The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation, whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile, the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. [ . . . ] The decrepit social order offered so little to its subjects that many saw the barbarian invasion as liberation from onerous obligations to the ruling class.
The myth dies hard. Thomas E. Woods of the Mises Institute appeared last summer on Scott Horton’s Antiwar.com radio program to try to kill it, as quite possibly only he can, but even his deft hands are full. He’s up against a fallacy, wrapped in a half-truth, inside a pseudo-patriotic shibboleth. It may well be that nothing’s more powerful than an idea whose time has come, but a carefully cultivated Big Lie will invariably give that timely idea a run for the money. People know what they know. They know war brings prosperity. They know because “World War II got the U.S. out of the Depression.” They know because the government schools told them “World War II got the U.S. out of the Depression.” Beyond that, they know because of what they see. They see the manufacturing might of the military-industrial complex (MIC). They see it employing land, labor and capital. They see its technological sophistication. They see the high-paying jobs.
I picked up a copy of a memoir written by the long-gone CIA Director, George Tenet. On the first page of the book’s preface, Mr. Tenet described what it was like on the day after the World Trade Towers had exploded as a result of the terrorists’ actions on 9-11-01.
I quote Mr. Tenet here:
“All this weighed heavy on my mind as I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing and saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. Perle is one of the godfathers of the neoconservative movement and, at the time, was head of the Defense Policy Board, an independent advisory group attached to the Secretary of Defense. Ours was little more than a passing acquaintance. As the doors closed behind him, we made eye contact and nodded. I had just reached the door myself when Perle turned to me and said, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. 'They bear responsibility.' (Italics added).
“I was stunned but said nothing. Eighteen hours earlier, I had scanned passenger manifests for the four hijacked airplanes that showed beyond a doubt that al-Qa’ida was behind the attacks. Over the months and years to follow, we would carefully examine the potential of a collaborative role for state sponsors. The intelligence then and now, however, showed no evidence of Iraqi complicity."
Joe Lieberman: China can shut down the Internet, why can’t we?
Who else but Joe Lieberman would introduce a bill to give the President the power to shut down the Internet with the flick of a switch? I’m afraid of the answer to that question, and you should be, too. However, it’s hardly surprising America’s premierauthoritarianwarmonger – author of a bill that would strip American citizenship from anyone even vaguely suspected of “terrorism” – would come up with a scheme like this.
If the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” passes – and isn’t that a name that embraces practically every collectivist bromide extant? – the Department of Homeland Security would establish a “cyber-terrorism” sub-bureaucracy, the Office of Cyberspace Policy (OCP), and the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communication (NCCC), with the former lording it over the Internet – a Cyber-Czar – and the latter unleashed to spy on and otherwise guard the “cybersecurity” Senators Lieberman and his two co-sponsors aver is imminently threatened.
During her speech to the first ever National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discouraged the very idea of a national organization, urging the movement to stay leaderless and decentralized. This was the most important and valuable part of Palin’s speech.
Sarah sounded pretty much like the same old Republican Party.
Despite the many independents that make up the movement, the tea parties in large part represent a long overdue reexamination of conservative principles. A big-spending Democratic president seems to have awakened grassroots conservatives enough to finally lament the big spending of the last Republican president,and plenty of incumbents from both parties face voter backlash in 2010 and possibly beyond, particularly if they supported bailouts, stimulus, national healthcare, or other massive debt-incurring legislation.
The tea partiers are right to acknowledge and denounce Bush’s big-government growth of Medicare, the implementation of No Child Left Behind, and Dubya’s other expansions of the domestic state. But what they still seem to forget is what made conservatives so tolerant of big government during that time—an almost religious preoccupation with supporting the Iraq War.
As Washington’s long debate on the Afghan war unfolded, one group had an unhealthy advantage though – based on its record – it should have had no influence at all. These are the neoconservatives, and they have captured The Washington Post’s editorial pages along with other outlets of elite opinion.
Over the past three decades, the neocons have carved this important place for themselves in Washington by purporting to stand for liberal values, such as democracy and human rights, while using those worthy goals to justify the frequent use of military force.
For the neocons, war also is not just a last-resort option. Rather, it is how they have gained – and how they maintain – their prominence. When the United States is at peace – or without a war looming – the neocons are at a loss.
(Of course, one of the signature characteristics of the neocons is that few have served in the military next to the soldiers whose blood the neocons so reflexively are willing to spill as a “solution” to nearly any problem. As elite intellectuals, the neocons view soldiers from inner-city or small-town America as expendable for the grander cause.)
What the neocons do excel at is the internal Washington policy debate. They are well-schooled and self-assured; they are fierce debaters; they understand media; and they don’t hesitate to question the patriotism or toughness of anyone who disagrees with them.
On the Iraq War, the neocons were the ones who gave inspiration to two of their own, L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer, head of the occupation, and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary for Policy in the Defense Department, who was responsible for day-to-day Pentagon operations in Iraq in 2003.
In eight days – after the U.S. invading force had ousted Saddam Hussein’s government – Bremer and Feith changed the whole tenor of the occupation from a quick get-in and get-out to a complex nation-building scheme that was designed to bring free-market “democracy” to Iraq.
Bremer and Feith did this by abolishing the Iraqi army and the civilian bureaucracy, thereby placing American solders in the middle of a Sunni insurgency that followed soon afterwards.
