20 Years On: "The case for removing the worst of the Arab prison states looks more justifiable than ever, even as the blunders involved in its execution look even more unpardonable...."

"The case for removing the worst of the Arab prison states looks more justifiable than ever, even as the blunders involved in its execution look even more unpardonable....
    "[The] account [must begin] with the singular figure of Saddam Hussein. The decision to employ force cannot be understood without taking stock of the dictator’s perverse 'role and agency,' and no amount of revisionism can efface his incessant malice, aggression, and volatility.
    "The regime of absolute control and capricious terror in Baghdad established what the Iraqi exile Kanan Makiya called a 'republic of fear, or what the country’s first post-war president, Jalal Talabani, once described as 'a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath it.' 

    "Before the arrival of coalition forces, Iraq was an abattoir of repression at home, and a font of menace and violence abroad. Although the rule of the Ba’ath Party has seldom been omitted from retrospective evaluations of the causes of the war, it has generally been given short shrift. It’s therefore not especially surprising that Saddam Hussein is now widely regarded as a phantom threat, and that the war has come to be perceived as the outcome of a conspiracy.
    "[We should not overlook] the moral and strategic challenges posed to American power by Iraq’s ancien régime. Perhaps one anecdote will illuminate the character of the modern totalitarian state the Ba’athists modeled on those of Hitler and Stalin. On July 22nd, 1979, just days after he assumed the presidency of Iraq, Saddam Hussein convened an urgent assembly of the Ba’ath Party leadership. One of his lieutenants opened the meeting by announcing a treasonous plot in which the conspirators were said to be present, and an old party rival bearing the signs of torture was produced to identify the 68 supposed collaborators. As the names were haltingly recited and the accused were detained, panic swept the room. Desperate to assure the new leader of their loyalty, some of the remaining delegates broke into hysterical chants of 'Long live Saddam!' 

 

    "A few days later, 22 of the 68 accused were brought to the courtyard of the same building for execution. The penalty would be meted out by the delegates themselves, to whom Hussein personally handed pistols, thereby ensuring their complicity with the new order.
    "The bloody origins of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship were indicative of the means of his rule. For decades, he would pursue forcible domination of the Middle East, and vast quantities of Iraq’s petroleum revenue were devoted to purchasing the instruments of war and genocide. The ambition to lay his hands on weapons of mass destruction persisted even in the face of daunting obstacles. In 1975, four years before he became president, the Iraqi Ba’athists inked a deal with French prime minister Jacques Chirac to acquire a nuclear reactor. The facility was later destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, but not even this brush with foreign power on Iraqi soil caused a rethink of the country’s nuclear aspirations. As Saddam later confessed to his American interrogators, these aspirations never ceased and were judged a necessary insurance policy for a regime dedicated to expansionism. As Saddam himself later put it, 'the boundaries of our aims and ambitions … extend through the whole Arab homeland.'...
    "The unintended consequence [however] of destroying Iraq’s Ba’athist tyranny without securing the institutions of free government was to release forces of barbarism straight out of [Conrad's] Heart of Darkness. But whatever may be said of this Rousseauian failure of imagination on the part of the American government, it scarcely undermined the casus belli. In fact, the vicious forces empowered by Saddam Hussein that swarmed into the power vacuum after his fall were part of the case for war to begin with. The evisceration of Iraqi civil society and the increasingly Islamist character of Ba’athist rule prefigured the descent into mayhem after he was swept from power. Had his reign been permitted to continue, the most plausible scenario would have been the eventual implosion of the regime under its own weight, turning a rogue state into a failed state.
    ... Advocates of a more humble foreign policy are always ready to explain the risks of using power, and seldom address the risks of not doing so. In the case of Saddam Hussein, this is a colossal mistake. It is perfectly possible to argue that the manifold blunders involved in the policy of ushering Iraq into a new era pale in comparison to the failure of refusing to confront its insane regime for so long.
    "To put the matter another way: Whatever the costs of the US military engagement in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s nightmarish tyranny was never going to be anything approaching a compliant partner in the international order. In all likelihood, it was going to enlarge its own power at the expense of every decent movement and state in its orbit until it was removed by force or collapsed into mayhem. By 2003, invading forces encountered a country already in an advanced state of disarray. Even more than other autocracies that abound in the Arab world, Ba’athist Iraq had kept society under a lid of oppression, stultifying the social, political, and economic development of the country. In due course, its implosion—whether by internal revolt or fratricide between the despot’s sons—would have unleashed a hideous orgy of violence. Absent the helping hand of international security forces, post-Saddam Iraq would have made the bloodletting of the Lebanese civil war look tame by comparison.
    "The experiment in participatory politics in postwar Iraq has been a messy and sometimes nasty arena of sectarian rivalry and confessional jostling.... The Ba’athist-Bin Ladenist forces arrayed against the new Iraq were eventually routed, but not before inflicting grievous wounds, both in Iraq and on the American psyche. The costs and failures of the war stimulated a remarkable coincidence of view between cynical conservatives and soft-headed progressives across the West that remains largely intact to this day. The public lost faith in the traditional mission of US foreign policy to shore up the international system. Despite America’s robust material support for Ukraine, it’s clear that the cause of American activism has not quite recovered from the war in Iraq.
    "Some two decades after the Iraq War was launched, its hold on America’s imagination has not slipped. But if it’s to be a determining influence over Americans’ view of the world and their role in it, a more sober consideration of its lessons is needed. Greater accuracy in our hindsight will sharpen our foresight. It therefore remains a relevant question whether the world would be better off were Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic sons still in power in Baghdad. Years after the demise of the Arab awakening, the case for removing the worst of the Arab prison states looks more justifiable than ever, even as the blunders involved in its execution look even more unpardonable."

~ Brian Stewart, from his post 'Chronicle of a WAR, 20 Years On'

* * * *

"... most worryingly of all, the West has forgotten how to set up a successful civil government in an occupied area. In the long run this last concern is the most serious, and it might mean that the brutality becomes more visible, and [the conquered country] more bloodstained.
    "And it is serious for another reason. What about the other terrorist-supporting governments that should be in George W. Bush's sights? If terrorism is to be toppled then the governments of Libya, Sudan, Jordan, Syria, Iran and Iraq must be toppled and replaced - and NOT with the fascist-leaning puppets that the US has supported in the past...
    "If Bush can't set up successful civil governments in these countries, then he may have to call off the War Against Terrorism early, just as his father called off the Gulf War early for the self-same reason.
    "As you may recall, the Gulf War ended in 1991 with the US reluctant to finish the war as they should have - with the toppling of Saddam Hussein. When Bush senior stopped the turkey shoot on the road to Baghdad, it wasn't just a loss of courage - it was also the realisation that they had no end-game, that they wouldn't know what to do when they got there."

