Thursday, May 31, 2007
End Both the War on Terror and the Drug War
When President Bush declared his war on terror, I wrote that such a war would be no different than the war on drugs, in the sense that it would be nothing more than a perpetual justification for ever-growing big government. Six years later, there is no end in sight, either for the war on terror or the war on drugs.
The standard for “victory” in both wars is actually no standard at all. Even when a standard is established, it quickly morphs into a new standard especially if the old standard is reached.
Consider, for example, President Bush’s war on Iraq, which he now justifies under the war on terror. At first, victory was defined as finding the WMDs that were about to be fired at the United States. Once it was established that Saddam didn’t have any WMDs, the troops could have declared victory and come home. Not so, however. The standards changed to capturing Saddam, establishing elections, bringing Saddam to trial, etc., etc, etc. When those standards were achieved, new standards were set, such as killing the terrorists, establishing order and stability, etc. The point is: There is never going to be a standard for victory that will cause the U.S. to exit Iraq voluntarily, especially because U.S. troops in the Middle East need a place to be parked. It’s not a coincidence that the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is bigger as the Vatican — the U.S. government plans to be around a long time.
Of course, it’s the same thing with the 30-year-old war on drugs. Victory is always around the corner but never attainable. When drug usage goes down, the drug warriors say, “This shows that we are making progress. We’ve got to wage the war on drugs more than ever. Victory is within reach!” But when drug usage goes up, the drug warriors say, “Uh, oh. The drug problem is getting worse because drug laws aren’t being enforced. We’ve got to redouble our efforts. We can’t surrender!” It’s not surprising that the war on drugs has maintained government officials (and drug lords) in business for 30 years — and will do so for another 30 years if the American people permit it.
Meanwhile, May is turning out to be one of the deadliest months for U.S. soldiers in Iraq—111 killed.
It’s no different for Mexican soldiers fighting the drug war — since December 89 soldiers have been killed fighting the drug war. They’re among the 1000 drug-war deaths in Mexico this year. Last year’s total was 2,000. Of course, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before Saddam had become a new official enemy to replace communism, if the Pentagon had followed through with its plans to participate in the drug war, there’s a good chance that its drug-war casualties would today be matching those of the Mexican army.
What greater gift could the American people give to themselves and their progeny than to end both the war on terror (and the interventionist foreign policy that produces the terrorism) and the war on drugs this year?
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Independent Mindsets and Well-Developed Consciences
U.S. officials are talking to Iranian officials, which raises the possibility that a deal will be cut between them that will enable U.S. officials to switch the mindset of the “my government, right or wrong” crowd within the U.S. toward one of, once again, viewing Iran as a friend and ally.
Today Iran is considered by the “my government, right or wrong” crowd to be evil because President Bush signaled early on that Iran was a member of the “axis of evil.” But don’t forget that after the CIA helped to re-install the shah of Iran after secretly ousting Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1953, Iran was considered a great friend and ally of the U.S. Among the “my government, right or wrong” crowd, there was no talk about the Iranian Islamo-fascist threat to conquer America because U.S. officials had signaled that Iran is our friend because their ruler was a member of the U.S. team. But once the Iranian people ousted the U.S.-installed team and installed their own, independent regime, the U.S. signal changed — announcing that Iran now hates us for our freedom and values and should now be added to our list of enemies. The “my government, right or wrong” crowd immediately complied and changed its mindset accordingly.
It was no different with Saddam. During the 1980s, when the U.S. was partnering with Saddam and delivering weapons of mass destruction to him, the “my government, right or wrong” crowd loved it. Again, there was no talk of the extremist Islamos and terrorists from Iraq coming to conquer and occupy America and take over our public schools, interstate highways, and IRS. Instead, Iraq was our friend because Saddam was part of the U.S. team and was even using U.S.-furnished chemical and biological WMDs to kill Iranians (who were good people for 30 years when their ruler was part of our team but who were now evil people because their ruler was no longer part of our team).
But then U.S. officials turned on Saddam, and the “my government, right or wrong” crowd received the message. Saddam was no longer a friend and a member of the team but was now the “new Hitler.” It was now time for the “my government, right or wrong” crowd to shift its mindset to Iraq as enemy and support the intentional destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants, the deaths of the Iraqi children from the sanctions as being “worth it” (but blaming them on Saddam), the illegal no-fly zones, and ultimately the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Here’s another example: Today, Pakistan is a friend and ally because its military dictator, who won’t permit democratic elections because he could get ousted from power, is a member of the U.S. team. But if he had remained an ally of the Taliban, which he was prior to 9/11, there is no question that today, the “my government, right or wrong” crowd would be supporting the U.S. bombing of Pakistan to eradicate our “Islamo terrorist enemies.”
This is what U.S. officials have long depended on to support their imperial and interventionist adventures — a segment of the populace with pliant mindsets and diminished consciences that shift in accordance with the different signals emanating from U.S. officials as to who are our friends and who are our enemies. Thus, one of the keys to our future well-being and freedom lies in independent mindsets and well-developed consciences among the citizenry.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Interventionism Is Bad Regardless of Terrorist Motivations
Let’s concede hypothetically that the pro-occupation people are right — that the 9/11 attacks were motivated by hatred for America’s “freedom and values” rather than by U.S. foreign policy. Don’t the pro-occupation people still have to confront the actual consequences of interventionism?
That is, they need to answer: What effect does killing a man’s child, wife, or parents have on a Muslim who already hates the U.S. but who wasn’t interested in manifesting such hatred with violence? Does it make him love the United States, or does it cause him to be indifferent to the U.S., or does it convert him into an anti-American terrorist?
Generally speaking, the Muslim world can be divided into 3 groups: (1) Those who either admire or are indifferent to the U.S.; (2) Those who dislike the U.S. but who would not initiate violence against the U.S.; and (3) Those who hate the U.S. and who would initiate violence against the U.S.
My hunch is that ordinarily Groups 1 and 2 would encompass most Muslims while Group 3, consisting of the fanatical terrorist types, would be miniscule.
Thus, after the 9/11 attacks, if the U.S. had simply employed criminal-justice and police tactics to bring Osama bin Laden and other coconspirators to justice, as the U.S. did with the 1993 WTC terrorists, Group 3 would not only have continued to be miniscule in number but also would have been very isolated, given the worldwide sympathy the U.S. received after 9/11, including from people in Groups 1 and 2 in the Muslim world.
Instead, by invading and bombing Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. used the 9/11 attacks to continue its interventionist policies that it had been pursuing in the Middle East for years. As U.S. intelligence agencies now confirm, the killing of an untold number of Afghanis and Iraqis in those invasions and occupations has been a dream-come-true for al Qaeda recruiters, swelling the ranks of those in Group 3 from Muslims in Groups 1 and 2.
Thus, even if we were to concede the “freedom-and-values” argument of the pro-war and pro-occupation types, the U.S. would still be better off ending its policy of empire and interventionism.
P.S. 3 more days to the start of our conference: Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. It’s not too late to register and join us for this exciting and important event!
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Let’s Remember the Iraqi Dead Too
Today, on Memorial Day, the paeans to the U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq will suggest that they died for their country. But the truth is that no soldier who has died in Iraq has died for his country. Instead, he has died for his government and because his government ordered him to Iraq to kill Iraqi people, none of whom had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. U.S. soldiers have died for an interventionist foreign policy devoted in part to “regime change,” which meant in Iraq the ouster of Saddam Hussein and his replacement by a U.S-subservient regime.
Let us remind ourselves that Iraq never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. The circumstantial evidence leads to but one conclusion: the 9/11 attacks were used as the excuse and cover to continue what the U.S. had been doing throughout the 1990s with the brutal sanctions against the Iraqi people — ousting Saddam from power and replacing him with someone more palatable to U.S. officials.
The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with an imminent WMD attack on the U.S. or democracy-spreading or bringing freedom to the Iraqi people. After all, if U.S. officials really believed that Saddam was about to fire nuclear weapons at the U.S., do you honestly think that U.S. officials would have been wasting time going to the UN for a resolution to authorize force against Iraq?
And if the invasion of Iraq was to help out the Iraqi people, why would U.S. officials have been callously and cavalierly willing to sacrifice so many Iraqi people during the sanctions, the invasion, and the occupation? Indeed, why would the U.S. government be opposed to letting Iraqis, whom they profess to love, emigrate to the United States?
The fact is that the Iraqi invasion and occupation have been based on lies and deceptions from the get-go, which many Americans swallowed, hook, line, and sinker. But the almost daily streams of news reports on U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq are a continuous reality that Americans are having an impossible time avoiding, no matter how much U.S. officials try to protect them from that reality. And it is the reality associated with those deaths (and maiming) — along with the reality that it will continue at least until President Bush leaves office — that is mugging Americans into confronting directly what U.S. foreign policy has wrought in Iraq
Hopefully in the months ahead, as Americans think more deeply about the Iraqi experience, they will think not only about U.S. servicemen who have been killed and maimed but also about the much larger number of Iraqi people who have suffered the same fate. Hopefully, they will come to realize that it was morally wrong to kill and maim the Iraqi people.
Hopefully, Americans will also come to recognize that the continuous deaths and maiming of the Iraqi people continue to raise the heat under the boiling caldron of anger, rage, and hate that people in the Middle East have toward the United States, just like U.S. foreign policy was doing prior to 9/11.
And hopefully, all this will lead Americans into a complete examination and reevaluation of the U.S. foreign policy of empire and intervention.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, May 25, 2007
U.S. Foreign Policy and Waco Motivated the Terrorists
One of the interesting aspects of the Giuliani-Paul exchange during the South Carolina presidential debate was the suggestion made by pro-Giuliani types that by pointing out that U.S. foreign policy motivated the 9/11 terrorists, Paul was somehow suggesting that the attacks were justified.
Don’t forget that Bill Clinton’s supporters made the same suggestion after the terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. When libertarians pointed out that McVeigh had been motivated by the federal massacre at Waco, pro-Clinton types immediately accused libertarians of “justifying” McVeigh’s terrorist attack.
The suggestion that examining motive behind a criminal act operates to justify it is obviously silly and fallacious. Motive and justification are two completely different concepts. Just ask any criminal prosecutor. While examining motive in criminal cases, prosecutors are obviously not justifying what the defendant purportedly did.
The obvious aim of this tactic is to shut down critical analysis, discussion, and debate about specific U.S. government policies. In the Clinton case, it was the Waco massacre. In the Bush case, it’s U.S. foreign policy.
Attempting to suppress discussion and debate about what Janet Reno, the FBI, and the military had done to the Branch Davidians at Waco, Clinton also angrily suggested that a citizen cannot love his country and hate wrongful policies of his government at the same time. How is that different, in principle, from the Republican establishment’s position that by criticizing U.S. foreign policy, the critic is “blaming America?”
While Giuliani received the expected knee-jerk response from the “my government, right or wrong” types, it is exciting and gratifying that independent thinkers on the Internet — and even in the mainstream press — have been using the power of truth and argumentation to tear Giuliani’s false and fallacious foreign-policy argument to shreds.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
A Free-Market Cure for Immigration Headaches
It was a lively time debating immigration reform on the Alan Colmes radio show last night. On the other side of the debate was a man who had worked for the INS for some 26 years.
What is amazing to me is how people can still put so much faith and hope that this time around, unlike all the other times, the federal government is finally going to find the “reform” that makes its beloved socialist and interventionist scheme work.
Think about it: Here is a guy who has been busting illegal aliens (as well as drug dealers) for a quarter of a century. During all that time, there has been reform after reform after reform. Why so many reforms? Because the previous reform always fails! And hope springs eternal, even after 25 years, that the perfect reform will finally be cobbled out.
Yet, what the reformers cannot or will not see is that the root of the problem is government central planning and intervention. Once the government begins planning an economic activity or intervenes in the marketplace, the inevitable result is distortion, perversions, crises, and emergencies. The government then gets everybody hyped up about the problem, and then the citizenry acquires a vested interested in finding a solution to the problem. “We’ve got to do something to solve the crisis!” becomes the standard cry.
Then, everyone has his own plan for solving the problem. After the system is jerry-rigged every 5 years or so (just like the old 5-year plans in the Soviet Union), inevitably people start crying again, “There is an emergency! The reforms didn’t work!” And you’ve got people saying, “The problem is that they just won’t enforce the law. If they adopt my plan, everything will be solved.” Then, a few years after the last reforms, the whole thing starts all over again. (You see the same phenomenon in the drug war, another multi-decade fiasco which they won’t let go of and which they “reform” every 5 years or so.)
The key is this: As Ludwig von Mises pointed out and as the Soviet experience confirmed, socialist central planning and government intervention do not work and are incapable of working. That is, they are inherently defective. And that is exactly what immigration controls are — socialist central planning and government intervention. Thus, no matter whose plan is adopted, there will be perversions, distortions, crises, and emergencies (just like in the drug war).
There is one — and only one — solution to this mess: free markets, which simply means opening the borders to the free movements of goods and services, just as we do domestically. With free markets, all the perversions, distortions, crises, and emergencies disappear. After all, do you see any distortions, perversions, crises, and emergencies arising from people migrating from one state to another? Do you see the government monitoring or planning their movements or trying to allocate labor to domestic markets?
No, it all happens as part of the spontaneous phenomenon of the free market. Under free markets, people go about their lives planning their own individual activities and making their own personal decisions. Under free markets, economic prosperity and standards of living soar through both division of labor and freedom of contract.
How long will the American people continue to suffer their headaches without finally accepting that the reason is that they persist in hitting their heads against a socialist and interventionist wall?
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
May We Live in Exciting Times!
These are indeed exciting times!
In an article entitled “The Neocon Moment Is Over” by Paul Mulshine in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, Mulshine talks about the aftermath of the exchange between Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul in the South Carolina presidential debate:
“I wrote a column taking Paul’s side in the debate. I expected the usual response from brainwashed Bush loyalists who believe the Iraq war is going so well that attacks on Iran and Syria are long overdue. That didn’t happen. Instead I was deluged with e-mails agreeing with Paul’s position. Something was up. I put in a call to Andy Napolitano, the Fox News legal analyst and my brother’s old buddy at Notre Dame Law School…. ‘Our calls have been going 10 to one in favor of Ron Paul,’ said Napolitano, a former Superior Court judge in New Jersey who supports Paul’s libertarian views.”
Just in case you didn’t know, Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano are our two Sunday night dinner speakers at our upcoming June 1-4 conference “Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties”!
How exciting is that! Talk about some powerful synergy taking place on that Sunday night!
And that’s not all! We also have 22 other fantastic speakers, each of whom shares the same passion and commitment as Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano to moving our country in a better and freer direction!
What better and more exciting time to be having a conference on a subject that is obviously beginning to strike a chord within the American people?
Call us today to register for the conference, buy a cheap plane ticket or drive here in your car, and come and join us at the beautiful Reston Town Center in Reston, Virginia, for one of the most exciting intellectual times of your life! You’ll be happy you did!
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Government Is the Problem in the Wars on Terror and Drugs
Over the weekend, seven U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, bringing the total for the month to 71. It’s all part of what the U.S. government calls the “war on terror” and the crack-down military “surge” that the U.S. military is bringing to Iraq.
Meanwhile, in the “war on drugs” eight Mexican police officers were killed by drug gangs in Monterrey, Mexico. The killings occurred in response to a crack-down offensive by the Mexican government against drug cartels.
The Mexican drug-war experience is similar to the U.S.-Iraq experience. The more that the Mexican government cracks down in the war on drugs, the worse that situation becomes. The more the U.S. government cracks down in Iraq, the worse that situation becomes.
Hopefully, as Americans begin piercing through the fog of falsehood and deception about Iraq and the war on terrorism, they will also begin doing the same thing with the war on drugs. By recognizing that U.S. foreign policy is the motivating factor behind terrorism against the United States, they will begin to see that the solution is simply to end the U.S. government’s interventionist foreign policy. By recognizing that the war on drugs itself is the root cause of drug cartels and drug-war violence, they will begin to see that the solution to eradicating such cartels and the violence associated with them is simply to end the war on drugs.
Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, in the war on terror and the war on drugs government is the problem, not the solution.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Socialism’s Marxist and Conservative Supporters
In its lead editorial today, the conservative Washington Times condemns the socialism of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who is confiscating land from the rich and redistributing it to the poor.
U.S. conservatives are good at condemning socialism among foreigners but unfortunately not so good at condemning socialism in the United States. The reason for this double standard is that conservatives feel that people wouldn’t take them seriously or vote for them if they failed to embrace socialism at home.
That’s why you see conservatives incessantly calling for the “reform” (rather than repeal) of the progressive income tax, which was one of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto. It’s also why conservatives always call for “reform” (rather than repeal) of such socialist programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, and corporate subsidies, even while proudly displaying their old 1950’s mantra of “free enterprise, private property, and limited government” on their stationery and websites.
Isn’t the entire underlying principle of the welfare state the confiscation and redistribution of wealth? While it’s true that the confiscation is of income and savings, rather than land, what is the difference in principle?
Isn’t the express purpose of inheritance taxes the confiscation and redistribution of wealth? Isn’t the purpose of progressive income taxes the same — taking from those who earn more in order to redistribute to those who have less?
The Times editorial concludes:
“Land redistribution will be yet another failed policy, and a reminder that Latin America’s retrograde Marxist left stubbornly refuses to learn from past mistakes.”
Couldn’t the same be said of the American conservatives and their unwavering commitment to the American socialistic welfare state?
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, May 18, 2007
U.S. Soldiers Pay the Price for U.S. Torture Policy
I can think of at least three people who might not agree with all those “tough” Republican presidential candidates who announced in the South Carolina debate that they favor “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Those three people are the 3 soldiers recently taken captive by insurgents in Iraq.
Yes, I know, those presidential tough guys were referring to U.S. personnel employing such techniques on foreign prisoners and detainees, not Iraqi insurgents employing them against U.S. soldiers taken captive. But as members of the U.S. military have been emphasizing from the get-go in their opposition to torture, once your side opens the door to torture, the other side is almost certainly going to open the door too.
Have you noticed that not once have U.S. officials insisted on proper treatment of the three kidnapped soldiers? The reason for that is that they know that it would likely do no good. After what they’ve been doing at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and elsewhere, the chances that U.S. soldiers taken captive would receive proper treatment evaporated. (Don’t forget that Jessica Lynch wasn’t tortured when she was taken captive, which was long before the Abu Ghraib revelations.)
Moreover, U.S. officials realize that if they demanded that the insurgents treat the 3 U.S. soldiers properly, much of the world would just laugh at the hypocrisy of such a demand. The sad truth is that U.S. officials have lost moral standing to demand proper treatment of U.S. soldiers taken captive. Those 3 kidnapped U.S. soldiers are undoubtedly paying the price for the “Jack Bauer toughness” exhibited by pro-torture tough guys here at home.
Unfortunately, U.S. political charlatans continue to spread their snake-oil remedies. What is more unfortunate is the fact that the American people continue imbibing their potions.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Banning Ron Paul at Home and Spreading Democracy Abroad
In my article “Giuliani’s Attack on Ron Paul Falls Flat,” I wrote “Don’t be surprised to hear more calls for suppressing Paul’s participation in future debates, even while the critics continue to wax eloquent about how U.S. soldiers are killing and dying in Iraq for the sake of ‘democracy.’”
Well, it didn’t take long for Republican stalwarts to disappoint. The chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, a man named Saul Anuzis, is now calling on the Republican National Committee to ban Paul from participating in any more debates. His reason? Because Paul stated in the last debate that U.S. foreign policy is the root cause of the anger and hatred that has engendered terrorism against the United States. Judging from the Republican establishment’s reaction to Paul’s point, it is obviously a big no-no, perhaps even a sin, within the Republican Party to criticize the U.S. government’s foreign policy.
So, the idea is, “Toe the official party line on foreign policy and we’ll let you participate in candidate debates. Stray from the official party line and you’re out.”
Just consider the irony of it all. Anuzis is undoubtedly one of those “courageous” and “patriotic” Republicans who continue to repeat the official canard that the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq for the purpose of bringing “democracy” to the Iraqi people. Yet, on the other hand, here he is back in the good old democratic United States calling on his own party to ban a candidate from participating in any more presidential debates because he has the audacity to criticize the foreign policy of the U.S. government.
What obviously is panicking Anuzis and many of his Republican cohorts is that Paul is obviously touching some deeply seated chords within people who are watching the debates. After all, what other explanation for the fact that Paul has placed at or near the top in post-debate polls?
There is a positive side to what Anuzis is trying to do. His wish to keep the American people from hearing Paul’s ideas is a testament to the power of ideas on liberty and why some people fear them so much.
In fact, that’s exactly why even totalitarian governments — the ones with omnipotent power, such as the communist regime in China — do their best to suppress ideas on liberty. The Chinese Reds know that ideas on liberty have the potential to awaken a slumbering public, which can then bring about monumental change in a positive direction, despite the wishes of the government and the establishment to maintain their ironclad grip on the minds and money of the citizenry.
Anuzis had better hope that his scheme fails. Because if he does succeed in banning Ron Paul from further debates, my hunch is that a high price will be paid in November 2008 at the hands of an electorate that is already sufficiently disgusted with Iraq and fake and false “patriotism” to put up with such anti-democratic nonsense.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Republican Establishment’s Worst Nightmare
Ron Paul is the Republican establishment’s worst nightmare. He is roiling the waters in the Republican presidential race, even to the point of engendering Rudy Giuliani’s attack on Paul during last night’s debate on Fox News. And he is making the debates fun and exciting! Think about it: Without Ron’s participation, both Republican presidential debates would have been the standard, boring events they have come to be. With his participation, he’s got the Republican establishment in an uproar.
Be prepared for more calls to suppress Paul’s participation in future debates not only because of the obvious dis-ease that Ron is producing within the Republican Party establishment but also because of the positive response he is receiving from the viewing public. Once again, Paul did extremely well in post-debate polls (second place on Fox News and first place on MSNBC).
The establishment cannot be pleased with the outcome of those polls as well as the national media attention that Ron is garnering. Take a look at this article, entitled “Rudy Giuliani vs. Ron Paul, and Reality,” from “The Nation” that was posted on Yahoo News, which skewers and ridicules Giuliani by pointing out that Ron’s foreign-policy points last night were the same as those that are outlined in the report of The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
It’s still not too late to register for our June 1-4 conference “Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties,” where Ron Paul will be the featured dinner speaker on Sunday night, along with Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano. Ron’s speech, “Nonintervention: The Original Foreign Policy,” will enable him to outline to the nation his foreign-policy views in a clear, succinct fashion.” And what better theme to follow Ron’s foreign-policy talk than a speech on civil liberties by Andrew Napolitano, entitled “Civil Liberties in Wartime.”
This conference is shaping up to be one of the most exciting, important, and memorable events in the history of the libertarian movements. I believe that everyone who misses it is going to regret it. Don’t delay! Call us today to register (703-934-6101) or register online. You’ll be happy you did — guaranteed!
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Rebuilding Saddam Hussein’s Socialist Paradise
The Pentagon has come up with a novel solution for rebuilding Iraq: Socialism! Yes, you read that right: the Pentagon has concluded that socialism is the key to the future of Iraq.
Pardon me for raining on the Pentagon’s parade, but isn’t that what Saddam Hussein believed too!
According to a front-page Washington Post story yesterday, Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense, along with his cohorts in the Pentagon, are reopening Saddam Hussein’s old state-owned, socialist enterprises and “investing” U.S. taxpayer money in them. Brinkley and his fellow socialists believe that this is the solution to Iraq’s unemployment problems and economic depression.
Interestingly, the biggest opponent to the Pentagon’s socialist plan to rebuild Iraq is the State Department, which has called Brinkley a “Stalinist.” However, it’s not exactly clear when State Department officials arrived at their born-again free-enterprise fervor because the first U.S. ambassador to Iraq’s Ministry of Industry and Minerals, retired ambassador Timothy Carney, himself favored reopening many of Saddam’s 192 state-owned factories.
In any event, Brinkley and the Pentagon, who hold the real power in Iraq, are ignoring State Department objections to their socialist plan to rebuild Iraq. Brinkley, who has set up his office far away from the State Department (but still in the Green Zone), put it bluntly: “We tend not to deal with them very often. We have our own mission, and we do our own thing.”
For his part, President Bush is so excited about Brinkley’s socialist vision for Iraq that he asked Congress to appropriate $100 million in U.S. taxpayer money for the venture. Those stingy members of Congress appropriated only $50 million, but that didn’t discourage Brinkley, who acquired his enthusiasm for socialism by marveling over how the Chinese Reds run their government-owned operations. Brinkley is convinced that before long Wal-Mart will be selling high-quality products from the Iraq-Pentagon state-owned industries in Iraq.
So, thanks to the president, the Congress, Paul Brinkley, and the Pentagon, Americans troops can now add one more thing they are killing and dying for in Iraq — the rebuilding of Saddam Hussein’s socialist paradise.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Bush’s Legacy vs. The Thirst for Power
A fascinating phenomenon is occurring with respect to Iraq. A year or so ago, I said that it was a virtual certainty that U.S. troops would be in Iraq through January 2009 because of the importance that President Bush’s legacy be preserved. That is, the last thing that President Bush wants to do is end up on his Texas ranch for the rest of his life ruminating about how he is going down in history as the president who “cut and run” from a war and occupation that he himself instigated, wrongfully. By keeping the occupation of Iraq going until he leaves office, President Bush knows that he can pass the responsibility for withdrawal to the incoming president, especially a Democrat who can be labeled as the one who “cut and run” from an occupation that was obviously on the verge of succeeding.
However, things might not work out that way after all. A group of Republican congressmen recently met with the president and advised him that if the situation in Iraq hasn’t stabilized by September, they might not be willing to support the occupation any longer.
What is driving the congressmen’s shift in position? Power! It is beginning to dawn on them that voters might retaliate (again) against Republicans who obviously failed to get the message in the 2006 elections. Do the Republican members of Congress want to give up their power to preserve President Bush’s legacy? It doesn’t seem as though they do.
So, you’ve got two major forces coming into collision with each other — President Bush’s hope to preserve his legacy and the thirst for political power that drives the members of his party.
Ordinarily, I would say that the president’s urge to preserve his legacy would win out. But there are now other factors at work against the president. For one, a majority of the Iraqi Parliament are now calling for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops. Second, and perhaps more important, an increasing number of military men are condemning the occupation. The latest is General John Batiste, now retired, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq. In a television advertisement sponsored by a group named VoteVets.org, Batiste skewers President Bush: “Mr. President, you did not listen. You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will now act to protect our fighting men and women.”
Meanwhile, here at FFF the emails we are receiving about how national security depends on our staying in Iraq to combat “the terrorists” or the “Islamofascists” have effectively dried up. It’s almost as if those who have been using such a rational for supporting the president’s indefinite occupation of Iraq are perceiving that a major shift might be in the offing and that President Bush might have to give up his quest for a legacy after all by reluctantly ordering an exit from Iraq before his term of office has expired.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, May 11, 2007
My Chance at Hollywood Stardom on Penn & Teller
If you subscribe to Showtime, you can catch my chance at Hollywood stardom all this week. I make a guest appearance on Penn & Teller’s weekly show “Bulls**t!”
As most everyone knows, Penn and Teller are among America’s greatest comedians/magicians. Equally important, they are ardent libertarians, as is plainly evident in their “Bull**t” series on Showtime.
This week’s segment is on Mount Rushmore, and the show is a fantastic critique of state idolization and worship as well as the false patriotism of “My government, right or wrong.”
Needless to say, it’s not difficult to guess on which side I come down in the discussion!
You’ll especially enjoy the part where people are asked to sign a petition prohibiting people from protesting within 300 feet of the Capitol.
Also, be sure not to miss the great piano performance in the show!
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Our FDA Nanny
For those who might think that the FDA is slacking, I have some great news for you: The FDA has succeeded in protecting American adults (as well as the children) from a new energy drink named … “Cocaine”!
The FDA felt that consumers might get confused and think that the energy drink was an alternative form of cocaine to compete against real cocaine on the streets. Even though the company made it clear that its customers were mostly in the age group 20-30 and, therefore, savvy enough to understand that its drink really isn’t cocaine after all, especially since selling cocaine is still illegal, the FDA refused to budge.
At the risk of asking a dumb question, if cocaine addicts began ingesting Cocaine (instead of cocaine) wouldn’t that ordinarily be considered a good thing?
Unfortunately, the company that produces Cocaine is buckling under the federal pressure, agreeing to change the name of the drink.
Isn’t this what “freedom” is all about in the paternalistic welfare state — the freedom to be watched over and taken care of by our federal mommy and to follow orders of federal bureaucrats? Aren’t you proud to be living in a nanny state? Don’t you feel safer and healthier now that “Cocaine” (but not cocaine) has been taken off the streets?
So far, there’s no word about what the FDA intends to do about Coca Cola.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Non-Interventionism: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Since Ron Paul’s answers in the MSNBC almost entirely dealt with foreign policy, the fact that he won three separate post-debate polls conducted by MSNBC, ABCNews.com, and C-Span — and that his YouTube video was ranked as the eighth most popular overall video — this could be very exciting news for libertarians and very discomforting news for lobbyists and bureaucrats in the military-industrial complex.
It just could be that non-interventionism is now an idea whose time has come, especially given the ever-growing disgust over the interventionist policies that have culminated in the Iraq horror. If a large number of Americans were to rediscover our nation’s heritage of non-interventionism, it is impossible to predict the power that such an idea could have as it sweeps across the America like wildfire.
Meanwhile, another interesting phenomenon is that the non-interventionist ideas that we have long been expounding here at The Future of Freedom Foundation are making their way into the halls of Congress. A couple of months ago, I was invited to share our libertarian views on foreign policy with Ron Paul’s Liberty Caucus, a group of Republican congressmen who meet each week in Ron’s office for lunch and discussion. At that meeting, I distributed copies of FFF’s book Liberty, Security, and the War on Terrorism. On April 25, Tennessee Congressman John J. Duncan Jr., a participant at the meeting, delivered a speech in Congress entitled “Interventionist Foreign Policy,” which not only criticized the U.S. government’s interventionist foreign policy but also quoted extensively from excerpts of articles by Richard Ebeling and Jacob Hornberger from Liberty, Security, and the War on Terrorism.
Don’t forget: Ron Paul is among our 24 speakers at our June 1-4 conference “Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties,” in Reston, Virginia. Ron, whose talk is entitled “Nonintervention: The Original Foreign Policy,” will be our Sunday night dinner speaker along with Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano, whose speech is entitled “Civil Liberties in Wartime.” This is surely going to be one of the most important, memorable, and historic conferences in the history of the libertarian movement. This is definitely one conference that you don’t want to miss, and we are hoping that you are going to be there! To register, just give us a call (703-934-6101) or visit our conference website: www.fff.org/conference2007.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Are the Deaths of Iraqi Children Still “Worth It”?
Another legacy of the democracy-building and liberation-producing U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has been announced by Save the Children: Iraq, which has now been occupied by the U.S. government for some 5 years, now ranks dead last in child-survival rankings. According to a report issued by the organization, one in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday.
Of course, this is just a continuation of the horrific situation that existed under the brutal economic sanctions that the U.S. government and the UN enforced against Iraq during the entire 1990s.You’ll recall that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died as a result of the sanctions, which prompted U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright to state that the deaths of the Iraqi children were “worth it,” a sentiment that was obviously shared by her federal compatriots. In fact, no doubt many U.S. officials would say that the deaths of the Iraqi children under U.S. occupation have also been “worth it.”
In its story on the Save the Children report, the Associated Press pointed out, “Iraq’s mortality rate has soared by 150% since 1990 [when the sanctions were first imposed]. Even before the latest war, Iraq was plagued by electricity shortages, a lack of clean water and too few hospitals.”
Meanwhile, pro-occupation supporters continue to claim that despite all the bad things the U.S. government has done to the Iraqi people since 1990, it must remain in Iraq to fight “the terrorists.” Such an argument is fallacious, however, for the following reasons:
1. While Iraqis were angry over the deaths of their children from the sanctions, they had not manifested that anger with terrorist attacks. The 9/11 attacks, while motivated in part by the deaths of the Iraqi children from the sanctions, were committed by non-Iraqis.
2. The U.S. government’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, which have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, including even more Iraqi children, have obviously made the Iraqi people even angrier than they were before. But continuing to kill them in the attempt to quell that anger is as logical as using gasoline to put out a fire.
The U.S. government should vacate Iraq immediately without killing one more person, apologize for what it has done to the Iraqi people, and ask for their forgiveness. Or, for those who are religiously inclined, U.S. officials should confess their sins, genuinely repent their wrongdoing, seek forgiveness from God and the Iraqi people, and do penance for all the death and destruction they have wrought on the Iraqi people.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Ask the Filipinos about Iraq
The situation in Iraq has devolved into what happened at the end of the Spanish-American War, the war that arguably was the turning point at which the United States went from a republic to an empire.
Proclaiming that its aim was to free Cuba and the Philippines from Spanish rule, the U.S. went to war against Spain in 1898. Once Spain was defeated, that should have been the end of it, right? Not so! The defeat of Spain was actually only the beginning because U.S. officials took the position that Cuba and the Philippines couldn’t be free without being under the rule of the U.S. government.
The Filipinos promptly initiated an insurrection to win their freedom and independence … from the United States! U.S. officials, now imbued with the same imperialistic fever that had infected Spanish officials, would have nothing of it. They initiated a brutal military campaign against the insurgents that included, yes, torturing and killing Filipinos.
By the time the U.S. war against the Filipinos was over, hundreds of thousands of them had been tortured, injured, and killed. The U.S. government, however, was ultimately able to declare victory. The Philippines had been “liberated” through conquest.
That’s exactly what George W. Bush has been dreaming of for Iraq. As former CIA Director George Tenet has now confirmed, the war was never about WMDs, or mushroom clouds, or democracy spreading. Those were just marketing tools to gain the support of the American people for the conquest of Iraq. This imperialistic adventure was always about ousting a recalcitrant dictator and replacing him with a U.S.-approved regime, just as in the Philippines. That’s also what Bush’s surge and his construction of permanent U.S. bases in Iraq is all about — establishing U.S. domination over the Iraqi people.
Thus, no matter how many people must be rounded up, tortured, wounded, or killed, the Iraqi people must be made to believe that all their misery can come to an end if only they will submit to the inevitable, just as the Filipino people ultimately did. Once they do that, Iraqis will have gained their freedom — the same freedom that the Philippine people ultimately gained — the freedom to be part of the U.S. Empire. And as President Bush and the Pentagon continue to emphasize, no price is too high to pay for such “freedom.”
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Why Would Oswald Have Hidden the Gun?
More observations on the great book I just finished reading on the Kennedy assassination—Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why by Gerald D. McKnight, which I blogged about on Wednesday and Thursday.
One of the most amazing aspects of both the FBI and the Warren Commission, which McKnight carefully documents and footnotes, is how both groups immediately reached the conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin and then proceeded to simply suppress, ignore, or disregard evidence to the contrary.
For example, the FBI concluded that 2 shots hit Kennedy and 1 shot hit Connally, for a total of 3 shots. When the media reported that a bystander named James Tague also got hit by a bullet, the FBI simply ignored it because 4 shots would have meant more than one shooter.
The Warren Commission, however, decided that it had to deal with the Tague shooting, which is how it ended up with the “magic-bullet” theory. Realizing that 4 bullets would have meant more than one shooter, the commission decided that one bullet hit Tague and one bullet hit Kennedy in the head and that the third bullet went through both Kennedy and Connally, causing 7 different wounds, including cracking Connally’s ribs and going through his wrist bone, and ending up going into his thigh.
While most everyone is familiar with the controversy surrounding the route of the magic bullet, McKnight focuses on the near-pristine nature of the bullet and points out that the wrist bone is one of the hardest bones in the body. Thus, the chance that a bullet could crack ribs and go through the wrist and remain fairly unscathed is minimal. And in fact, Warren Commission experts performed many tests in which bullets were fired into the wrists of cadavers. Unlike the Kennedy bullet, the bullets fired in the tests were clearly deformed or flattened. So, guess what the Warren Commission did. You guessed it: It simply suppressed the results of the tests because they didn’t fit within the preconceived conclusion that only 3 shots were fired.
There are two conspiracy theories with respect to Oswald: (1) He shot Kennedy as part of a conspiracy, and (2) He was an innocent person who was set up to take the fall, so as to distract attention away from the real conspirators. After he was arrested, Oswald himself claimed to be a “patsy” and, according to McKnight, Oswald told investigators that he had been on the first floor of the School Book Depository building, not the sixth floor, when the assassination took place.
In support of Oswald’s claim, McKnight cites the statements of two separate women who said that they entered the stairwell within a minute of the assassination and never saw Oswald coming down the stairs. Their testimony wasn’t taken seriously by the Warren Commission.
Another interesting point that McKnight points out is that Oswald’s rifle was very carefully hidden in the 6th-floor room where the assassination purportedly took place. It was lodged between two boxes with another box on top, which made it difficult for searchers to find it. Now, ask yourself: Why in the world would Oswald have taken the time to carefully hide the gun before he made his escape. After all, it’s not as if the gun would never be found, especially given that there were 3 spent cartridges in plain sight on the floor and it was certain that the entire room would eventually be searched. Wouldn’t a rapid escape, not hiding the gun in the same room as the shooting, be the sole concern of an assassin?
So, if Oswald had lived, continued to claim his innocence, and gone to trial, wouldn’t his defense attorney have argued that the hidden gun would be much more consistent with a set-up, one in which someone had previously hidden the gun in the room to ensure that no one discovered it before the shooting? And wouldn’t he also have argued that the near-pristine bullet had been planted on Connally’s stretcher after having been fired into, say, a stack of cotton from the planted gun rather than into Kennedy’s back and Connolly’s back, ribs, wrist, and thigh?
Unfortunately, these types of questions linger because both the FBI and the Warren Commission were fixated on their lone-nut assassin theory and refused to consider any other alternatives, as McKnight so carefully documents in his excellent book.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Oswald and the CIA
Yesterday, I blogged on an excellent book on the Kennedy assassination entitledBreach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why by Gerald D. McKnight. The book was listed as Number 1 of “The Top Five Books on the Kennedy Assassination” by David Talbot, founder of Salon.com. In fact, Salon has just published a new article about Bobby Kennedy’s reaction to his brother’s assassination. (Thanks to LewRockwell.com for bringing that article to my attention. In fact, Lew also links to a synopsis of a new book by the son of CIA operative and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt’s that ties the Kennedy assassination to the CIA.)
According to McKnight’s book, when the CIA was asked to turn over whatever files it had on Oswald to the Warren Commission, the CIA responded that its files only contained some third-party reports from other agencies.
Yet, how credible is that?
Oswald was a Marine who had acquired a security clearance while working on sophisticated radio equipment at the same base that the super-secret U-2 spy plane was flying out of. A high school dropout, he learned the Russian language fluently while in the service (even though the Army denies that he learned it at the Army’s language school in Monterrey, California, which was near the base that Oswald was stationed at.) He asked for an early discharge because his mother was sick, which was a lie, and then defected to the Soviet Union, where he told the U.S. Embassy that he wanted to give up his U.S. citizenship because he was enamored with Marxism. A few years later, he returned to the United States, where he became a very public pro-Castro sympathizer.
