Author: Justin Raimondo

The first black female Secretary of State testified yesterday at her confirmation hearing that we now have an adjunct to the infamous “Axis of Evil” — the Outposts of Tyranny:

“To be sure, in our world there remain outposts of tyranny and America stands with oppressed people on every continent … in Cuba, and Burma (Myanmar), and North Korea, and Iran, and Belarus, and Zimbabwe.”

You’ll note that this new grouping of targets is geographically and ethnically diverse: a multicultural rainbow coalition of bad guys. Cuba — Hispanic. Burma — Asian. Belarus — European. Zimbabwe — African. Iran and North Korea are thrown in as reminders..

But this is an encouraging development: she left out Russia. Although I’m sure that was just an oversight, to be corrected shortly.

Jonathan Chait, writing in the Los Angeles Times has an, er, interesting suggestion:

“The Bush administration’s foreign policy is centered around fighting a highly expensive counterinsurgency in Iraq. The administration’s domestic policy is centered around driving federal tax revenues to ever-lower levels.

“Some observers say there’s an unsolvable contradiction here. I say those people just aren’t thinking creatively enough. There’s a simple, logical way to reconcile President Bush’s foreign and domestic policies: Start demanding tribute from foreign countries.”

The Old Right curmudgeon Garet Garrett once remarked that ours is an empire unique in human history, one where “everything goes out and nothing comes in.” But such altruism is bound to put a strain on the Treasury, as Chait observes, and yet the War Party’s demand for more invasions and foreign adventurism only heightens the contradictions between domestic and foreign policy. Tax cuts and imperialism are ultimately a fatal combination, and we can only avoid total bankruptcy, opines Chait, if we get over our pre-9/11 conception of modernity:

“Some might object that demanding tribute is a hoary, barbaric practice long ago repudiated by civilized countries. Well, sure, but so is torturing enemy combatants, or those suspected of being enemy combatants, or those merely living in the same general vicinity as enemy combatants. The administration understands that, if we’re going to win the war on terror, we can’t allow our hands to be tied by the quaint and obsolete requirements of the so-called civilized world. The war isn’t going to pay for itself, you know.”

But of course someone is already paying tribute, and that someone is the American taxpayer who is forced to subsidize neocon social engineering projects from Iraq to Ukraine and beyond. And a good many of the people on the receiving end of this largess are Americans, government contractors, “consultants,” and vendors who feed from the public trough. Innocuous-sounding NGOs abound, virtually al of them on the government dole, aggressively pursuing their own little agendas and spreading around lots of dollars in dirt-poor places.

War is a racket, said General Smedley Butler, and the war means fat profits not only for the weapons manufacturers and huge corporate outfits like Haliburton, but also for a small but growing group of professional do-gooders. An imperialist foreign policy, devoted to wars of conquest and “nation-building” amid the ruins, is a big drain on the ordinary American, but a tiny fraction does reap tangible benefits, and these children of the Empire constitute a key component of the War Party.

Neocon bloggers are in such a tizzy over Sarah Boxer’s New York Times piece, provocatively titled “Pro-American Iraqi Blog Provokes Intrigue and Vitriol,” that they can barely contain themselves. We haven’t seen such a roiling of the waters since a certain cigarette-smoking antiwar reactionary punctured their insufferable pretensions way back in 2002, when the blogger phenomenon was really new. My fellow San Franciscan Tim Cavanaugh delivered what was pretty much the death blow in a celebrated piece, “Let Slip the Blogs of War,” published in the Online Journalism Review. That sure provoked plenty of whining from Matt Welch at the time, but Cavanaugh and Welch are both grazing peaceably in the green pastures of Reason magazine these days, so I guess that little spat died down faster than the blogger phenomenon itself. Now that the subject is old and tired, the Times has stumbled on the “news” that the blogosphere is more aptly termed the propaganda-sphere.

Boxer takes on the case of Iraq the Model, a website that captures in its very name the neocon vision of a democratized and properly domesticated Middle East. The pro-war bloggers have been touting the brothers Fadhil, as exemplars of the “good news” from Iraq. Their capstone of their triumphant American tour, sponsored by a “charitable” organization known as the “Spirit of America,” occurred when two of the brothers were received at the White House for face time with the Prezt. But there’s a fly in this ointment, as I pointed out at the time, and I’m glad to see that the MSM, in the person of Ms. Boxer, has fished it out: the disenchantment of the third brother, Ali, whose last post on Iraq the Model read as follows:

“This is the last time I write in this blog and I just want to say, goodbye. It’s not an easy thing to do for me, but I know I should do it. I haven’t told my brothers with my decision, as they are not here yet, but it won’t change anything and I just can’t keep doing this anymore.

