What to Do About Syria: A Response to Pure Libertarians

As you know, I am one of those conservatives who would be a libertarian if mainstream libertarians did not appear to me to be pacifists. Pacifism is immoral; it’s even more immoral than it is unpractical.

I was asked what I would propose the US should do about the on-going massacre in Syria. I answered but I don’t know what happened to my answer. It may be on Crackpot’s new blog, at http://notesonliberty.wordpress.com/.  Here is my response to the question again, a little refined perhaps.

The Syrian people have been slaughtered by their own dictator and his professional army for more than three months. They use tanks on people. According to the UN, over five thousand civilians have been killed so far. Since it’s easy for a government to bury bodies and difficult for civilians to report their missing relatives in a country where the foreign press is banned, 5,000 is probably an underestimate. The population of Syria is about 25 to 30 million, less than one tenth of ours. Thus, the 5,000 Syrians killed by their government is about equivalent to 40,000 Americans.

For me, personally, the moral question about whether to intervene or not is easy: The current “President” Assad is slaughtering his people because they want representative government. (And yes, I know that “representative government” in Syria may ultimately mean “Islamist.” ) His father, from whom he inherited his fascist regime, killed Americans by proxy for thirty years. He, Assad the Younger, did the same as long as there were Americans in Iraq. It would be a pleasure to kill him. This does not mean that we should. Pleasure isn’t everything, after all.

I would begin by declaring war on the Assad regime though I don’t know how this would be done technically. Or, I would invite Mr Assad to make himself available to the International tribunal for Civil Rights in The Hague, or to any of the Belgian courts that claim universal jurisdiction. The charge would be crimes against humanity.

I would give an individual weapon and ammunition to any Syrian who asked. Right now, the armed forces and the security forces have almost all the weapons. Any additional weapon is almost certainly going to go to the opposition. When it comes to weapons, every little bit helps. Individual weapons can be distributed through Turkey and through our current friend in Lebanon, Christians and Druses. I would also provide many cheap radios.

I would then send planes to take out his tanks whenever it is easy or without danger. The more irregular the pattern, the less the pattern is a pattern, the better. You want Assad’s tankers to crap their pants at the sight of their own tanks. If possible and only if possible, I would try to increase the number of sorties to give government forces the impression that things can only become worse for them. You want to induce mass desertion or cowardice. Keep in mind that any aerial attack on Assad’s forces is better than none.

I would make back-door contact with Assad while all this is going on. I would offer him him and his extended family reasonable asylum.(I am thinking Caribbean.)

I would also make contact with the religious leaders of the large Alawite minority – who cannot all be offered asylum. They are Assad’s group. They have held high office under him and his father for forty years. They have good reasons to worry about the after-Assad. I would offer my services to help them negotiate the after-Assad with other groups. I would ask other Arab states with an army and who owe us to guarantee the agreement. Saudi Arabia and Iraq come to mind.

For libertarian purists who would argue that even those minimal efforts cost to much, I would propose that the US administration attempt to cover the costs through subscription rather than taxes. I would send a check for $100 right now to see even part of this plan implemented. At any rate, a subscription is a kind of vote, isn’t it?

How about the risk of inviting the military intervention of other countries? Russia would not risk to go to war with us on behalf of Syria because that country is just not important enough to the Russians’ game. Same, and more so, for China. Iran might try to intervene on behalf of its ally Assad and guess what I think about that possibility!

And yes, I have noticed also the silence of Israel on the Assad travails. You would think the Israelis would be overjoyed. Apparently, they are not. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if it turned out the both Assad were Mossad agents? A rumor worth spreading in any case, as part of an offensive against the Syrian fascist regime.

Our present neutrality in the Syrian conflict is disgusting, shameful. It’s a national moral failure. It reminds me of the Spanish Civil War.

My Story Telling: An Update

I am working on my memoirs, “I Used to Be French: An Immature Autobiography.” I am trying to wrap up. And no, I am not whining, I am bragging: I have trouble finishing because every time I proofread, I come up spontaneously with good additional material I want to incorporate.