~ me, from my 2001 post 'The Roots of Peace'

* * * * 

"[T]he notion that the Bush administration deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative of how we went to war.
    "Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House 'manipulation' -- that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly propagating falsehoods.
    "In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it “did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments.” The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found 'no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction'....
    "Iraq-Al Qaeda links were 'substantiated by intelligence information.' The same goes for claims about Hussein’s possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons programme.
    "Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don’t get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats [and others who] wish to contend they were 'misled' into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA....
    "This may sound like ancient history, but it matters. After Sept. 11, President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice invaded neighbouring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis and stood in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to remain in possession of what he believed were stocks of chemical and biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program. By glossing over this history, the ... lies-led-to-war narrative provides false comfort in a world of significant dangers."

~ Los Angeles Times, from their 2008 op-ed 'The White House Didn't Lie About Iraq'

* * * * 

"While mistakes were made by both the Bush administration and the Obama administration, those mistakes were of different kinds and of different magnitudes in their consequences, though both sets of mistakes are worth thinking about, so that so much tragic waste of blood and treasure does not happen again.

    "Whether it was a mistake to invade Iraq in the first place is something that will no doubt be debated by historians and others for years to come. But, despite things that could have been done differently in Iraq during the Bush administration, in the end President Bush listened to his generals and launched the military 'surge' that crushed the terrorist insurgents and made Iraq a viable country.
    "The most solid confirmations of the military success in Iraq were the intercepted messages from Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq to their leaders in Pakistan that there was no point sending more insurgents, because they now had no chance of prevailing against American forces. This was the situation that Barack Obama inherited — and lost.
    "Going back to square one, what lessons might we learn from the whole experience of the Iraq war? If nothing else, we should never again imagine that we can engage in 'nation-building' in the sweeping sense that term acquired in Iraq — least of all building a democratic Arab nation in a region of the world that has never had such a thing in a history that goes back thousands of years.
    "Human beings are not inert building blocks, and democracy has prerequisites that Western nations took centuries to develop. Perhaps the reshaping of German society and Japanese society under American occupation after World War II made such a project seem doable in Iraq.
    "Had the Bush administration pulled it off, such an achievement in the Middle East could have been a magnificent gift to the entire world, bringing peace to a region that has been the spearhead of war and international terrorism....
    "Despite the mistakes that were made in Iraq, it was still a viable country until Barack Obama made the headstrong decision to pull out all the troops, ignoring his own military advisers, just so he could claim to have restored 'peace,' when in fact he invited chaos and defeat.."

~ Thomas Sowell, from his 2015 post 'Who Lost Iraq?'

"As always there are lessons both to avoid and to emulate from history, and a lesson too from this capitulation: 

• Subduing and modifying Japan and putting it on a path to peace and prosperity after WWII: Six years and the destruction of Shintoism as an ethical code.
• Reconstructing Germany and setting it on a path to peace and prosperity after WWII: Seven years, and the destruction of Nazism as an ideology.
• Reconstructing Iraq (including hunting down and killing the killers and those who supply them) and setting Iraq on a path to peace and prosperity: Too difficult. 

"Setting both Germany and Japan on the path to peace and prosperity -- making havens of peace and prosperity at the heart of Europe and at the door to Asia, and putting down the twin bacilli of Shinto nationalism and German national socialism -- this was selfishly important to anyone who valued a peaceful world ravaged by decades of strife and war, and was done by people who knew what they were doing. Just as selfishly important now would [have been] a haven of secular peace in the ravaged Middle East.
    "Now I grant you that the knowledge of how to set up a country from the rubble has clearly been lost (just another symptom of the modern-day philosophical collapse), and German and Japanese reconstruction did not have sworn enemies in the country next door supplying arms, money and training to brainwashed killers (that this continues so brazenly is another symptom of the timidity brought to the war against Islamic totalitarianism), but surely there should be recognition that setting up a post-war country ravaged by tribal and religious conflict takes years, not months, and that making a haven in the Middle East for peace and prosperity is of selfish importance to everyone in the west."

~ me, from my 2007 post 'Democrats Vote for Cut and Run'

"In 1945, the knowledge existed to successfully rebuild countries after they'd been liberated from savagery. But by 1991's Gulf War, even the victors had realised that knowledge had gone. Disappeared. Gone with the wind. So they didn't drive to Baghdad, because they knew enough to know they wouldn't know what to do when they got there.

    "They still don't."

~ me from my 2021 post, 'Kabul'

Kabul [UPDATED]

CIA officer helps evacuees up a ladder onto US helicopter in Saigon, 29 April 1975.

[Pic by Hubert Van Es, Wikipedia]

It's looking like Saigon in 1975 all over again, isn't it.

There was no good time to pull out of Afghanistan. We can probably all agree on that. But it is possible to question how the pull-out was done -- starting with the 'peace talks' with the Taliban (peace! with the Taliban!) that delivered to those butchers the US's timetable of withdrawal, and right up to the advice from the world's most expensive 'intelligence' agencies that the government, the army and the whole damn place would not collapse in a heap once that withdrawal happened.

Won't happen, they said back in July. Won't happen within 90 days, they said last Thursday. Turns out it took less than 90 hours -- "which is close enough for US intelligence work," as Mark Steyn quipped.

Make no mistake, for anyone concerned with peace -- or with the idea that a Pax Americana could be its source -- this is another dark day indeed in the continuing collapse of that myth. As the great Bernard Lewis warned nearly two decades ago, 

the danger here is that America risks being seen as harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend... It's a very dangerous lesson to teach the planet.

That's no longer a risk. That's the lesson the whole world has just watched and learned. Again. To quote a line of Steyn's from about a decade ago, 

Afghanistan is about Afghanistan – if you're Afghan or Pakistani. But, if you're Russian or Chinese or Iranian or European, Afghanistan is about America.

So since we're posting old observations about America and Afghanistan, I thought I'd go back and briefly examine some of mine. Here's what I said on Afghanistan's day of liberation way back in 2001, when the coalition took Kabul:

The beards are coming off, and singing is heard again in Kabul. Although the war against terrorism is far from over, the Taliban retreat makes it possible to believe the war in Afghanistan just might be reaching a conclusion, and that civilisation and peace might come to Afghanistan some time soon. However, I have nagging doubts that will ever happen. First: while the occupying Northern Alliance is less single-mindedly oppressive than the Taleban, they are no less brutal. Second: the Taleban retreat to the hills puts them in their area of competitive advantage - these murderous witchdoctors don't know very much, but they do know all about killing and cave-dwelling.

Third, and most worryingly of all, the West has forgotten how to set up a successful civil government in an occupied area. In the long run this last concern is the most serious, and it might mean that the brutality becomes more visible, and Afghanistan more bloodstained....

If Bush can't set up successful civil government ... then he may have to call off the War Against Terrorism early, just as his father called off the Gulf War early for the self-same reason.