“My stand regarding America has never changed. I still love America and feel grateful to all those who helped us get our freedom and are still helping us establishing democracy in our country. But it’s the act of some Americans that made me feel I’m on the wrong side here. I will expose these people in public very soon and I won’t lack the mean to do this, but I won’t do it here as this is not my blog.

“At any rate, it’s been a great experience and a pleasure to know all the regular readers of this blog, as I do feel I know you, and I owe you a lot.

“Best wishes to all of you, those who supported us and those who criticized us as well.”

Boxer got in touch with Ali, and her depiction of his ambiguity about the American occupation, and the tenuousness of his position in relation to the realities of Iraq, ruined the Potemkin Village rah-rah propaganda regularly emitted – in English – on “Iraq the Model” and a slew of other pro-occupation Iraqi blogs:

“Why did he quit Iraq the Model? When was he going to expose the Americans who made him feel he was on the wrong side? He was surprisingly frank. The blog had changed him. When the blog began, he said, ‘People surprised me with their warmth and how much they cared about us.’ But as time passed, he said, ‘I felt that this is not just goodwill, giving so much credit to Iraq the Model. We haven’t accomplished anything, really.’

“His views took a sharp turn when his two brothers met with the president. There wasn’t supposed to be any press coverage about their trip to the United States, he said. But the Washington Post wrote about the meeting, and the Arabic press ended up translating the story, which, Ali felt, put his family in real danger. Anyway, he said, he didn’t see any sense in his brothers’ meeting with President Bush. ‘My brothers say it happened accidentally, that it was not planned.’ But why, he asked, take such an ‘unnecessary risk’? He explained his worries: ‘Here some people would kill you for just writing to an American.’”

Ali, in short, was tired of being used by the War Party to make propaganda in America. The pro-war bloggers are now getting up on their high horses, screeching that Boxer has put the Fadhil brothers in danger. But Ali is right: it is the propagandists in America, including the laptop bombardiers’ brigade, who put them in danger the minute they started holding them up as model New Iraqis, the offspring of the “liberation.” But since Glenn Reynolds-Powerline-Little Green Footballs crowd is definitely not part of the reality-based community, the hard reality of Ali’s comment that “Here some people would kill you for just writing to an American” is inadmissible, becasue “some people” means an awful lot of people.

Boxer takes up the suspicions first raised by Martini Republic that “Iraq the Model” might have informal connections to the U.S. government, a suggestion that was greeted with outrage by pro-war bloggers, but Ali’s account doesn’t dispel the murky aura of intrigue that hangs over the whole affair:

“Ali never did expose the people who made him feel that he was on the wrong side, and in fact conceded that he couldn’t. As he confided on the phone, ‘I didn’t know who the people were.'”

Hmmmmmmmm….

But Ali isn’t disenchanted with the idea of human freedom: it’s just that now he doesn’t identify this idea with the U.S. government:

“‘Me and my brothers,’ he said, “we generally agree on Iraq and the future.’ (He is helping his brother Mohammed, who is running on the Iraqi Pro-Democracy Party ticket in the Jan. 30 election.) But there is one important difference: ‘My brothers have confidence in the American administration. I have my questions.'”

“Now that,” writes Boxer, “seems genuine,” and I can only concur. .

He’s started his own blog, Free Iraqi. Go check it out.

Uh oh. Do you think I have reason to worry?

For once, I agree with Glenn Reynolds. Oh well, I guess there’s a first time for everything….

Yulia Timoshenko, the Ukrainian oligarch-turned-revolutionary, says she fully expects to be made Prime Minister, now that her ally, Viktor Yushchenko, has won the presidency — and she’s already acting like she’s in charge. Countermanding Yushchenko’s order that the tent city of “orange” activists camped out in the middle of Kiev must disperse, the fiery “gas princess” is telling the activists to remain at their posts:

“We must respect people who came to protect democracy. I’m against any orders, and people should leave when they are ready.”

Yulia claims Yushchenko signed an agreement prior to the election designating her as his candidate for Prime Minister — but he hasn’t met with her after returning from vacation:

“When asked why Yushchenko had not yet included her in his consultations, Timoshenko said icily: ‘Ask him. I am not going to initiate such an encounter.'”

In the meantime, he’s found plenty of time to meet other Ukrainian politicians on the make.

Is the “orange revolution” turning into a lemon? I’ll bet this is part of the reason.