Tag: war

WND column

Better Late than Never

Being one of the many columnists who initially supported the invasion of Iraq under the mistaken impression that Saddam Hussein had violated a ceasefire agreement with the United States (although I did argue that it should not be undertaken in the absence of a declaration of war), I am in no position to criticize Mr. Farah or anyone else for taking a long time to come around to the understanding that the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq must come to an immediate end.

Only a very few commentators, such as Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo and WorldNetDaily’s own Pat Buchanan and Ilana Mercer, can truly say that they were opposed from the start to the expensive, unconstitutional and ultimately useless abuses of the American military that have been inflicted upon it by Republican and Democratic commanders in chief over the last nine years. And even fewer opinion writers are man enough to admit in public that their previously expressed opinions were incorrect. Farah, to his credit, is not afraid to do so.

“For the life of me, I cannot begin to understand our objectives in either Iraq or Afghanistan any more. … I admit I was a supporter of both of these campaigns. I was obviously wrong.”
– Joseph Farah, Where are protests of Obama’s wars?, July 22, 2010.

Weekly Poll: Afghanistan and Iraq

In light of Mr. Farah’s recent conversion to the anti-war cause, I’m wondering how many readers here support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, how many oppose them, and how many, like Mr. Farah and me, have changed from supporting at least one of them to opposing them both at some point along the way. As for me, I never supported the Afghan war and began openly opposing the Iraqi war in 2004 when I learned that my support for it on the grounds of the broken ceasefire agreement was based on incorrect information; the agreement was between Iraq and the United Nations, not Iraq and the USA. Therefore I was forced to conclude that sans any declaration of war or casus belli, the Iraqi war and subsequent occupation was always wholly illegitimate as well as lacking in any national security interest.

Better late than never

Joseph Farah flips on the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq:

For the life of me, I cannot begin to understand our objectives in either Iraq or Afghanistan any more.

Because I appreciate the sacrifice our men and women are making over there, it is with a heavy heart that I make this proclamation. But enough is enough. We have spent over $1 trillion on these two wars and spilled far too much American blood. We are obviously unwilling as a country to do what is necessary to kill the bad guys in either place, so what is the point? Isn’t it time to declare victory and get out? What is the point? Can someone, anyone, tell me?

I admit I was a supporter of both of these campaigns. I was obviously wrong.

Being one who flipped on the Iraqi War in 2004, I’m hardly in any position to condemn latecomers. I made the mistake of supporting the war under the misconception that the ceasefire Hussein had violated was an agreement between Iraq and the USA, (it was actually an agreement between Iraq and the UN and therefore had absolutely nothing to do with the USA or its national security), but I was always against any potential military occupation. Pat Buchanan, to his credit, was one of the very few who had it right from the start. As for Afghanistan, we never had any business fighting the Taliban in the first place, much less attempting to occupy the country.

Anyhow, it’s good to see relatively mainstream Republicans beginning to join the libertarians in opposing the ongoing occupations. What a pity that the anti-war Democrats have again decided that they like war after all so long as a Democrat is the Commander-in-Chief. But given the history of 20th century American military conflict, it is a mystery that anyone believes Democrats are anti-war.

WWI – Wilson (D)
WWII – Roosevelt (D)
Korea – Truman (D)
Vietnam – Johnson (D)

That is not the track record of an antiwar party. Which, of course, is why I predicted that Obama would not end the wars, but rather, expand them.

Breaking the Army

As if there wasn’t enough reason to stop occupying Iraq and Afghanistan:

For those of us working in the US military it was clear that by the surge in 2007 the US forces were in terrible shape. By 2007, the repeated deployments resulted in an estimated 30 per cent of the US Army with some degree of post traumatic stress disorder. Every indicator of morale showed problems. Divorce and suicide were way up. Officers leaving the service after repeated deployments meant that the promotion selection of those remaining rose to 100 per cent. Before the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars lower performing officers were weeded out on the promotion lists from captain to major and major to lieutenant colonel. Competition for promotions ensured high standards in the officer corps. Normally only about 60 per cent of majors were selected for promotion to lieutenant colonel and those not promoted retired.

Yet by 2007 officer retention was so low that virtually all officers below full colonel were being selected for promotion to the next higher rank. The joke in the US Army was that the new standard for promotion was “fogging a mirror.” This also means that a lot of incompetent officers are moving higher in rank. This means big trouble now and even more in the future.

The absurd thing about these occupations, as with the Korean occupation, is that they have absolutely NOTHING to do with national security except to threaten it. Meanwhile, the southern border is being invaded on a daily basis. And both political parties are culpable.

