TGIF: Watch the Forest as Well as the Trees

It's always important not to miss the forest for the trees. U.S. government announcements, such as its report of the turnover to the Afghan government of the seventh and last military base in Afghanistan, Bagram, should lead no one to think that U.S. foreign policy has changed worldwide or even in that particular region. Far from it. This is true even if virtually all U.S. troops, except for 600 military personnel, most of them left to guard the U.S. embassy, have left Afghanistan, as reported by Politico. (Who knows what the special operations forces will be up to?)

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki (at 1:03) said, "We have every intention of continuing an ongoing presence in Kabul, which is continuing even after we bring our military who are serving home by the end of August." But will those people come home or be redeployed? Can we expect cuts in the military budget? That may hold a clue.

A month earlier Psaki said, "The United States will remain deeply engaged with the Government of Afghanistan to ensure the country never again becomes a safe haven for terrorist groups who pose a threat to the U.S. homeland." In part I translate this to mean that the military contractors need not lose any sleep.

Note that Psaki invoked the old "safe haven" case for being ready to do something more in Afghanistan--or anywhere else, really. This is the argument that if we aren't careful, certain failing countries could become headquarters for terrorist groups bent on attacking America or Americans. Chief case in point, according to the convention wisdom, is Afghanistan after the Russians left and the U.S. government turned its attention elsewhere. Then came al Qaeda, supposedly given safe harbor by the Taliban.

But the "safe haven argument is a myth—a false but widely believed tale used to justify continuing a policy of perpetual failure," Scott Horton has repeatedly pointed out. (See also Horton's invaluable Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan.) As Horton summarized in The American Conservative in 2017, apart from the particular case of Afghanistan, from which the tiny remnant of al Qaeda has long departed, "terrorists don’t need safe havens from which to strike. As we’ve seen in recent attacks in the United States and Europe, one or two men with rifles or a truck can do plenty of damage with no more preparation space than a rented apartment."

Moreover, he adds, "The few dozen core al Qaeda members who survived the initial Air Force bombing campaign in Afghanistan fled the country by the end of 2001 [largely to Pakistan]. They were a non-factor in the war against the Taliban regime, and at no point did they have major influence in the insurgency against the occupation that grew up in later years. If any did come back they would be irrelevant. Afghanistan is exile, as far as anyone can get from anywhere. It provides no special access to any Western target." (Emphasis added.)

Just to drive the point home, Horton goes on: "The September 11 hijackers, none of whom were Afghans, gained entry to the United States under regular tourist and student visas. The terrorists launched the attacks from Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey. They had planned them in Malaysia, Germany, Spain, California, Florida, and Maryland." (See the article and the book for details on how distant the Taliban was from Osama bin Laden, despite U.S. government efforts to conflate the two.)

Needless to say, the safe-have myth has cost many lives, Afghan and American. And the myth seems not to have outlived its usefulness. The case for the United States as guardian of the globe echoes the myth, even when it is not invoked outright. Never forgetting 9/11 apparently means that the U.S. military and CIA need to be ready to pounce anywhere and everywhere. Nothing that goes on the world can be allowed to escape the attention of our best and brightest, lest we are caught asleep again.

But as Horton points out in the case of Afghanistan and the Middle East, the allegedly vigilant policies are actually counterproductive: rather than avert threats, they produce threats that then are used to justify U.S. intervention. It's been well-documented that 9/11 grew out of long years' of American intervention in the Middle East, especially the close ties with Israel and the Saudi monarchy and the 1990s child-killing sanctions against the Iraqis. (For details, in addition to Fool's Errand, also see Horton's encyclopedic Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism.)

Provoking threats in order to respond to them is a very old game of state. Whenever U.S. troops suffer casualties in some remote place, I can almost hear a U.S. official saying, "That's why we need U.S. troops there. Without them, who would defend the U.S. troops there?"

In our efforts to keep track of the details of particular interventions, we must not lose sight of the big picture: the U.S. government's lethal and costly self-appointed mission to police the world and its rationalizations for that role. If liberty matters, it's a "little America" policy that we must promote.