As you may recall, the Gulf War ended in 1991 with the US reluctant to finish the war as they should have - with the toppling of Saddam Hussein. When Bush senior stopped the turkey shoot on the road to Baghdad, it wasn't just a loss of courage - it was also the realisation that they had no end-game, that they wouldn't know what to do when they got there.

Our current statesmen may not know how to go about successfully rebuilding a conquered country, but we only need to travel back half a century to find some statesman who did know how.

Out of the rubble of Japan and Germany, Douglas McArthur, Ludwig Erhard, Wilhelm Röpke and Konrad Adenaur built new countries that abandoned their militaristic, totalitarian and feudal pasts and instead embraced peace, prosperity and freedom.

In the words of Röpke: "Men are gripped by a desire to be told what to do and to be ordered about, to the point almost of masochism. The state has become the subject of almost unparalleled idolatry." He and his colleagues recognised that attitude as the very source of war, and sought to banish it, new German Chancellor Adenaur declaring in March 1946: "The new state must no longer dominate the individual. Everyone must be allowed to take the initiative in every facet of existence." They set up governments large enough to maintain the rule of law and protect initiative, and small enough to get out of the way otherwise. And they worked like all hell!

Their minimal governments, constitutionally constrained to protect contracts and property rights, allowed free trade to flourish and prosperity to blossom. German and Japanese young men soon realised that there was more to life than butchery and invading their neighbours, and they set about getting rich instead.

They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Germany and Japan could hardly have started at a lower point. At the end of 1945, both countries were in ruins, yet only twenty years later they were flying. It was called a miracle, but it was in fact the work of some remarkable men.

We can only hope that the lessons from these remarkable men can be learned by the current crop of statesmen. It won't be easy, but if terrorism is to be eradicated and the gun-toting young men and the veiled women of Afghanistan offered any future at all - then the lessons must be learned, and they must be applied.

And if they are successful, then the world might have cause to give thanks once again to Douglas McArthur, Ludwig Erhard, Wilhelm Röpke and Konrad Adenaur.

In 1945, the knowledge existed to successfully rebuild countries after they'd been liberated from savagery. But by 1991's Gulf War, even the victors had realised that knowledge had gone. Disappeared. Gone with the wind. So they didn't drive to Baghdad, because they knew enough to know they wouldn't know what to do when they got there.

They still don't.

The result can be seen today in Kabul.

Taking questions from the press in July, Biden was asked if he saw “any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam.”

“None whatsoever. Zero,” he replied.

He was, in some way, right. The Afghan collapse was far more precipitous ...

UPDATE: "The Taliban have entered the Afghan capital, having rapidly swept to power throughout the country, while the U.S. is frantically airlifting its diplomats to safety. What explains the fall of Afghanistan? In 2001 U.S. forces targeted the Taliban’s Islamic totalitarian regime, which had harbored the 9/11 plotters. What went wrong? Join Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo for a special episode of the New Ideal podcast":

Chilcot, Blair and the rights of invasion

 

“Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent “rights” of gang rulers. It is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses."
~ Ayn Rand on ‘Self-Determination of Nations’

Any decision to take men and women into war must be made with the utmost seriousness and sincerity.  Trying to peer beneath all the invective over the last decade about the decision taken to invade Iraq makes it almost impossible to see whether that was so in this case. “This rage over the Iraq war and inchoate desire for revenge has driven the collective political psyche in Britain and the West off the rails,” says Melanie Phillips in The Times.

I supported the war against Saddam and still do. I also think, though, that in many crucial respects it was misconceived from the start and subsequently managed with astounding incompetence, ignorance and cowardice.
    The Bush and Blair administrations failed to understand they were entering a tribal minefield. They failed to acknowledge the need to stop Iran fomenting sectarian strife in Iraq. They also failed to commit themselves to the long haul in order to defeat Islamist terror.

It was a job half-done, its reasons poorly explained; the plan for the end-game, tragically, was dismal – barely conceived, if it ever was.

So … “Blair lied, people died.” “No blood for oil.” “Bush’s lapdog.” “Where was the WMD?” Too much commentary has been little more than bumper-sticker lite, not the thoughtful analysis the subject demands. Seven years in the making, the 12-volumes-worth of Chilcot report, issued overnight, should be that document.

Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.”
    On the other hand, the inquiry explicitly says that it is not “questioning Mr. Blair’s belief” in the case for war — i.e., it is not accusing him of conscious misrepresentations.

And after all those years being written, Julie Lenarz among others can still identify crucial omissions:

1) It's quite remarkable that Sir John failed to mention the attempt by the US and UK to resolve the conflict with Saddam peacefully by pushing new sanctions through the UNSCR, as the old sanctions regime was violated on a daily basis. That attempt was vetoed by Russia.
2) It's even more remarkable that Sir John made such bold statements about bad judgement on behalf of TB without acknowledging once the evidence he received from Hans Blix, the UN's chief weapons inspector and by no means a supporter of the war.
    a) “It seemed plausible to me at the time, and I also felt — I, like most people at the time, felt that Iraq retains weapons of mass destruction. I did not say so publicly. I said it perhaps to Mr Blair in September 2002 privately… I talked to Prime Minister Blair on 20 February 2002 and then I said I still thought that there were prohibited items in Iraq.”
    b) “I have never questioned the good faith of Mr Blair or Bush or anyone else. On some occasions when I talked to Blair on the telephone, 20 February, I certainly felt that he was absolutely sincere in his belief.”

It’s too easy now to forget that there was a case for war – a “legitimate case to be made for the removal of a genocidal regime.” Phillips reminds us of some of the selfish reasons for ending the regime, arguing that without the Iraq War Saddam would now be riding the tiger of .Islamist terror.

Saddam was a highly significant threat to the West. He was a godfather of international terrorism.
   He was behind the plot to murder George HW Bush. Audiotapes of his conversations with key officials revealed that al-Qa’ida had been in contact with Iraqi intelligence for sanctuary, training and planning acts of terrorism against the US.
    Saddam’s refusal to show that he had stopped developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as he was required to do by the UN, reinforced the belief among western intelligence services that he was still engaged in these programs.
   In 1998, the threat Saddam posed to the West had caused Bill Clinton to sign the Iraq Liberation Act, which called for Saddam’s removal and a forced end to his WMD programs. Clinton didn’t follow through.
    The events of 9/11, however, changed the calibration of risk, overnight. It wasn’t that Saddam was generally thought to be responsible for those attacks. It was rather that, with the new realisation Islamic terrorism breached all previously understood constraints of warfare, Saddam’s regional ambitions, sponsorship of terrorism and pursuit of WMD made the threat he posed no longer tolerable.

These reasons were made at the time, poorly heard, and now only dimly remembered, but they were made and understood. “The case for overthrowing Saddam,” argued Christopher Hitchens in 2005, “was unimpeachable”—and Blair “the only statesman from the nineties to emerge from the decade with any credit on this front.”

