Author: Sam Koritz

I like cheese.

War Politics Without Romance

I found this essay: “Public Choice: Politics Without Romance,” by James M. Buchanan, on the excellent (though pro-imperialism-tending) aldaily.com website.

“Armed with nothing more than the rudimentary insights from public choice, persons could understand why, once established, bureaucracies tend to grow apparently without limit and without connection to initially promised functions. They could understand why pork-barrel politics dominated the attention of legislators; why there seems to be a direct relationship between the overall size of government and the investment in efforts to secure special concessions from government (rent seeking); why the tax system is described by the increasing number of special credits, exemptions, and loopholes; why balanced budgets are so hard to secure; and why strategically placed industries secure tariff protection.”

Nukes + Military Aggression = Proliferation

According to Albert R. Hunt, writing in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (“It’s a Real War and It’s Not Going Well”), “Rather than an incentive to cooperate, the effect of the Bush pre-emptive doctrine on Iran and North Korea, the other members of the infamous axis of evil, clearly has been to expedite accumulation of weapons of mass destruction.”

And that ain’t all.

Eugene A. Matthews writes about “

Missing the Cold War


Speaking of “OK, So Vietnam Wasn’t Do-or-Die, but We Promise This War Is“…

Arnold Beichman’s featured Opinon piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal is titled “Why I Miss the Cold War.”

“Am I being wholly rational when I say that I miss the Cold War?

“There was a time, say a decade ago, when I wouldn’t have hesitated for a minute to answer that I most certainly do not miss the Cold War. But as I pull my shoes back on at Sea-Tac airport, rebuckle by belt, repack my laptop, mourn the confiscation of my metal money clip (with a tiny, hidden knife blade) and watch female airport security agents pass their wands over the bras of female passengers, I have a curious thought: In the worst days of the Cold War, even during the Cuban missile crisis, you simply showed your ticket and marched onto the plane. And if your plane was hijacked to Cuba, it might only mean a short delay for refueling and back home without a scratch.”

According to Condoleeza Rice, the Cold War cost the US taxpayers $15,000,000,000,000. Which is over $150,000 per American household. And more than twice the US national debt. And it’s about the same as the US housing stock; that is, the value of every house, duplex, condo, apartment and trailer in the USA. If you counted one dollar per second non-stop it would take about 3 million years to count $15 Trillion dollars.

According to a Rand study released this year, there’s a greater risk of accidental nuclear holocaust now than during the Cold War: “the United States and Russia retain large nuclear forces on ‘hair-trigger’ alert, meaning they could be launched in minutes and destroy both societies in an hour.”

Perle’s Prequel

“>
billion with a ‘b’) dollar secret program to aid the Afghan mujahideen in the ’80s. There is some debate about whether bin Laden and the other ‘Afghan Arabs’ who formed al Qaeda received US money or only matching funds from Saudi Arabia through this program. (The Saudi government claims to have stopped directly funding bin Laden in 1989.)

I haven’t read the book yet, and after reading a review of it on Exile.ru, I’ll probably borrow it rather than buy it. (If you’re not familiary with The Exile, it’s a site run by US expats in Moscow; worth checking out if you’re not too bothered by foul language, cynicism and nihilism.):

“The author, George Crile, is hopelessly infatuated with his subject, and scolds Wilson as unconvincingly as Aunt Polly dressing down Tom Sawyer. In fact, Crile loves the whole filthy DC world: every fascist spook, tyrant’s bagman and rightwing nutcase.”

Of particular interest regarding the US’s possible miscalculation in Iraq is one-note regime-change expert Richard Perle’s guest appearance.

The Big Tent

Every once in a while someone will point out some theme that I disagree with in an article posted on AWC & ask me why, if I disagree, I bother doing the work of editing the site’s letters section, etc. But, in fact, it’s not possible (never mind necessary or desirable) to agree with everything since AWC presents such a wide variety of viewpoints.

Take two of today’s highlights, for example: Justin Raimondo’s “Israel is the Problem – Our Problem” and Christopher Layne’s “The Cost of Empire” (The American Conservative). Both reject the stated reasons for the invasion of Iraq, & suggest other motivations. Justin: “the strategic doctrine at the heart of U.S. Middle Eastern policy” is “the installation of Israel as regional hegemon.” Bush went to war “for Israel’s sake.”

Layne, on the other hand, doesn’t mention Israel as even a partial motivation. Instead, Layne claims, the invasion was a logical outcome of the “offensive realism” theory of international relations, which has guided US foreign policy since World War II. Specifically:

“The administration went to war in Iraq to consolidate America’s global hegemony and to extend U.S. dominance to the Middle East by establishing a permanent military stronghold in Iraq for the purposes of controlling the Middle Eastern oil spigot (thereby giving Washington enormous leverage in its relations with Western Europe and China); allowing Washington to distance itself from an increasingly unreliable and unstable Saudi Arabia; and using the shadow of U.S. military power to bring about additional regime changes in Iran and Syria.”

Antiwar.com, the politics website where everyone doesn’t have to agree on everything.

30,000 WMDs Found

Sure, terrorists can cause trouble, Mideast dictators could threaten their neighbors with nukes, if they had ’em. Matt Bivens, writing in the Moscow Times reminds us, though, about the threat that could destroy civilization:

“Look, if we’re such great friends, why do we still have around 30,000 nuclear weapons — including thousands on hair-trigger launch alert? (China, in distant third place, has about 400.)

“Under the Nonproliferation Treaty — the one we keep rolling up to whack North Korea and Iran with on the nose — Russia and the United States also have solemn obligations to work toward complete nuclear disarmament. (Pie-in-the-sky? Perhaps, but then so is expecting other nations never to try to produce a single nuke.)

“Consider again the threat lurking in Putin’s story.

“So, what happens if some day, when it matters, Putin’s not around anymore and his gorilla-partners take over? As long as we’re all pals now, wouldn’t this be the moment to junk about 29,000 nukes?”

WMD are a real problem, & a nuke-armed state’s policy of invading non-nuclear powers is a good way to guarantee proliferation.

viewpoint highlights
breaking news
© 2024 Antiwar.com. All rights reserved.
Antiwar.com Blog Stock Photos provided by our partner Depositphotos