Afghanistan

The Lost Sergeant Lost Again! (Updated)

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law , , , , ,

If I were Sergeant Bergdahl and  if I were not a deserter, I would ask for a court-martial. Given the public airing of rumors concerning his case, I don’t see how his request could be turned down. He has been damaged by a very public discussion of his case. He is entitled to his day in court to clear his name. For a member of the military, this means a court-martial, a procedure giving good guarantees concerning the presumption of innocence.

The Army is keeping him incommunicado in a military hospital in Germany. It’s as if he had been lost a second time. Some say he has forgotten English. That’s completely absurd. It could be that the Army is merely trying to avoid the accidental spilling of military secrets. It could be that there is another, darker secret involved.

Could it be that he did not particularly wanted to be rescued? Had he cast his lot with the other side who cynically sacrificed him in return for the huge prize that Mr Obama provided?

Usually, I am quick to blame the Obama administration ineptness rather than criminal intent for its actions that look like sabotage of the USA. This time, the debacle is so huge that my judgment vacillates. Really, one lost soldier for five battle-hardened generals of armies who throw acid in school-girls’ faces? We are returning to the struggle people who were only one degree  of separation removed from 9/11?

President Obama, he of the Veterans Administration, suddenly speaks like a military patriot: We don’t leave any of our soldiers behind no matter who they are. Period! What if the Taliban barbarians had asked for a nuclear device in return for delivering Sergeant Bergdahl into our hands?

We don’t leave any of our soldiers behind. Period?

Update: It’s been one week and Sergeant Bergdhal has still  not been allowed to talk to his mother. Maybe he has forgotten how to say “Hi” in English, or “Mom,” or something.

It’s because of concerns for his health, says the administration. It has not told us what the health concern is.

I don’t much like conspiracy explanations as a rule but I can’t help notice that medical doctors are professionally obligated not to talk about their patients. And military officers usually follow orders including orders to keep their mouths shut irrespective of what they think. If this were not true, why in the world was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sent to die in a French military hospital?

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , , ,

Again, the soup is too rich. I am going to let most of what you say stand except two things:

1 Is it the case that you endorse and confirm the statement Ron Paul made voluntarily, on his own that he armed forces spend $20 billion a year on air conditioning in Iraq and in Afghanistan? I ask because it’s a measure of Ron Paul’s seriousness and of his followers, with respect to simple facts.

In this connection: It’s clear that Herman Cain knows little about anything outside the country. I don’t doubt Congressman Paul knows much more. About Gingrich’s alleged misstatements, I don’t know what you mean. Please, stop treating as obvious what others may not have seen, heard of, or noticed or may not exist at all.

2 Your sophisticated musings about what constitutes the right to wage war may well be worth considering. You make good arguments that they are worth it. However, they take us a long way from your original statement on the illegality, the unconstitutional character of these wars. At the time, you sound as if you were parroting the left-wing yahoos on the topic.

On moral responsibility, I chose Rwanda of an extreme case where it would have been easy to intervene productively at little cost or risk. That’s what this country did we respect to the beginning genocide of Kosovars against a much more powerful and sophisticated oppressor.

Your words speak for themselves on the Rwanda genocide.

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , , ,

Brandon: I stand corrected on the unimportant issue of whether you belong to the Libertarian Party or not. Most of your assertions could come straight out of one of the Libertarian organizations; that’s what misled me. Yet, I confess that you are not a Libertarian but an orthodox libertarian (small “l”).

I think our conversations are fairly useful to the many who are repelled by orthodox libertarians although they have much analysis and many positions in common with them.

The most useful thing you did recently to help this cause is to affirm clearly that we, as a nation, have no responsibility toward the victims of mass massacres in which we could intervene at little cost and at little risk to ourselves. I refer to Rwanda, of course and not to Iraq where there was always much risk.

We have radically different moral compasses. There is an impassable gulf there.

The second problem I have with orthodox libertarians and that you illustrate concerns the use of facts. As you know, in one Republican debate, candidate Ron Paul affirmed, under his own power, with no incitement, that the US armed forces spent twenty billion dollars a year on air-conditioning alone in Iraq and in Afghanistan. No Libertarian and no orthodox libertarian of note took the trouble to question him on this absurd figure.

