Venturing into Mali by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2013 Murray Rothbard once observed that it was getting harder and harder to use the reductio ad absurdum device to ridicule U.S. government policy. Things haven’t changed. Thanks to recent events, we may no longer use “Timbuktu,” a name associated with a far-off middle-of-nowhere location, in a reductio about U.S. interventionist foreign policy. The U.S. government has helped the French ...
What If the Tsarnaevs’ Motive Was Revenge for U.S. Foreign Policy? by Sheldon Richman April 23, 2013 On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama stood in the White House briefing room and said, “We will find out who did this; we’ll find out why they did this.” What motivated the murderous acts allegedly committed by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarvaev is the question on everyone’s mind. We would be surprised if it were ...
Saber Rattling in Korea: Cui Bono? by Tim Kelly April 11, 2013 North Korea has announced plans to restart a nuclear reactor that will enable production of weapons-grade plutonium. The announcement coincides with Pyongyang ratcheting up its rhetoric, issuing threats to wage atomic war against South Korea and Japan, and even to target American cities with long-range nuclear missiles it does not yet possess. For decades, North Korea has used its ramshackle ...
The Disasters that U.S. Intervention Created by Sheldon Richman March 21, 2013 Americans have forgotten about the Iraq war, which began 10 years ago this week, and the Afghan war, the longest in American history, but the U.S. government is still throwing its weight around in both countries. The Iraq war, the pretext for which was nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, officially ended in 2011 with the withdrawal of virtually all of ...
I Am Sick of Veterans Who Wave the Flag and Send Others Off To Die by James Glaser March 21, 2013 A World War II vet told me something once that I have found to be true: “If you walk into a VFW or American Legion Post bar and hear some guy telling everyone what a hero he was and how he fought the enemy so well, but at the end of the bar there sits a man alone not talking ...
The Libertarian Angle: March 18, 2013 (video) by Future of Freedom Foundation March 19, 2013 The Libertarian Angle features FFF vice president Sheldon Richman and president Jacob Hornberger. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.
Timbuktu Not out of Reach of U.S. Troops by Laurence M. Vance March 5, 2013 Although it is a real city north of the Niger River on edge of the Sahara Desert in the West African country of Mali, Timbuktu has long served as a metaphor for an exotic, mysterious, and distant land. To travel from “here to Timbuktu” suggests a long, arduous, and adventurous journey to a place far away. Timbuktu has both economic ...
Foreign Aid: The Seen and the Unseen by Michael Tennant March 1, 2013 Practically everyone in American politics today claims to favor cutting the federal deficit in part by reducing “waste, fraud, and abuse.” At the same time, however, every item in the budget lines someone’s pockets, and that someone can always be counted on to argue — either directly or, more often, through a seemingly disinterested surrogate — that his plainly ...
Drone Trust the Government by Sheldon Richman February 12, 2013 “Covert” drone warfare requires a level of confidence in politicians that they will never deserve. In the Kentucky Resolutions, the 1798 protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts, Thomas Jefferson wrote, It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of ...
Hagel’s Retreat by Sheldon Richman February 6, 2013 Some observers are mystified by Chuck Hagel’s pathetic showing at his Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, but there should be no mystery about it. He performed as he did for one simple reason: He wants to be the next secretary of defense, and he (along with the White House) must have calculated that standing up for his past positions ...
The New Scramble for Africa by Tim Kelly February 6, 2013 The deployment of French troops to Mali has put that large and impoverished African nation in the media’s spotlight. We are being told France’s intervention, which the US military is supporting, is necessary to prevent the country from being overrun by Muslim fanatics and terrorists. However, the intervention by a former colonial power into the affairs of yet another African ...
The Ominous U.S. Presence in Northwest Africa by Sheldon Richman January 31, 2013 Ominously but unsurprisingly, the U.S. military’s Africa Command wants to increase its footprint in northwest Africa. What began as low-profile assistance to France’s campaign to wrest control of northern Mali (a former colony) from unwelcome jihadists could end up becoming something more. The Washington Post reports that Africom “is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest ...