Month: October 2004

“Chip” Frederick, posing at left in his capacity as torturer at Abu Ghraib is was a prison guard in his other life. He’s going to prison as an inmate this time. I wonder if he’ll run into anyone who knows him.

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’s market healthcare rhetoric, it proceeds,

Okay. But if that’s your “opinion”, how if we apply the same logic to, I dunno, say, warfare?

Rather than letting some fat-assed chicken-hawked “officials” in “the nation’s capital” make military decisions, let those doing the work make such decisions.

More importantly, so long as we’re “privatising” more and more of warfare’s “services”, how if we do it correctly — according to market theory?

In other words, rather than taxpayers footing the bill for private companies’ operations in-theater, let the companies themselves “assume the risk” of doing business. That’s the miracle of the market, right?

Halliburton wants to go to war in Iraq? Good, let Halliburton buy the f*cking military machinery and materiel at “market prices”. Let Halliburton hire the entire necessary soldiery at “market prices”. Let Halliburton pony up a coupla hundred billion dollars to carry out the war’s operations. Let Halliburton pay for so-called “externalities” (e.g., cleaning up environmental side-affects of manufacturing weapons and of making war). Let Halliburton pay “market rates” for access to the public’s airwaves, that it may demonise a hapless leader in order to find willing takers for its plan to devastate a defenceless citizenry.

Let Halliburton lobby the United Nations for permission to invade sovereign countries. Let Halliburton assemble a “coalition of the willing” — willing individuals considering the job to be worth the pay, not national soldiers compelled to go fight and die even when their home government’s participation in a “coalition” is opposed by 90% of its population. Let Halliburton’s CEO stand trial for war crimes. Let Halliburton pay reparations to the aggrieved country.

Once Halliburton has done all of this — and rebuilt the Iraqi oil sector with its own money; while successfully “pacifying” the ungrateful n*ggers it’s “liberated” from their homes, schools, occupations, and lives — then, sure, let Halliburton reap whatever profits remain to be taken out of the Iraqi “market”.

It is, after all, the American Way™.

Of course, this perfectly (though perhaps inadvertently) refutes the Marxoid belief in capitalist imperialism. (A belief shared, not so coincidentally, by the Marxoid “conservatives” and “libertarians” of our contemporary War Party.)

Some interesting election links:

*Various libertarian-ish people from Reason magazine’s Rolodex announce their presidential preferences. Kerry appears to be leading, with a strong showing by Badnarik. Most surprisingly emetic response goes to Nat Hentoff.

*The American Conservative endorses five candidates, plus not voting at all. Antiwar.com’s own Justin Raimondo and Alan Bock argue for Ralph Nader and Michael Badnarik, respectively. Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell pick their lesser evil of the Big Two.

Not that anyone asked, but as I see it, the difference between Kerry and Bush is temporal vs. spatial. That is, no matter who wins, we will see an extension of current U.S. foreign policies, primarily meddling in the Middle East. Kerry will drag out Bush’s Iraq disaster for another four years. On the “bright” side, he will be so busy defending this policy to an opportunistic Republican Congress – which will happily alternate between bashing Kerry for not winning and bashing him for not leaving – that he won’t have time to “liberate” the Saudis or anyone else (except maybe the Haitians, who will soon be due for their routine check-up from Uncle Sam). LBJ’s pitiful exit from office will seem strangely familiar on its 40th anniversary.

Bush, on the other hand, will see his reelection as God’s own vote on the soundness of the Bush Doctrine. Bush will thus be duty-bound to extend his divine benevolence to Iraq’s neighbors as a craven Republican Congress – largely aware of the tragedy to come – alternates between biting its nails and waving the flag. Insert your own reality-based Iran/Syria invasion scenario here. Just remember to update all the relevant names.

Which ticket do I support? Why, the only honorable one and the longest shot of all.

That’s right: Impeachment/Removal ’05.

Raed Jarrar has an interesting idea. If you’ve ever wished you could help Iraqis deal with the aftermath of sanctions and the invasion as well as the ongoing occupation, this looks like a good way:

One of the last international NGOs, CARE, stopped their work in Iraq after their director was kidnapped yesterday. I used to see her all the time in the NGOs meetings in Baghdad.
Poor woman.

I have much to say about international NGOs and their work in Iraq, about their projects and their expenses, and about their international staff inside the country. But I prefer to postpone this some weeks until this kidnapping thing ends, peacefully as I hope.

With the withdrawal of most of the foreign humanitarian organizations from Iraq, and the incapability of the Iraqi “government” of funding itself much less funding local groups or organizations, the humanitarian crisis in Iraq is getting more serious.

Meanwhile, the U.S. army is planning to attack something around 20 cities and towns that are not under the control of the occupation authority.

“The Jarrars” (i.e. me and my family), decided to start a small individual humanitarian campaign for a month (maybe we’ll extend it) for buying basic things like some medical stuff, food, blankets, and other necessities and send them directly to hospitals in the most affected cities and towns. We will try our best to work under the supervision of one of the few functioning NGOs in Iraq (e.g. Occupation Watch, or others) to give more transparency to this small campaign, but over all the working plan is as follows:
*Money will be donated through PAYPAL to my account, (Jarrar_raed@hotmail.com), and will be reported on my blog frequently.
*My brother Majid will collect the money from Victoria in Canada and wire it to me in Jordan through my bank account.
*I will buy everything from Jordan, and publish the receipts on my blog.
*Then I will send things to my family in Baghdad, where they will send it in turn to hospitals depending on the priority and accessibility of the towns and cities.
*We will get official papers from the hospitals to insure they received the certain amount of supplements; we will publish them on our blogs too.
*We’ll publish a financial break down at the end of the month (end of Nov.)

You can send money from your credit cards too; even small amounts of money can do much in Iraq.

Today I received the first donation from a person in Japan called Tomoko. He sent 10,000 JPY.

Hit Raed’s Donation Button!

Some interesting election links:

*Various libertarian-ish people from Reason magazine’s Rolodex announce their presidential preferences. Kerry appears to be leading, with a strong showing by Badnarik. Most surprisingly emetic response goes to Nat Hentoff. (E.g., on Ralph Nader: “He’s also become part of the bash-Israel crowd, and to get on ballots he’s been cooperating with Lenora Fulani, who has been accused of harboring anti-Semitic biases.” Now I hold no brief for Fulani, but notice that Hentoff doesn’t even bother to call her “anti-Semitic,” much less provide any evidence for the charge – he’s content to simply note that she “has been accused of harboring anti-Semitic biases.” The stuff about FDR is nauseating, too.)

It is not my intention to disparage my fellow columnist Ivan Eland’s otherwise excellent book, “The Empire Has No Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed” (reviewed today by Anthony Gregory), but I do have to note an objection that concerns my field, such as it is.
Gregory’s review indicates that on page 140, Eland says:
“[I]n the year before the NATO bombing campaign, the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbs was only about 2,500. In contrast, during the eleven weeks of Allied bombing, with no longer anything to lose, the Serbs slaughtered 10,000 Kosovar Albanians.”
Unfortunately, these figures are as accurate as claims about Saddam’s WMD’s. Continue reading “Myth of the 10,000”