You too, seem to not pay enough attention to facts that are both important and easy to ascertain. I find this common among followers of severe political or religious doctrines. Here is your latest example.

You take to me to task tersely for something we would agree is very important: not understanding the constitutional provision that places the initiation of war within the province of congressional action. In particular, you insist that I and my readers agree with you that both the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War are illegal, unconstitutional. Here are the relevant facts:

A Joint Resolution of Congress was passed on September 18th 2001. It gave the President authority to use all necessary force against against whoever he determined planned, committed, or aided the attack on 9/11. (Public Law 107-40.) The votes were: 401 – 1 and 98 – 0.

How is that for Congressional authorization?

“Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq” was passed October 16th 2002. (Public Law 107-243.) The votes were 297-133 and 77 – 23. That’s comfortably more than 2/3 majority in both houses.

It’s disconcerting to me that sometimes, you seem to get your information impressionistically only and only from the liberal media.

I am not blameless myself. My statement that “95%” of terrorist acts in the past twenty years were committed by people who called themselves Muslim was a bit overblown. That statement needs correction. See below but let me explain my mistakes.

I did not include much of Columbia in my mental count of terrorist acts because I am under the impression that there have been few intentional homicidal acts committed in Columbia not directed at one chain of command or another (not civilians). In addition, it seems to me that so many homicidal acts there are connected with the drug trade that there is little room left in the numbers for victims of terrorism as conventionally defined.

As for the Tamil Tigers, I have followed their story from their beginnings to their recent end. They were formally classified as a terrorist organization by a large number of governments. Yet I don’t think they committed a large number of terrorist acts defined as deliberate acts of violence against civilians. They were responsible for considerable collateral damage, I think, they were callous, but that’s different.

Thanks to your influence, I have become more conscious of what I mean by terrorism. It includes intentionality and blindness toward the (civilian) victims. Thus, I have revised my concept of terrorism. I will be more precise in the future.

In response to your intervention, I am reducing my estimate of worldwide responsibility for terrorism by people who claim to be Muslims from 95% to 85%. That’s a big reduction of more than 10%. Yet, it has not implications at all with respect to the substance of my argument.

And I repeat that I am not anti-Muslim but that I deplore vigorously the moral blindness of American Muslim organizations. By the way, for readers who are interested, there is a good, thick recent book by a Muslim scholar that both documents and, ironically, illustrates the same blindness: Akbar, Ahmed. 2010. Journey Into America: The Challenge of Islam. Brookings: Washington D.C.

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , , ,

Like shooting fish in a barrel…

I think that’s not the Libertarian position. The party’s position instead is to wait until we are attacked, as in Pearl Harbor, to engage in active defense on the basis of a military establishment much smaller than the current one. Please, correct me on these specific points if my perception is wrong.

To be honest, I have no idea what the LP’s position on foreign policy is. I don’t think it worth my time to even look it up either. I don’t know why you keep conflating libertarians with an irrelevant political party, either. It probably helps your position to look better, I suppose, but most libertarians vote and participate within the two parties that are dominant today. Just look at yourself. I know I do.

This particular aspect of your argument is disturbing though:

The party’s position instead is to wait until we are attacked, as in Pearl Harbor, to engage in active defense on the basis of a military establishment much smaller than the current one.

First of all, the United States didn’t “wait around” for Japan to attack us at Pearl Harbor. Nobody saw it coming, including, I am sure, a large number of Japanese policymakers and elites. The assumption that the U.S. was innocent in the whole affair is disingenuous as well. Did Roosevelt not impose an oil embargo on Japan? Is that not, essentially, an act of war? If we remember our Bastiat, then we must surely realize that when goods stop crossing borders, armies will.

I think it is also a mistake to confuse Japan – an industrialized imperial power – with the likes of North Korea and Iran. I have already addressed this in a number of other arguments, so I don’t think it is worth repeating here. Free men have nothing to fear from toothless despots. It is our own government that we must be wary of, first and foremost.

Drumming up fear and suspicion of far-away despots has never had a place at the table of Liberty. It is not hard to see why.

You refer mysteriously to the constitutional limits of military actions. I think both the Iraq war and the Afghanistan wars are constitutional. I think, the help to Libyan is borderline.

What part of “only Congress can declare war” don’t you understand? Tinkering with words is something only liberals do, I have found.