The man he helped depose, unquestionably, was a monster:

 

All known and understood at the time. But then suddenly, once the Coalition went to war, as Phillips recognises: “Saddam was said never to have been a threat at all, and logic, reason and proportion went out of the window.”

The apparent over-egging of questionable intelligence about Saddam’s WMD programs was held to prove that they had long been junked altogether. The failure to find any stocks of WMD was held to prove that Saddam was no longer trying to produce the stuff. Absence of evidence was held to be evidence of absence.
    The Iraq Survey Group’s interim report saying Saddam was pursuing biological weapons programs up to the start of the war was brushed aside. The Israelis who said WMD stocks may have been moved to Syria were brusquely dismissed. Former US general James Clapper, the present director of national intelligence, and ex-general Thomas McInerney, who said the same thing in 2003 and 2006, were ignored.
    In 2004, an American defence official, John Shaw, claimed that Saddam’s WMD stockpiles had been moved to Syria by the Russians. In 2006, I interviewed Georges Sada, Saddam’s former air vice-marshal. He told me Saddam had transported chemical and biological stockpiles by air and road to Syria in late 2002.
    The legacy of the Iraq war has been toxic. The British people now seem reluctant to believe warnings by politicians or intelligence officials about threats from the Islamic world and even less willing to countenance any military action to counter any such threat.
    If Saddam were still around today, he would be riding the tiger of Islamist terror, as he always did, and the threat to us all would be even greater.

Chilcot is supposed to suggest lessons we must learn from the Iraq war. This is the main one: the core reason the war was botched was the West’s failure to acknowledge the nature, scale and complexity of the threat from the Arab and Islamic world.
    The persecution of Tony Blair shows that this failure remains just as true today.

Perhaps that makes Chilcot’s Report the worst kind of whitewash.

The important, humane task of understanding the history and politics of that calamity in 2003 has been sacrificed at the altar of allowing a needy elite the space in which to say: ‘Blair is evil, and I am good.’

.

Putin’s libertarians

Guest post from our Russian correspondent, Mikhail Svetov

I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS after I noticed that western libertarians have unaccountably developed a soft spot for Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The consensus among them seems to be that Putin is in the right in Ukraine. Even Ron Paul, whom I normally admire, has fallen for his charms. But as a Russian libertarian myself, it leaves me disappointed and terribly sad.

The biggest complaint from libertarians about the Ukraine seems to be that the government in Kyiv is somehow “fascist,” which in their eyes warrants Russian military intervention. I would like to start by outlining some facts about Russia and Ukraine, and hopefully dispel some myths about the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine (also known as the Donetsk Basin).

The simplest way is to focus on some of the most notable characteristics of fascism. The defining characteristic of Fascism is that the good of the State comes before the good of the individual, identified by Laurence Britt as being commonly manifested in the following ways …

Stability over insanity in Iraq...yeah, right

With New Zealand wanting a seat on the UN Security Council, it can't just stay quiet about ISIS, says Olivia Pierson in this Guest Post.

Before 2003, when Saddam Hussein tyrannised Iraq with his secret police, torture chambers and death squads, many, if not most in the west, claimed that he was still the best man for the job "because he kept stability in the region."

In fact, he was the brutal dictator of a psychopathic regime left to dehumanise Iraqi citizens, systematically breaking their hearts and minds over a thirty year time-line. That is until the coalition forces led by America and Britain finally deposed him, resulting in his long-overdue execution. Iraq never was, and will not be in the near future, anything close to stable, unless your idea of stable is tormented and tyrannised.

In the wake of the burgeoning cruelty dished out by the new Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, NZ Prime Minister John Key said that he wouldn’t want to put NZ troops into Iraq, "because this is a civil war between two groups, Sunni and Shi’ite." He echoes the same sentiments as do his idols, Barack Obama and David Cameron.

The thing that John Key and the boys don’t get is that ISIS is a Sunni-led terrorist corporation, with 2 billion dollars at its disposal thanks to its backers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and its looting of Iraqi banks. They are Sunni Muslims hell-bent on becoming a full-blown medieval Islamic Caliphate, who are butchering members of all other sects, including other Sunni Muslims. This is not just a civil war between two Muslim enclaves; this is an attempt by jihadists to wipe out any form of Islam that doesn’t impose Sharia Law, along with all Jews, Christians and infidels worldwide.

ISIS seeks to remake the world in its own pathological image. Through clever branding, technological savvy, a single-minded purpose, overwhelming violence and the primal call for all true Muslims around the world to join their crusade of death, their numbers are swelling. They have already taken the North-East of Syria and a third of Iraq, including the Mosul dam, which itself can be used as a terror-tool to drown hundreds-of-thousands of Iraqis, if they so choose. They have set up terror-training camps where they are teaching young Muslims who have responded to their call, from all parts of the world including Europe, America and Australia, how to kill, rape, maim, crucify and behead civilians, including children. These radicals will return to their home countries to inflict their "holy cause" on western civilian life, otherwise known as infidels.

Welcome to the harsh reality that Islam is a political ideology, not merely a religion – and there's no reformation in sight!

John Key has brought New Zealand back into NATO and is seeking a seat on the UN Security Council. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark is in the running to hold the top UN position currently occupied by Ban Ki-Moon. That places NZ in an important position regarding its voice on geopolitical issues. John Key has stated that he supports the US air-strikes over Northern Iraq in order to aid the brutalized Yazidis and Kurdish forces on the frontline against ISIS. But this is not enough. As the Islamic State swells its ranks, they will be able to overwhelm resistance.

This is the moment jihadists have been anticipating for many years, if not decades. It is estimated that there are 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, seven percent of whom are conservatively deemed "radical"; that’s 112 million. If only one percent of said radicals respond to the call of the new Caliphate, that is a fighting force of 1.12 million deadly terrorists.

With full knowledge of the idea being utterly unappealing, I submit that troops on the ground are inevitable – the alternative is the spreading of pure hell. Considering that all modern countries will be affected by the despicable tactics of the new Islamic State, it would be prudent, though not attractive, to step forward firmly on the offensive, in concert, to send a clear message to Islam around the world that their jihadist’s agenda will be vanquished.

John Key and Helen Clark ought to stay open to all options, no matter how unedifying, instead of making statements about not supporting intervention in the form of ground troops. The well-signposted withdrawal of American troops from Iraq helped bring about this alarmingly swift catastrophe. After an eleven-year campaign and a very wobbly government, such an act was a betrayal of the Iraqi people, barely able to stand after the spirit-crushing abuses of Saddam. And now this.

* * * *

Olivia Pierson is an Auckland screenwriter.

