An Illegal, Unconstitutional War? Reality Check (Amended 5/25/12)

Some libertarians, misguided by Ron Paul, among several false leaders and several bad leaders, habitually, even frequently denounce the war in Afghanistan and the war of liberation of Iraq as “illegal”and “unconstitutional.” Such statements meet with little overt contradiction because the public has grown tired of both wars, the one that we left behind in Iraq and the one that’s more or less continuing in Afghanistan. These wars lasted too long for the American national ADD. In addition much of public opinion considers the charges of illegality and of unconstitutionality thoroughly irrelevant. Many more don’t even understand such charges. I think I understand well the charge of unconstitutionality and I consider it important. I care only a little about the charge of illegality. It’s too vague to be important and too absurd on its face to merit much consideration. Yet, it may be a conceptual step to the charge of unconstitutionality, the one that merits attention.

Right now, I cannot perform the research “lite” but nevertheless time consuming required to deal with the constitutionality of the former war against Saddam Hussein. I can however try to throw some light on the constitutionality of the on-going war in Afghanistan against the Taliban barbarians and against their allies.

Note on 5/25/12:  My Ron Paul devoted follower- in- residence, Brandon Christensen, insisted several times in comments to this essay that Congressman Paul never called the Afghan war illegal or unconstitutional. Rather than review several tedious hours of the presidential debates where I heard Paul say that, I insert this warning here. If you believe Christensen, you may want to read what follows as a free-floating essay on the constitutionality of that war. Incidentally, Christensen himself, the loyal Paulista, has not responded to my invitation to declare whether he, Christensen, thinks the war is legal and constitutional. What he thinks is a secret.

Before I begin, let me say that I recognize that the war in Afghanistan is winding down. It will end almost irrespective of anything anyone does except in the unlikely case another massive attack against us originates there. I am sorry that war is ending the way it’s ending. I mean, with the democratic world displaying its lack of resolve for all believers in mass murder to see. I also think there is a fair chance that the Taliban savages will take over the country anew after we leave. Accordingly, it’s possible that again and again Afghanistan will serve as a haven for violent jihadists who have wet-dreams about assassinating large numbers of infidels. Incidentally, if you study the issue even a little you will soon discover – or re-discover – that “infidels” deserving of assassination by the violent jihadist include many more Muslims than non-Muslims of any kind. On May 19^th 2012, the victims were 90+ members of the Yemenite armed forces. Periodically, the victims are the subdued Shiite Muslims in Pakistan; earlier they were even Iraqi Shiite Muslims who were themselves busy trying to kill Americans.

My wife’s share and my share of the cost of the ten-year war, together, averaged $400 annually so far. That’s about as much as I spent on tobacco when I was still smoking. It’s less than we currently spend on wine, and we have humble tastes and my wife hardly drinks any. It’s not much money to keep reminding the many mean, America-hating people in the world that we area a tough nut to crack.

Yes, of course, I don’t forget the 3,000 brave Americans who died in Afghanistan, nor the hundreds of NATO allies. The Americans died for a noble and valuable cause, to establish the notion that killing Americans and protecting those who kill Americans bring pain and suffering. Of course, every death is one too many but, if you believe this literally you have to surrender to the worst barbarity. It’s a kind of moral blackmail for those who use it. And, of course, I find despicable the crocodile tears of secret pacifists who call the Afghan war illegal. That just war has cost a ten times fewer American lives in ten years than traffic accidents cost in a single year. Yet, anti-war types never never go after traffic mortality although it’s obvious to any thinking person that many traffic deaths are avoidable. ( Driver’s license canceled on first DUI conviction; five years in jail on the second.) Anti-war persons of all feathers believe that it it’s no big deal if Americans kill Americans in a drunken stupor as long as the killers are at the wheel of an automobile. Some moral compass!

The charge of unconstitutionality of the Afghanistan war must depend on what the US Constitution has to say about war. Here it is, below in its entirety. It’s amazingly brief:

ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8The Congress shall have Power:To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress…. ARTICLE II, SECTION 2 The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States when called into actual service of the United State

In addition, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 limits the ability of the President to wage war without Congressional assent. By doing so, of course, the resolution recognizes de facto the right of the President to wage war of his own accord to some extent. This ordinary act of Congress obviously does not modify any part of the Constitution.

There are several precedents of presidential autonomy in matters of war. Here is one: In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson attacked the Barbary Pirates (of Libya!) and kicked their asses. What happened is that after the United States separated from the UK, the pirates figured the US as a state was too far away and too small to do anything about attacks against its merchantmen and looting and slaving taking place in the Med. Pres. Jefferson became annoyed.

“Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was ‘unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.’” He told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.”^[14] Although Congress never voted on a formal declaration of war, they did authorize the President to instruct the commanders of armed American vessels to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli “and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.” (Wikipedia)

Pres. Jefferson thus struck the pirate states without benefit of a formal declaration of war by Congress. He must have thought that when other people shoot at you, you shoot back, that you don’t need permission to do so. Congress did nothing to stop Jefferson. It seems Congress thought that Jefferson knew pretty well what the Constitution meant. I am wondering if Congressman Ron Paul, or any of his followers, would call the war against the Barbary pirates “unconstitutional.” I am not just asking for the sake of asking. I would like to see any of Paul’s followers answer this question here in writing.

The fact that the War Powers Act and the actions of several respected presidents show that the American executive may wage war with the passive acquiescence of Congress however does not mean that the War of Afghanistan was started that way

What happened is that President Clinton several time threatened the Taliban regime militarily if it did not stop hosting and helping Al Qaida. The fact is that President Clinton acted on his military threat. The feeble Clintonian military actions in Afghanistan however proved insufficient to motivate the Taliban regime to interfere with Al Qaida while it was preparing the 9/11 massacre. Thus, the American response to 9/11 was not written on a blank page. It was not a kind of Pearl Harbor in reverse. (I think libertarian commentaries imply something like that.) Even the semi-literate Taliban rulers had all the information at their disposal to know that a state of war existed between them and the US. That was several years before 9/11/2001.

Seven days after the 9/11 attack, a joint resolution of Congress gave the President the power to use all necessary force against those he determined planned, authorized or aided the 9/11 attack as well as those who harbored those who committed the attack. (This wording is paraphrased from Public Law 107-40, 107^th Congress of the United States, first session; September 18^th 2001. If you don’t like it, give your own wording right here, please.)

The joint resolution that begun the present war in Afghanistan passed by 420 to 1 in the House of Representatives. It passed by 98 to 0 (zero) in the Senate.

I don’t know how any war could be more legal than this.

Now, if you want to argue that the omission of the sacred words, “declare” and “war” is enough to make the war unconstitutional, go ahead, do it openly.

Libertarian leaders who say the Afghan war is unconstitutional or illegal, and first and foremost Congressman Ron Paul, don’t seem to know what they are talking about. Or else, they are closet pacifists who don’t wish to pay the political price of their moral convictions, ethical cowards, if you will.

If there is some sophisticated constitutional argument to the contrary that escapes me, I would be glad to publish it on this blog integrally and repeatedly. I will not treat especially well however attempts to change the subject under the pretext of picking up this challenge.

Ron Paul’s 9/11 (with Helpless Comments from True Believers)

I have been pointing out for months on this blog that Congressman and Republican presidential candidate candidate Ron Paul frequently volunteers statements that are false, or incredible, or too difficult to verify. I have stated repeatedly that I distinguish between inaccuracies politicians may make when surprised by a question for which they are not prepared and pseudo-information they volunteer freely to aggrandize their cause or themselves. My several postings on the topic have been greeted by rational discussions as well as by bouts of insanity. There has also been innocent, stubborn denial, of the kind you would expect when reasonable adults get caught in flagrante of hero worship.

I have suggested several times that Congressman Paul is himself cracked. I based my judgment not on the nature of his followers but on the sum of his own many nonsensical statements. I was also impressed by the fact that Ron Paul asserted that Ron Paul did not read the Ron Paul Newsletter that published racist statements several times in the nineties.

Today, I am going to depart from the distinction outlined above. I will refer to statements Mr Paul made off the cuff, on the spur of the moment, and videoed on the spot. He was responding to a woman who I think was a supporter not a hostile party attempting to entrap him.

As he was standing a in an identified room surrounded by people, Mr Paul was trying hard to discuss the Federal Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and the alleged sinister relationship between them. A youngish woman who seemed to me like an enthusiastic well-wisher interrupted him and asked:

“Why can’t you come out and tell the truth about 9/11/”

Ron Paul replied distinctly, “ Because I can’t handle the controversy… I have too much on my plate.”

And then he resumed talking about banks.

What can the woman have meant? Are there any other interpretation than the one that comes to your mind instinctively?

Here is what Ron Paul did not say in response, “ What truth?” “What do you mean?”

