Author: Sam Koritz

So maybe al Qaeda exploited US jihad support prior to Sept 11, 2001, but since then the government has been kicking the terrorists’ butts. Right?

Maybe not.

According to a new Syracuse University study, in the 2 years after the Sept 11 attacks the Justice Department resolved 2681 terrorism-related cases referred by investigators. Of these:

– 1,554 were thrown out without charges being filed. Of the remaining 1127 cases:

– 234 were dismissed. Of the remaining 893 cases:

– 14 resulted in not guilty verdicts. Of the remaining 879 cases:

– 506 resulted in no prison sentence. Of the remaining 373 cases:

– 260 were sentenced to the time they had already spent in jail, and were released. Of the remaining 113 cases:

– 23 were sentenced to 5 or more years — as compared with 24 sentenced to 5 or more years in the two years before the 9/11 attacks.

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“Terrorism cases fizzling out in US courts: study,” LA Times:

“…[W]hile 184 people have been convicted of crimes deemed to involve ‘international terrorism,’ defendants were sentenced to a median prison term of just 14 days.”

FOB Antony S. comments on “Why There’s No Left Left“:

Point taken, but do these people really own all this stuff, or are they just renting it from banks and loan companies?

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the assassination of our last Yankee president The Wall Street Journal published an article by Christopher Hitchens, “Where’s the Aura?”. Hitchens is glad that the Kennedy cult is dying, and, having grown up in Massachusetts, I agree, the near-nuclear war Cuban missile showdown by itself being reason enough – see “Cuban Missile Crisis Closer to Nuclear War Than Believed.” (And, no, the fact that civilization wasn’t destroyed doesn’t disprove the point; there’s a very good chance of surviving a round of Russian roulette, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. Ask any successful options trader you happen to meet about the risk /reward profile.)

Hitchens:

“In a recent ill-phrased speech, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts referred with contempt to the combat in Iraq as something cooked up ‘in Texas.’ He thereby gave vent to a facile liberal prejudice that still sees the Galahad of Camelot as having been somehow slain by Dallas itself, or by Texas at any rate. And what do we think of, or what are we supposed to think of, when the word ‘Texas’ is invoked? Why, cowboys and gunplay and irresponsible capitalist dynasties.”

This brings to mind Glenn Danzig’s song for Jackie O:

“Texas is an outrage when your husband is dead,
Texas is an outrage when they pick up his head,
Texas is the reason that the president’s dead.”

Who should we believe – wobbly late-Hitchens or classic early Misfits-era Danzig? (Here’s the full song in Real Audio – Warning! Language, adult content, nihilism and mature themes: “Bullet.”)

According to The Yankee and the Cowboy War conspiracy theory, much of the past half-century of US history can be explained as the results of an East Coast – West feud. Nixon, cowboy. Reagan, Yankee turncoat (Illinois to cowboy actor in the West, Roosevelt Democrat to Goldwater Republican), cowboy.

But can’t they just get along? Yes! US spycraft (Yankee) and oil (Cowboy) meet in the person of Bush I, who actually moved from East to West. Bush II made the reverse migration. Which brings us to James Baker III.

“Baker fuses patrician chill with Texas saltiness: He’s a hyperefficient control freak dressed up in cowboy boots and chaw. He rocketed through the political hierarchy from President Ford’s undersecretary of commerce to Reagan’s chief of staff to secretary of the treasury to Bush’s secretary of state. … With the smugness that only the combination of Texas and the Ivy League can produce, Baker settled for an aide’s role because he knew he was better than the pols he served.”

– “James Baker – The Bush family janitor,” by David Plotz

The hereinreality.com website has a nice bunch of links about Baker and and his law firm, Baker Botts:

“He led the campaigns of the last four Republican presidents. He watched the September 11 attacks at the Ritz-Carlton with the Bin Laden family. He’s defending the Saudis against a trillion-dollar lawsuit brought forth by the September 11 families. Some say he’s the most powerful lawyer in the world. …

“He’s the Senior Counsel for The Carlyle Group, a company that invests pension funds in defense and telecommunications companies around the world. The Carlyle Group is the nation’s 10th largest defense contractor, with extensive ties to Enron, Global Crossing, Arthur Andersen, the Saudi Royal Family, and the Bin Ladens.