 

UPDATE: Kurdish soldiers launch ground offensive to free Mosul dam …

Tony Blair on Terrorism

A good conversation, here, over the weekend, on fighting an ideology.

Meet the Press Sunday, host David Gregory suggested to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair that the US, Britain and others made a mistake when they went after Saddam Hussein, which Gregory said only led to more terrorism.

Watch Blair’s response.

It makes you wonder whether his incredible unpopularity might just be because he still has the ability to concisely state uncomfortable truths.

Ukraine: It’s the only news story this week [update 2]

There’s only one real news story this week, and it’s not the bumblings of David Cunliffe or the trial of a South African sprinter.

The only story that matters is what Russia is doing in to the Ukraine, and what western “leaders” are doing in response.

Not that any of them are obliged to respond. Few, if any, have any directly selfish reason for responding at all – but their reactions, or lack of them, betray the weakness that Putin obviously thought he could exploit.

The Truth About Economic Forecasting

Guest post by Graeme B. Littler

Astrologers, palmists, and crystal-ball gazers are scorned while professional economists are heralded for their scientific achievements. Yet the academics are no less mystical in trying to predict the direction of interest rates, economic growth, and the stock market.

Sixty-five years ago, Thomas Dewey was defeated by Harry Truman in the US presidential race, stunning the political experts and journalists who were certain Dewey was going to win. While questions about “scientific” polling techniques naturally arose, one journalist focused on the heart of the matter. In his November 22, 1948, column in Newsweek, Henry Hazlitt said the “upset” reflected the pitfalls of forecasting man’s future. As Hazlitt explained:

The economic future, like the political future, will be determined by future human behaviour and decisions. That is why it is uncertain. And in spite of the enormous and constantly growing literature on business cycles, business forecasting will never, any more than opinion polls, become an exact science.

[We know how “well” they forecast both the Global Financial Crisis, and the recovery therefrom.] We know how well economists forecasted the eighties: from the 1982 recession and the employment boom to the Crash of 1987, no major forecasting firm came close to predicting these turns in the market. And following that Crash, virtually every professional forecaster revised his economic forecasts downward, all because the historical data suggested that the stock market was a reliable barometer of future economic activity. The economy then continued to expand and the stock market eventually reached newly inflated highs.

Despite the sorrowful record, most economists remain die-hard advocates of forecasting. Most have spent years in college and graduate school learning the tools of their trade, and can’t bring themselves to admit their own entrepreneurial errors. As one investment advisor put it:

No matter how many times they fail, their self-assurance never weakens. Their greatest (or only) talent is for speaking authoritatively.

Of their errors, the forecasters contend that it’s only a matter of time before they master the techniques. Though that day will never arrive, economic forecasting remains an integral part of the economics mainstream. The original motto of the Econometric Society still holds sway: “Science is Prediction.”

Whether one uses a ruler to extend an economic trend into the future, or a sophisticated econometric model with dozens of equations, the problem is still the same: there are no constant relations in human affairs.

Unlike the natural sciences, economics deals with human actions, plans, motivations, preferences, and so on, none of which can be quantified. Even if it were possible to quantify these things, changing tastes (and all the factors that affect tastes) would make the data almost instantaneously useless to the forecaster. And then there are the millions of “unimaginable” things which constantly crop up, influencing people in unpredictable ways—like Eisenhower’s heart attack (after which the stock market experienced a massive drop), or the recent outage in the Bitcoin server (after which the Bitcoin price plummeted), or Saddam Hussein’s tanks driving into Kuwait (tweaking the tail of an already delicate world economy, sending it within weeks from tiger into tailspin).

Economic statistics (i.e., history) do not imply anything about the future. Because data show the relation between price and supply to be one way for one period of time doesn’t mean that it cannot change. As Ludwig Von Mises pointed out,

external phenomena affect different people in different ways [and] the reactions of the same people to the same external events vary.

Some economic forecasters like to argue that economic forecasting is not unlike predicting the weather (and should also be equally difficult). Not only is the nature of these two problems entirely different, but one can reasonably expect that as scientific methods become more sophisticated, weather prediction could theoretically approach perfection. This is because there are constant relations among physical and chemical events. By experimenting in the laboratory, the natural scientist can know what these relations are with a high degree of precision. However, human society is not a controlled laboratory. This fact makes the forecaster’s job of accurately predicting future events impossible.

Forecasters try to get around this problem by linking events in historical chains, and randomly guessing that if one variable reoccurs, then the others will necessarily follow. But this is a sophisticated version of the logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore, because of this). This has led major forecasters to seriously study astrological patterns and to build mathematical models correlating weather patterns with business cycles. Once the forecaster throws out economic logic and causality, anything could have caused anything else and all variables in the universe are open to study. One mainstream forecasting theory for investors, for example, is based on the rate at which rabbits multiply.

Does this mean we can know nothing about the future? No, the best “forecasters” are successful businessmen,* whose entrepreneurial judgment allows them to anticipate consumer tastes and market conditions. As Murray N. Rothbard points out:

The pretensions of econometricians and other “model-builders” that they can precisely forecast the economy will always flounder on the simple but devastating query: “If you can forecast so well, why are you not doing so on the stock market, where accurate forecasting reaps such rich rewards?”

Forecasting gurus, instead, tend to disdain successful entrepreneurs—just as politicians and planners do, preferring to write the entrepreneur out of their thinking and rely instead on the quacks.

The myth that economists can predict the future is not just harmless quackery, however. Central planners use the same theories to direct the economy. Yet by setting production goals with the data collected by the planners themselves, they destroy the very process that directs free-market production.

Central planners try to overcome uncertainty by substituting formulas for entrepreneurial judgment. They believe that they can replace the price system with commands, but they miss the whole purpose of individual action on the free market. As Ludwig von Mises said, they make “not the slightest reference to the fact that the main task of action is to provide for the events of an uncertain future.” In that sense, central planners are no different from professional forecasters.  [Even in better times, however, not with very much success. – Ed.]

Don’t expect unemployment among forecasters, however. Many have cushy jobs with Treasury, the Reserve Bank, and virtually every agency, arm and consultancy of government, and will happily issue predictions without end.

In the view of Austrian economists, on the other hand, economists have three functions: to further our understanding of market processes, to identify possible consequences of government policies, and to counter economic myths.

Economic forecasting has nothing to do with these objectives. In fact, by presenting itself as the only scientific dimension of economics, forecasting has helped discredit the whole discipline, and fuelled an exodus of economists from the more mundane academic world to the arena of state control and coercion, to the detriment of every American.

Graeme B. Littler is a former bank economist and editor of Central Bank Watch, and now scholar in residence at the Ludwig von Mises Institute's Lawrence Fertig Student Center. This article from the Mises Daily first appeared in the book Economics of Liberty.  It has been updated, localised and lightly edited.

