Dan Sanchez - Antiwar.com Blog

Playing with Fanatic Fire: How the Saudis (and the U.S.) have perilously exploited radical Islam in their pursuit of power

As the new war on ISIS widens, and the media war drums pick up the tempo, some nice breaks in the rhythm have been the few peeps made about the role of the U.S. and its allies (especially Saudi Arabia) in feeding the beast, by arming and training ISIS’s fellow travelers and prospective members in Syria.

Yet, this is no new phenomenon. Less-than-pious rulers (especially American presidents and decadent Saudi royals) have cynically harnessed radical Islam to fuel their worldly wars of conquest and dominance for centuries. And they have done so with the indispensable help of radical Islamic scholars, clerics, and preachers who formulate and communicate the doctrines that underpin that fanaticism.

This partnership is the most ancient variety of a more universal one: what Murray Rothbard called, “the State’s age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule.” Rothbard wrote:

“…since the early origins of the State, its rulers have always turned, as a necessary bolster to their rule, to an alliance with society’s class of intellectuals. (…) The alliance is based on a quid pro quo: on the one hand, the intellectuals spread among the masses the idea that the State and its rulers are wise, good, sometimes divine, and at the very least inevitable and better than any conceivable alternatives. In return for this panoply of ideology, the State incorporates the intellectuals as part of the ruling elite, granting them power, status, prestige, and material security.(…)

Before the modern era, particularly potent among the intellectual handmaidens of the State was the priestly caste, cementing the powerful and terrible alliance of warrior chief and medicine man, of Throne and Altar. The State “established” the Church and conferred upon it power, prestige, and wealth extracted from its subjects. In return, the Church anointed the State with divine sanction and inculcated this sanction into the populace.”

The ideological roots of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the current wave of Islamic fanaticism in general can be traced back to the 18th century, to one particular, “terrible alliance of warrior chief and medicine man, of Throne and Altar,” that serves as a textbook illustration of the explosive power of this kind of partnership. Continue reading “Playing with Fanatic Fire: How the Saudis (and the U.S.) have perilously exploited radical Islam in their pursuit of power”

Our Enemy-Maker, the State

missile on target

The state is the archenemy of the individual, as has been demonstrated by libertarian state analysts from Herbert Spencer (Man Vs. State) to Albert Jay Nock (Our Enemy, the State) to Murray Rothbard (Anatomy of the State). However, it is not only our chief enemy, it is also our chief maker of enemies. The parasitic state is not only perpetually at odds with us, but it is constantly setting us at odds with others. It is not only a millstone around our necks, but a target.

States make enemies on behalf of its subjects, primarily because threats make it easier to marshall support from the frightened and indignant public for expansions of its power, both home and abroad. This is agreed upon both by opponents and practitioners of this policy. Rothbard wrote that:

…the State has for centuries used the “foreign threat” to aggrandize its power over its deluded subjects.

and that…

“…war and a phony “external threat” have long been the chief means by which the state wins back the loyalty of its subjects.”

And the leading Nazi Hermann Göring stated at the Nuremburg Trials that:

“…it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.(…) …voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked…”

This aspect of the state has been especially important in recent news. The bourgeoning Islamic State, or ISIS, seems straight out of super villain central casting. And when the political class isn’t panicking over ISIS, it is scaremongering over the “imperial designs” of Vladimir Putin.

Continue reading “Our Enemy-Maker, the State”

Squandered Lives and Snuffed Out Genius: Mises, Tolkien, and World War I

Recently in The Times, Richard Morrison discussed, “The musicians silenced in the carnage of the Great War,” this being the centennial year of World War I. Morrison explored the war’s, “cataclysmic effect on the musical world,” and how “it left an indelible mark on musical composition—partly because almost a whole generation of brilliant young composers were killed, and partly because those that survived were changed for ever.” Morrison ends on a poignant note:

“As with so many of that horribly ill-fated generation, you wonder what might have been—had mankind not slaughtered so many of its brightest and best.”

This sentiment can be extended beyond music to all fields of human endeavor. Every life is precious for its own sake, but we can only have a full accounting of the costs of war if we also reflect upon the squandered potential of its victims.

Of course we can never know exactly what was lost to civilization in a war, but one way of getting an idea is to consider what we almost lost.

For example, World War I might have easily cost us most of the contributions of Ludwig von Mises, the greatest economist, and one of the greatest champions of liberty, who ever lived. In his wonderful biography of Mises, Guido Hülsmann wrote of how much danger Mises was in as an artillery officer on Austria-Hungary’s Northern Front:

Continue reading “Squandered Lives and Snuffed Out Genius: Mises, Tolkien, and World War I”

We Need Cops Like Mike Brown Needed a Hole in the Head

The Ferguson community is rightly outraged over the fatal police-shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown and the broader problem it represents: how American blacks are treated like a subject population under military occupation. They are also right to be doubly outraged at how the police state that dominates them has been baring its fangs and pushing them around with a fully militarized response to their protest.

It is good that they want justice for Mike Brown and the mitigation of police impunity. It is also good that the public is now finally aware of and deeply concerned about the militarization of the police. But this has been a decades-long, losing struggle. By now, it should be obvious that the police state, and especially its treatment of blacks, will never be fundamentally reformed.

You might ask, “Well, what else can we do but keep trying?” My answer may initially take you aback, but hear me out. Abolish the police, at least in Ferguson and any other black community that has had enough.