The video is embedded in an article by Bryan Preston, a conservative who is evidently hostile to the Paul candidacy. The article is on the REAL CLEAR POLITICS  website and  dated December 10^th 2011. I viewed it on April 27^th 2012. It is only one of several reports from people who are themselves of a libertarian bent about Ron Paul and 9/11. The main witness is an long-time aide who, of course, would be called a “disgruntled employee” by true believers

I emphasize the video because it allows me to say that I heard Dr Paul myself utter those words. I have no doubt that it was Ron Paul I was watching and listening to. If someone wants to argue that what my eyes saw and my ears heard was just a movie production with an actor or otherwise a montage and not what I think I saw and heard, I hope he will take the trouble to do it on this blog. But if you are one of the people who really believe that any part of the the US government took a part in setting up the 9/11 aggression against our society, please stay away. We have nothing to talk about if you think this is tenable. If wish you well though wherever you may be, in a large enclosed park with tall trees and white-smocked attendants.

In the meantime, I believe more then ever that Ron Paul is cracked. I am disappointed and very sorry that he has succeeded in representing libertarian thinking to the rest of America. Libertarian ideas are unconventional, radical enough on their own. The last thing we need is a spokesman of dubious sanity.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/12/27/ron_paul_is_a_911_truther_amp_that_disqualifies_him_269938.html

Ron Paul’s Credibility: A Wrap-Up

In December 2011 or a little earlier, on the occasion of the Republican presidential primary debates, I began monitoring seriously Congressman Ron Paul’s statements. I did it because I am small-government Republican, someone who could be a libertarian, (but not easily.) For those who follow us from a foreign country: Mr Paul is a long-time Representative from Texas. He is running to be the Republican presidential candidate.He is favored by libertarian elements within the Republican Party and by many members of the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party does not seem to have a candidate of its own in this round of presidential election.

BY THE WAY, IF A DEMAND WERE EXPRESSED FOR EXPLANATIONS OF AMERICAN POLITICS, OR OF AMERICAN LIFE IN GENERAL BY NON-AMERICAN READERS LIVING ELSEWHERE THAN THE US, I WOULD BE GLAD TO RESPOND TO IT ONCE IN A WHILE. JUST SPEAK UP.

Following Paul’severy word, I soon discovered that there was almost (see below) no debate when Mr Paul didn’t make some strangely false declaration. I am not referring here to the usual politicians’ exaggerations or to spontaneous ridiculous answers to unexpected gotcha questions. I mean false information volunteered by Mr Paul that happened to support his quite consistent line of reasoning, his doctrine, in other words. I have reported periodically on some of Mr Paul’s misstatements. Paul followers have responded. My comments and the responses, all unedited, of course, are available on this blog, arranged by date. If you want to look for yourself you might also conduct a search of my postings using the key words “Ron Paul.” The comments are appended to each relevant essay. Below I review the Paul statements to which I took exceptions and I summarize what I think are the replies or explanations by Paul followers. Some responders/commentators will complain that I betray their thought. It’s all there for anyone to judge.

Here is a little political introduction: I generally agree with the congressman’s ideas regarding domestic policies. However, I think Dr Paul would be a foreign policy disaster on the scale of an President Obama or worse, if he ever became president. His isolationist ideas on foreign policy, I think, are based on false perceptions and tightly chained to adherence to a libertarian doctrine hardly troubled by simple facts. Incidentally, I know well that Dr Paul and mainstream libertarians object to being described as “isolationists.” I don’t mind that they mind. Let me admit, also incidentally, that I do not dispute the general libertarian analysis on the disastrous consequences that war has for the autonomy of civil society, for individual freedom from state oppression. However, this recognition does not require that I close my eyes and shut my ears to the nature of the world I which I live. Neither does this consciousness command suicide.

In brief, as I have said repeatedly, I believe Mr Paul listens to a different drummer. Or rather, he hears a whole bunch of drummers in his mind that no one else can hear. The mainstream press ignores his many failed grapplings with reality because it thinks (correctly) that Mr Paul will not be president, no matter what. Mr Paul’s followers don’t mind his missteps either. Some are too busy or too ill-informed to notice. Many, I suspect, don’t want to notice because the Paul group is largely (not completely) a cult. Some of his embarrassed rational followers cite his age (my age, as it happens) as an excuse for his missteps. That is, they argue implicitly that a man too old to avoid talking nonsense at debates is young enough to have his hand on the button. Congressman’s Paul’s followers are simply not inclined to look too closely into his pronouncements; I mean, the way I look into every single presidential candidates’ statements, for example, and no mercy given. After all, if I have my way, one of them will have his index finger on the same red button. Better I give each of them the middle finger first.

Dec 31st 2011

Below is a paraphrase, not an exact quote from Mr Paul. The number though is exact.

The Iraq war and the Afghanistan war are not only very wasteful, they are stupidly wasteful. So, for example, the US armed forces spend 20 billion dollars each year in those war theaters on air-conditioning alone.

The number if absurd on its face. One frequent critic of mine affirms that he proved right the figure or the statement in which it was embedded. I have no idea what he means. Someone else referenced a general that may well have been Paul’s source, if he had a source. Read the general and decide what he, the general, is up to. Ask yourself if you have ever heard of anyone doing cost accounting the way the general does.

January 8, 2012

Paul said that (American) minorities suffered more in war than whites. That’s not true. In current wars, since Vietnam, they die less, and they get wounded less often. Whatever else could “suffering” mean, lower pay raises?

In connection with Pres. Obama’s then-recent speech on cutting the US military budget, Paul also said clearly that those are cuts in increases to military expenditures, not absolute cuts. As one who has been reading the Wall Street Journal for the past thirty years and also for the past thirty days, I tell you that this is not true. I think it sounded good at the time so, the Congressman just said it, irresponsibly.

In rare form that day, Paul also said in New Hampshire that if the Straight of Hormuz were closed (by the Iranians or, presumably, by anyone), Eastern Europe would be “de-stabilized.” Makes no sense at all. Why Eastern Europe? He gives the impression that he knows something we don’t. Not in this case, for sure.

January 17^th 2012

In the Republican presidential debate that took place January 17^th or 16th in South Carolina, Ron Paul said, “We are still in Iraq.” Don’t bother to check, he said it, with exactly those words. Only one problem: “We” are not there unless you decide that contractors are “us.” Most people would think he meant “our military is still in Iraq.” It, the military, was already not in Iraq at the time the statement was made. This is at least a grossly misleading statement. misleading in a direction that happens to promote his isolationism.

January 2th^d 2012

Ron Paul did it again at the Tampa debate on Monday night 1/23/12 or 1/22/12. I mean he 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, the United States of America, 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. There was no blockade, there is no blockade, except in Mr Paul’s mind.

On February 07 2012, I challenged the Ron Paul website by email to give the source of declaration of Dr Paul’s about the Mossad, the Israeli CIA. Dr Paul had stated that the head of the Mossad had declared that an Iranian nuclear bomb would pose no “existential threat” to Israel. I received no answer from his campaign. Instead, a reader guided me to an interview by the same head of Mossad.

The head of the Mossad did say what Congressman Paul had reported he said. I was wrong to doubt it. I WAS WRONG. It was all my fault. I did not think long enough about the word: existential threat. See my mea culpa and explanation following on Feb 14th.

February 16th, 2012

A quaint statement issued by the candidate himself that he, Ron Paul, received more money contributions from the military than other Rep. candidates lead to a striking demonstration of the absurdity of the figures on which the claim is based. It highlighted the shocking lack of criticality of his shock troops. No one is watching; the candidate is allowed to run wild, quite wild if in his quiet way.

February 22^nd 2012

Dr Paul pointed out that Iran was “surrounded” by “forty-five bases.” I assume he meant American military bases. This “surrounding,” I understood the Congressman to argue, would justify Iran’s nervousness and therefore its apparent bellicosity. I protested that the encirclement statement was pure invention.

In response, Paul supporters produced, first and second, a map showing patently false information. Of course, this fact in itself, re-enforces my impression that Paul supporters are not serious about facts. It’s not difficult to eye-check a map, after all. Following this false start, there was much back and forth. And then, I agreed that the Paul statement was not false and not an invention if you only stretched the meaning of the word “base,” of the word “military, “and, especially, of the word “surrounded.” (There was no need to stretch the meaning of the word “American,” fortunately.)

Looking back on the exchange, I am inclined to take back my admission. There is a kind of Bermuda triangle logical problem involved: How far does the alleged triangle extend? How far can you go and still declare that a base contributes to “surrounding” Iran? One Paul supporter included Djibouti. Why not the much more significant military bases in Germany, I ask? And how about military installations in New Jersey?

I will agree though that the Paul “surrounded” statement is probably more true than I thought it was at first. This discovery makes me more optimistic about the future, from a military standpoint, than I used to be.