Photoshopped picture of Ludwig Von Mises by Peter J. You can easily tell it’s been photoshopped, because the fastidious Von Mises never wore a T shirt in his life--let alone use “cuss words” like that!

NOTES:

* Unlike politicians and central planners, who do take these forecasts as gospel (and Ben Bernanke, Alan Bollard, Graham Wheeler et al who think they write the gospel) entrepreneurs themselves rely largely on their own independent judgement of what the future holds-- and it's them after all who actually move the economy and drive production. 
    Entrepreneurs will certainly listen to forecasters, and they definitely don't mind forecasts being taken seriously by the easily led, since it sets up opportunities to take advantage of their poor estimates.  ( What entrepreneurs are often looking for is, as Israel Kirzner explains, "unexploited opportunities for reallocating resources from [low-valued] use to another of higher value [which] offers the opportunity of pure entrepreneurial gain.  A misallocation of resources occurs because, so far, market participants have not noticed the price discrepancy involved.  This price discrepancy presents itself as an opportunity to be exploited by its discoverer.  The most impressive aspect of the market system is the tendency for such opportunities to be discovered.")
    Entrepreneurs generally recognise the truth stated by Ludwig von Mises, "that the main task of action is to provide for the events of an uncertain future."  If, for example, the date of booms and busts and the like could be predicted "with apodictic certainty" according to some formula or other, then everyone would act at the same time to make it so.

    In fact, reasonable businessmen are fully aware of the uncertainty of the future. They realize that the economists do not dispense any reliable information about things to come and that all they provide is interpretation of statistical data from the past...   
    If it were possible to calculate the future state of the market, the future would not be uncertain.  There would be neither entrepreneurial loss nor profit.  What people expect from the economists is beyond the power of any mortal man.

The greatest danger of 'the forecasting delusion' is the illusion that "the future is predictable, that some formula could be substituted for the specific understanding which is the essence of entrepreneurial activity, and that familiarity with these formulas could make it possible for [bureaucratic management] to take over the conduct of business."

    The fact that the term 'speculator' is today used only with an opprobrious connotation clearly shows that our contemporaries do not even suspect in what the fundamental problem of action consists.
    Entrepreneurial judgment cannot be bought on the market. The entrepreneurial idea that carries on and brings profit is precisely that idea which did not occur to the majority. It is not correct foresight as such that yields profits, but foresight better than that of the rest.

Friday Morning Ramble: No Banks. No Key. Not here.

Is there anything intelligent to say about Banks and Key? Is there anything worth saying. I think not.

You know why it’s not news.
David Cunliffe making stuff up – LINDSAY MITCHELL

I don’t agree with all of his assumptions, but this is certainly true: “The current debate about monetary policy taking place in the public makes little sense.”
Reframing the monetary policy debate: Some notes – Matt Nolan, THE VISIBLE HAND
New RBNZ PTA– Matt Nolan, THE VISIBLE HAND

“Meddling with the exchange rate isn’t a panacea for the world’s woes, Employers’ and Manufacturers’ Association chief executive Kim Campbell says.”
Alternatives to meddling with exchange rate – HOME PADDOCK

The most interesting “controversy” in the US presidential election this week, for me at least, was the so-called “gaffe” by candidate Romney in pointing out to supporters 47% of Americans will never vote for tax cuts, because that 47% are on the mooch.  He’s right. They’ve become a “moochocracy.” Their vote has already been “bought.”  “These are voters "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."  He’s right, you know—although sadly those are not his words. There was a time however (see pic above) when being a moocher was anathema
The "Bought Vote" of the 47 Percent – HISTORY NEWS NETWORK
A Defense of Romney’s “47 Percent” Comment – BASTIAT INSTITUTE
Media shocked, shocked to hear Romney state the truth – Steve Kates, CATALLAXY FILES

“Many are pillorying Romney for saying this, a few are defending him. But both his detractors and his defenders are missing what is really wrong with this statement: it ignores the role of ideas–particularly of moral ideas.”
What virtually everyone has missed with Romney's 47% comment – Harry Binswanger, FORBES

And what’s the postcode for so many of the moochers?
Washington's Riches: D.C. Area Now Boasts 7 of the Nation's Top-Earning Counties – REASON
Carney: Romney gets it all wrong on government dependency – Timothy Carney, WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“Sandra “Pay For My Birth Control” Fluke explains why “her generation” supports entitlements:  “[B]ecause our vision for the future doesn’t leave our fellow citizens behind. . . . This isn’t about not knowing how to take care of ourselves—it’s about knowing we should take care of each other.” It’s a funny argument if you think about it. If “we” can “take care of ourselves,” then why do we need to “take care of each other”?
    “What Fluke’s collectivist language is trying to disguise is that some people can and do take care of themselves—and she believes they have an obligation to sacrifice for those who can’t or won’t.”
The Entitlement Generation - Don Watkins, LAISSEZ FAIRE

However … "we’ve been asking Romney how he can cut taxes without adding US debt. Now he’s let the cat out of the bag: He can’t.”
Mitt Romney’s confession – WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Territorial conflict between China and Japan over a few rocks in the East China Sea? Will it mean war? How did historical military conflicts between the two play out? What is the true nature of each nation, and what effect will it have on future relations? How on earth would you know? What a good time to jump on board Powell History’s online History of Asia course—which starts this weekend with Chinese history. Join me there.
The History of China: Registration now open – POWELL HISTORY
The Dangerous Standoff in the South China Sea is About to Boil Over – MONEY MORNING AUSTRALIA
China Versus Japan: Shooting War, Economic War or War of Words? – ZERO HEDGE

American Defence Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in New Zealand this morning. While in China signing agreements yesterday, he stood beside Chinese Defence Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie while the general “made public comments about the dispute with Japan, threatening Japan with unspecified ‘further actions,’ but made no mention of the fact that the defence secretary of Japan’s closest military ally was standing next to him.  Mr. Panetta reiterated American policy that Washington would take no sides in territorial disputes across the region….”
Isn’t that how earlier wars started—most recently Gulf War I, when US ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein what he did with Kuwait didn’t bother him? With increasing cross-Pacific NZ military cooperation with the US on the horizon, as this visit seems to indicate, do we really want to be dragged into a muddle-headed Sino-American military confrontation over disputed islands like the Senkakus?

