Antiwar.com Blog

Gene Healy shares the deep thoughts of the thinking man’s Glenn Reynolds.

The neoconservatives have issued their own statement on immigration, supporting pending Congressional legislation for militarization of the borders using federal troops for “border enforcement, and interior enforcement (employer sanctions).” The letter is signed by 39 “prominent conservatives and civic leaders,” such as the unapologetically pro-war William Bennett, Frank Gaffney, Newt Gingrich, David Horowitz, Michael Ledeen, Victor Davis Hansen, and Daniel Pipes: link.

The letter states, “Today, we need proof that enforcement (both at the border and in the interior) is successful before anything else happens,” and commends the pro-militarization legislative efforts of “Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and House chairmen Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.) for their leadership role in putting America’s national interests in border and interior enforcement first.”

What makes this letter additionally noteworthy is its “coincidental” appearance just hours before the public release of the Independent Institute’s Open Letter on Immigration, which has been signed by 500+ economists and other scholars, including five Nobel Prize-winners, plus 44 scholars from other countries. Link.

Was the neocon effort thrown together in a last-minute scramble and timed for release prior to the Independent Institute’s far more prestigious, bipartisan and credible Open Letter which debunks the economic and social arguments used by those pushing for border militarization? Well, you fill in the blanks. Circulated for signatures for a month prior to its release, the Independent Institute’s Open Letter was well known of in major academic circles (including neocon ones), and the neocon letter was the work of Hudson Institute John Fonte, who has made no secret of his outrage over Independent Institute stands against the war in Iraq, the national surveillance state and U.S. interventionism around the world.

Reflecting a broad consensus against the arguments used to support border militarization, the signatories to the Independent Institute’s Open Letter include prominent economists involved in both Democratic and Republican administrations such as Gregory Mankiw (Harvard U.), former Chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Bradford DeLong (U. of California, Berkeley), Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton, as well as Alfred Kahn (Cornell U.), Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board under President Jimmy Carter, and Paul McCracken (U. of Michigan), Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Richard Nixon. In addition, the 5 Nobel Laureates include the diverse Thomas Schelling (Maryland), Robert Lucas (Chicago), Daniel McFadden (Berkeley), Vernon Smith (George Mason), and James Heckman (Chicago). Link.

So, who would you trust, 500 economists, including Nobel Prize-winners, and the courageous and impeccably honorable Independent Institute, or the likes of the same people who have relentlessly championed the war in Iraq, the USA PATRIOT Act, and greatest expansion of federal power and pork spending since the New Deal?

This Wednesday, June 21, the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy Presents “Right Against War with Iran.”

• Ivan Eland
  Independent Institute, Antiwar.com Columnist
  “The United States Might Have to Accept a Nuclear Iran”
• Philip Giraldi
  Former CIA officer, partner in Cannistraro Associates
  “Iran: Same Bad Intelligence, Same Catastrophic Results”
• Doug Bandow
  Liberty Coalition and Antiwar.com columnist
  “Another War: Another Attack on Civil Liberties”
• Charles Peña
  Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and Antiwar.com columnist
  “Refocusing the War on Terrorism”

Wednesday, June 21, 2006
2pm-3pm
122 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC

The event is free-of-charge, open to the public, and no reservation is required.

If you have any questions please call Michael D. Ostrolenk, Policy Fellow, Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy at 301-717-0599, or michaeldostrolenk@gmail.com.

On this Father’s Day, frequent AWC contributor Dr. Teresa Whitehurst recalls her father’s view of the Iraq war.

Arthur Silber is back among the blogging, and at the end of a post today he reissues an old favorite of mine from 2003: “It’s Your Goddamned Mess. You Be ‘Constructive.'” (I cited it in this 2004 piece.) Today’s remarks, on the stay-the-course fundamentalists who run the government and media, are damn pertinent too.

Remember that $9 billion that somehow got “lost” in Iraq? Boxes of cash were shipped from the Federal Reserve to Iraq, where a former Coalition Provisional  Authority official testified that our guys were playing football with blocks of $100 bills and an investigator described the atmosphere as “a free-fraud zone.” The U.S. government was supposed to follow up on that somewhat dismaying discovery with an audit — but that has now been nixed by President George W. Bush, who recently issued a presidential “finding” that heads off an investigation at the pass:

“Title III of the Act creates an Inspector General (IG) of the CPA. Title III shall be construed in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authorities to conduct the Nation’s foreign affairs, to supervise the unitary executive branch, and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The CPA IG shall refrain from initiating, carrying out, or completing an audit or investigation, or from issuing a subpoena, which requires access to sensitive operation plans, intelligence matters, counterintelligence matters, ongoing criminal investiga-tions by other administrative units of the Department of Defense related to national security, or other matters the disclosure of which would constitute a serious threat to national security.”

All power to the “unitary executive” — and let the good times roll!