Speaking of bleeding hearts, my answer to your strange question regarding Rwanda is a wholehearted and resounding “yes“.

The people who took part in those massacres were all or mostly adults. That means that they are capable of making decisions for themselves. Paternalism is another idea that has no place at the table of Liberty. The people responsible for the massacres in Rwanda were the Rwandans. If we stretch this, we can even pin some of the blame on European imperialism. But to the bleeding heart liberal, living safely and comfortably in the United States, the Rwandan massacres were all our fault! We didn’t do anything about it!

95% of all terrorist acts in the world in the past twenty years have been committed by people who call themselves Muslims and most often, in the name of Islam.

It would be nice if you could provide some statistics to back up this rather mendacious claim. What about Columbia? Sri Lanka? What about the fact that most terrorist acts committed by Muslims kill other Muslims?

The rest of your argument I can mostly agree with. Except, of course, for the part where you have celebrated the successes of removing dictators from Iraq and Libya. Although I usually don’t have any problem wading in to a fight to help out a friend, I think I would be better to let you stand on your own for this one. Libya and Iraq are successes of American bombing campaigns and “nation-building” exercises. Yeah, sure, Dr Delacroix, and fairies sometimes fly out of my butt when I fart.

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , , , , , , , ,

I am flattered, Brandon and I am sure I don’t deserve all this attention. I did not merit these detailed rebuttals and your rebuttals don’t deserve that much either. Sorry if this sounds dismissive b, it’s not my attention but your arguments seem to proceed from some debating class that I have not taken. He are your words:

It is not enough for you to have an adequate defense force that protects the territory and integrity of the Republic.

I think that’s not the Libertarian position. The party’s position instead is to wait until we are attacked, as in Pearl Harbor, to engage in active defense on the basis of a military establishment much smaller than the current one. Please, correct me on these specific points if my perception is wrong. Please, don’t run all around the chicken corral!

You charge me with saying that “we must bomb, maim, and bully other peoples in the name of peace as well.” Of course, it’s a caricature but it hides an important truth. We have different perceptions of recent events. Here it is in a capsule: The Iraqi liberation war did not do as well as it should have; it went much worse, in fact. Yet, knowing what I know now, if I had to make the decision I would do it again. The Libyan operation went as well as one could expect. As I wrote on my blog, it’s an Obama success.

You refer mysteriously to the constitutional limits of military actions. I think both the Iraq war and the Afghanistan wars are constitutional. I think, the help to Libyan is borderline.

I can’t take your otherwise thoughtful critique seriously because of all that you leave out of my clearly expressed position. I want to try one last time to elicit your response one something that is important to my military posture. I assume that you and I could easily agree that the US had no vital interest in Rwanda at the time of the genocide.

Was it fine to let thousands of Rwandan massacre hundreds of thousands of their fellow-citizens with machetes and bricks?

It seems to me that the first answer has to be a “yes” or a “no.”

One more thing, Brandon: I don’t know where in my writing you see anything resembling anti-Muslim statements. What I have done repeatedly is:

  1. denounced the hypocrisy of American Muslim organizations;
  2. deplored the blindness, the confusion of ordinary Muslims;
  3. attacked the mendacity of political correctness in this country, all with respect to the following simple fact: 95% of all terrorist acts in the world in the past twenty years have been committed by people who call themselves Muslims and most often, in the name of Islam.

I mean by “terrorism” violent acts directed deliberately against civilians.

Just to be superfluously declarative: I don’t think Muslims are evil; I think they are in massive denial. There are Muslim commentators who say exactly the same. There are too few and they are not heard much.

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

This is starting to feel a lot like shooting fish in a barrel Dr Delacroix. Since we both know exactly how Leftists argue, I think it would be pertinent to over your rebuttals point-by-point.

I am glad we agree on the US intervention in Afghanistan based on the fact that the Taliban hosted and refused to deliver the terrorist Al Qaida.

And it would have been nice if we had focused our resources and our energy on staying there and hunting down al-Qaeda. There is also something amiss here: Osama bin Laden was shot dead in a shootout involving our special forces underneath the nose of Pakistan’s version of West Point. As we both know very well, the Taliban and Islamabad have never been on friendly terms, yet both sides gave refuge to bin Laden.