On Feb 29^th 2012 in the Michigan primary. Paul said two memorable things :

1 The wars we have had for ten years, he said (I assume he means Iraq and Afghanistan), have added four trillion dollars to the US national debt ($4,000,000,000,000). The statement surprised me only moderately. (It amounts to about $13,000 per American. )My problem is that again, I have no idea where the information comes from. I even doubt the contribution of the wars to the national debt can be calculated. Yet, I would be happy if this figure were merely a pretty good approximation. I would say it’s fine even if the order of magnitude were right. How demanding is this? At any rate, I sure hope this large amount included the 20 billion dollars per year just air-conditioning American forces in the two relevant countries Paul said it cost. (See above!)

2 The congressman announced that there was a “transfer of wealth from the middle class” to the rich. That’s not a surprising statement since it’s also the basis of the Obama class war. What is surprising is the way this transfer takes place, according to the congressman. It is through the erosion of the currency, the US dollar’s value, says Dr Paul. I don’t know how this could be. I have no quarrel with the idea that the US dollar has lost much value in say, 20 years, relative to something, to gold in particular. What I don’t know is how what is lost by the “middle-class” through loss of value of the currency (whatever that is) comes to accrue to the benefit of “the rich.” Here again, I am open-minded. Please, help.

There was no response to my second question, the question regarding the transfer of wealth. Another Paul dream, I guess, a nightmare, in this case.

Libertarian economist Fred Folvary of NotesOnLiberty suggested an interesting answer to my question regarding the origin of the Paul figure about the cost of the wars. He referred me to Paul Stiglitz, Nobel winner and idol to the American Left. I have not read the Stiglitz book of reference and Prof. Stiglitz’s status with leftists does not make his calculations wrong. (I did read another one of his books which convinced me  never to read another one because it contained so much intellectual dishonesty. But that’s a subjective personal response, of course.) Why am not surprised that Mr Paul gets some of his information from left-wing sources? (Does not make the info false, again.)

I am fair: On January 27^th 2012, I stated:

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, by that time, I had got to him after all!

Now, of course, there remains the really important issue of whether Congressman Paul ever accused the Bush administration or parts thereof of being complicit in 9/11. I keep dismissing this allegation in my mind and forgetting it but it keeps coming up and don’t mean coming up through liberals or “progressives.” A couple of weeks ago, a local talk-show host in my area of Santa Cruz, California ,brought it up again. I have listened at least to 500 hours of this man’s show and I have never found him in significant error about anything important. He is a small-government conservative I know to be scrupulous with facts.

The apparent origin of this suspicion is that one of Congressman’s Paul’s former staffers accused him squarely of having been a “truther.” Dr Paul denied the whole things just as squarely:

“That’s complete nonsense … I never bought into that stuff and I never talked about it,” Paul said of the accusation made by former staffer Eric Dondero, who wrote in a blog post last week that Paul “engaged in conspiracy theories” surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

From Post Politics retrieved 03/29/12, here is part of the post:

“Ron Paul was opposed to the War in Afghanistan, and to any military reaction to the attacks of 9/11.

He did not want to vote for the resolution. He immediately stated to us staffers, me in particular, that Bush/Cheney were going to use the attacks as a precursor for “invading” Iraq. He engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11, and pretty much forbade us staffers from engaging in any sort of memorial expressions, or openly asserting pro-military statements in support of the Bush administration.”

Paul also denied the same assertion unambiguously in Wikipedia.

Real Clear Politics of December 27^th 2011 describes how incomplete and unsatisfactory the Paul denials are on this matter.

Me, I understand the idea of a “disgruntled employee” trying to do harm and it’s not absurd, not by a long shot. But an evil little voice keeps whispering in a corner of my suspicious mind: Why did the disgruntled employee attack Paul on this issue rather than on the many others probably available to him as a former aide?

Why is my mind “suspicious” about this almost certainly good man? Several reasons. Here is one, a concrete and tangible reason. It’s something undebatably authored by Congressman Paul, not a rumor, not an indirect report, not spur-of- the- moment fallible ejaculation.

Shortly after 9/11, Congressman Paul introduced a piece of legislation he called: the “Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001.” Look it up; read a few lines of it. Reflect on the concept of a “letter of marque” applied to 21^st century conditions. You are not going to believe what you read. Then, wonder why Paul’s followers did not call him on it. As I said, no one is watching the Paul farm. And why would that be?

And, if you believe the “Act” is a serious defense proposal, please write me a note. I am willing to learn but it’s not going to be easy.

Ron Paul’s 20 Billion On Military A.C. – N. S.!

In an attempt to achieve holy humility, I am dealing with objections against the several times I accused Ron Paul of being insouciant about facts. The first time I questioned on his blog Ron Paul’s veracity with respect to the alleged facts he throws out freely, I expressed disbelief at his assertion that the US spent 20 billion (B) a year on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan (“ Ron Paul Won’t Get My Vote” posted December 3st 2011.) I declared, of course, that I did not believe that number for a minute. I also speculated in that posting on the possible sources of such silliness.

In reaction, frequent critic of this blog and fervent Paulista Crackpot sent me a flurry of links to press items supposedly supporting Paul’s statement. The 20 billion figure was so absurd on its face that I did not, at the time, make enough of an effort to activate the links. He sent me again recently, in a more user-friendly form, linkages to three press items purporting to prove to me that this country really spent 20 billion dollars annually on air conditioning warring in Afghanistan and in Iraq (Obviously, for Iraq, the figure has to be applied retrospectively. Not a problem.)

The first item, from the British Telegraph, usually a good source, does not endorse the claim but clearly attributes it. It turns out that the claim was made by a retired general named Steve Anderson. I think no one at all seconded him. It turns out from the Telegraph piece and, more clearly, from the third source, NPR (of all things) that the retired general had an ax to grind. He had been struggling in vain to make the higher brass accept the idea of insulating military tents with foam. It appears from the NPR report that the general had “green”concerns among other concerns of a more directly military nature. (This is not statement on whether the general was right about the foam.)

The Telegraph story gives figures that put the total annual cost of the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq in past years at 171 billion,or possibly at 180 billion. ( I am correcting a little upward for a given Iraq estimate based on 2011, a low year). Thus according to the same report in the Telegraph, air conditioning would account for something like 1/9^th of American military expenditures for the two theaters of war together. Assuming a run-of-the mill underestimate of the total costs of war, air-conditioning would still eat up around 1/10^th (ten per cent) of the whole.

That’s ridiculous, of course, but it may make sense sense if you keep in mind that the general was trying to prove a point. His accounting involves imputing to air conditioning some unknown fraction of the very high expenses naturally incurred when moving large amounts of freight over physically difficult, undeveloped terrain and under the constant threat of military attack.

Again, it’s no clear what formula you would use to attribute a fraction of the total transport expenditure to air conditioning. I note with interest though that if there were zero air conditioning in both countries, the transportation costs of everything else (ammunition, aviation fuel, trucks, parts, food) would probably amount to pretty much the same total. This is all a little fishy.

Yet, the idea of distributing the cost of an infrastructure across all users makes sense; it’s even quite intelligent, in fact. Perhaps, it’s a practice that should be adopted whenever market forces are lacking to tell us the true price of things. But at this point, it’s a highly unusual way of presenting information. It leads to false comparisons. (See above.) And, think of an apple grown in Washington state and transported to New York City to be sold there. If there were no market to tell me the true price of this apple, I am pretty sure that, with General Anderson’s accounting method, I could probably present the New York cost of that single apple as a cool $10 or more.

Note again that no one with credentials equal to those of General Anderson seems to have confirmed his A.C estimate. The Pentagon gave some alternative figures that NPR (of all sources) faithfully reproduces. There is every reason to believe that the Pentagon, a government agency, has to rely on conventional accounting methods. The Pentagon made these two relevant statements:

1     It spends annually for energy $15 billion for all its military operations around the world. “Energy” involves much more than air conditioning, obviously. The whole wold is a lot more than Iraq and Afghanistan.

2   It gives recent figures for fuel costs for Afghanistan alone equivalent to about $2.4 billion annually. It’s difficult to imagine that fuel for air conditioning specifically constitutes more than a fraction of all the fuel used in that theater of war including for trucks, cars, and especially, for airplanes. It seems reasonable to think that the air conditioning expense for Afghanistan is a small fraction of 1/10^th of the amount advanced by General Anderson.

Now, if you think the Pentagon is lying here although it is one of most watched organizations in the world, you must either admit that there is no way to obtain this kind of information or, alternatively, you have better sources. If you do, please share them, don’t hog them, please!

I think that what happened with the bombastic allegation by Congressman Ron Paul is that the information came from some people on his overenthusiastic staff. As is often the case with enthusiasts, they didn’t take the time to study the very documents they use to shore up their pre-conceived notions. I persist in thinking that Mr Paul himself does not crack the whip on helpers with respects to such peccadilloes as saying “10” for “much less than 1.” Congressman Paul and his staff are, at minimum, unusually credulous. I am not sure I would not prefer that they lied like many other politicians and their organizations.