TGIF: Imperial America, Which Never Left, Is Back

In a cliche-ridden foreign-policy speech delivered at the State Department on Thursday, President Joe Biden declared that "America is back"--on the global stage, presumably, as policeman of the world, but certainly not a disinterested policeman. The problem is that it never left.

Despite some uncouth rhetoric and regular New York Times headlines regarding "American isolationism," Donald Trump never withdrew the U.S. government from its meddling role in the world. He baited Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and ended no war or U.S. assistance to other wars. Far from leaving NATO or punishing its members for not paying more for their military forces, he oversaw its expansion--which had only one purpose: to aggravate Russia. Yes, Trump apparently removed some troops from Germany--does anyone have a good reason why they are still there?--but Biden promised to change that. He also wants to add Georgia and Ukraine to NATO, which of course--*wink*--would never make Russia nervous.

If that's what he means by "America is back," let's us shout in unison: Thanks, but no thanks!

Not that we should be surprised by Biden's position, considering that his foreign-policy team consists of Obama administration retreads who act as though there's a world of difference between intervention and humanitarian intervention.

Biden put Russia and China on notice: "The days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions—interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens—are over."

Hang on. We've never been given evidence that Russia, which has a weak economy and limited military, interfered with an election--quite the contrary--or engaged in cyberattacks. By the way, we know the U.S. government does that sort of thing routinely, even with respect to Russia and its allies. Moreover, if Vladimir Putin's government poisons its citizens--obviously something to be condemned by all decent people--how is that an aggressive action against against the United States or any other country? By that curious standard, U.S. persecution of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou, et al. could be construed as aggression against others.

I will give Biden credit for agreeing with Russia to extend the New START Treaty on nuclear weapons. (Putin's so-called puppet, Trump, pulled out of such treaties.)

And on China:

And we’ll also take on directly the challenges posed by our prosperity, security, and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China. We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.

Note the words: "Our most serious competitor." One way to reduce tensions among states is to stop seeing them as competing economic entities. America doesn't compete with China in the global marketplace because America is not a homogeneous entity with a single scale of preferences. An American consumer and a Chinese merchant may have a harmony of interest; likewise an American manufacturer and a Chinese consumer or producer. (Concerns about intellectual property can be taken care of by repealing the relevant laws. Ideas cannot legitimately be owned.) But Biden. like Trump, is locked into the mercantilist worldview in which nations compete against each other. That's why Biden promises to reinforce the "Buy American" policy, costing taxpayers more for stuff that the U.S. government could buy for less from foreign manufacturers. "Buy American" also distorts the international division of labor, making everyone less prosperous.

Regarding Biden's other charges against China, one need not approve of the oppressive Chinese government to understand that something is wrong when no government but the U.S. government is allowed to have a sphere of influence ("backyard"), which thereby extends to the whole world. In a world of states, that sort of policy is asking for trouble.

So Biden's speech wholeheartedly embraced America's role as the global overseer, self-appointed to keep everyone on good behavior, strangely alternating between invocations of altruism and "naked [national] self-interest." We know where that took us in the past.

Biden promised to end assistance to Saudi Arabia's "offensive" actions in Yemen. Fine. But how will he define "offensive"? We might have a clue in what Biden said right after this promise:

At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, UAV strikes, and other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries.  We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.

Bear in mind that the Saudi regime is one of the most repressive in the world.

So nothing will really change. If Biden wanted to make a constructive difference to that region, he would end the long-standing multi-front covert/overt war against Iran, including all the sanctions Trump imposed. Biden didn't otherwise mention Iran in the speech, yet he says he wants to reenter the nuclear deal, which Trump stormed out of. The way to do that is end the sanctions, which harm and even kill innocent people.