My suspicion is that both factions harbored bin Laden because of his immense wealth, not because of ideological solidarity. Also, I am not sure that the Taliban would have even been able to retrieve bin Laden if they wanted to. Rule by the Taliban was no doubt cruel, but for the most part they relied heavily on regional strongmen and political alliances to maintain control of the state.

With all this being said, I don’t think we ever declared war on Afghanistan. I may be wrong, but I think we focused our efforts on toppling the Taliban regime and hunting bin laden rather than fighting the Afghan state. This is actually a logical outcome, if you think about it, because al-Qaeda was not sponsored by Kabul, and it most certainly was not sponsored by the impoverished warlords of the Afghan regions, either. I’m willing to bet that the Taliban were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Remember, al-Qaeda, or whatever is left of it after President Obama gets finished with them, is not the same thing as the Taliban. I would even say, with some confidence, that the Taliban knew nothing of the attacks being planned against the United States.

Either way, both factions are finished, and it’s time to bring our troops home after a job well done (thanks to President Obama’s strategy).

The “some press reports” statement regarding the Taliban blinding of little girls with acid shows what might be deliberate ignorance. The assertion was made by several responsible neutral sources, including National Geographic, not exactly a hawkish extremist publication. I suspect the Libertarian pacifist stance cannot be maintained without a broad practice of tactical ignorance such as you just demonstrated: Iran’s nuclear weapons? No problem.

My point wasn’t to discredit the press reports, it was to suggest that going to war with a state because a regime sometimes sponsors the throwing of acid into little schoolgirls’ eyes is a little bit silly. And where did the statement on Iran’s nuclear weapons come from?

Pulling stuff out of thin air to legitimate a point that was used to purposefully misconstrue the argument of your opponent is something only Leftists do, usually.  When are you going to come out of the closet, Dr Delacroix?  We’re all dying to know!

Your disquisition on the French Revolution simply ignores my question: Is the American revolution any the less valid because ti was helped by the intervention of a foreign power, France? When you seem to relate the Terror to this intervention, you are going out on a very thin limb. There is a conventional belief that the French intervention hastened the revolution in France by aggravating the public debt.

Ah. Here I think there is a miscommunication between us. If a revolution happens, it is valid regardless of who is involved and who it affects. Pretending otherwise is a waste of time. I brought in the French angle because today the United States IS France playing the role of interventionist in the Middle East.

How is relating the social, political, and economic upheaval of the Terror – which was aggravated by French intervention in the Anglo-American war – going out on a very thin limb? I did not suggest that we are on a crash course for violent revolution. I only drew some (quite pertinent) parallels between the two situations: supporting revolutions that have nothing to do with national security has never bode well for the states that do the intervening.

If you negative feelings, your apprehensions about the Arab Spring were all well-founded (were) should we then, as a country, continue to favor tyranny in those countries as we did for thirty years?

Ah. I have never said that I do not support the revolutions going on in the Middle East. Ever. What I have done is raise a flag of caution in the face of bellicose calls for more bombing, more involvement, and more intrigue on the part of Washington in the revolutions going on in the Middle East. Given that we have been supporting brutal regimes in that part of the world for the last half century, I don’t think our involvement will be looked upon with graciousness by the peoples we are inevitably trying to help.

Of course I support the revolutions going on in the Middle East, I just don’t support our government getting involved with them. When the dust clears, I think we should be the first state to stick out our hand and offer our friendship to the new governments.  I think the people of the Middle East would be inclined to agree with me.

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , ,

Brandon: I am glad we agree on the US intervention in Afghanistan based on the fact that the Taliban hosted and refused to deliver the terrorist Al Qaida.

The “some press reports” statement regarding the Taliban blinding of little girls with acid shows what might be deliberate ignorance. The assertion was made by several responsible neutral sources, including National Geographic, not exactly a hawkish extremist publication. I suspect the Libertarian pacifist stance cannot be maintained without a broad practice of tactical ignorance such as you just demonstrated: Iran’s nuclear weapons? No problem.

