Antiwar.com Blog

Charles Rangel thinks that having a society where human beings own each other is perfectly okay as long as the slaves are destroying lives and property for the state rather than producing things for private plantation owners.

From USA Today:

“Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 if the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has his way.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars and to bolster U.S. troop levels insufficient to cover potential future action in Iran, North Korea and Iraq.

‘There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,’ Rangel said. …

At a time when some lawmakers are urging the military to send more troops to Iraq, ‘I don’t see how anyone can support the war and not support the draft,’ said Rangel, who also proposed a draft in January 2003, before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.”

Don’t you see? Conscription will deter wars by providing the politicians with a bottomless supply of cannon fodder. And by the new magic principle of “everything works how Charlie wants,” the rest of the politicians will be somehow unable to swing exemptions for their own children.

As for those of us who have priorities other than killing foreigners, well, individual sacrifice for the greater good is the American Way, right?

Comments welcome over at Stress.

LewRockell.com linked to an article of mine today on the servile atmosphere in DC think tanks.  The piece is at the Globalist.com website but, since yesterday, the page with my article has been converted into a membership/registration required page.

Here’s the core:

Many think tanks have become as servile as military bases, as far as providing applause for lies from the highest level of government. Two decades ago, many people expected think tanks to revolutionize politics in Washington, bringing ideas and principles to sordid political clashes. Instead, some think tanks have become nothing more than props for politicians.

The article contrasts the courage of New York organizations fighting U.S. torture with the docility  of Washington think tanks on the same issue.

The full text of the piece is at my blog, where comments and cavilings are welcome.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman has died. He was 94.

I know our readers have a wide range of views regarding his economics, but Friedman deserves the thanks of everyone opposed to conscription. A long-time opponent of the draft, Friedman served on the presidential commission that finally abolished what he forthrightly called a form of slavery. At a conference on the War on Drugs, which he also opposed, Friedman recalled the anti-draft movement as a source of hope for anti-prohibitionists:

Back in the 1940s and 1950s we had a military draft. And I may say, I was just as opposed to the military draft as I now am to the prohibition of drugs. It looked as if you couldn’t get rid of it. It was politically unfeasible to get rid of the draft. We had a conference like this at the University of Chicago; I have forgotten the exact date – sometime in the fifties or early sixties. It was one of the few conferences in which opinions were changed. I hope this will be another. We took a poll at the beginning of the draft conference. We had, just as here, people in favor of the draft, people opposed to the draft-a much wider group than here, including politicians, academicians, and so on. At the beginning of that conference the vote was one-third in favor of the volunteer army and two-thirds in favor of the draft. After three days of the conference, the vote was precisely reversed. Two-thirds expressed themselves in favor of the volunteer army and one-third still in favor of the draft.

I believe that was a major factor in starting the ball rolling, which ultimately got rid of the draft in 1973. 1 believe that this is the same kind of an issue. The evidence is highly persuasive to those who are willing to look at it from the point of view not of one extreme or the other, but of the sensible middle that everybody is looking for. We must change the present policy. I am not without hope that something will happen. At least, the vigor of the attempt at enforcement will lessen.

When specifically asked about foreign policy in a 1995 interview, Friedman was somewhat ambivalent:

Reason: Do you consider yourself in the libertarian mainstream on foreign policy issues?

Friedman: I don’t believe that the libertarian philosophy dictates a foreign policy. In particular I don’t think you can derive isolationism from libertarianism. I’m anti-interventionist, but I’m not an isolationist. I don’t believe we ought to go without armaments. I’m sure we spend more money on armaments than we need to; that’s a different question.

I don’t believe that you can derive from libertarian views the notion that a nation has to bare itself to the outside without defense, or that a strong volunteer force would arise and defend the nation.

Reason: What did you think about the [First] Gulf War?

Friedman: I always had misgivings about the Gulf War, but I never came to a firm decision. It was more nearly justified than other recent foreign interventions, and yet I was persuaded that the major argument used to support it was fallacious.

After all, if Iraq took over the oil, it would have to do something with it. If they don’t want to eat it, they’d have to sell it. I don’t think the price of oil would have been much affected. The more important consideration was the balance of power with Iran and Iraq. I have mixed feelings about that war; I wouldn’t be willing to write a brief on either side.