The new material comes in two kinds. One kind is  anecdotal details that would liven up or flesh out  the existing text. This happens because writing is thinking and it fires up the memory part of the brain. As I write, I keep remembering things I did not know I had even stored.

The second material trying to press itself into my narrative is made up of linkages between the past and the present. It comprises many illustrations of the idea that “the child is father to the man.”

This blog is cutting into my re-write time. It’s a problem.

Incidentally, if you know an agent or a publisher, don’t be shy about asking me for excerpts to send. There are links  here to excerpts already on this blog but they are links to text that is now fairly obsolete. Use those if you wish anyway. Thank you.

Communist Dinosaurs

I watch a French two-and-a-half-hour weekly television show that’s pretty good in most respects. It mixes no- hold-barred interviews of politicians with talks with movie directors, authors and artists, including singers.  There is a presidential election beginning in France too. It relies on an an incomplete primary system. To make a long story short, anyone with a grievance or an idea who can get 500 signatures of I don’t know whom can run. That makes for a lively and exotic first round of  balloting. In the second round, things get serious. In any case, this time, there is an explicitly “communist” candidate (Trotskyst branch). She runs for an organization that calls itself “Workers’ Struggle” (Lutte ouvriere).

It’s not clear what her party considers as “workers” but from the candidate’s choice of examples of struggle in her interview last night, there is a strong preference for conventional blue-collar and pink-collar workers. Of course, manufacturing jobs are vanishing from France as they have been doing here. People employed in manufacturing are becoming accordingly scarcer. Bad strategic bet that, defining yourself as a workers’ party when you also define workers that way, (going away, going away, gone!).

The “communist” candidate discourse is loud as it is transparent. Let me summarize:

A   “Workers” are “exploited” by the “corporations.” That is shameful and unbearingly unfair.

B  “Workers” are laid off by “corporations.” That is shameful and unbearingly unfair too.

This vision of the world raises several questions:

Don’t workers stop being “exploited” when they are laid off? Isn’t that the solution?

What does “exploited” mean anyway? (The term used to have a specific if fallacious meaning in Karl Marx’s time. None of his alleged followers have any idea what it is.) When I was a college professor I think I was exploited because my employer did not even have the decency to provide me with a car. It even charged me for parking! Bastards, exploiters!

The communist candidate blames the “big corporations” but not the small ones for “exploiting” the workers. She does not seem to know that in France as here,  workers can’t wait to trade up their “exploitation” by small employers for the more generous “exploitation” of big ones.

Who owns the corporation the candidate is denouncing? She seemed to think it was their CEOs. I wish it were true. It would solve a lot of problems. It’s rarely true at all. She would be surprised to learn that the legal owners and those who get the “dividends,” if any, are people like me, and insurance companies, and retirement funds, and even labor unions.

No one in France is much worried about the “communist.” Just about everyone including herself would be surprised if she garnered even 2% of the votes in the fist round of the French presidential election. Me, I am glad I heard her. It’s good to visit with dinosaurs once in a while to remember why they vanished!

Back to the USA: I am glad to report that during the second Florida Republican presidential debate, I did not hear Ron Paul make a single patently false, invented statement. Maybe, I got to him.

Brave Syrians continue to die day- by-day trying to get what we take for granted: The right to be governed by those they chose. And yes, that may include Islamists. What do you think? That bloody fascist tyranny is better (for us) ?  Syrians also die because of the Obama policy of “engaging” the likes of Assad. He, Assad, is using tanks on the soft bodies of unarmed civilians to make sure he does not miss. Ron Paul followers assure me that the slaughter of Syrians is none of our business. Apparently they think it’s OK for someone else to  conduct mass slaughter as long as it’s done neatly within the boundaries of a nation-state. That’s the same nation-state libertarians say they want to abolish.

Do you recognize the same kind of inconsistency I just showed you above, in France?