If you insist in spite of everything on believing the absurd 20 billion figure, you might at least console yourself with the thought that the estimated cost of the recent US military intervention in Libya was only 1/20^th as much as the cost of air conditioning the war in Afghanistan and Iraq in a hot year, with full personnel. The liberation of Libya was a steal, I would say!

(This last info is from The Week, the third source Crackpot provided in a futile attempt to overcome implausibility.)

I am not sure whether you will be able to activate the links below that Crackpot sent me. If you can’t, perhaps Crackpot will oblige again.

The UK’s Telegraph on $20 billion a year for air conditioning (which we’ve already gone over a number of times):http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8601975/US-spends-12.5-billion-a-year-on-air-con-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan.html

The Week on $20 billion a year:http://theweek.com/article/index/216786/the-militarys-20-billion-air-conditioning-bill-by-the-numbers

And, last but not least, NPR drops the $20 billion bomb:http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning

Paul Vindicated by Crackpot; Dr D. Confounded and Humbled!

Recently, I posted several short essays suggesting or affirming that Republican candidate Paul has little respect for facts. I gave several examples and challenged his followers to explain, account, reference. My last challenge concerned the Congressman’s statement to the effect that the chief of Mossad had affirmed that Iranian nuclear weapons were not an existential threat to Israel. With respect to that latest challenge to Congressman Paul and to his followers, I stand instructed by Brandon Christensen ( alias CrackpotCrackshot). He sent me an activable link to an article in English in the on-line edition of the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz. I reproduce the title of the piece below.

• Published 01:23 29.12.11
• Latest update 01:23 29.12.11

Mossad chief: Nuclear Iran not necessarily existential threat to Israel

How is this for leaving no ambiguity behind?

Thus, Mr Paul did not (NOT) make up the statement contrary to what I had feared and wondered aloud. And I am glad that at least one Paul supporter is interested in establishing his leader’s factual accuracy.

The body of the article explains that three Israeli ambassadors came out of a closed meeting with 97 other of their colleagues reporting that the Mossad head had made the statement. I have no opinion about whether the statement was made as reported because I am nearly certain the Mossad chief may not comment or confirm in public what he said in a closed meeting. To me, the statement, as explained in the body of the article of reference, is believable as coming from a responsible intelligence source. What was apparently meant was that Israel as a state would survive even an Iranian nuclear attack. I believe this is more likely to be true than not

Israel has a little fewer than 8 million people including a large Arab minority.* Suppose Iran succeeded in detonating four or five nuclear devices over the Greater Tel Aviv area and over a few other population centers, probably not including Jerusalem because it would trigger massive enmity in the Muslim world. With a nuclear assault on that very concentrated population, it’s possible that as many as one million Jewish Israelis and one hundred thousand Arab Israelis and others would die on the spot. An additional 500,000 might be severely injured.

Under this hypothesis, it’s not impossible to speculate that the State of Israel would survive as such. It would almost certainly emerge as an economic ruin with diminished capacity to defend itself against further, conventional assault, by Egyptian tanks, for example. A surviving Israel might also become demoralized overall and witness big Jewish emigration or, alternatively, it might come back in the guise of a cobra, ready and willing to devastate its neighbors at the slightest hint of aggressiveness on their part.

As you can imagine, if I had any responsibility for Israel’s safety and if I thought this scenario likely, I would push for a preemptive strike on Iran without needing to believe that its nuclear weapons “posed an existential threat to Israel.” My main target would be the country’s nuclear facilities. My first target, however, would be the homes of the ruling mullah clique.

And, if you are wondering, I am not even Jewish. Nor am I one of those born-again Christians who think Israel’s existence is a pre-condition to the Second Coming. And if you are one of those, who also think the Second Coming will involve The Rapture, can I please have your car?

More soon on Congressman’s Paul credibility.

* I refer here to Arabs who are citizens of Israel. I do not refer to the Arab population of the West Bank currently more or less under Israeli military control.

Leadership, International Trade, Hormuz and Ron Paul, Minorities and Ron Paul: The Last-Before-Last Republican Follies

Well, I am just about debated out. It’s difficult for all the candidates or pretend-candidates to maintain their dignity while answering complex questions in sixty seconds with thirty seconds for rebuttals. It’s worse when the debate is moderated, and many of the questions formulated, by one local unknown and two liberals, one of whom has been an air-head for as far back as I can remember. I am referring to Diane Sawyer, of course, and I can remember at least thirty years.

Two general comments about the Saturday night New Hampshire debate. (I missed the Sunday morning debate, sorry.) First, as usual, much time was wasted with questions and answers about “leadership.” I don’t understand the questions. I don’t understand the answers. I suspect (strongly) that the candidates understand neither the questions nor the answers about leadership. Leadership is a word that is worse than useless. Trust me, I taught management for about 25 years. If the concept were useful, I would have noticed. It’s useless the way baby-talk is useless. To the average one-year old, everything is a “wah.” It takes all the resources of parental love to assign to or to invent a meaning for each “wah” utterance. I don’t have such love for anything politicians say. Any politician who made it a rule to eschew completely the use of the word “leader” and of its derivatives would instantly gain in clarity and in sincerity.

My second comment is that, as happens every time, the candidates demonstrated their deep ignorance of basic concepts of international trade and of international economics in general. It makes me feel good that I taught the topic for about thirty years. I think retrospectively, that I must have been doing something useful. I expect such ignorance among liberals. It’s disheartening to encounter it on the conservative and libertarian side.

Two main things: a) If you raise trade barriers against the products of other countries, China, for example, it’s likely that other country will do the same against your products. The general principle here is reciprocity, otherwise known as tit-for-tat. There is no free lunch. It’s not obvious who will suffer most, the other guy’s people or yours. And, by the way the words “free trade” and “fair trade” are not complementary, they are alternatives to each other. “Fair trade” means “not free trade.” In the public arena, the word “fair” always announces the formulation of some protectionistic measure or policy. Let me repeat something I have been saying for thirty years and most economists have said for one hundred and forty years: In the aggregate, protectionism, any restraint on free trade, are a recipe for poverty. (Please, see my several, well-organized and quite accessible lectures on the subject on this blog.)

b) The main reason manufacturing jobs have been shrinking in this country is technical progress. In the meantime, the value of American manufactured products almost tripled in ten years.

Individual participants in the Saturday New Hampshire debate re-affirmed who they are in my book.

Rick Santorum confirmed that he is a clear-headed and brave man. I don’t know why he does not have much traction but he does not. Perhaps next time, perhaps he is too narrow.

John Huntsman is not a serious candidate. Yesterday, he spoke Mandarin to Romney, to make him feel bad and unsophisticated, no doubt. Cheap trick, sophomoric!

Gov. Perry proves once again that he is abysmally ignorant. Not surprising. Those big boned, broad-shouldered handsome guys in high-school always got the benefit of doubt when they said something that sounded misinformed. He said something spirited yesterday about “Iran moving back into Iraq.” I am not completely, completely sure what he meant but would you be willing to bet good money against the following proposition: The governor thinks that before the current elected Iraqi government, Iran occupied Iraq. He might even think Saddam Hussein was Iranian?

Gingrich is often formidable. He is well informed, cultured, rational, possesses a practical, high-power analytical mind in addition to a political past that’s, of necessity, an open book. He speaks clearly, in particular, of such things as Islamic terrorism. I don’t care much about anything else in a President except basic honesty. Gingrich possesses it irrespective of how much money he made eating at the Fannie Mae trough. I wish he hadn’t; I wish I were taller and thinner. I wish that, on that particular occasion, way back then, I had said,” You must be mistaken,” instead of “Fuck off!”

Ron Paul illustrated again what I have been telling you for weeks: He is irresponsible, he will say anything without worrying about factualness if he thinks it serves his argument. Either, he lies, or he believes in his false statements. The latter is worse. My intuition is that he believes them. My intuition matters because I have met people like him often before: “true believers,” in the words of the regretted Eric Hoffer. (Look him up if you are young.)

A couple of examples of Paul’s lack of attention to truth:

He said that minorities suffered more in war than whites. That’s not true. It may have been true when Leftists were saying this at the time of the Vietnam war, 30 years ago. It’s not true now. The reverse it true: White soldiers and Marines die more and get wounded more often. Incidentally, folks, I am tired of doing everyone’s research instead of going to the beach. Here is a proposal: If you don’t believe me, bet me some reasonable amount to be paid by loser to your favorite charity. Can I be more generous? If you don’t want to put your money where your mouth is, there must be a reason. Think it through.