While we're talking about the Middle East, let us note that Biden said nothing about Israel and Palestine, despite all the damage Trump did there on behalf of the Israeli state and against the long-suffering Palestinians. We already know from his Senate confirmation hearing that Secretary of State Tony Blinken has no problem with what Trump did: from moving the embassy to Jerusalem to declaring the settlements in the de facto annexed West Bank just fine and dandy. Massive annual military aid to Israel--without any conditions whatever--of course will continue. That policy of course gives propaganda opportunities to other regimes that the U.S. government can then condemn as destabilizing. But which party is the real destabilizer?

Also among the no-mentions was Afghanistan. How can Biden give his first speech on foreign policy without discussing the country's longest war? That is really remarkable. The names Iraq and Syria also do not appear in the speech. Amazing.

As long as government exists, the proper foreign policy is nonintervention. Policing the world inevitably invites defensive and deterrent responses, which are then used as pretenses to counter so-called "aggressive" actions. It also makes fortunes for military contractors. The result is perpetual war in which liberty and prosperity must suffer.

TGIF--The Goal Is Freedom--appears occasionally on Friday.

Hot off the Press! Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism

 

It my supreme pleasure to announce the availability of Scott Horton's great new book, Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism. This encyclopedic work is available in paperback and Kindle format at Amazon and contains pretty much all you need to know about the lethal, corrupt, and counterproductive series of wars and imperial actions that still plague the world. 

And don't forget Scott's previous indispensable book, Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan.

TGIF: The Nonintervention Principle

Anyone old enough to think about "America's" role in the world ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. For example, one ought to be able to argue firmly against U.S. intervention in other countries without feeling obliged to downplay or deny the real crimes that the tyrant du jour has committed. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees.

I can see the temptation here. Many people believe that all one needs to do to establish a case for intervention is to portray the target as egregiously bad. Consequently, a noninterventionist may think that the easiest way to rebut the interventionist is to deny the claim that the target is as bad as "they say." But this is a lousy, shortsighted, and ultimately self-defeating move. For one thing, it implies that intervention would be acceptable if the target were that bad. Unsurprisingly, it's better to stick to principle.

The principle of foreign nonintervention has nothing to do with the record of the foreign government in question. It is perfectly coherent to identify Ruler X as a brutal dictator and to oppose a U.S. government action aimed at regime-change and nation-building. Thus the noninterventionist has no need to blunt the move toward intervention by misstating or obscuring facts to make the targeted ruler appear less bad than he really is. If someone is puzzled by the statement "The ruler is as horrible as you say, but that is no justification for intervention," it's the noninterventionist's job to straighten that person out because he clearly misunderstands the nature of noninterventionism.

The world is full of egregiously bad rulers -- as distinguished from merely garden-variety bad ones -- but when the matter turns to U.S. foreign and military policy, the appropriate question is, "So what?" As I say, the case for nonintervention doesn't rest on the target's record. So noninterventionists should have no trouble identifying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (among many others) as egregiously bad guys while also opposing U.S. government action against them.

Noninterventionists should also be able to state, assuming of course it is true, that a particular bad ruler is not as bad in every respect as the interventionists say without being smeared as an apologist for that ruler. For example, we can note that Assad, although a brutal dictator, has protected religious minorities, such as Christians, from the fanatical Sunni Muslims, such as al Qaeda and the late Islamic State. (Assad himself is a member of a religious minority, the Alawites, which is in the Shia branch of Islam.) Acknowledging Assad's record of protecting minorities does not make one a fan, much less a tool, of the Syrian ruler. Similarly, one ought to be able to point out that U.S. sanctions are partly responsible for Venezuela's problems without being accused of defending or overlooking Maduro's authoritarian state socialism, which by nature will always harm the very people it is perhaps intended to benefit.

Thus the case for nonintervention is independent of Assad's policy toward minorities and the consequences of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. (Those sanctions should end.) Nonintervention stands on its own merits.

I find it necessary to discuss what ought to be obvious because recently I've seen people committing these fallacies: a few noninterventionists have appeared to suggest that a potential target of U.S. intervention, Maduro, isn't really so bad, while some interventionists have accused noninterventionists of being soft on some demonstrably horrible rulers.