Arabs and America

Below, I lifted something from the Wall Street Journal (01/26/12) as an attempt to influence my friend Prof. Amburgey, a frequent visitor to this blog. This shortish quote is also intended for the many conventional libertarians I know who have bought the Leftist tale of the world’s horror of America and of the particular hatred Arabs, specifically, feel for this country.

The author, “Ed” Hussain, appears to be a Muslim since his first name is “Mohammed.” He is a British author. As the beginning of the article from which I lifted this piece indicates, Mr Hussain can probably read Arabic. He has an MA in Middle-Eastern Studies and he studied in Damascus. (This info is available in Wikipedia.) In this piece, he writes from Cairo.

“The Arab revolutionaries did not look to China or Russia for a model of government. They looked to four-year presidential terms, inspired directly by American democracy. Islamist leaders such as Tunisia’s Mohamed Ghannouchi condemn French secularism but highlight American accommodation of religion as a model of a secular state that is less hostile to religion. Across the Arab world, satellite dishes face west. Hollywood films, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Jeans, Baseball caps, Facebook and Twitter are the widespread norm.

Even those Egyptians who shout anti-American claptrap – the Muslin Brotherhood and their Salafist cousins– crave meetings and photo-ops with visiting American politicians, such as Sen. John Kerry recently. The seek an American stamp of approval that bestows legitimacy, modernity, and association with global power. Without it, they remain pariahs.”

There is nothing new to me in those observations. I have been saying the same things for years. It’s good though to have another person, one with much better specific credentials than mine, say it aloud.

Arabs don’t hate us. A great many of of them just want to be us.

“Secular Theocracy- Part Two” by David Theroux

Below is the link to the second part of an article by David Theroux I posted a couple of weeks ago. David Theroux is the founder of the Independent Institute and its current president. I have major differences with the Institute about American foreign policy but Theroux is well worth reading anyway.

The second link below is to the whole article with footnote.
Part 2:
http://blog.independent.org/2012/01/12/secular-theocracy-the-foundations-and-folly-of-modern-tyranny-part-2/

The full article with footnotes is here:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3206

Ron Paul’s Secret Information

I wonder if I am the only one who pays detailed attention to Congressman Paul’s statements. I suspect many of his supporters go into a trance whenever they hear his voice.

Ron Paul did it again at the Tampa debate on Monday night 1/23/12. I mean spread some information that only he, Congressman Paul, is privy to. Mr Paul declared clearly, under his own power, with no prompting whatsoever, that this country is presently conducting a blockade against Iran. He used the word four times at least, both as a noun and as a verb. And, no, he was not speaking prospectively ( “If we conduct a blockade, in the future ….”) but declaratively and in the present tense.

Now, a blockade is a physical act of interdiction where you actually prevent ships and planes from reaching the country being blockaded. In a blockade, you sink ships if they won’t stop. It’s a naked act of war. The US conducted a blockade of Cuba for a couple of weeks during the missile crisis. The UK blockaded Germany during all of WWI, slowly starving Germany of food and raw materials.

I see three possible explanations for Mr Paul’s strange declaration:

1 The US is actually conducting a secret blockade against Iran and Mr Paul found out about it and no one else did;

2 Mr Paul has the right to modify the English language by himself (before he is even elected President!) anytime he wishes so that a “table” may become a “chair and “drinking,” “eating,” also anytime he wishes.

3  As, I have suggested before, Mr Paul is watching his own movie under his eyelids that no one else sees.

The third explanation seems to me the most likely to be right because Ron Paul is so obviously a sincere man. He does not lie. He believes everything he says.

Update on America and on the World

Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary by a big margin. I know that’s only South Carolina, perhaps the most conservative state. Still, that’s a major rebuke to serious candidate Romney. The speeches both gave after Gingrich won delineate clearly two major paths for the Republican Party. Romney’s speech was colorless, odorless, rich in platitudes. It was the kind of speech unfairly associated with “moderates” who deserve better.