In connection with Pres. Obama’s recent speech on cutting the US military budget, Paul also said clearly that those are cuts in increase to military expenditures, not absolute cuts. As one who has been reading the Wall Street Journal for the past thirty years and also for the past thirty days, I tell you that this is not true. It’s another cheap rumor Mr Paul gathered from Leftists. He is a Congressman; he should know better. And if you don’t believe me, see my bet proposal above,

And then, once in a while, Mr Paul makes seemingly innocent statements that suggest that his many false assertions are embedded in an entire imaginary world in which he lives most of the time. He said Saturday night in New Hampshire that if the Straight of Hormuz were closed (by the Iranians, or, presumably, by anyone), Eastern Europe would be “de-stabilized.” To the regular people who have a job, or who go to school, and who don’t necessarily read the small piece in the last page of the WSJ, the statement implies that eastern Europe, specifically, has a special dependence on the Middle-Eastern oil carried through the Straight of Hormuz. One could easily forgive oneself for not being aware of this bit of trivia. Of course, I will tell you that there is no such dependence. Mr Paul made this up inside his mind for reasons that escape me because I am not privy to the whole movie playing in his mind. And you are right, I did not look it up. I don’t need to. Want to bet?

The long and the short of this primary campaign is that Romney is a colorless, risk-averse smooth character I don’t especially love. But I am a conservative and therefore, a rationalist. Unlike Obama voters I don’t need to be in love with my candidate. (Unlike Chris Matthew of MSNBC, rarely have I felt a tingle along my leg when I thought of a presidential candidate or of a President!) He is far from a good Tea  Party candidate. Yet, when it comes right down to it, if I have to, I will vote for Romney for President. Of one two things I am sure: First, no matter what, he is more conservative than Barack Obama. Second, he is easily more competent than Barack Obama, the man who never achieved anything in his life except  get elected.

I have to keep reminding myself that elections – including primaries – are a lot like negotiations: When all the parties walk away pissed off, you know there has been a valid compromise.

A final thought, one of patriotic pride: In a majority-Protestant country, in the party of conservatism, in the alleged party of the haves, in the imagined party of wealth, two candidates remaining are Catholics, two are Mormons; the other two are Texans, for Christ’s sake!

Ron Paul Won’t Get My Vote

My low-level research on Ron Paul has paralleled his rise in the polls. What I have done is to give a number of opportunities to people who I know favor his candidacy and to people and organizations who I think support him to react to the latest accusations against him. This is low-level research as I said. (I am a respected conventional social scientist; no need to bore me with injunctions about scientific rigor.) This low-level research is more than most people try to do in pursuit of a rational vote, I think.

The latest accusations are also old. I am referring to the report that newsletters entitled: “The Ron Paul Letter” and such, published in the 1990s, contained both clearly racist and clearly anti-Semitic statements. (I mean anti-Semitic, not anti-Israel. He had some of those too but that’s another story altogether.) I have asked Libertarians, and what I call “orthodox libertarians”,( non-party members who are doctrinally aligned with the Libertarian Party) what they thought of the charges. This is a deliberately open-ended question. It gives the respondent a wide latitude to answer even if by changing the subject.

I received no answer or no clear answer from anyone, on my blog or through Facebook. One orthodox libertarian with whom I argue often on this blog gave me, gave us, a reading list. Of course, I don’t need, don’t want a reading list. My reading schedule is full until June 2012. Besides, there is something presumptuous about giving others reading lists. One should do it with much restraint, if at all. I imagine that my correspondents, my reader, who favor Ron Paul could have given me instead any number of easy-to-grasp, reasonable answers. After all, as thinking people, they have, or they had, to make up their minds, to decide for themselves unless they are eager to avoid the topic of those accusations altogether.

Here are some possible answers:

I don’t believe it.

It does not matter because it was a long time ago.

The statements attributed to him (that Paul himself does not deny) are not enough to prove either racism or anti-Semitism.

I don’t care if he is a racist.

I don’t care if he is anti-Semitic.

He, Paul, was not paying attention to his newsletters, as he said himself. So, the statements show nothing about him. Therefore, I don’t care.

Here is what this attentive libertarian-leaning conservative thinks about this issue. I have two explanations that are not mutually exclusive and that tell us much about him as a potential president

I think Ron Paul is both a racist and an anti-Semite but in a mild, passive way, if there is such a thing. Racism first. It has several possible sources. We are used in America to the poisonous, virulent kind of racism, to the brand that is associated with lynching. I doubt Paul has this in his heart. I think his passive racism is rooted in indifference, in callousness only. When an ardent follower of his, an orthodox libertarian insists (on this blog) that one kind of Africans massacring hundreds of thousands of another kind  of Africans with machetes and bricks is none of our business, he demonstrates precisely this kind of callousness.But he certainly does nothing to encourage one kind of black people to murder another kind of black people. He just thinks that both killers and victims are too unlike us for us to be concerned. (There is a huge paradox there in that libertarians tend to define as “us” those who share citizenship in our state, the same state they say they want to eviscerate.) Besides, we don’t know enough to hold off the machete or the brick. Besides we don’t even know who started it. . . .

Similarly, I suspect (“suspect,” I don’t know) that Ron Paul shares in the casual anti-Semitism of his Southern social class. He is an MD. It’s common (not universal by all means) for medical doctors to have received a poor undergraduate education in the liberal arts because of the focus on “pre-med” competitiveness. His anti-Semitism, if any, is of the passive kind. It will never lead him to favor the slaughter of Jews but it allows him to live comfortably with a hazy knowledge of the harder European brand of anti-Semitism and of its historical consequences. Plus, medicine is a field of endeavor where one might bump hard against common Jewish unscrupulous industriousness. (Not my formula; I cribbed it; how sad I am it’s not mine!) Dr Ron Paul would not discriminate ever against Jews but he would not be exceedingly alert to the occurrence of such discrimination in his environment. That’s not because he is evil but because he is extremely dogmatic. Ideological dogma helps you stay consistent by telling you what to ignore.

I am adding something separately so no one will accuse me of sneakiness. It’s not difficult to find, on talk-radio and even around my coffee-shop, individuals who spout the perfect libertarian anti-interventionist line and whose discourse against Israeli “aggression” quickly drifts into the expression of characteristically anti-Semitic sentiment. I agree that politicians in general and Ron Paul in particular cannot generally be held responsible for the words of all their followers. Yet, when an occasion arises spontaneously to condemn what’s disgusting among one’s disciples, one should seize this opportunity vigorously and loudly. Mr Paul has not done this.

In addition to moderate, passive racism and anti-Semitism, Mr Paul displays a sovereign disdain for factualness. As I have pointed out several times in this blog, Mr Paul does not only make light with facts when he deals with an unexpected question, or a “gotcha” question from a reporter, or from a rival, a question for which he is not prepared. He will sometimes volunteer false information the better to make a point:

The Iraq war and the Afghanistan war are not only very wasteful, they are

stupidly wasteful. So, for example, the US armed forces spend 20 billion

dollars each year in those war theaters on air-conditioning alone.

 

There is a chance that 2 billion dollars would not be impressive enough so, why not add a zero, two zeros? What the hell?

I have met this kind of shameless mendacity before. It’s common among leaders of virtuous small sects who have spent many years in the wilderness, addressing only small groups of the already converted, the elect, those who will never contradict. In the seventies, I knew members of tiny Trotskyst groups, splinters of splinter of splinters, the shavings of multiple ideological schisms. They would speak well, with winning logic, and demonstrate a thorough knowledge of history. And then, they would come up with a howler that reminded you instantly that schizophrenics too can sound intelligent. Not that I claim Ron Paul is insane. His mind is just way out on a limb and he does not care that it is, and he probably even enjoys it.

Underlying the passive racism, the matter-of-fact anti-Semitism, and the indifference to fact lies a tremendous intellectual elitism that is fundamentally undemocratic. Ron Paul, like his fellow isolationists from the Left, does not really care what the great unwashed masses of voters know, understand or believe. He thinks they should vote for him because he is right on everything, or on everything that matters. If they don’t, too bad for them.

As I have said repeatedly, on domestic issues, I am closer to Ron Paul than to any other candidate. And I don’t treat lightly the other big difference I have with him, and with Libertarians, on foreign policy and on defense. Yet, interestingly, if this last difference did not exist, I still would not vote for Paul for president. I would not vote for him for some of the same reasons that would have turned me off Barack Obama if he had been a libertarian-leaning conservative, one favoring radical shrinkage of the federal government. There are personality issues that disqualify.

And, naturally, I have not dealt here again and explicitly with the fact that Ron Paul’s foreign policies views make him as dangerous as President Obama to the survival of this constitutional republic. Or, possibly, he is even more dangerous since Mr Obama l finally revealed himself a secret admirer of covert military action against those who would destroy us. The 01/2/12 issued of the Weekly Standard has several nice pieces about the moral giant Vaclal Havel who died last week. One article reminded me that Havel was firmly in favor of the expansion of NATO.

In the Wall Street Journal of Thursday December 29^th 2011, the political columnist Daniel Henninger gives his own take on Mr Paul’s recent surge, pre-Iowa surge, in the polls. Henninger argues that though Paul has his own strong, small but consistent following, the upsurge is simply the latest expression of the mass of “not Romney” voters seeking a good horse to ride. In this perspective, the Paul upsurge is of the same ilk as the earliest vogue for Perry, then for Cain, then for Gingrich.