Another fallacy I've encountered is the equation of noninterventionism with nationalism, specifically with a belief that national borders are sacrosanct. The fallacy here is in thinking that the libertarian case for nonintervention rests on a reverence for national boundaries. Nothing could be further from the truth. Noninterventionism and open (i.e., essentially abolished) borders go hand in hand.
So why the iron rule against nonintervention if borders are not sacrosanct? Albert Jay Nock and Murray Rothbard both answered this question: as long as we live in a world of states, to minimize the harm, we are obliged to keep the state we labor under on, as Nock put it, as short a leash as possible. This is true in domestic policy, but it is even more urgent in foreign affairs since presidents have frightening and acutely lethal autonomy in that realm. We should need no reminder that when the U.S. government intervenes in a foreign conflict, it makes things worse -- much worse -- especially for noncombatants. So nonintervention is motivated not only by a wish to keep the state as small as possible, but also to minimize bloodshed by abstaining from exacerbating other people's conflicts. Bluntly put, we must keep states from clashing. It's got nothing to do with a reverence for borders.

In the harsh light of 21st-century American foreign policy, we can see that the cause of nonintervention has never been more urgent. Let's not burden it with irrelevant considerations.

(For a statement of libertarian noninterventionism, see my "Libertarianism Means Noninterventionism.")

TGIF --The Goal Is Freedom -- appears occasionally on Fridays.

Drop Everything and Read this Article!

"How to Avoid Swallowing War Propaganda" by Nathan J. Robinson is an extraordinarily important article. I cannot recommend it too highly. Read it now!

TGIF: Trump’s Escalation Imperils Innocents

While an eerie, surreal calm has fallen over US-Iranian relations, I wouldn’t assume we’re out of the woods yet. Trump had no reason to be confident that Iran’s response to his most recent escalation of violence would be little more than symbolic. Although he’s accepted that response more or less passively for now, with Trump, things can turn on a dime. Who can tell what determines his mood at any given time?

Contemplating Trump’s January 3 escalation of the previously relatively low-level conflict with Iran, one might be struck by how casually the US government (and others of course) treat innocent bystanders. That was among my first thoughts on hearing of the Trump-ordered drone assassinations of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani, Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and others in Iraq.

By innocent bystanders, I don’t mean the commander of Iran’s Quds Force or the leaders of Iraq’s Shi’ite militias, which are part of the Iraqi security establishment, all of whom were allies of US forces in the fight against the Islamic State. (Remember the Islamic State, don’t you?, which the US had fertilized the ground for by declaring open season on Syria’s ruler and Iranian ally Assad?) I take as a given that no one among the rulers and military leaders of countries in the Middle East has clean hands. The same can be said for the rulers and military leaders from powers outside the Middle East that have intervened in the region. The case for nonintervention has never depended on the presence of good guys in any particular conflict. That case stands  even when the targeted figures have been less than discriminating about whom they order shot. Interventionism is based simply on 1) the wisdom of keeping “one’s own” government on as tight a leash as possible and 2) the knowledge that the law of unintended horrific consequence is always in effect. After all we’ve lived through since 2001 -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, among others -- must we really be reminded of this?

By innocent life I’m also not even referring to American military and diplomatic personnel. Americans in Iraq may indeed be killed, injured, and captured as a result of Trump’s assassinations, but they are hardly innocent. On the contrary, they are there because Bush II ordered an invasion force into Iraq and his successors have carried on the operation and have extended it beyond Iraq. Absent that program (or something equally insane), we would not now be at this juncture.

No, the innocent lives I’m talking about are Iraqi and Iranian (among others) -- lives that Americans have been treating like garbage for years: the lives, that is, of foreigners. I realize that for many, and maybe most, Americans, foreign lives don’t rank high on their list of concerns. It’s the prerogative of history’s presumed chosen nation to put itself first and only, and indeed it has. You’ll often hear how many Americans have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq (or Vietnam), but rarely how many Afghans and Iraqis (or Vietnamese) were murdered by Americans. Nor will you hear how America’s economic warfare against Iranians and others have cost countless lives because of its effect on food and medical supplies.

