contains harsh tones, to:

“combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.”

Does anyone else remember the wargame, Millennium Challenge ‘02?

Via Robin T.

Update: see TP for an update on the language that was passed in this non-binding resolution.

The Wall Street Journal recently discussed a bill that Senator Dick Durbin plans to introduce sometime this week.

The Dream Act is being touted as a bipartisan alternative to fast-tracking citizenship for tens of thousands of undocumented residents, however, as the WSJ notes, one of its provisions has a unique militaristic twist.

In a nutshell, the Act would essentially grant citizenship to any illegal alien that enlists and serves in the military for at least two years.

Unsurprisingly, key members of the military establishment have vocally supported this measure, believing that it would not only entice an “underrepresented” minority to serve but also help fulfill “innovative” recruitment goals (e.g., in addition to “quick-ship” bonuses, lower physical and aptitude standards have been implemented to widen the pool of eligible candidates).

Bills such as these are reminiscent of the creation of entities like the French Foreign Legion, who offer similar amnesty incentives to foreigners seeking citizenship.

It would be interesting to find out exactly how the political class will define a national army 10 years from now. After all, more than half of the occupation troops in Iraq are actually mercenaries due to their “privateer” status, what is an army comprised of non-citizens?