Fire McChrystal

Then bring the troops home. Does this report give you any reason to believe that the US military is on the verge of achieving victory?

But the bigger problem with McChrystal’s leadership has always been the general’s devotion to unreasonably restrictive rules of engagement that are resulting in the unnecessary deaths of American and coalition forces. We have had many, many accounts of the rules endangering Americans, and the Rolling Stone article provides more evidence. In the story, a soldier at Combat Outpost JFM who had earlier met with McChrystal was killed in a house that American officers had asked permission to destroy.

McChrystal’s devotion to restrictive rules of engagement isn’t totally ridiculous; the Coalition is an army of occupation, not conquest, after all. But, the fact is that Afghanistan isn’t going to be pacified by the mere presence of 100,000 troops over a period of ten years; the incompetence of the US strategy is exhibited by the fact that America’s military leaders had to already know that going in.

If McChrystal wasn’t, like most of the US military’s general class, a politician at heart, he would have resigned, not whined about his Commander-in-Chief to a magazine. Obama does not personally merit respect, but no soldier who fails to respect the chain of command should be permitted to retain his command unless he has some very, very good reasons for not doing so.

UPDATE – Looks like Gen. McChrystal did the honorable thing.

According to an unnamed source ‘Gen. McChrystal has submitted his resignation’ – Joe Klein on Rick Sanchez, CNN…

Mailvox: Fear-based strategy

DS disagrees with today’s column:

Afghanistan is important, although it is being mishandled to the “nth” degree by people who know nothing about combat. Afghanistan was/is the base for the Taliban and they were using it as such for their incursion into Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is at best, wobbly. Pakistan has nukes and the wherewithal to deliver them into the hands of the likes of Al Qaeda or simply launch them against either us or Israel.

By keeping the Taliban fragmented and on the run were have been preventing that from happening. Now maybe you want to wake up to an air burst over the Midwest (or 2, or 3) taking down our grid, our nation and our way of life, followed by mass starvation in our cities, or to read the morning paper and see that Israel no longer exists, but I don’t.

First, it is ludicrous to think that occupying Afghanistan is somehow tantamount to defending American territory against nuclear attack. The invasion of Afghanistan not only destabilized Pakistan, but renders a terrorist nuke more likely since terrorism is a fundamentally non-military option. Keeping the Taliban “fragmented and on the run” in no way inhibits their ability to acquire nuclear technology from North Korea or Iran.

Second, it is remarkable to see DS attempt to argue that we should occupy Afghanistan in defense of Israel. I don’t think even Justin Raimondo at his most peacenik paranoid would draw a connection between the one and the other. This attempted defense isn’t so much hapless as complete gibberish. Anyhow, if Israel’s survival truly depends on occupying Afghanistan then let the IDF do it. As they have demonstrated for 30 years, they are more than capable of occupying territory populated by a hostile people.

Fear seldom leads to clear thinking, least of all when the thinking required is strategic.

WND column

Nine Years of Futility

In December 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan with 80,000 soldiers supported by 1,800 tanks. The government of Afghan President Hafizullah Amin was overthrown in less than a week at a minimal cost of only 86 fatalities. However, Marshal Sokolov was unable to establish control outside the major population centers, and despite reinforcements that increased its total occupation force to 100,000 troops, 80 percent of the country remained outside the control of its military or its puppet government. Over the 10 years of the failed occupation, Soviet forces lost an average of 1,445 dead annually (63 percent of which were combat-related), until they finally retreated in a two-stage, largely peaceful withdrawal that was completed in February 1989.

The United States Yankee Corps

I was raised to revere the Marine Corps my entire life. I have always harbored the greatest respect for the many Marines I have met through the years. But I have absolutely no doubt that my grandfather, who fought in WWII and Korea and was declared a Marine’s Marine by the Commandant of the Corps himself, would be bewildered by the rejection of the American South by what should apparently be renamed the United States Yankee Corps:

Straight out of high school, one 18-year-old Tennessee man was determined to serve his country as a Marine. His friend said he passed the pre-enlistment tests and physical exams and looked forward with excitement to the day he would ship out to boot camp. But there would be no shouting drill instructors, no rigorous physical training and no action-packed stories for the aspiring Marine to share with his family. Shortly before he was scheduled to leave Nashville for boot camp, the Marine Corps rejected him…. When the young recruit didn’t go to boot camp, Andrews learned of his rejection based on his tattoo of the Confederate battle flag on his shoulder.