Meanwhile, every day, brave young Syrians die for wanting the liberties we take for granted. None of our business, of course.

PS My constant concern about anti-Semitism does not mean that I am Jewish. I am not, never have been, never will be.

AND I AM PRETTY SURE THE MAYAS’ MATH SKILLS WERE GREATLY OVERRATED. THE FATAL DATE WAS ACTUALLY 1212. I DOUBT THE WORLD WILL REALLY END THIS YEAR, 2012, BUT IF IT DOES, I HOPE WE WILL HAVE TIME FOR ANOTHER END -OF-THE-WORLD PARTY.

Republican Sins: Mitt, and Ron, and Newt

The much-derided Republican presidential debates are doing the job they are supposed to do. They instruct us about important candidates’ features and, by doing this, they winnow them out. They are especially important with respect to the task of showing us the dark side of candidates we like. They force us to be more mature in our enthusiasms than we otherwise would be.

The Fox News-sponsored and conducted on 12/16/11 was head and shoulders above the predecessors in terms of intellectual conduct, in terms of dignity. Nothing surprising there but it’s worth mentioning because it’s chic in some environments to treat Fox as it were beyond the realm of intellectual responsibility. Conservatives who don’t watch television have been infected by their liberal buddies (who certainly don’t watch Fox either). It’s a cheap way to join the elite. It beats reading books!

Face it, there are only three candidates left. The others – fairly or unfairly – appear as lightweights, in terms of this forthcoming election. At this point, I am about ready to stop learning anything about any of the main three. I am getting this sense of redundancy that tells you you might just as well watch a movie.

During the debate, Mitt Romney convinced me in a few words that he did not understand the basics of this country’s immigration laws. He said something about illegal aliens presently in the country having to return home and go to the end of the line and, once there, they could apply for “permanent residency or even for citizenship if that’s what they want.” I have written on this blog about the widespread ignorance of our immigration laws among conservatives. (Search.) Romney committed three mistakes of fact in a bout two sentences.

First, the “line” is so long that illegal immigrants with American-born babies largely would not make it back until their children were of college-age. Romney did not think he was making this kind of pitiless statement. He thought he was being eminently reasonable. Then, there is the fact that “permanent residency” status and citizenship are not alternatives to each other but sequential events.

I keep asserting that illegal immigration is the wrong hill to die for for conservatives, in part but not only because you can’t fight effectively if you know little about what you are fighting. There are other reasons. Yet, if you know that a large part of your potential electorate is agitated by a certain topic you should certainly inform yourself on it. That’s especially true if the information is easy to obtain and not complicated. Romney’s superb indifference to facts on immigration tells me something negative about both his personality (lazy) and his intellect. Intelligent men are aware of danger; that’s a minimum.

Romney also said that “very few countries” other than the US enjoy the rule of law. That’s a mediocre high-school student’s view of the world. It’s embarrassing. “Very few” means, at minimum, all the countries of western Europe, most of the former eastern Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore. Israel etc… Why, on the same day as the debate, it was announced that a former two-term French president, a well-liked old man, had been sentenced for small-time graft that had taken place twenty years earlier! Why, isn’t the former President of Israel in jail as I write? No rule of law, indeed!

Romney is a chameleon. He does not know what his color will be tomorrow. He thinks he can always count on having learned advisers who will tell him what color to take on. In that situation, there is no compunction to burden one’s brain with trivial knowledge such as the basics of immigration law one is a discussing in a centrally important debate.

Another thing, about the revealing virtues of debates: The more Romney brags about his long career in the private sector, the less I think it’s important. You don’t really need twenty years in the private sector to understand markets. At least, there are diminishing returns. Three economics classes and occasional reading of the Wall Street Journal will get you 90% there, I think. Incidentally, I emerged from teaching for 25 years in a business school impressed with the number of downright fallacies business decision-makers usually carry in their minds. I was also taken by their retrospective blindness to the consequences of their own actions: I did exactly this at Pepsi in 1983 therefore it will work just fine for Apple in 1992. (I may have the years wrong; it does not matter).

I share most of Ron Paul’s views about how government is several times larger than it needs to be. I would subscribe to most of the radical measures he has announced to reduce the size of the federal government. Nevertheless, I have trouble imagining circumstances when I would vote for him for president. He gave more reasons for my acute concern in the debate. I think that pretty much most of what he affirms is false. Here is an example no one in the media has commented on. He said that this “country is completely bankrupt.”

First when a government is bankrupt, it does not mean that the country it tries to government is bankrupt. It can be; it does not have to be. The federal government still only accounts only for one in five dollars in the US. This means that if you told everyone to stop moving money around, at any one time, you would find only one in five dollars in some federal hands. Certainly government expenditures have effects, sometimes profound effects, on private wealth; they are not one and the same. In fact, in the perfect libertarian society – the one Paul he says he aspires to – the government would be starving and private parties would be rich.

Second, the federal government is not “bankrupt.” I, and conservatives in general, fear that it’s moving toward bankruptcy. We fear even more that, without ever reaching bankruptcy, federal debt will impose an inhumane burden on our children. But there is near-objective proof that the federal government is nowhere near bankruptcy. Private parties, individuals, companies at home and abroad, foreign governments, are still rushing to buy American government federal bonds. That’s federal debt. Their confidence is so great that they are buying at a time when those bonds are paying next to no interest.

Congressman Paul does not know what he is talking about or his words exceed his knowledge; he exaggerates for effect. Reminds me of someone, or some ones. (More on this below.)

Mr Paul also said, à propos of nothing, “To declare war on 3,5 billion Muslims…” No US official ever did that, no one ever came close, no opposition figure did either, not unless you assume that declaring war on the violent jihadists who conduct terror against Americans is the same as declaring war on all Muslims. Strange twist of perception!

I don’t hold it against Congressman Paul that he has secret information that no one else has demonstrating to him that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and is not working toward one. Neither do I mind that he, alone, has knowledge of a carefully guarded secret: How many nuclear warheads Israel possesses. (By the way, Paul says 300. I wonder what Israel would do with so many on such a small territory. I mean the whole Middle-East rather than Israel itself.)

I don’t mind Mr Paul’s deviousness. It does remind me however of my three-year old grand-daughter subterfuges when she has been caught, she knows she has been caught, but will still not acknowledge whose hand was in which…. Mr Paul was asked three times in three different ways what he would do if he were President and if he received incontrovertible proof that the Islamic Republic of Iran actually possesses nuclear weapons. Each time he insisted that there was no such proof, that the Iranian nuclear program was all illusion and that it was an understandable response to Iran being “encircled.” (I don’t know how you can have it both ways.) In other words, each time, he changed the subject because he did not want to answer that straightforward question that might arise in any presidency and with respect to any number of countries other than Iran.

Understand my point: You can answer this kind of hypothetical question irrespective of what you believe about its premise. You can always say, “ I don’t think it does…If it did, if, I would do the following….” If you are going to be Commander-in- Chief, you have to answer this kind of hypothetical question. To refuse to do it is dishonest or childish. Mr Paul is not dishonest; he holds to his line of thinking with remarkable firmness. The problem is that part of him enjoys affirming things that no one believes. He likes to be in your face if you are one of the uninitiated. He likes to be bad. He is petulant.

I ask myself who Ron Paul reminds me of besides my high-spirited grand-daughter. First, he reminds me of the New Left leaders I knew in the seventies who never stopped affirming that the North Vietnamese Communists were going to create a workers’ paradise as soon as they won in the south of the country. They kept affirming that as workers were fleeing Vietnam in leaky boats by the hundreds of thousands. Second, he reminds me of spokespeople for the current climate change movement who will keep talking the same talk as the public evidence of their mendaciousness piles up at their feet. With both comparisons, I am referring to style, of course, not to content. Ron Paul is not a Communist and he is not a global warming advocate. (I have to state the obvious because some of my casual readers are silly.)

And then, there is Newt Gingrich. He is obviously the best informed and the most intelligent of all the candidates for President (of all parties). He speaks to the issues. He never fails to answer questions. He does so rationally and clearly. His view of American exceptionalism matches mine. He is decisive. He would be good in a crisis, including as a Commander-in Chief. And yet, yet, I agree with just about every negative thing that’s been said about Gingrich. He did seem to endorse the climate change madness. He became involved in bio-fuel boondoggles when it was predictable that they were boondoggles. He did earn piles of money being a de facto consultant with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He had every right too, of course, as a private citizen. I am very, very sorry he denies it though he does not do it petulantly but really, really hoping it will pass, like a kidney stone. There are style issues too: I keep wondering what would make a small-time history professor in a small university even want to have a $500,000 line of credit at Tiffany’s. Hunger in men that age troubles me.

I am surely glad I don’t have to vote tomorrow. I trust I will know more in a few weeks. Things are looking good, in fact; I understand the candidates a lot better than I did after the first debate.