So my thoughts are with the overlooked innocent foreign lives that are on the line. Consider their predicament of powerlessness: they won’t even be able to vote in the upcoming presidential election. (Not that the one “cherished” vote that each American 18 and older possesses is worth terribly much.) I’m beginning to see why foreigners might want to “intervene” in American elections: it’s so easy for them to be on the receiving end of America’s lethal militarist imperial foreign policy; they certainly have an interest in the outcome of US presidential elections. The only country to blame for providing an incentive for foreign election intervention is the United States itself. 

The threat to innocent Iranians from a war with the US -- whatever form it may take -- doesn’t take much imagination. One need only look up the US record of civilians deaths in the region and beyond to see what I mean.

But let’s not overlook the potential Iraqi victims. After all, Trump had the arrogance to assassinate the Iranian Soleimani on “friendly” Iraqi soil, and Iran’s missile response (though it apparently was bloodless) also occurred there. The battleground, if it eventuates, could mainly be in Iraq. (But let’s not forget Syria.)

By the way, Soleimani flew to Iraq after Trump had urged the Iraqis to facilitate a de-escalation of tensions between Iran and US best buddy Saudi Arabia. Soleimani had flown openly to Iraq’s international airport to deliver his response to a Saudi proposal at a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi. That’s when he was killed by the American drone strike ordered by Trump. Who says? Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi does.

Thus did Trump add dishonor to murder.

With the killing of the top Iranian military/political operative and Iraqi militia leaders -- again, all of them US allies against the Islamic State -- fragile Iraq could spin out of control, with grave consequences for regular innocent Iraqis, Shi’ite and Sunni. Iraq is mostly Shi’ite, of course, but it has pro-Iranian and not-so-pro-Iranian factions, not to mention Sunni Arab and Kurdish populations. How much influence Iran should have in Iraq’s internal affairs is a contentious matter there. (Since 2003 the US strangely has favored the pro-Iranian factions over their more nationalist rivals.) If Trump’s lethal strike ignites a civil war, no doubt he’ll be safe and sound at Mar-a-Lago or in the White House. So it’s no big deal to him. Small comfort for the bystanders thousands of miles away.

But even if the strike ends up uniting Iraqis against the US presence, the results could still be deadly to bystanders as the cycle of violence intensifies. Moreover, as veteran war correspondent Patrick Cockburn points out, with the shift in US attention from the remnants of ISIS to the Iraqi Shi’ites and Iran, “The biggest cheer in Iraq after the US drone strike [that killed Soleimani et al.] will have come from ISIS commanders in their isolated bolt-holes in the desert and mountains of Iraq and Syria.”
Sure, some American military and diplomatic personnel may bite the dust too, but that would just give Trump another pretext to order his military into heroic action. So no big deal. He’ll be adored at rallies, and maybe he’ll throw in a photo op with a Gold Star family or two.

I’m not worried about Trump. I worry for the innocent bystanders.

TGIF -- The Goal Is Freedom -- appears occasionally on Fridays.

Interview: America's Bipartisan War Culture

I recently talked to Scott Horton about America's war culture. Listen here.

TGIF: America's War Culture

For most of the opinion-making class in America today, war is the default position. Representatives of establishment newspapers and TV news operations are not likely to grill someone who favors U.S. military intervention somewhere -- anywhere. He or she will have no burden of proof to sustain. But persons who oppose a new war or call for an end to an existing one are sure to be treated like oddballs if not traitors. They’d better have an extraordinarily strong defense of their position because the burden of proof will be squarely on them, but even a strong defense won’t get the heat turned down.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

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TGIF: Trump's Foreign Policy War on Americans

Beyond any reasonable doubt, in substance if not in appearance, Donald Trump is a thoroughly conventional American politician. It’s a wonder that anyone requires proof at this late date.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: The Iraq Invasion after 15 Years