It would be educational to see what would happen if Southerners refused to enlist and re-enlist until ludicrous ban on Southern heritage and Southron pride is rescinded. Without the South, the Marine Corps would find itself transformed into a mercenary force largely populated by gangsters looking to acquire combat training and Mexicans seeking citizenship. Of course, if that’s the ultimate objective of the policy, then we can expect that the ban on the Confederate Battle flag will only be the first step and it won’t be long before other patriotic symbols such as the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross Flag are banned as well. Does anyone believe a UN or Mexican flag would be cause for similar rejection?

Speaking of Mexico, it is already on the verge of civil war violent revolt in the north. This makes me wonder, how long will it be until Round Two?

The end of entitlements and the occupations

After looking at the books, do you still think democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan is a priority?

50% of the federal budget right now goes to entitlements.

This last month we posted a record $220.9 billion budget deficit. We took in $107 billion but spent $328 billion.

Isn’t that special. We only funded 32% of expenditures?

Remember – entitlements were half of that $328 billion.

So let’s see if we can do the math here.

Entitlements were about $164 billion last month in spending. The rest was, of course, the rest.

But we only took in $107 billion.

So even if we eliminated all entitlement spending we still did not have enough money to cover the rest.

The insane thing is that the only pressure from the American people to date is to fight entitlement reduction even though eliminating all entitlements isn’t enough to stem the financial bleeding. One certainly can’t say they aren’t going to get what they deserve. Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that even the Tea Partiers don’t want to cut back on military spending.

Mailvox: broken windows and the stimulus of WWII

CH asks about a common economic misconception:

I follow your columns so I thought you’d be able to answer this question for me, if you would. As you have stated, the Democrats are Keynesians and believe they can spend their way out of recession. Benanke cites the Great Depression as evidence of this. I know that FDR’s policies of spending didn’t lift us out of the Great Depression (they made it worse), but it is often noted that WWII did lift us out of said Depression. How can this be? How did that work? It seems to me that the militarization of our industries were funded by the Government. This put people to work and sent many to war equipped with the products of our industries and therefore operated as a large Government “stimulus”. I am trying to see Bernanke’s logic, if I am correct, that the spending the Government did to fund the war was what it took to get the economy going. This in effect is what the Dems are trying to reproduce by simply dumping money in the economy, putting people to work and creating a false demand, to bring us out of this recession. The war was true demand, sure, but wasn’t the war really a big fat stimulus? Government gave money to industries who put people to work, who paid taxes and spent money, allowing industry to produce more product, etc. I’m very confused how all this worked. Please set me straight!

First, let me note that it’s not only the Democrats who are Neo-Keynesians. Most Republican politicians are too; the monetarism of the Chicago School is little more than a Keynesian heresy that focuses on monetary policy and leaves fiscal policy out of the equation. Now, it is true that WWII helped lift the USA out of the Great Depression, but not for the reasons that the economically illiterate, historically clueless, and logically challenged usually cite. The stimulus involved in producing hundreds of thousands of ships, tanks, and airplanes and employing millions of men did not bring about the post-war economic recovery, it was the effective use of those men and materials in destroying the industrial infrastructure of Italy, Germany and Japan that did. While economists such as Henry Hazlitt and Thomas Sowell rightly cite Frederic Bastiat’s Broken Window fallacy and point out that there is nothing productive or wealth-generating about turning steel into a rusting hulk on the bottom of the ocean, they forget that destroying an economic competitor’s industrial infrastructure at no cost to your own, then providing consumer goods and the means of rebuilding that infrastructure is very productive and wealth-generating indeed.

Let us call it Vox’s Addendum to Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy. Or, if you prefer, the Broken Window Martial Motive. Bastiat’s parable goes thusly:

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation—”It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?”

Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade—that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs—I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

If, however, the shopkeeper happens to live in the next town over, his window is broken, and the house belonging to his neighbor the second glazier is burned down with the second glazier inside it due to the vagaries of violent inter-village relations, the six francs the shopkeeper will spend on repairing his broken window will be six francs that did not previously circulate within the first town’s economy, and which the shopkeeper, living in the second town, was never going to spend on shoes or books produced in the first town. Therefore, it is a good thing to break windows, so long as the windows are broken in the neighboring town at a cost that is exceeded by the benefit to be gained from fixing them.

“In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented, [unless the accident happens to take place in the neighboring town. – VD]”

This means that while most wars are economically destructive, wars that offer the likely prospect of destroying the industrial base of one or more advanced economies without putting the nation’s own industrial base at risk are economically beneficial. By way of statistical evidence in support of this conclusion, note how the annual rate of commercial bank loan growth was much higher immediately after WWII – 25% in 1947 and 21.5% in 1950 – than it ever has been since.