Terrorism

I have serious concerns, however, about the president’s decision to add some 30,000 troops and an as yet undisclosed number of civilian personnel to escalate our Afghan operation. This “surge” will bring US troop levels to approximately those of the Soviets when they occupied Afghanistan with disastrous result back in the 1980s. I fear the US military occupation of Afghanistan may end up similarly unsuccessful.

In late 1986 Soviet armed forces commander, Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, told then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "Military actions in Afghanistan will soon be seven years old. There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nonetheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of rebels.” Soon Gorbachev began the Soviet withdrawal from its Afghan misadventure. Thousands were dead on both sides, yet the occupation failed to produce a stable national Afghan government.

Medlock said his daughter was at her mother's house when Ozark police Officer Dustin Bradshaw shocked her in the back with a Taser and arrested her.

"If you can't pick the kid up and take her to your car, handcuff her, then I don't think you need to be an officer," Medlock said.

"He had no other choice. He had to get the child under control," said Ozark police Chief Jim Noggle.

Ozark police said it is their policy to use a Taser on someone who is a threat to others, no matter their age.

In the first two lessons on how to play the Shame & Blame Game in America's long running culture war you learned how to slap down the Race Card and the Sexist Card.

Those two cards have been shamelessly played face up and in your face for a very long time. But today's class concerns itself with a more recent addition to the deck: the Terrorist Card.

When you hear that some libertarians who typically call themselves Anarcho-Capitalists, or AnCaps, want to abolish government entirely do you respond with gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair?

“Without government we’ll have nothing but chaos,” you might gasp in dismay.

But think about how much chaos government creates.

This past week there has been a lot of discussion and debate on the continuing war in Afghanistan. Lasting twice as long as World War II and with no end in sight, the war in Afghanistan has been one of the longest conflicts in which our country has ever been involved. The situation has only gotten worse with recent escalations.

What if tomorrow morning you woke up to headlines that yet another Chinese drone bombing on US soil killed several dozen ranchers in a rural community while they were sleeping? That a drone aircraft had come across the Canadian border in the middle of the night and carried out the latest of many attacks? What if it was claimed that many of the victims harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but most of the dead were innocent women and children? And what if the Chinese administration, in an effort to improve its public image in the US, had approved an aid package to send funds to help with American roads and schools and promote Chinese values here?

Maybe it's time to quit stigmatizing Third World countries by calling them Third World countries.

At least when it comes to the drug war.

While the supposedly advanced and enlightened First World countries, such as The United States of America, still love to gussie up their cop corps with military style guns and gear and gangland arrogance and turn them loose like a pack of hounds on people who are doing nothing more than committing an act of harming no one, the nations of South America are dismantling the War On Some Drugs one law at a time.

Google the phrase, with quotes, "Going Galt" and you'll get "about 215,000" results or so.

Are libertarians witnessing the mainstreaming of John Galt?

This article touches on one of the reasons why the idea of Going Galt is becoming so popular. But it needs to begin with this caveat:

When Obama is not busy appeasing militant Islamists and making timid statements against other terrorist nations or organizations, he is busy encroaching on individual rights and the conditions under which American business must operate. Obama is going “soft” on potential enemies abroad, taking a policy of appeasement that is likely to invite attack. He is riding roughshod on individual rights of citizens at home. He has this back-assward.

The Iranian authorities are flirting with revolution. No American intervention will be needed, until a new regime takes over and finds the partially built bombs.

While much of the country’s attention is on other issues, a serious situation is developing in Pakistan that threatens to plunge us into another fruitless and bloody war. It is very frustrating to see that many who were so vehemently against the wars of the last administration have suddenly lost interest in foreign policy simply because we were promised change.

Those still paying attention know that nothing could be further from the truth. Very little has changed, except perhaps rhetoric, but what does that matter when the bombing missions are only getting deadlier? Rather than drawing down violent military interventions into the affairs of other countries, the new administration is escalating the foreign policy of the previous administration.

The recent episode with the Somali pirates has brought to the forefront many questions about maritime security. What is the best way to deal with a gang of criminals, not acting on behalf of any country, when they attack private vessels? Under whose jurisdiction are these types of criminals to be prosecuted? Most importantly, how do we deter such attacks in the future?

Already the administration is saber-rattling with typical big government so-called solutions, like “diplomatically” threatening the weak Somalian government, or any government of any country where pirates are thought to live, with military action if they fail to control the situation. There are calls to increase the size of the navy until it is nearly omnipresent on the seas. I was pleased to see they got one thing partially right in stating that the government should work with shippers and the insurance industry to address gaps in their self-defense, if by “work with” they mean “get out of the way”. But I fear this will be soon be brushed aside in favor of the more elaborate, interventionist and expensive measures. Self-defense is the most obvious, most effective and least expensive solution, but that has never stopped the government from spending money they don’t have to make problems worse.

"No one would lie about something like this simply to undermine the Baghdad security operation. That can be done simply by calculating the dozens of dead this last week. Or by writing about the mass detentions of innocents, or how people are once again burying their valuables so that Iraqi and American troops don't steal them."

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Libertarianism is a bundle of schismatics, branches of white water politics, has much potential political force. However it keeps dividing, inventing more versions, both becoming more vulnerable and confusing people. It is a wonder it has not already self-destructed.

What if we wake up one day and realize that the terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others?

What if propping up repressive regimes in the Middle East endangers both the United States and Israel?

What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan – and bombing Pakistan – is directly related to the hatred directed toward us and has nothing to do with being free and prosperous?

What if someday it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair trade-off for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens, no matter how many Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghan people are killed or displaced?