Wednesday, 21 Dec 2011 06:05 PM

A few days after I posted this essay, Thomas Sowell pretty much made up my mind for me. Herd is the link to NewsMax:

Read more on Newsmax.com: Thomas Sowell: I’ll Take Gingrich over Romney
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Libertarian Pacifism vs Liberal Pacifism: What I Learned by Arguing with Libertarians

I think there are three good reasons, and many bad reasons, to argue about politics. The first good reason is also the least important. It’s to convince the other guy, the one with whom you argue, of the validity of your views against his. The second reason is to persuade mostly passive spectators to join you and to forsake the views the other guy supports. The third reason to argue is to better understand your own views.

The first good reason is not very good. As you may have noticed, the other guy never breaks up the debate to say, “You are right; my viewpoint has been wrong, ill-thought out. I am joining your faction or your party.” Instead, when you succeed in influencing the other guy the fact comes out far from your presence. Mostly, you don’t even hear about it. Sometimes, it takes several years. I know this because it happened to me; once. I understood the validity of an interlocutor’s position ten years later. I tried to tell him but I couldn’t trace him.

The second reason to argue speaks for itself. It’s exploitive really but mutual exploitation is not really exploitation. Or, if the other guy is so simple that he does not understand that you are using him to influence others, you should not be arguing with him anyway. (Same thing as talking kindergartners out of their juice money, or really plain girls out of… well you can finish the thought.)

The third reason is by far the best. I don’t know exactly what I think until I have heard it coming from my mouth with great élan and yet sounding shockingly stupid. I am often vague in my own mind about what I believe to be true until someone else points out the absurdity of one variant of one particular interpretation of my vague belief. Often, others force me to tighten my arguments; sometimes, they force me to abandon them. Nearly always, opponents induce me to be more articulate. I respond well to partial failure, including partial failure to make my point. I know others who do too. Many of my students did although they denied it.

Those who more or less follow this blog will have noticed that frequently, I criticize the positions of Libertarians, that often, I get into arguments with individual libertarians who may or may not be Libertarians (and some who may be closet Libertarians). The arguments always revolve about military action. In every other way, I am close to very close to mainstream libertarian positions. Foreign policy and the desirability of bearing arms abroad are the only reason I cannot be a real libertarian. Those are not trivial reasons. I am quite sure there are tens of thousands like me, libertarian-leaning conservatives who think it’s not wise to espouse dogmatically pacifist positions. Libertarian theoreticians, by the way, will insist strongly that they are not pacifists. Their argument is based on tiny technicalities. Let me explain what I have come to understand as a result of my encounters with those people. First our crucial area of agreement about how things work. (I am repeating myself, I have said numerous times what I say just below.)

Every war expands the capacity, the importance, the reach of government, technically, the power of the state, relative to civil society. And every expansion of the state reduces the area left for individual freedom and for voluntary cooperative enterprise. It is rarely the case that an expansion of of the state is subsequently reversed. It follows form this succinct description that every libertarian should have a horror of war, completely aside from humanitarian pacifism. I share this sentiment.

My estrangement from mainstream libertarians and from Libertarians exists because of our different transition scenarios. I see differently, or I simply see in my mind’s eye and they don’t, the most likely process by which this society can move toward radically smaller government. I think there are two archetypes of transitions. The first one is the Somalia scenario: The organs of government fall apart of their own accord as a result of civil war or other catastrophes. I don’t want a society with small government hard enough to wish the Somalian fate upon American society.

The second scenario entails a democratic and probably gradual take-over of the organs of government by political forces that desire smaller government. We are seeing this possibility more clearly today, as I write, because of the Tea Party movement inside and outside of the Republican Party. Of course, such a peaceful take-over can only happen in a society that already enjoys constitutional government. Roughly, this means a society where elections are fair and honest and perceived to be so, where the overwhelming mass of the people abide by election results, and a society where courts are able to arbitrate decisively differences concerning election results. Obviously, the USA would be a good example of a society with constitutional government (excepting Chicago and New Orleans,of course)

If constitutional government is threatened, the likelihood of such a desirable transition is also threatened. Of course, an issue of proportionality arises here. It’s not the case that everytime a fool issues a threat against the Republic, the Republic is actually threatened. After all, Timothy McVay, a successful terrorist if there ever was one, failed absolutely to change the social order or the political order of this country. But take the 9/11 attack, another successful act of terrorism, in operational terms. It caused less than one tenth of the deaths that take place on American highways in a normal year. As I never tire of pointing out, by the way, about one half of highway deaths are connected to alcohol and therefore, completely avoidable. They are in fact a form of terrorism allowed by our collective passivity, if you will. ( I say that alcohol- related accidents are avoidable based on the following assumptions: If the first DUI were punishable by a lifetime driving prohibition and the second by a five- year prison sentence, you would quickly see the incidence of that behavior go down to near zero. This wouldn’t happen because drunk drivers would stop drinking but because they would stop driving as their friends would take away the keys. Others would have five years to dry up and reconsider. During those years, they wouldn’t kill anyone with a vehicle.) The 9/11 attack was very brilliantly organized which makes us forget how modest the means engaged were. I think I could have financed it entirely with a second mortgage on my house.

Is there anyone who doubts that the 9/11 cheap terrorist attack provoked deep and lasting disturbances in our economy? Is there anyone who doubts that such disturbances usually have grave political consequences even if no one can describe them well at the time? Is there any libertarian who does not believe that those political consequences severely undermine the credibility of arguments in favor of a weak state?

And more directly, isn’t it the case that spectacular and violent attacks against a society with constitutional government make more palatable security measures that depart from the society’s own constitutional tradition. Attacks, and even the threat of attacks, make citizens more attached to their state, more unconditionally attached to it and, accordingly, more willing to accept a measure of authoritarianism. I argue that successful attacks do more harm to the cause than do the measures taken to protect against such attacks. It’s useful to remember that the Patriot Act was a response, not a preventive measure.

And I have not forgotten the issue of assessing the credibility of threats against the Republic. I am only trying to establish that there exist threats that are credible enough to require actions protective of our constitutional arrangement. Such actions include pro-active measures abroad and the possibility of military attacks against a foreign entity. I am attentive to suggestions concerning the thesis that such actions are never necessary. Take good note of the fact that it’s the only thing I am trying to establish here. I am explicitly not arguing that the wars the US has fought were all necessary. There are wars of choice, such as the Vietnam War – that I opposed – and the liberation of Iraq – which I supported and still support. Yet, the fact that many politicians are wont to see snakes under every rock does not prove that there are no snakes under rocks.

The libertarian pacifist answer to this line of argument is dual. First, they seem to say: Attacks on the US, in general, and current attacks by Islamist terrorists, in particular, are merely responses to American own foreign policy. (I mean by “Islamist” simply that the terrorists involved declare that they do what they do in the name of Islam. I am obviously not qualified to judge the validity of their claim.) The absurdity of the “response” assertion is obvious if you make any effort to read the Islamists’ own abundant declarations. The response receives superficial support from the fact that Islamists also affirm that Islamist terrorism is a response to American and Western actions. That’s not all that they assert, however. It’s clear that we are the Great Satan, first of all because of who we are. We would be the Great Satan if there were not a single American soldier anywhere outside the US. Although the regretted Bin Laden had threatened the US in connection with American military presence in Saudi Arabia, the 9/11 attack took place after the US forces had vacated that country, not as a means to make them move. Notably Al Qaida and all of its local branches (which may be all that’s left of it, I understand), and the Islamic Republic of Iran have never offered the US conditional peace. Neither of these entities ever said, “You stay home and we will restrain any terrorist organization plotting against you.” They have made no such offer because it would destroy their very reason for being.

Libertarians who affect to believe that American actions constitute a perfect or near-perfect explanation for Islamist terrorism are just not serious, I think. It’s strange that many are well-informed people in every other way. I believe that their position if in fact anchored in stubborn, primitive, and presumptuous American isolationism dating back to the days when a warship took three weeks to arrive from Europe if it arrived at all, and when there were only en ships in all of Latin America . Those people are opposed to every proactive defense on foreign soil or even in international waters. They will tell you with a straight face (you can sometimes discern a straight face on Facebook!) that one should never direct a weapon at anyone unless one is actually attacked. Those are people whose idea of a constitutional war begins with a Pearl Harbor! And they will sometimes maintain that a joint resolution of Congress passed with a huge majority is not a proper declaration of war.

The psychological underpinning of this isolationism rests, it seems to me, in a distant and somewhat haughty 18^th century view of the rest of the world. The rest of the world, un-America, in this perspective, is quarrelsome, petty, with strong criminal proclivities, fundamentally incapable of learning or of improving itself. This perspective nourishes a peculiar version of American exceptionalism made of 90% contempt. Those who hold it are often easy to spot because they rely excessively on the term “ Old World,” happily conflating the United Kingdom with Uzbekistan and Japan with Burkina Fasso.