Yet, as our own David Henderson noted earlier this year, Friedman’s economic insights, when applied to foreign policy, yield decidedly noninterventionist conclusions. And in a July conversation with the Wall Street Journal, the still spry gentleman was flatly opposed to the latest attack on Iraq:

“What’s really killed the Republican Party isn’t spending, it’s Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression.” Mrs. Friedman – listening to her husband with an ear cocked – was now muttering darkly.

Milton: “Huh? What?” Rose: “This was not aggression!” Milton (exasperatedly): “It was aggression. Of course it was!”

In light of House Democrats’ choice of Rep. Steny Hoyer over Rep. John Murtha for House majority leader, Robert Scheer’s Tuesday column (in today’s Viewpoints section) is worth another look. Murtha is far from perfect – in fact, he’s been a reliable friend to the military-industrial complex over the years – but as Scheer notes:

Because of his credentials as a highly decorated Marine veteran and stalwart Pentagon supporter, U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) was more effective than any other member of Congress in crystallizing the changing American position on Iraq when he dramatically wrote last year, “It is time to bring them home.” Not intimidated by the president’s “cut-and-run” smears, he said what most Americans have come to believe: The war is not “winnable” and it is time—now, not in 10 years—to let Iraqis make their own history and to get American troops out of the line of fire.

By contrast, his opponent for the House leadership position, U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), disagrees with 60 percent of the voters in continuing to support President Bush in this ever-deepening disaster. As recently as Monday, Hoyer continued to hold an allegedly moderate position that is as divorced from reality as the disgraced former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “You can transfer authority to the Iraqis … but we need to do so in a way, hopefully, that will not create greater carnage,” he told MSNBC-TV.

What gibberish. In fact, as realists from all sides of the political spectrum, including the president’s father, argued before the war started, taking Baghdad was inevitably going to stoke the always smoldering nationalist and religious fires of the Middle East that now engulf Iraq with apocalyptic fury. The toll on Tuesday alone: Scores of scholars were kidnapped from the Education Ministry in a plot reportedly aided by policemen, while 82 others were killed or found dead from clashes, murders and bombings around the country.

What an insult it would be to voters to place a continued cheerleader for the war in the No. 2 spot in the House. To reject the basically conservative Murtha also would be to reject the votes of independents and Republicans who broke with Bush on the war.

Read the rest.

If you don’t know yet, the German Court system, claiming world-wide jurisdiction over torture, is re-hearing a complaint against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA Director George Tenet and others, alleging that many of the “interrogation” techniques they authorized at Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib amount to torture and violate the Geneva Conventions.

Previously the German prosecutor declined to investigate on grounds that the U.S. Government would look into these allegations itself.

Since that ruling however, just the opposite has happened: Passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows a continuation of such secret “interrogations,” — and amending the “War Crimes Act” retroactively immunized those authorizing them.

Will the German system have cojones enough to take on the Bush Administration?

And that’s where you can “help put ’em away!”

It will help the German system pluck up it’s courage if enough people show support for the investigation. Former U.S. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski has done just that — and you can join her.

Go to THIS PAGE from the website of the Center for Constitutional Rights and send a letter to the German prosecutor encouraging him to look into the matter. (The english translation is at the bottom of the “Read & Edit the Message” window.)

This is your chance to make a difference.

Do it now!! (BIG TOOTHY SMILE — think Gary Busey)

P.S. The case could not be brought with the International Criminal Court, because the United States is not a member, and could not be pursued through the U.N. because the U.S. has veto power.

In reply to those who point out that we defeated the Nazis in less time than we have now been fighting in Iraq, National Review (Sept. 25, 2006) agrees that it only took three years and five months to defeat Germany, but then adds: “But is that how long it took to defeat the Nazis in Europe? Try telling that to Britain (bombed August-October 1940), France (conquered June 1940), or Poland (invaded September 1939).” Okay, National Review, once we have been in Iraq longer than the time between Germany bombing Britain, conquering France, and invading Poland, and surrendering, what logic will you use to justify the war then?