Gingrich spoke incisively, precisely about what agitates conservatives like me who are not born- again-Christians nor any of the other stereotypes the liberal press has invented. We want a smaller government that’s not wasteful and that does not get us into debt for two  generations to come. Gingrich’s speech was well received for another reason: It spoke of simple pride in America, not of imperial pride, not of a wish to dominate, not of hubris but of simple dignity.

There is a pervasive feeling that we lost our national dignity during the three -year Obama presidency. It was not all his fault. Certainly, a major contributor is our large national debt that was already too large when he took office. However, it’s fair to charge Obama for this loss of dignity because he told us repeatedly that America should become a smaller, more ordinary country, and it has. If you tell Mom in anger, ” I wish you died” and she dies, don’t be surprised if your brothers are angry at you. And, President Obama, whose middle name is  still Hussein, bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, the grandchild of camel thieves who happens to have captured a lot of oil.

Gingrich’s rise will pose a problem for  conservative rationalists like me. On the one hand, his vision of American and of the world is mine. On the other hand, I don’t trust his temperament. It’s not the accusations of a bitter ex-wife that bother me. It’s the undisputed report that he has a half-million line of credit for jewelry. Why, I ask?

Ron Paul had an honorable showing, as usual. I keep asking his obviously sincere supporters to assure me that they are assured themselves that he is not preparing a third-party campaign, a sort of  “me or Obama” blackmail. I know a fair number of Paulistas. Some have heard my appeal. None has volunteered.

For the rest of the world, it’s simple. Europe continues to fall apart in a predictable manner and for predictable reasons. I can’t imagine what would stop the decline. The problem is that the continent mostly provides a comfortable life. The long-term unemployed will receive their welfare checks until the very moment when there is no money left at all in the till. I have been following the preliminaries to the French national elections on television. There is no sense of crisis dramatic enough to induce the desperate actions that are needed there. If you replayed the 1990s election tapes, I am not sure how many would notice. I spy on my young French nieces and nephews and on their friends via Facebook. At 25, most  don’t seem to think they will ever have to make a living. Of the ten or twelve I encounter on Facebook regularly, only one is acting like a go-getter. I knew her when she was fourteen. She was already exceptionally enterprising then.

Elsewhere, Islamists have been busy.  (I say, “Islamists.” That means  those who militantly want to expand the Muslim religion into the political sphere.) Egyptian Islamists took the revolution from the hands of the secular democrats who started it. They seem to have done it fair and square. No more gauche military tyranny there, it seems. Instead they may or may not establish something familiar to inhabitants of Christian countries: fourteenth century religious despotism. Unlike us then though, they will not burn people at the stake for their ideas. Rather, they will stone women to death for having sex outside of marriage. (That would reduce the female population of Santa Cruz by 4/5, at least.) In Tunisia, Islamists have won too.  A Tunisian acquaintance of mine just returned from a visit to his homeland reports that his mother said to him,” I did not know we had people like that in this country.” The man himself, I caught just as he was back, seems both perplexed and shaken by what he saw.

In Nigeria, Islamists are massacring  Christians. Elsewhere in the world, in Iraq, in Pakistan, Islamists are slaughtering other Muslims. Let’s be fair: Islamists almost always assassinate more Muslims than they kill anyone else. I don’t want to be labeled an “Islamophobe.”  So, I keep waiting for a Muslim organization with some credentials to show me the error of my simple perceptions.  I would pay attention if I found even a single sincere Muslim, also with credentials, to correct me. I am waiting for this to happen too. And waiting, and waiting.

I WILL BE AWAY FROM THIS BLOG AND FROM MY COMPUTER FOR A FEW DAYS. TALK TO YO LATER.

Reality according to La Fontaine (and Aesop)

If I had children today, I would make them memorize this
 fable as I had to memorize the French version when I was
 seven or eight. Scared the hell out of me, fortunately!

The Grasshopper and the Ant

  The Grasshopper having sung
All the summer long,
Found herself lacking food
When the North Wind began its song.
Not a single little piece
Of fly or grub did she have to eat.

