Antiwar.com Blog

I think that I will use the following from Don Boudreaux the next time I receive a “you don’t support the troops” emails:

Libertarians understand in their guts that flags, anthems, marble domes and columns, fancy titles, embassies, and majoritarian-voting procedures do not transform human beings and human institutions into something higher than human beings and human institutions.

There’s nothing special about the policemen who protect my house from burglars, my son from kidnappers, and my wife from rapists. There’s nothing special about the troops who protect us from foreign armies and terrorists. These activities are important and valuable when done properly. But there’s nothing special about them. Nothing about these activities gives the people who carry them out any exceptional claims upon our affections or wallets.

If the policeman or soldier agrees to render unto me a certain degree of protection in exchange for $100 of my money, neither of us owes anything more to the other as long as I pay him $100 and he performs his contractual duty accordingly. I owe him no special allegiance just because he specializes in using force to counteract force. Nor does he gain superhuman knowledge or wisdom just because he is a force-specialist.

Read the rest.

Personal reasons have precluded me from doing a Balkan Express this week, but the column will return on its regular schedule next Thursday, June 30.

According to Al-Jazeera, Ayman-shouldn’t he have been caught by now?-al-Zawahiri has a new tape out, and he sounds just like the conservatives on my local talk-radio station:

1. Shariah Is The Only Source Of Law

“This Ummah will not accept any forms of laws or governments other than the Shariah which was sent down from the Lord of the Worlds. This Ummah has suffered a great deal from man-made laws that were forced on them by the crusaders and their allies from our own.”

2. Liberation of Islamic Lands

“Our land is occupied by the enemies of Allah, from East to West. Our land is being used as a base from which enemy forces take off to kill thousands upon thousands of Muslims across the globe.”

3. Total Freedom Of Islamic Ummah To Run Its Own Affairs

• The judicial system (based on Islamic Shariah) must have autonomy and must be respected and not tampered with. The verdicts of the Islamic judges verdicts must be final and must be enforced with full vigor.

• Islamic Ummah must have the freedom to practice enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong.

Ever considered running for the Senate?

Numerous reports have surfaced on the web claiming that the US government is covering up thousands of US deaths from the war in Iraq:

There is excellent reason to believe that the Department of Defense is deliberately not reporting a significant number of the dead in Iraq. We have received copies of manifests from the MATS that show far more bodies shipped into Dover AFP than are reported officially. The educated rumor is that the actual death toll is in excess of 7,000. [emphasis mine]

How can anyone think the above credible? Why not post these “copies of manifests” on the web? Go to your local Kinko’s, scan them, convert to pdf and find an anonymous ftp server.

As stated, the reports focus on a supposed discrepancy: approximately 25,000 US troops have been flown to Germany for treatment of battle wounds, while the public rarely hears of any subsequent deaths. In fact, there have been many reported deaths from wounds outside the combat zone. In the hopes of dispelling this myth, here is my best attempt at a full listing:

Augusta, GA 2
Died of wounds days later 2 3
Bethesda, Md 2 3 4
Germany, Bethesda
Texas 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
UK
Germany 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
US
Walter Reed 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

There is little if any evidence that the US is covering up some 5600+ deaths of US troops and it is likely that there is nothing to cover-up. The Antiwar.com staff spends many hours a week searching the web for death confirmations, cross-checking with the site ICasualites.org and have yet to find any discrepancy in the military’s numbers. Here are some things to consider before believing the rumor.

Firstly, why trust the government and military — so inefficient at lying about other aspects of the war in Iraq — to be so good at hiding thousands of deaths from the public and possibly the families of those killed? Let’s suppose that there are 7000 unreported deaths. Also, let’s suppose that all the families of these troops know of their lost loved ones (reasonable). Is it really feasible that none of these tens of thousands of friends and relatives haven’t contacted their local media, had a funeral or sent in an obituary? I find it quite doubtful.

In the first weeks of the war, we contacted both the DoD and Centcom to inquire about the statistics they reported and how the press releases were handled. I was told on numerous occasions that the press releases – found here, here and here — are mandatory. Any enlisted soldier who dies must be reported to the press. Though I rarely trust the government to follow the very laws it writes, I do trust that someone in the press or the non-profit sector would have noticed a violation.

To keep yourself informed about the deaths in Iraq, one can visit the DoD site (also see this pdf), check Centcom’s releases, read the well-databased Iraq Coalition Casualties, see our page or subscribe to the email releases.

