Antiwar.com Blog

Jack “Islamic Revival” Wheeler’s list of those belonging to “The Anti-American Right” includes Antiwar.com advisor Jon Utley, who he claims “…has simply gone around the bend in his hatred for everything America does in terms of foreign policy and everything the Bush administration does, foreign and domestic.”

One person’s around-the-bend hatred for Bush is another’s consistent opposition to destructive policies, however. In August 2001, Antiwar.com posted an article by Utley that criticized Clinton’s military interventionism and had this to say about Bush:

“…the best defense is ‘to give foreigners less offense,’ in the words of Ivan Eland at CATO. Already under President Bush we seem much less ready to go about bombing other nations as Clinton did. Except for Palestine and Iraq, no blood is being shed by American bombs.”

A mere month before the Sept. 11 attacks, Utley presciently warned that the combination of military intervention overseas and lack of civil defense preparedness at home made America “immensely vulnerable to terrorists who would give up their lives for a mission.”

“This missing element, not wanting Americans to think that there may be consequences to our killing foreigners, seriously affects civil defense. …

“Still, the government is now spending $10 billion yearly on civil defense, most of it going to protect government personnel and installations. But very little, only some 2%, is going for civilian medical preparations. … For details on legal and medical preparedness, please see our handout, ‘Preparing for the Terrorist Threat,’ published in Insight Magazine last January 15th. …

“The Pentagon and CIA are surely the most juicy targets for any terrorist, but American bases overseas are easier – and more likely – targets now. …

“However, as Jude Wanniski has written, no one controls mad fanatics. Very possibly any major American city could be targeted by those consumed with hate against us. A dirty bomb could contaminate much of a major city. A small tactical nuke (of which many are reportedly missing from Russian bases) would take out 4 or 5 city blocks; new breakthroughs in biology may develop truly horrendous agents of selective death. Or just plain suicide truck bombers with dynamite in a tunnel could wreak havoc upon us. In truth, we are immensely vulnerable to terrorists who would give up their lives for a mission. …

“WHAT YOU CAN DO…
· Go to your Congressman’s town hall meetings and ask him the embarrassing questions about our interventions overseas and ask for civil defense.
· Start a movement asking that our military send guards to protect key bridges and reservoirs and electric stations. The real threats are here, not overseas.”

And check out this interesting article (with photo above), “Rogue Statesman,” about Wheeler’s Afghan jihad buddy Dana Rohrabacher.

(To be fair to Wheeler, though, he did warn about the dangers of funding Hekmatyar.)

Jesse Walker has his number.

A few random thoughts on last night’s “Rock the Vote” “debate,” which I admittedly watched with a couple of sheets to the wind:

1) My generation could not think its way out of gossamer handcuffs.

2) Playing “The Times They Are A-Changin'” at youth forum in 2003 = playing Helen Kane at youth forum in 1968.

3) All I can say for Dean, Moseley-Braun, Lieberman, and Sharpton is that they didn’t stoop to fashion-pandering.

4) Given the historical illiteracy of college students, I was surprised to learn that more were interested in Ft. Sumter than in Fallujah.

5) John Edwards’ character was forged in the crucible of fraternity hazing.

6) Despite looking as if he got lost on the way to a Happy Days version of a beatnik happening, Dennis Kucinich was the only decent human being on stage. He doesn’t stand a chance.

7) You’ll want to have your passport in order by Jan. 20, 2005.

Long-time liberventionist Jack Wheeler identifies the connections between Murray Rothbard’s anti-interventionism and the new anti-interventionist right, which he calls “The Anti-American Right” in this article on Newsmax.

I often hear the argument that it is perfectly acceptable to build a wall to keep out your enemies. I have no problem with building a fence or wall on your property.

This story is a perfect example of why this is not that kind of fence. Israel has handed out confiscation notices to Palestinian homeowners in the northern Jordan Valley — the government needs their property to build a portion of the fence.

But the supporters of Israel’s expansionism dismiss the pleas of Palestinians that this is a land-grab. Far too often, property rights are ignored in Mideast policy debates. I would love to hear some of the liberventionists try to defend these actions.

The state of the federal government’s finances shifted from large deficit to large surplus over the course of the 1990s, in an extraordinary turnaround that would not have been possible without the defense cuts. …

One important consequence of this substantial decline in government borrowing, a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 transformed into a 2000 surplus of $236 billion, was a fall in long-term interest rates set in the U.S. Treasury bond market – particularly in the later 1990s when investors woke up to the fact that the government was actually retiring some of its outstanding debt. For borrowing by the government crowds out borrowing by the private sector by competing for funds provided by investors. This may sound esoteric, but it had important ramifications because other interest rates depend on long-term government bond yields. For example, it became much cheaper for home buyers with lower mortgages rates or companies planning to borrow money for investment as federal surpluses grew during the ‘90s. While economic textbooks have long pointed out the existence of crowding out, budget deficits had been around for so long by the end of the Cold War that nobody could really remember what it was like when there had last been a lot less competition for funds in the capital markets from the government. …

Defenses’ share of total government spending dropped from 28 percent at the end of the 1980s to 16 percent in 1999. …

Throughout the second half of the decade, interest rates in the United States stayed low, investment in new businesses and technologies boomed, and the economy experienced its longest expansion since records began with a significant increase in the productivity trend. …

The peace dividend, then, has been large and significant. This should come as no surprise. War is not an inherently productive activity, to say the least. This points to a rather pessimistic conclusion about the likely impact of the resumption of war, and one that could, like the Cold War, be long drawn out and spread its tentacles throughout civilian life. After all, uncertainty about the world outlook is likely to keep investment spending lower than it might otherwise have been, as businesses opt for taking fewer risky bets on demand for their products or services. The new concern, not only in America but worldwide, about security, and higher insurance premiums, will raise businesses’ costs. Even a small increase in costs can have a big impact on investment decisions and on international trade. Some specific industries – the airlines and tourism, for example – have been badly affected by the terror attacks. And there may be other ramifications, such as a drop in immigration to the United States, reversing a flow of skills and energy that had enormously benefited the economy during the 1990s.

– Diane Coyle, Sex, Drugs and Economics