Meanwhile, the reason for Japan rediscovering its nationalism continues to emerge: it’s collapsing economically.
Japan’s Slow-Motion Tsunami – Wolf Richter, ZERO HEDGE
There’s Going To Be a Fight – Dan Denning, DAILY RECKONING

Fascinating to hear a mainstream economist, Shamubeel Eaqub, talking on the wireless about the Broken Window Fallacy in the context of Christchurch rebuilding. Notably, both the head of Christchurch’s Chamber of  Commerce and Simon Mercep have no idea what he’s talking about.
Christchurch rebuild is gaining momentum [sic] – RADIO NZ [AUDIO]

“We are so accustomed to our present currency system that it is difficult to imagine a system of more than one currency circulating side by side. However such a monetary system has existed and successfully functioned in the past in many countries, either de jure or de facto. One very good, long-lasting example is the case of China between 1650 and 1850, where copper coins and silver taels circulated as parallel currencies.
    In the 1970s F. A. Hayek ignited a discussion on the subject with the publication of Choice in Currency and Denationalisation of Money, which essentially advocated the end of the government monopoly to issue money, and that private institutions should be allowed to print money, letting the market choose the one deemed best.
    With the euro in crisis, we could learn from this analysis…”
The end of the euro - and the beginning of currency competition – Eduardo Belgrano, IEA BLOG

“Paul Krugman is famous for his stridency… But since his stridency has made him famous and won him adulation from the left, Krugman has been encouraged to emphasize this character trait to the point of comical exaggeration. He is heading into that strange netherworld where William Shatner has been living for the past twenty years. He is becoming a caricature of himself.  I don't know how else to explain his latest column, in which Krugman tries to recruit the launch of the iPhone 5 as evidence for the efficacy of government stimulus spending..”
In Krugman, Keynes Meets Orwell – Robert Tracinski, REAL CLEAR MARKETS

I bloody hate cables. So anyone who can set up their home entertainment system without any showing, like the setup above, has my attention.
How To Create a Cord and Cable Free Home Entertainment TV Setup — The Harpster Home – APARTMENT THERAPY

A story about heroes, villains and intellectual property. “Stealing magic has become a commonplace crime. Teller (right), a man of infinite delicacy and deceit, decided to do something about it.”
The Honor System – ESQUIRE

It’s a Smart Bulb!
LIFX: The Light Bulb Reinvented – KICKSTARTER

Are these really essential?
10 Essential Tablet Apps for Business – MASHABLE TECH

Myth-busting at Stats Chat: Is it safer to sit in the back of plane than the front?
They don’t reverse into mountains – Thomas Lumley, STATS CHAT

“Judith Thurmon of the New Yorker writes, “Rand’s ruthless supremacism, however—her stark division of humankind into ‘makers and takers’—leads inexorably to a society like the one that staged ‘The Hunger Games.’” Another critic has labeled Rand “undoubtedly one of the most lunatic shrieking sociopaths that there has ever been” and claims that her ideas would help Ryan destroy the middle class.
    One might assume from these statements that Ayn Rand’s ideas should be avoided. But do Rand’s critics accurately portray her ideas? … Consider the following passage from her best-selling novel, The Fountainhead … Does it passage look like one written by someone who thinks that people should be at each other’s throats?
Ayn Rand: Decide for Yourself – Nicholas Marquiss, THE UNDERCURRENT

You might think anyone asking this question would be severely depressed. But you’d be severely wrong—it’s the question, the answer to which, helps tell you where ethics begins.
Is Life Worth Living? – Per-Olof Samuelsson, HOUSE AT POS CORNER

“All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton’s famous quote never actually meant what you think it did.
Power does not corrupt – STEPHEN HICKS

Progressive education is failing abysmally. (Could a graduate of a progressive classroom even spell the final world in that last sentence?) But does progressivism’s failure mean so-called “classical education” is the answer?
The False Promise of Classical Education – Lisa Van Damme, OBJECTIVE STANDARD

Well, well, well. As it happens, my birthday is on November 14. So, do you think I should?
Have a right royal birthday – HOME PADDOCK

Yes, stuff like this, from Oscar Brown's 1962 television program "Jazz Scene USA," was once a regular on prime-time American television.  Here’s Cannonball Adderley and his band playing their “Work Song”:

Here’s Duke Ellington playing his “Work Song”—part 1 of his “Black, Brown & Beige Suite.”

And here … well, here’s what Guiseppi Verdi makes of a work song: his Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, sung by the Met chorus:

[Hat tips to Jazz on the Tube, Thrutch, Geek Press, Noodle Food]

Enjoy your weekend!
PC

PS: What beer are you looking forward to most, this weekend? I’m heading to Hallertau tonight, so I foresee a Statesman in my life very soon...

The one fact about 9/11 you still need to know

Nearly one decade on from that day when an organised gang of barbarians hijacked civilian airliners and flew themselves and scores of innocents into two of the world’s most famous symbols of capitalism, one wonders what could be said about that outrage that hasn’t already?

Midst all the words of pseudo-sophistication and “complexity,”  Christopher Hitchens repeats boldly the one point that still bears repeating:

Simply evil. A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description and most essential fact about al-Qaida … a particularly odious group (a secretive and homicidal gang: part multinational corporation, part crime family) that was sworn to a medieval cult of death, a racist hatred of Jews, a religious frenzy against Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims, and "unbelievers," and the restoration of a long-vanished and despotic empire.
    To me, this remains the main point about al-Qaida and its surrogates. I do not believe, by stipulating it as the main point, that I try to oversimplify matters. I feel no need to show off or to think of something novel to say. Moreover, many of the attempts to introduce "complexity" into the picture strike me as half-baked obfuscations or distractions. These range from the irredeemably paranoid and contemptible efforts to pin responsibility for the attacks onto the Bush administration or the Jews, to the sometimes wearisome but not necessarily untrue insistence that Islamic peoples have suffered oppression. (Even when formally true, the latter must simply not be used as nonsequitur special pleading for the use of random violence by self-appointed Muslims.)
    Underlying these and other attempts to change the subject there was, and still is, a perverse desire to say that the 9/11 atrocities were in some way deserved, or made historically more explicable, by the many crimes of past American foreign policy… That this was an assault upon our society, whatever its ostensible capitalist and militarist "targets," was again thought too obvious a point for a clever person to make. It became increasingly obvious, though, with every successive nihilistic attack on London, Madrid, Istanbul, Baghdad, and Bali. There was always some "intellectual," however, to argue in each case that the policy of Tony Blair, or George Bush, or the Spanish government, was the "root cause" of the broad-daylight slaughter of civilians. Responsibility, somehow, never lay squarely with the perpetrators.
   … Al-Qaida demands the impossible—worldwide application of the most fanatical interpretation of sharia—and to forward the demand employs the most hysterically irrational means…
    Contrary to the peddlers of shallow anti-Western self-hatred [however], the Muslim world did not adopt Bin-Ladenism as its shield against reality. Very much to the contrary, there turned out to be many millions of Arabs who have heretically and robustly preferred life over death. In many societies, al-Qaida defeated itself as well as underwent defeat…
    Against the tendencies of euphemism and evasion, some stout simplicities deservedly remain. Among them: Holocaust denial is in fact a surreptitious form of Holocaust affirmation. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was a direct and lethal challenge to free expression, not a clash between traditional faith and "free speech fundamentalism." The mass murder in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not the random product of "ancient hatreds" but a deliberate plan to erase the Muslim population. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fully deserve to be called "evil." And, 10 years ago in Manhattan and Washington and Shanksville, Pa., there was a direct confrontation with the totalitarian idea, expressed in its most vicious and unvarnished form. Let this and other struggles temper and strengthen us for future battles where it will be necessary to repudiate the big lie.