The notion of doing without police may seem as outlandish as abolishing parenthood or outlawing air. But police forces are not some timeless, sacred feature of human society. In its modern form, policing was actually only developed in the past couple of centuries. And tellingly, it originated directly out of imperial domination. As Will Grigg puts it, modern police forces have from the beginning been:

“…paramilitary bodies designed to operate as occupation forces, rather than as a protective service. In creating his London Metropolitan Police, Robert Peel adapted the model he had employed in creating the “Peace Preservation Force,” a specialized unit within the 20,000-man military contingent Peel had commanded as military governor of occupied Ireland.”

Continue reading “We Need Cops Like Mike Brown Needed a Hole in the Head”

Give Up Your Domestic Empire or Live Under It

In the recent film X-men: Days of Future Past, the “Sentinels” are robots programmed by non-mutant humans in the government to hunt and keep down the feared and marginalized population of “mutants.” Eventually, however, their programming undergoes major “mission creep,” and according to Wikipedia, the Sentinels, “expand their targets beyond mutants to baseline humans based on the logic that they have the potential to produce mutant descendants, culminating in a dystopian future where most of humanity and mutantkind have been wiped out.” This is an apt parable for the police state, which is also used against the marginalized, but which also eventually will turn on its creators and enablers.

The late scholar Chalmers Johnson used to say, “Either give up your empire, or live under it,” referring to the truth that foreign empires tend to foster domestic police states. American experience, especially in past years, has shown just how prescient this unheeded warning was. The September 11, 2001 terrorist blowback from U.S. imperialism in the Middle East excused a massive swelling of the “homeland” security state, as well as an imperialist double-down in the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. These foreign wars, in turn, engorged our police state even further, as a torrent of surplus military gear streamed into our local police and sheriff’s departments, ramping up an already long-running militarization of the police in America.

Chief Ken Geddes poses with the Preston, Idaho police department’s new MRAP.

This militarization has been largely under the radar, in spite of efforts to publicize it by prolific libertarian writers like Will Grigg and Radley Balko. The issue has finally broken into public consciousness and mainstream media coverage after police responded to protests and unrest (over the police shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown) in Ferguson, Missouri with militarized full-spectrum dominance, putting all their new toys from the Pentagon to use and on display.

And yet, even with their news and social media feeds bombarded by images of an American town that are indistinguishable from images of occupied Iraq, many conservatives are still clinging to a “Support Your Local Police” attitude toward the matter. They don’t see the images as indicative of the tyranny of empire “coming home.”

Wall of high beams facing anyone approaching Ferguson, Missouri.

This in part is due to identity politics, which currently dominates judgments concerning public affairs, at the expense of principled concerns for justice and individual rights. These generally non-black, middle-class “law and order” conservatives identify with “black neighborhood” blacks in Ferguson about as little as they identify with Arab townsfolk or bedouins. To many of them, it is not a truly American town that is being militarily occupied, or true Americans being tear gassed. In X-men argot, they’re not “baseline humans,” so it is deemed okay if the “Sentinels” get rough with them.
Continue reading “Give Up Your Domestic Empire or Live Under It”

Back to Black and Back to the Stone Age

You know how sometimes a cop will turn off his dash cam (often “mistakenly,” or it “malfunctions”) right before he brutalizes or executes a victim? That’s what Israel did yesterday, when it knocked out Gaza’s only power plant, killing the power for most of the population. This, besides its economic/humanitarian impacts, will make it much harder for Gazans to convey their plight to the rest of the world. As smartphone and computer batteries run out, powerful, sympathy-inducing voices from Gaza, like that of the 16-year old Twitter-user Farah Baker (@Farah_Gazan), and the 10-year-old girl in this viral video, will be silenced. And as camera batteries die, we may see fewer heart-rending images of the carnage and wreckage that Israel’s pogrom is inflicting upon civilians, especially children.

Israeli government officials and their cheerleaders will welcome such a development, as one of their chief complaints in interviews has been the “unfair” impact that such images of, in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s words “telegenically dead Palestinians,” have had on world opinion. Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, recently fretted that, “the pictures look terrible on the TV, and that immediately translates into diplomatic pressure on Israel to accept a far-less advantageous ceasefire.” Oren was particularly worried that the outrage over the images would lead to Israel having its (blood-soaked) “hands tied” by the UN Security Council.

After all, imagine if these pesky personal recording and communication devices had been around in 1947. If its massacres had been broadcast in real time, the Naqba might never have even gotten off the ground!

Surely, Netanyahu and Oren hope that the electricity black-out will result in an atrocity black-out. And with the “telegenically” dead conveniently made invisibly dead, the massacre might become “out of sight, out of mind” enough to world opinion, that Israel can secure a Carthaginian peace, with their precious starvation blockade of Gaza fully intact.

Leaving Gaza with no electricity, and therefore no running water or sewage treatment, also furthers another Israeli aim. Netanyahu has stressed the war objective of stripping Hamas of its rocket-firing ability. We’re not talking centrifuges and IBMs here. The Qassam rockets Hamas uses consist of little more than piping and fertilizer. So, the only way that an assault could make the creation of such primitive devices impossible would be by completely obliterating any remnants of technology and the division of labor left in Gaza: by bombing the Palestinians “back to the Stone Age” and destroying their infrastructure. A chilling expression of such a desire was given by Gilad Sharon, the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Jerusalem Post in 2012:
Continue reading “Back to Black and Back to the Stone Age”