  She went complaining of hunger
To the Ant's home, her neighbour,
Begging there for a loan
Of some grain to keep herself alive
Til the next season did arrive,
"I shall pay you," she said
"Before next August, on my word as an animal.
I'll pay both interest and pricipal."

  The Ant was not so inclined:
this not being one of her faults.
"What did you do all summer?
Said she to the grasshopper.

  "Night and day I sang,
I hope that does not displease you."

  "You sang? I will not look askance.
But now my neighbour it's time to dance." 

==========================================

	La Cigale et la Fourmi

  La Cigale, ayant chanté
Tout l'été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue :
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau.
Elle alla crier famine
Chez la Fourmi sa voisine,
La priant de lui prêter
Quelque grain pour subsister
Jusqu'à la saison nouvelle.
"Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle,
Avant l'Oût, foi d'animal,
Intérêt et principal. "
La Fourmi n'est pas prêteuse :
C'est là son moindre défaut.
Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud ?
Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse.
- Nuit et jour à tout venant
Je chantais, ne vous déplaise.
- Vous chantiez ? j'en suis fort aise.
Eh bien! dansez maintenant.

The French version is the original. The English translation is
 by Michael Star. It's good except that "cigale" means
 "cicada," not "grasshopper." Translator seems to
 have reverted to the original Aesop on this word
 rather than follow La Fontaine's version.

Paul Does it Again?

In the Republican presidential debate that took place yesterday – January 17th – in South Carolina, Ron Paul said, “We are still in Iraq.” Don’t bother to check, he said it, with exactly those words.

Would one of the many Ron Paul supporters who appear on my Facebook  and on this blog explain what he meant?

I think that Ron Paul volunteers false information at every debate. I have been promoting on my blog the idea that he should no be president because he has a tenuous grasp of facts.

Here is a Facebook answer by a Santa Cruz Ron Paul partisan who comments on my blog often:

Upwards of 17,000 military personnel and private security contractors will remain in Iraq to guard diplomatic personnel, continue training Iraqi forces, maintain “situational awareness” and other functions.”
http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1922&Itemid=69

I, Dr D., will give Congressman Paul the benefit of doubt on that one. I wish he were clearer because so much of what he says is patently false, made up.

I can’t look it up conveniently because Wikipedia is closed today but I would bet we have many more than 17,000 military in Germany. I realize, Paul would deplore that fact too but I am putting the number for Iraq in context.

I hope all readers have noticed that Iraq is next to Iran. It’s  also a good listening post because of the large Shiite population there. Of course, it does not matter to Congressman Paul who has said repeatedly that Iran is not a threat and that if it is a threat, it’s our fault.

Likewise, in 1,000, the Christian feudal monarchies of Europe were not a threat to the Muslim Middle-Eastern region.

The Arab Spring: Confession

Different kinds of  Islamists are on the ascendency in Arab countries that chased away their dictators. There is little doubt that, to various extents, those Islamist parties are already trying to increase the influence of religion on their societies. Much of their program is reactionary, a wish for a return to darker times. When they declare that the fate of women will improve if they have their way, I don’t believe them. It’s that simple. The prediction several of my friends made that the forthcoming Islamist- dominated democratic governments would be more dangerous to Israel than were their despotic predecessors sounds right as I write.

That’s not the outcome I was hoping for. I thought there was a chance that secular democrats (like me but also including Leftists) would be in the majority. At this point, it’s not to be. I was too optimistic. This is a full  confession. I can’t do any better.  This being said, what are you saying? What are you thinking? That relegating millions of Arabs to endless tyranny was your preferred outcome?

The question seems to me inescapable.

PS to my Arab readers: Welcome.

I am concerned about the welfare of Israel for reasons that are in no way religious. I am not Jewish, never have been. (Look at my last name for sake!) I am not either one of those Christians who hold to a biblical prophecy where the state of Israel plays a role. I am pro-Israel, the same way I am pro-Turkey.