On the 10th anniversary of the U.S. government's criminal, catastrophic, and still-to-this-day consequential war against Iraq in March 2003, I wrote:

It is no exaggeration to say that most news operations were little more than extensions of the White House Office of Communications. Abandoning even the pretense of an adversarial relationship with the government, the media became shameful conduits for unsubstantiated and outright false information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged threat to the American people. Included among the falsehoods were reports that Saddam had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, had trained al-Qaeda fighters, and had attempted to obtain uranium ore and aluminum tubes for nuclear bombs. 

Put bluntly, the disastrous invasion of Iraq, which was sold on the basis of lies told by President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, [CIA Director George Tenet,] Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and others might not have happened without the enthusiastic help of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and others. The blood of more than a hundred thousand — perhaps more than a million — Iraqis and 4,500 [now nearer to 5,000] Americans is on their hands too.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: "Peace Through Strength" Is a Racket

Donald Trump has embraced the popular "peace through strength" doctrine (PTSD) with his characteristic panache: 

"I’m going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody — absolutely nobody — is gonna to mess with us," Trump says. On other occasions he's said similar things: "We want to defer, avoid and prevent conflict through our unquestioned military strength" and, a year ago, "Nobody is going to mess with us. Nobody. It will be one of the greatest military build-ups in American history."

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

Radio Interview: Why I Am Proud NOT to Have “Served” in Vietnam

I was on the Craig Silverman Show yesterday talking about why I am proud not to have "served" in Vietnam. Listen here.

TGIF: Raining on the Parade

Of course Donald Trump wants a military parade. I'd be surprised if he didn't. It's just what an insecure narcissist would want. A parade would be the national equivalent of his strutting around like a peacock, dying to turn heads. Even a politician can see that: "I think confidence is silent and insecurity is loud, Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said. "America is the most powerful country in all of human history; you don't need to show it off."

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: New York Times Acknowledges US Global Empire

One big advantage the war party has is the public’s ignorance about the activities of the far-flung American empire. Although frustrating, that ignorance is easy to understand and has been explained countless times by writers in the public choice tradition. Most people are too busy with their lives, families, and communities to pay the close attention required to know that the empire exists and what it is up to. The opportunity cost of paying attention is huge, considering that the payoff is so small: even a well-informed individual could not take decisive action to rein in the out-of-control national security state. One vote means nothing, and being knowledgeable about the U.S. government’s nefarious foreign policy is more likely to alienate friends and other people than influence them. Why give up time with family and friends just so one can be accused of “hating America”?

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Dying for the Empire is Not Heroic

Predictably, the news media spent most of the week examining words Donald Trump may or may not have spoken to the widow of an American Green Beret killed in Niger, in northwest Africa, in early October. Not only was this coverage tedious, it was largely pointless. We know Trump is a clumsy boor, and we also know that lots of people are ready to pounce on him for any sort of gaffe, real or imagined. Who cares? It’s not news. But it was useful to those who wish to distract Americans from what really needs attention: the U.S. government’s perpetual war.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: The American Way of War

The most striking fact about the United States of America is not its supposed founding principles — more often lauded than observed — but how often “the greatest country on earth” has waged war. If we count wars against internal “enemies” (i.e., the Indians), covert foreign wars, and aid to other states’ aggressive external and internal wars, we can see the United States has been at war almost continuously since it broke free from Britain. By one estimate this nation has been at war 214 out of the 228 years since the Constitution took effect — that’s 94 percent of the time — and there were wars during the Articles of Confederation period too. Contrary to popular misconception, the war state did not begin in 1945. From the start, war was an acceptable means to national policy ends, whether to open markets or to install friendly regimes.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Let's All Calm Down about Russia

I can understand why the ruling elite, broadly conceived to include the intel bureaucracy and the military-industrial complex, has an interest in positing Russia as our enemy. The reasons are obvious enough. What I can't understand is why common Americans would fall for it. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain from swallowing this line.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: An Idiot Abroad