And in this view lies the a crucial cultural difference between Left-liberal pacifism of the well-known type and the growing libertarian pacifism. Liberals profess to reject American military intervention abroad because of a strong myth of people of color’s virtuousness. According to this liberal myth, people of color, non-whites, seldom ever do anything wrong by any standard. When they do, as when they eat their neighbors, for example, it’s always somehow because of something or other that Westerners, Whites, usually Americans have dome to them, or to someone else. Or something. And then, of course, you shouldn’t do anything to them or in connection with them.

Libertarian pacifism has a significantly different basis that is almost the obverse of the first. It’s that the rest of the world is so fundamentally, irreversibly so awful that Americans must avoid it almost all costs. That position is qualified by an “almost” because there has to be room for when the outside world simply bombs one of your cities (Japan) or when it formally announces that it’s going to wage war on you (Germany).

The ethnocentrism underlying libertarian pacifism requires willful ignorance, not simply neglect of reality but clenched-jaws blindness. It’s obvious that in every continent and in especially large numbers in Europe, there are millions of people who share, on the whole, most of Americans’ wonderful virtues. Avoiding solidarity with such people is morally disgusting and strategically irresponsible. When they suffer, we suffer in short order. When they thrive, we thrive. The fewer of them there are the more vulnerable we are. Those who hate them want to kill us too. Just consider our collective disappointment at the electoral defeat of the secular and democratic forces in Egypt right now (December 2011). Are those Americans who are disappointed just being silly? Nevertheless, there are times when the avoidance of foreign entanglement is the only realistic stance, it’s true. But, erecting impotence as the main basis for principled collective action seems absurd.

The second thing I leaned from my interactions with libertarians severally defined (see above) is also the second basis of their adherence to the principle of non-intervention. Libertarians assert that non-intervention in the affairs of foreign countries is somehow a morally superior position. Whenever you argue about this matter with a libertarian, or if you listen to Republican candidate Congressman Ron Paul, you will hear a recurrent theme: We should mind our own business. The context always shows that “our” has a national definition. They don’t say that Presbyterians should not intervene in the affairs of Lutherans, or that Texans should leave Coloradans alone, or that football fans should not criticize basketball fans. (They might agree to all the above bye-the-bye but it’s not the point they make.) In fact, they are asserting unambiguously the moral position that Americans should not interfere with what goes one in foreign countries.

Most countries today are technically “nation-states,” that is, states based more or less on a single nation. The key word here is “state.” But remember that objecting to the existence of the state in general, or, at least wishing to see the importance of the state remain small vis-a-vis civil society is at the heart of libertarianisms of all breeds (mine included). So, suddenly, those who don’t like states put themselves in a position to defend the sanctity of the boundaries of that to which they object. Does this make sense?

They say in effect: We don’t want states because they are immoral but morality demands that states must be respected as if they were moral entities.

Incidentally, there is gross indifference, a massive lack of compassion also involved in this supposedly moral posture of non-intervention. This is puzzling because many libertarians are also, individually, Christians (although Christianity is not a necessary foundation of libertarianism ). The mental gymnastics to which Christian non-interventionists must subject themselves give me a headache. They have to pretend to believe, for example, that American military intervention in Bosnia where 10,000 civilians were killed in one city alone in the years 1992 to 1996 was a morally worse act than continued passivity would have been. They must force themselves to think that somehow things would have turned out better if America had let the massacre continue. Same thing with the subsequent use of American armed force in Kosovo to stop the completion of a genocide in progress there. Memory refresher: Serbian fascist dictator (formerly Communist dictator) Milosevic in the Fall of 1998 ordered all ethnic Albanian civilians who were citizens of Serbia to take to the roads and leave. They began to do so by their hundreds of thousands, which would unavoidably have led to the deaths of thousands of the aged, the sick, and small children. The US Air Force and Navy carrier planes eventually reversed this ethnic cleansing.

Non-interventionists must also think that the slaughter of between 500,000 and one million people in Rwanda in 1994, over only three months, would have been even worse had the US (or others) sent a dozen warplanes to bomb a single radio station directing the massacre. (The low estimate of the victims comes from the always cautious Human Rights Watch.) For me, it’s difficult to imagine much that would be worse than the attempted and largely successful violent liquidation of large minority of the population of a small country. By the same token, the continuing deadly ethnic cleansing of Darfur, in the Sudan, where rape is used systematically as a weapon of war, evokes only indifference among libertarians. By the way, the arguments for non-intervention in Rwanda, and now in Darfur, are such that it’s difficult not to think about racial prejudice: Black people in remote parts of Africa are eviscerating one another? What do you expect? That’s what they do!

In summary: You can’t seriously argue that the time to fight enemies is strictly only when they are on the beach in Malibu or in the New York City subway. You can’t be taken seriously, and you should not take yourself seriously, if you say one day that you want no more state and tomorrow that state boundaries are so sacred that they must not even be breached to stop the massacre of innocents

And no, I have not changed my mind: War, even the preparation for war, are inimical to the realization of a greater sphere of individual freedom. It’s a real dilemma, no question about it. I don’t see that libertarians will make much progress toward resolving it by pretending it’s not in the room with us, like a dinosaur.

And, as one of the Founding Fathers so aptly remarked: “ If we make ourselves into sheep, the wolves will eat us.” And that’s no individual freedom!

Republican Presidential Candidates

Pres. Obama has already lost the next presidential election as far as thinking people right and left are judging. It does not mean that Republicans will win. The GOP has to run with an electable candidate.

The field of Republican presidential candidates is becoming more readable, I think. Here is my summary.

Herman Cain is very likable and he speaks clearly about his genuinely conservative program. Besides, he looks like a president and women will love his manly manners. That’s not enough to get him elected or to make him electable. Americans will not vote to make president anyone who was not previously elected to something. No amount of good business experience will make up for this. (And Cain, has plenty of that.)

Newt Gingrich is a completely clear conservative. No one explains better than he does the main practical points of a conservative programs for 2012. Unfortunately, no one likes him, I think. There are good reasons to, including his unprincipled flirtations with government support for ethanol.

Gov. Perry lost it all in the last presidential debate. There is no way he can make up for it. He was facing the test of his life with Gov. Romney and he came to the test without having studied. He was not prepared. It’s not a default of knowledge as some pretend, it’s a character fault.

Romney is equal to himself. He is reasonably likable in a sort of metrosexual way. He carries a lot of baggage, including his Mass. health program he has never either really defended nor apologized for. That’s a lot of baggage, especially in 2012 because Obamacare, cousin to the Mass. plan, will be a number one reason to reject Pres. Obama. No one knows for sure whether Gov. Romney is a conservative by today’s standard.

Note: If I turn out to be wrong, it’s going to be about Gov. Romney. He may just be the half-way candidate where the Republican Party voters meet. I sure hope not.

Congresswoman Bachman is another Great Woman’s Hope in the ring. She is clearly a conservative and she is likable in a weird sort of way. (Rearing all those foster children surely was not pretend work.) Politically, though, she is not serious. She said something big-time wrong on the occasion of the second debate, about vaccinations. She will never recover. Here is a the rule of thumb: You may stumble when someone else hands you a question, especially when it’s an enemy handing you a trap question. (I am reminded of Gov. Palin being asked perversely what she thought of the “Bush Doctrine.” I would have flunked too.) You may not, however, tell falsehoods on a topic you, yourself chose. It matters little whether you are lying or merely ignorant. I am not even sure which one I prefer.

Ron Paul sounds like he whines. It may not be his fault. I could be like Pres. Bush’s alleged smirk, just a physical thing with no intention behind it. Paul will always get some support because there are significant numbers of loyal Libertarians who wish to work within the Republican Party. He will never get much more support because they, the Libertarians, don’t dupe anyone. Their isolationism in foreign policy is perceived as a lack of patriotism. (Full disclosure: I am a libertarian – small “l” – who is a registered Republican. I am struggling with the inherent contradiction between libertarianism and the necessary American armed stance. See my recent essays on the topic: “Libertarian Military Isolationism: Forward All with Eyes Tightly Shut,” “The Libertarian Project and American Military Power. “ )

Congressman Paul declared in the second debate that the armed forces spend 20 billion dollars (US D 20,000,000,000) annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan. See the rule of thumb above. Like many ideological purists, he will come to believe just about anything that seems to support his ideology.

Then, there is what’s his name who stated categorically in a debate that, “ 97 % of climate scientists” believe in man-made global warming. You can’t say that. It’s  dogmatically stupid. If it were true, we would not know it and therefore, no one can affirm it. The man sounds a little stupid, perhaps because he answers before he thinks. Bad trait for a president. Forget him.

And then, there is the other what’s his name whose sole contribution thus far is a good wisecrack about dogs and shovel-ready jobs.

Gov. Christie of New Jersey keeps insisting he is not running. He is not the mincing type. I think he is telling the truth.

It all does not ad up to much, so far. Time to get excited.