Antiwar.com Blog

Back in August I had an interesting talk with Richard Maybury, an economist of the Austrian school and editor of the financial newsletter Early Warning Report. He is the author of a big idea, actually a model with which to help predict long term trends in global politics and finance. It’s called Chaostan, and basically it means that enlighenment ideas of liberty and property never made it past Marx in Germany in their natural spread eastward, that the former Soviet Union is ready to break into many more pieces, and most importantly that the US government ought to leave those people the hell alone, as creating a global empire there will destroy the great limited constitutional republic Americans created back when they believed in enlightenment ideals of liberty and property.

The American War Party has decided not to follow his advice.

A few days back I saw on TV a cheesy re-creation of a firefight in Afghanistan interspersed with interviews of the men involved in the actual event. One of them made the comment, “This is Injun Country,” in reference to their firebase out in the middle of Afghanistan somewhere. Eh, so what?

Well, just now I went to take a look at A Tiny Revolution, where Jonathan Schwarz quotes George Bush from February 2003 as saying, “If we must use force, the United States and our coalition stand ready to help the citizens of a liberated Iraq,” and then brings up the record regarding American’s promises to “help people” in the past.

“It might have been useful if we’d remembered the first Great Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was part of the charter granted to British settlers in 1629 by Charles I. This was where America began�with Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, etc.
Now, look closely. Can you tell what the American Indian on the seal is saying?

That’s right! He’s asking the settlers to “come over and help us.” The settlers, of course, did help the Indians…to be dead.This formula recurs over and over again throughout American history. We go somewhere because we HAVE TO HELP PEOPLE. Then they all somehow�perhaps because of a 400-year streak of bad luck on our part?�end up dead.”

He then cites Andrew Bacevich’s review of Robert Kaplan’s new book, Imperial Grunts, where it is explained,

“[A]s Kaplan sees it, 9/11 returned the US military to its nineteenth-century roots when advancing the boundaries of free society meant removing any obstacles impeding the westward march of the young Republic. Today’s war on terror is “really about taming the frontier,” with the frontier now literally without limits. According to Kaplan, the vast swath of Islam, stretching from Africa across the Middle East to Southeast Asia, now qualifies as “Injun Country.” The “entire planet” has now become “battle space for the American military.”

At least the always optimistic Bacevich ends his review on a happy note,

“Hard-pressed to hold on to the new provinces to which today’s architects of empire have laid claim, America’s armed forces are in no position to appropriate more. As for the Pentagon’s ability to flood additional obscure quarters of the earth, the troops required to do so simply do not exist.”

No wonder Zbigniew Brzezinski and them are so concerned about Iraq, the job was Asia – now the neocons have blown it.

Anybody ever looked at a map of Asia? Anybody believe that the way to spread liberty is by making up stupid racial slurs to dehumanize people and then kill them and steal their stuff?

Does anyone really believe that 6% of the world (us) can conquer the Old World from across the ocean or that we’ve got the right to even try?

Check out some Richard Maybury and get back to me.

As you know, the so-called social contract which created the national government provides them the power to prosecute for treason, as it was in the Old World, but at least they made the standards pretty specific. From Article 3 Section 3:

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.”

Now comes George W. Bush, joining Bill O’Reilly in invoking “comfort to the enemy” while crying about folks who point out what a complete and total disaster his invasion of Iraq has been:

“I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries.”

So, which criticism is permissible and what isn’t? What brings credit to our democracy and what makes our enemies feel comforted?

What if I were to assert that the Iraq war is what brings comfort to our enemies? What if I were to cite the CIA, the RIIA [.pdf], the Saudis, the Israelis, all the former CIA guys I’ve interviewed, the best reporters and academics to back me up? That al Qaeda has become al Qaedaism – an ideology like neoconservatism, but for pissed off Salafist types, that the Kurdish Peshmergas are preparing for war, that the SCIRI and Da’wa party, who lived in Iran though the Iran-Iraq war and up until the US invasion in 2003 and now dominate the Shi’ite south, have basically secured a giant new province for the Ayatollahs that we had supported Saddam Hussein against?

What if I were to point out that the congress has had to raise their phony “debt ceiling” to 9 Trillion dollars?

Or that the Constitution has been all but scrapped?

How about the fact that a high level member of the War Party has been indicted for the leaking of the name of a CIA officer at the center of their anti-nuclear proliferation efforts, others are under investigation for leaking secret codes to Iranian spy Ahmad Chalabi, and one more has pled guilty to passing classified information to Israel?

Seems to me that if we’re to start throwing around accusations of treason, the Cheney/ex-Trotskyite cabal and their child-leader are much more susceptible to charges of working against America for the benefit of foreign states than those of us in opposition.

Update: Thank you all for your many thoughtful comments.

Buried down at the bottom of this news article:

Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who resigned as oil minister last week over increases in consumer fuel prices, also resumed his old post after the prime minister and president asked him to do so, Iraq’s Council of Ministers said.

I am under the impression that Ahmad Chalabi had taken over as oil minister. Well, is he or isn’t he? No mention if Chalabi has stepped down.

Repaired some broken links, deleted some defunct ones, and added four on the floor: Diana Moon, Sheldon Richman, Glaivester, and Kevin Carson. Check ’em out.

For all those who have been trying to keep up with (and make sense of) the story of Sibel Edmonds, the woman who learned terrible things while translating for the FBI, blew the whistle and was promptly fired and gagged with the court invented “state’s secrets privilege,” there is good news.

Lukery, proprietor of the excellent blog wot is it good for?, has put in the time and gray matter to piece together what we can learn from what she can say around her gag order. (Which was recently upheld by the Supreme Court without comment.)

It seems clear at this point that the many scandals of the neoconservatives who lied us into Iraq, as Edmonds told me last August 13, are connected together. It seems more and more likely that her half-told portion is the puzzle piece to hold them all together, though many questions indeed remain.

Lukery’s excellent summary is here.

Notes from his interview of her here.

More from him on the subject here, here, here, here and here.

Christopher Deliso’s interviews of Sibel are here and here.

His 3 latest articles on all this here, here and here, my December 17th interview of him on the subject here.

Sibel’s website, the notorious Vanity Fair article, and the transcript of my most recent interview of her here, mp3 here.

Check out these pathetic right-socialist warmonger types trying to claim that Americans aren’t bothered by the recent National Security Agency wiretapping scandal. Citing a Rasmussen poll, “NewsBusters” claims, “the nation doesn’t feel the Bush administration is doing anything wrong.”

“Busters” is right, because that wasn’t the question.

Media Matters has Pat Buchanan – typically right in writing and wrong on TV – making the same ridiculous claim on Hardball ,

“MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow, and conservative radio host Michael Reagan referenced the Rasmussen poll in defending Bush’s authorization of the NSA eavesdropping program. The poll, conducted December 26-27, asked respondents: ‘Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?’ Sixty-four percent of respondents answered ‘Yes.'”

Wowee, well I guess I can ignore the fact that the NSA has been tapping virtually all international calls and that the law has been broken, since this stupid unrelated poll question was tailored in such a way as to make for a useful soundbite for the warmongering and liberty hating Krauthammers of the world.

I give up. You conservatives are right. A “Democracy,” as the new leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iraq have taught us, “means accepting the will of the majority” – that is, as determined by misinterpreted phony poll questions on a day to day basis.