War & WikiLeaks

"A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events which will
never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the
breasts of benevolent enthusiasts."
-- James Madison

It’s impossible to easily summarise all that flood of WikiLeaked paper, although people have been trying, but at this early stage I tend to agree with Andrew Bolt’s summary, that

the overall tenor of these leaks is like the last, which confirmed just how wildly Lancet and other activist-captured bodies had exaggerated the death toll in Iraq. They tend to confirm that the perils the US confronts are real, and the claims made by its enemies tend to be false.
    In this case we get further evidence that the Saudis indeed are financing al Qaeda; that Iran and North Korea are indeed are in an axis of evil, trading missiles; that Iran really is using Red Crescent ambulances to ferry arms to Hezbollah, as Israel has long claimed; that Iran is seen as not only a threat by the West, but the Arab world; that China was a conduit for the arming of Iran; that Russia is in a new authoritarian phase, and that China is sabotaging computer systems in the West and hacked into Google’s.

Like it or not, the world is still a dangerous place. Even Rachel Maddow agrees.

Strip out the gossip and the diplomats-as-spies and the please-attack-Iran parts, and what you get from Wikileaks's latest is the very scary news that the Iran probably has the weaponry it needs to attack European cities.

Which is why the non-response of of the U.S. president to cross-border murder by North Korea is so dangerous, since it says to the world’s many potential aggressors of today that they will meet no serious opposition from this occupant of the White House.

We can recall how Neville Chamberlain’s agreement to back down over Czechoslovakia famously emboldened Hitler and led to world war.  We might recall how (not quite to famously) US ambassadorial assent to turn a blind eye to  Saddam Hussein’s view that Kuwait was really a province of Iraq emboldened that aggressor, and led to the First Gulf War. So how to take Obama’s response to North Korea’s unprovoked attacks on the U.S.’s military ally, which barely amounts to a stiffly-worded memo.

How did the White House respond to North Korea's shelling of South Korea [asks columnist Paul Greenberg]? Our president is said to be 'outraged' -- according to his spokesmen. That'd be a first. For has Barack Obama ever shown more than Thoughtful Concern on any matter, foreign (Iran's nuclear program) or domestic (the national debt)?
    Early on Tuesday morning, as the Koreans were collecting their dead, the president's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, issued a statement calling on North Korea 'to halt its belligerent action and to fully abide by the terms of the armistice agreement' signed in 1953. ...
    Dispatches from Washington Tuesday evening said President Obama wasn't planning to speak publicly about the shelling on the peninsula, preferring to issue a written statement later on.
    Why rush? It'll doubtless be neatly typed.
    Can you imagine a Harry Truman, or, for that matter a Reagan or Kennedy or Eisenhower or either Roosevelt just having an aide issue a press release when an ally comes under fire? Isn't it time for the current occupant of the White House, officially acclaimed a great statesman by the Nobel committee, to say something to both enemies and friends to assure the peace? Or do we have to sit through another yawner from his soporific press aide? ...
    As I write these lines, the current occupant of the White House remains silent, as in Silence Gives Consent. In this case, to war…

[Hat tip for James Madison quote to the Patriot Post]

There’s no charity in Viva Palestina [updated]

Following the appearance  of Gaza faux-tilla fool Nicola Enchmarch last night on the alleged current affairs show Sunday,  I’m re-posting this critique from last week of the organisation for which she works.

Repeaters have been reporting that New Zealand woman Nicola Enchmarch, being held in Israeli custody, works for what they is an “aid organisation” called Viva Palestina.

HERALD: “Enchmarch is a member of the British aid group Viva Palastina”
STUFF: “ ... one of a number of people[working for] aid organisation Viva Palestina”
TV3: “…working for a British aid organisation - Viva Palestina”

If Viva Palestina is an aid organisation, then I’m the UN Secretary General.

Viva Palestina was founded by George Galloway.  Remember him?  The former British MP who received millions of dollars stolen from the United Nations Oil-For-Food Program, in exchange for his public denunciations of the UN sanctions against Iraq.  Who once told Saddam Hussein, "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.” Who recalls the day that the Soviet Union fell as the worst day of his lifeWho used to fly the Palestinian flag over the Dundee Town Hall. Who set up the Mariam Appeal as an anti-sanction “charity”  whose stated purpose was "to provide medicines, medical equipment and medical assistance to the people of Iraq.” But a four-year inquiry by the House of Commons Select Committee on Standards and Privileges found massive amounts of incontrovertible evidence -- including bank records and Iraqi government vouchers -- that Galloway had used the money largely to enrich himself, suspending from the House of Commons for his egregious breach of ethics.

This is the founder of the front organisation for which Miss Etchmarch works—an organisation founded by Galloway holding up a bag of money and declaring: “This is not charity ... This is politics.”  One set up explicitly “as a challenge to international law”; one that has given given millions of dollars as well as non-cash aid directly to Hamas.  “It’s not about charity ... but in every way that we cut it, it is political.” That’s how Lamis Deek, a member of both Viva Palestina and Al-Awda, described it.

Viva Palestina does not hold formal charity status; rather (like other radical organisations) it uses the tax-exempt status of The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization/Pastors for Peace (IFCO) as a conduit to funnel funds and materiel to Hamas.

Their last convoy, in January, saw Viva Palestina protestors erupt in violence at the Egyptian-Gaza border, leaving dozens injured and an Egyptian soldier dead.

Viva Palestina is not about charity ... but in every way you cut it, it is political.  And can be violent.

So let’s stop this nonsense about calling it a charity organisation, shall we.

[Thanks to David Horowitz’s Discover the Networks for many of the links.]

UPDATE: It now appears the “peace activists” on board the Mamara who confronted the boarding Israelis with peaceful iron bars, knives and molotov cocktails were recruited by Turkish  organisation IHH, who co-organised the flotilla with the Free Gaza Movement.

    “Better known by its Turkish name (Insani Yardim Vakfi) and acronym (IHH), the Foundation's initial mission was to supply aid to Bosnian Muslims during their conflict with Christian Serbs in the Yugoslavian civil war. To this day, IHH continues to send aid to distressed areas throughout the Middle East – in the form of food, medicine, vocational education, and the construction of schools, hospitals, medical clinics, and mosques. According to Reuters, IHH “has been involved in aid missions in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Indonesia, Iraq, Palestinian territories and other places.” In recent years, IHH has also established branch offices in a number of European countries.
While IHH is involved in the foregoing humanitarian activities, its overall objectives are much broader…”  Read on here.