{"id":1380,"date":"2004-10-21T05:38:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-21T12:38:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-10-21T05:38:00","modified_gmt":"2004-10-21T12:38:00","slug":"m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/21\/m\/","title":{"rendered":"m"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Though I detect an anti-capitalist tone in the proposal, <a href=http:\/\/www.rationalenquirer.org\/comment\/archives\/000148.html>this piece<\/a> from the Rational Enquirer should warm the heart of any genuine free-marketeer. Riffing on Bush&#8217;s market healthcare rhetoric, it proceeds,<\/p>\n<ul>Okay. But if that&#8217;s your &#8220;opinion&#8221;, how if we apply the same logic to, I dunno, say, warfare?<\/p>\n<p>Rather than letting some fat-assed chicken-hawked &#8220;officials&#8221; in &#8220;the nation&#8217;s capital&#8221; make military decisions, let those doing the work make such decisions.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, so long as we&#8217;re &#8220;privatising&#8221; more and more of warfare&#8217;s &#8220;services&#8221;, how if we do it correctly &#8212; according to market theory?<\/p>\n<p>In other words, rather than taxpayers footing the bill for private companies&#8217; operations in-theater, let the companies themselves &#8220;assume the risk&#8221; of doing business. That&#8217;s the miracle of the market, right?<\/p>\n<p>Halliburton wants to go to war in Iraq? Good, let Halliburton buy the f*cking military machinery and materiel at &#8220;market prices&#8221;. Let Halliburton hire the entire necessary soldiery at &#8220;market prices&#8221;. Let Halliburton pony up a coupla hundred billion dollars to carry out the war&#8217;s operations. Let Halliburton pay for so-called &#8220;externalities&#8221; (e.g., cleaning up environmental side-affects of manufacturing weapons and of making war). Let Halliburton pay &#8220;market rates&#8221; for access to the public&#8217;s airwaves, that it may demonise a hapless leader in order to find willing takers for its plan to devastate a defenceless citizenry.<\/p>\n<p>Let Halliburton lobby the United Nations for permission to invade sovereign countries. Let Halliburton assemble a &#8220;coalition of the willing&#8221; &#8212; willing individuals considering the job to be worth the pay, not national soldiers compelled to go fight and die even when their home government&#8217;s participation in a &#8220;coalition&#8221; is opposed by 90% of its population. Let Halliburton&#8217;s CEO stand trial for war crimes. Let Halliburton pay reparations to the aggrieved country.<\/p>\n<p>Once Halliburton has done all of this &#8212; and rebuilt the Iraqi oil sector with its own money; while successfully &#8220;pacifying&#8221; the ungrateful n*ggers it&#8217;s &#8220;liberated&#8221; from their homes, schools, occupations, and lives &#8212; then, sure, let Halliburton reap whatever profits remain to be taken out of the Iraqi &#8220;market&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It is, after all, the American Way\u2122.<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, this perfectly (though perhaps inadvertently) refutes the Marxoid belief in capitalist imperialism. (A belief shared, not so coincidentally, by the Marxoid &#8220;<a href=http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/justin\/j070302.html>conservatives<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;libertarians&#8221; of our contemporary War Party.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though I detect an anti-capitalist tone in the proposal, this piece from the Rational Enquirer should warm the heart of any genuine free-marketeer. Riffing on Bush&#8217;s market healthcare rhetoric, it proceeds, Okay. But if that&#8217;s your &#8220;opinion&#8221;, how if we apply the same logic to, I dunno, say, warfare? Rather than letting some fat-assed chicken-hawked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}