Your disquisition on the French Revolution simply ignores my question: Is the American revolution any the less valid because ti was helped by the intervention of a foreign power, France? When you seem to relate the Terror to this intervention, you are going out on a very thin limb. There is a conventional belief that the French intervention hastened the revolution in France by aggravating the public debt. It’s not much and isn’t there a chance it’s a little out of your area of expertise? All the same, I admire your gumption! Next thing you know, you are going to offer to continue this discussion in French and you will correct my grammar in that language! (OK, that last statement wasn’t fair. I couldn’t resist. I am deeply ashamed!)

Reply Part II: You sidestepped my main question by taking advantage of my advanced age to distract me with ancillary issues:

If your negative feelings, your apprehensions about the Arab Spring were all well-founded (were) should we then, as a country, continue to favor tyranny in those countries as we did for thirty years?

Same question: How about individually, as human beings?

The Intricacies of Political Life in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Is Islam Prominent?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Religion , , , , , , , ,

Riffing off of Dr Delacroix’s piece on Afghanistan, and reading through the comments, I thought it’d be a good idea to “go with the flow” (as they say in Santa Cruz). Anatol Lieven has a must-read piece in the National Interest on the US government’s failures in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Among the gems:

I have been struck, both in the United States and in Britain, by the tendency of officers and officials to speak and write as if protecting the lives of troops from Taliban attack is the first duty of the U.S. and British states. In fact, it is the duty of soldiers to risk their lives to protect the civilian populations of their countries, and the only valid reason why the U.S. and British militaries are in Afghanistan at all is to protect their fellow citizens from terrorism. If that equation is reversed, and the needs of the war in Afghanistan are actually worsening the terrorist threat to the U.S. and British homelands, then our campaign there becomes not just strategically but morally ludicrous.

Indeed, one of the most common leaps of logic that neoconservatives and Leftists make in regards to foreign policy and the rule of law is the role of militaries in society. If there is to be a role for the state, it should be limited to maintaining a domestic court system, providing for the defense of the state, and signing trading pacts with other polities. Anything more than this results in things like exploitative generational gaps, trouble paying the bills, and terrorist attacks.

Lieven continues, explaining the geopolitical situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Continue reading →

Afghanistan, Conservatives and Libertarians. Telling off the King.

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

There is an upsurge of hostility to the war in Afghanistan in conservative circles. Thus, the Independent Institute, an organization I have been supporting modestly but faithfully for years has a spate of statements against our anti-Taliban operations there. It’s understandable but disappointing.

Part of the reason for some conservative reserve is simply childish tit-for-tat: “You libs berated Bush about his war, in Iraq; the shoe is on the other foot and we will berate you about Obama’s war in Afghanistan.” It matters not to this mindset that it’s only Obama’s war in the trivial sense that he is not using his powers to withdraw.

The main cause of the upsurge of hostility comes from the strong libertarian component in our midst. Libertarians, by definition, dislike big government. They observe, correctly, that every war enlarges the importance and the power of government in relation to civil society, to society in general. They assert further that the taxation capability governments acquires in war time – largely with the help of the suspension of criticality occasioned by patriotism – is seldom rolled back. Thus, war means irreversible growth of the state and a corresponding shrinking of individual liberties. Hence, libertarians tend to be reflexively isolationists.

Of course, I think this is all true. However, this is only part of the story. It’s futile to ignore the concrete, short-term questions facing this country with respect to its involvement in Afghanistan. Here are three: Continue reading →

“The Young British Soldier”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , ,

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

– Rudyard Kipling, “The Young British Soldier,” 1892

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Liberty, Links , , , , , , , ,

Don’t criticize Obama for being too rational about Israel by the Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf

Six Women Rape Man to Death

Obama’s Adventures in Africa by Gene Healy of the Cato Institute

The Folly of Nation Building by Dr. Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University

The Bell Curve of Despotism by loyal reader Hank

Hey, check out our Facebook page, too!

A Few Fun Links

Brandon Christensen Liberty, Links , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. Europeans: anti-Semitic violence is okay as long as it’s done in the name of Palestine
  2. Five reasons to withdraw from Afghanistan by Malou Innocent in the National Interest
  3. Speaking of Afghanistan, Justin Raimondo wonders if the murderer acted alone
  4. In USAToday (!!) there is a great piece on libertarianism and science. Be warned all ye religious libertarians! (ht Wilson Mixon)

Okay! Okay! Perhaps they’re not that fun, but enlightening I hope.