We at Antiwar.com always doubt what the government says. However, if we are going to claim that it is lying, we will try our best to back up such claims with evidence. It is not healthy for the antiwar movement to spread disinformation and rumors. If the above claims are true, Antiwar.com will investigate any hard evidence sent our way and publish it. Until then, we must assume that the count is accurate, though still too high.

There’s a wave of “tagging” washing through the blogosphere: the idea is to stimulate discussion of books by “tagging” someone you know to reveal what books they’ve read recently, how many books they own, the five top books that went into forming their views, etc. Butler Shaffer of LewRockwell.com has tagged me, and Butler being a nice guy and all, I am obliged to respond. So here goes:

Total number of books owned: Around 1,000 are in my tiny apartment — that’s a very rough estimate — which means I am surrounded by books on almost every side.

Last book I bought: Dreaming to Some Purpose, by Colin Wilson. This is the autobiography of one of the most prolific, and fascinating, writers around. I’ll say no more since I’m working on a review, except that I read the British edition: the American edition is due out on July 26.

Last book I read: The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, by Andrew J. Bacevich. (Yes, I’m working on a piece about this one, too, but I’ll just say here that it deserves to be a best-seller.)

Top Five Books:

The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand — Without having read this book I would never have survived beyond the age of 17. I would say this about her other works, too, including Atlas Shrugged and We, the Living, because they reinforced my complete identification with Rand’s sense-of-life (albeit not with all aspects of her philosophy, which she called “Objectivism,” and I call libertarianism).

The Outsider, by Colin Wilson — I have chosen Wilson’s first book because it is the best known, but I have to say that his subsequent works (an amazing 100 books, by my count) had even more of an impact on my own thinking, including especially New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution, The Strength to Dream, The Age of Defeat.

The Peoples Pottage, by Garet Garrett — This book (the recently re-published edition, put out by Caxton Press, is titled Ex America) includes three essays, two of which were written during the New Deal era, that gives the Old Right’s history of that time, from the rise of Roosevelt to what Garrett calls, in the title of the last essay, the “Rise of Empire,” meaning the American Empire. Lyrical, embittered, imaginative, and ultimately forgotten, Garrett was the emblematic figure of the Old Right in America. His book on American history, The American Story, is a forgotten gem. When I first started writing about Garrett, in my Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, my goal was to see as many of his books back in print as possible (back then, they were all out of print). Today, I am glad to say, he is becoming known again, and not only Ex America but also two collections of his essays — Salvos Against the New Deal and Defend America First: The Antiwar Editorials of the Saturday Evening Post, 1939-1942 — are in print and informing a new generation of conservatives and libertarians.

An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, by Murray N. Rothbard — This is the great Unfinished Symphony of economics, which Rothbard — my dear friend and mentor — died before he could complete. It is about … everything: or, at least, much more than just economics. But then economics cannot exist without reference to other fields, including religion, ethics, politics, foreign policy, customs, mores, and the entire woof and warp of life itself (which is one of the main themes of this two-volume work). In addition, I have been profoundly influenced by all his written works: go here for a complete list. And be sure to check out The Irrepressible Rothbard, a collection of his essays that captures the spirit of the man.

I also have to mention Thomas E. Mahl’s Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44, a short but highly informative and even shocking account of how the Brits finagled and schemed to drag us into World War II using any number of “dirty tricks” while spending an enormous amount of energy, effort, and money. It really brought home to me how a foreign country can influence American policy overseas, often decisively, and the power of foreign lobbies in the U.S.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah: I almost forgot. So now I have to “tag” five others. Hmmmm…. Let’s see: how about the other bloggers on this website? Yeah, that’s the ticket! Ok, c’mon you guys, let’s get with the Program….

The Turkish Weekly reports (hat tip: Juan Cole):

“Eighty two Iraqi lawmakers from across the political spectrum have pressed for the withdrawal of the US-led occupation troops from their country.

“The Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and communist legislators made the call in a letter sent by Falah Hassan Shanshal of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the largest bloc in parliament, to speaker Hajem Al-Hassani, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).”

This is significant: if prominent members of the elected Parliament of Iraq are asking us to leave — including members of the majority UIA coalition — then it seems to me the days of the occupation are numbered. How can the U.S. credibly claim to be for “democracy” in Iraq if it stays in the face of an increasingly vocal and nonviolent opposition?

Prediction: The “political wing” of the insurgency is bound to link up with dissident Iraqi politicians, who will demand U.S. withdrawal. This will become increasingly an issue as the next round of scheduled Iraqi elections draws nearer.