Now, ask yourself: At the height of the Cold War, and following the Bay of Pigs disaster, and on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and with communist trouble brewing in Vietnam, and with the federal government looking for communists under every American bed, what are the chances that the CIA never debriefed Oswald on his return to the United States to determine whether he had given up military secrets to the Soviets? Indeed, what are the chances that the CIA, whose very job was to acquire intelligence to protect “national security,” especially from the threat of Soviet communism, would not have maintained its own analytical files on Oswald?
There is another possibility: Rather than Oswald’s being a genuine pro-Marxism lover, he was instead a CIA-trained communist mole, much as the Soviet Union was training some of its citizens to become moles within the U.S. system. Such a mole would have been ideal, for example, for stationing in Cuba, where the CIA’s obsession with regime change was reaching a climax.
Now, before anyone screams “Conspiracy theory!” I should point out another interesting revelation in McKnight’s book. It turns out that certain members of the Warren Commission and their chief counsel were having top-secret meetings for the purpose of discussing the possibility that Oswald was working undercover as either a CIA or an FBI operative. Yes, that’s right—members of the Warren Commission and their counsel were conspiring to conduct secret meeting to discuss whether Oswald was working undercover for the U.S. government when Kennedy was assassinated. Even better, those Warren Commission conspirators then conspired to destroy all notes of their meetings and to keep such meetings secret from the American people forever. (Someone apparently forgot to tell the stenographer, however, to destroy her tape of the meeting.)
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Lee Harvey Oswald and Regime Change in Cuba
I’m reading an interesting book on the John Kennedy assassination entitled Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why by Gerald D. McKnight, professor of history at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.
One of the intriguing points that McKnight discusses in the book is the purported visit of Oswald to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City a few weeks before the assassination. It turns out that there is strong evidence that Oswald was actually in New Orleans at the time of the Mexico City visit, which, if true, would mean that the visitor in Mexico City would have had to be an Oswald impersonator.
According to McKnight, that was an area of inquiry that President Johnson, FBI Director Hoover, and the Warren Commission declined to explore at all costs, presumably because they didn’t want to risk a war with the Soviet Union if it were established that Oswald had assassinated President Kennedy as a Cuban agent.
However, if the Mexico City Oswald was an impersonator, then an obvious question arises: Was the Oswald impersonator simply a lone nut trying to make people think he was Lee Harvey Oswald and, if so, for what purpose? Or was the impersonator instead part of a group, such as the CIA, that was trying to fortify Oswald’s connection to Cuba in order to establish a rationale for reinvading Cuba for the purpose of effecting regime change in that country, just as the CIA had previously successfully done in Guatemala and Iran?
Now, before you cry, “Conspiracy theory!” don’t forget about Operation Northwoods, the 1962 plan in which the Defense Department officials conspired to enact fake acts of terrorism on American soil, with real deaths of innocent people, in order to generate public support for reinvading Cuba.
So, if the Joint Chief of Staff could conspire to manufacture a fake rationale for reinvading Cuba, then is it really beyond the realm of reasonable probability that another government agency, say like the CIA, would be on the same wavelength? In fact, it would even seem that the CIA would have more reason to want to reinvade Cuba than the Defense Department given that it was the CIA that was in charge of the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Of course, if the CIA was behind the fake Oswald appearance in the Mexico City Cuban Embassy, then that obviously would raise a completely separate and troubling line of inquiry: Would good would it do to fortify the appearance of a Cuban connection for Oswald unless Oswald were to do something really bad in the future, such as assassinating President Kennedy, who, as the CIA will tell you, jeopardized national security by failing to provide air support for the CIA’s unsuccessful invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs?
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Enemy Combatants on “24”
There was an interesting, real-life aspect to “24” last night. Vice President (and acting President) Daniels has just discovered that his aide Lisa, with whom he has been having an affair, has also been secretly having an affair with another man who has been secretly (and illegally) releasing secrets acquired from her to the Russians.
The vice president confronts Lisa with the evidence and orders her to cooperate in a plan to feed false information to her boyfriend. To overcome her resistance, the vice-president pulls his post-9/11 trump card: He threatens to label her an “enemy combatant” for her treason, which means locking her away incommunicado for a very long time.
The reason that I describe the scene as “real life” is because it perfectly describes the power that the president and the Pentagon acquired after 9/11, without hardly a peep of protest from a very frightened citizenry, including American men. After all, what Vice President Daniels threatened to do to Lisa is no different from what President Bush and the Pentagon did to American citizen Jose Padilla.
Ever since the founding of the American Republic, if someone were accused of treason, terrorism, or any other federal crime, federal officials were required to follow well-established judicial procedures, including indictment, right to counsel, right to confront witnesses, and trial by jury, before someone could be punished. Those freedom protections were outlined in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, which our ancestors demanded soon after the United States were established as a nation.
Unfortunately, those freedom protections were traded away on 9/11 with people’s acquiescence to the federal government’s revolutionary assumption of power to label Americans (and foreigners) as “enemy combatants” in the “war on terror.” The significance of that revolutionary change in America’s legal system was two-fold: (1) It has given the military ultimately power over the citizenry, and (2) It is the first time in American history that a generation of Americans willingly traded away their freedom for safety knowing that the trade would likely last indefinitely.
The power that the president on “24” has to label and treat anyone, including his aide, as an “enemy combatants” is, in real life, the power that President Bush and the Pentagon now wield over every single American.
And thanks to an acquiescent Congress and an acquiescent and very frightened citizenry, who obviously placed less value on their freedom than on their safety, the power to label and treat people as “enemy combatants” will also inure to President Clinton, President Guliani, or any other “tough” authoritarian-like candidate who wins the presidency.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.