I've got a few leftover thoughts from Donald Trump's trip to Europe. As usual, I oppose both Trump and his mainstream critics. It's possible for both sides to be wrong in a dispute.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

Revisionist History Day, 2017

Today is Revisionist History Day, what others call Memorial Day. Americans are supposed to remember the country's war dead while being thankful that they protected our freedom and served our country. However, reading revisionist history (see a sampling below) or alternative news sites (start with Antiwar.com and don't forget to listen to the Scott Horton Show) teaches that the fallen were doing no such thing. Rather they were and are today serving cynical politicians and the "private" component of the military-industrial complex in the service of the American Empire.

The state inculcates an unquestioning faith in its war-making by associating it with patriotism, heroism, and the defense of "our freedoms." This strategy builds in its own defense against any criticism of the government's policies. Anyone who questions the morality of a war is automatically suspected of being unpatriotic, unappreciative of the bravery that has "kept us free," and disrespectful of "our troops," in a word, un-American.

To counter this common outlook, which people are indoctrinated in from birth and which is shared by conservatives and progressives alike, we should do what we can to teach others that the government's version of its wars is always self-serving and threatening to life, liberty, and decency.

In that spirit, I quote a passage from the great antiwar movie The Americanization of Emily. You'll find a video of the scene below. This AP photo is a perfect illustration of what "Charlie Madison" is talking about.

I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it's always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades . . . we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows' weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices....

My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. . . . [N]ow my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave. [Emphasis added.]

Here's an all-too-incomplete list of books in no particular order (some of which I've read, some of which I intend to read):

• We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now, edited by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• The Failure of America's Foreign Wars, edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger
• America's Second Crusade, by William Henry Chamberlin
• Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal, by Ralph Raico
• Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, by Jeff Riggenbach
• War Is a Lie, by David Swanson
• War Is a Racket, by Smedley D. Butler
• Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, by Paul Fussell
• Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
• The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, by William Appleman Williams
• Empire as a Way of Life, by William Appleman Williams
• The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition, by Arthur Ekirch
• The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic, 1890-1920, by Walter Karp
• The Costs of War, edited by John Denson
• Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer
• All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer
• Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson
• The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, by Chalmers Johnson
• War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
• A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin (This book has serious flaws, but it nonetheless shows the cynicism of the European imperialists.)
• The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, by David Hirst
• Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001, by Ussama Makdisi
• Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, by Max Blumenthal
• Genesis: Truman, Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, by John B. Judis
• The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination, by Jeremy R. Hammond
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe
• The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, by Miko Peled
• Assault on the Liberty, by James N. Ennes Jr.
• Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II, by Jim Powell
• American Empire: Before the Fall, by Bruce Fein
• Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World, by Jonathan Kwitny
• The Emergency State: America's Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs, by David C. Unger
• The War State: The Cold War Origins Of The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963, by Michael Swanson
• Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, by Nicholson Baker
• Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy, by Percy Greaves
• Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath, by John Toland
• Day of Deceit: The Truth about  FDR and Pearl Harbor, by Robert Stinnett
• Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, by Daniel Ellsberg
• The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, by Nick Turse
• Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, by Nick Turse  
• "War is the Health of the State," by Randolph Bourne
• “War, Peace, and the State,” by Murray Rothbard
• “‘Ancient History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention,” by Sheldon Richman
• "War's Still a Racket," by Sheldon Richman
• "The American Disease," by Sheldon Richman

By the way, if you can't help but think of this day as "memorial day," then at least spend part of it remembering how the U.S. government has caused the deaths of so many people.

TGIF: The Real Danger from Trump Is Ignored

While the chattering classes spend all their time rehashing Donald Trump’s alleged — there’s a word you don’t much see in the media anymore — coordination with Russians over their alleged — there it is again — hacking of the Democrats’ email, a story with far more ominous implications is being ignored. I refer to Trump’s trip, beginning today, to Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!