“Through his law firm, Baker & Botts, he is also working to assist American oil companies in the Caspian Region. This work right now involves a pipeline to be built through Afghanistan, a pipeline that Texas oil companies were negotiating with the Taliban to build before 9-11.

“Is this the same James A. Baker that works for the Department of Justice as the Counsel for Intelligence Policy? ‘The Office serves as adviser to the Attorney General and various client agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Defense and State Departments, concerning questions of law, regulation, and guidelines as well as the legality of domestic and overseas intelligence operations.’ …”

That’s right, Baker, like Cheney and the Bushes, is one of the Big Oil, Saudi royalty–partnering, national security statists who brought us international jihad, the Gulf wars, and the “occupation of the land of the two sacred mosques.” It wasn’t easy but that’s why they get the big bucks.

A few months back, President Bush sent Baker to meet with the president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze has recently been deposed, and Mark Ames, for one, thinks these events are connected: “Georgia in the Crunch.”

In Ames’ other excellent article in the current issue of The Exile, he shares advice from a Russian friend of his regarding conspiracy theorizing: Vsyo gorazdo prosche – It’s always much more simple than the analysts portray it.

A long time ago, pants were mended, not replaced. Books were borrowed, not bought. And people realized that cash was king and crap was crap. Try talking to your grandparents; get a sense of their Depression-era expectations. …

Our expectations have become so inflated, in fact, that even how we classify “poor” has become totally wacked. According to the Census Bureau, 30 million Americans are living in poverty. Not to sound cruel, but it’s a misleading term. By almost any global standard, Americans who are classified as “poor” don’t have it that bad. In 1995, over 41 percent of all poor households owned their own homes. Seventy percent own a car; 27 percent own two or more cars; 97 percent of poor households have a color television – nearly half own two or more; 75 percent have a VCR, 64 percent own a microwave, and 25 percent have an automatic dishwasher.

– Jonathan Hoenig, Greed is Good: The Capitalist Guide to Investing

FOB (friend of blog) Gary Oppewall, replying to my Fukuyama quote, writes:

“The pirates are still among us. They may not wave skull and crossbones flags and have parrots on their shoulders, but the deeds are the same. The only difference is that they have the support of that giant mental cloning machine AKA the media which helps them sugar coat their deeds with pious rhetoric /feel-good slogans such as ‘free’ trade, competition, security, patriotism, community, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

“The fact is, there are less and less of the aforementioned items all the time. The closer things come to disappearing, the more they seem to need to be invoked. A subconscious summoning of old ghosts, I would guess.”

To which I reply:

As Antiwar.com’s letters editor, I’m familiar with the various pro-war arguments. One of them is the argument that “we” (aka the US government) must contol the Mideast’s oil. The Fukuyama quote answers this argument and claims that “war makes much less economic sense than it did two or three hundred years ago.” It’s not surprising that some people and organizations prefer a benefit to themselves over a larger benefit to millions of people, even if the former destroys net wealth.

Those interested in this sort of analysis should check out Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by progressivist-historicist Robert Wright.

People from all over the political spectrum hate Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, with its naïve progressivist-historicism, its post–Cold War /pre–Sept. 11 triumphalism, etc., so imagine my surprise when I started reading it and enjoying it (while of course finding lots to disagree with).

This is from the chapter “The Power of the Powerless”:

Before the Industrial Revolution, national wealth had to be extracted from the small surpluses eked out by masses of peasants living at or just above the level of subsistence in what were almost universally agricultural societies. An ambitious prince could increase his wealth only by grabbing someone else’s lands and peasants, or else by conquering certain valuable resources, like the gold and silver of the New World. After the Industrial Revolution, however, the importance of land, population, and natural resources declined sharply as sources of wealth in comparison to technology, education, and the rational organization of labor. The tremendous increases in labor productivity that the latter factors permitted were far more significant and certain than any economic gains realized through territorial conquest. Countries like Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong with little land, limited populations, and no natural resources found themselves in an economically enviable position with no need to resort to imperialism to increase their wealth. As Iraq’s attempted takeover of Kuwait demonstrates, of course, control over certain natural resources like oil confers potentially great economic benefits. The consequences of this invasion, however, are not likely to make this method of securing resources seem attractive in the future. Given the fact that access to those same resources can be obtained peacefully through a global system of free trade, war makes much less economic sense than it did two or three hundred years ago.