Wire Report

(WIRE/II) – On March 31, 2010, the New York Times wrote an editorial that briefly expressed horror in response to the Moscow subway terror bombings, then warned that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin might yet again use terrorist attacks to further consolidate his power, and finally lectured Russia that the only way to defeat such extremism was to deal with the underlying causes. Such a sermonizing editorial by any Russian publication after the 9/11 attacks would have engendered outrage in America. Yet the same conclusions and advice that the Times gave to Russia in the wake of its tragedy could equally be applied to post-9/11 U.S. policy.

In the wake of the Moscow subway attacks, the Times opined,

“We are concerned . . . that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will use Monday’s horror as another excuse to further consolidate his authoritarian control of the country.”

“After extremists from Chechnya executed a series of bloody attacks in 2004, then-President Putin pushed through ‘reforms’ supposedly intended to improve Russians’ security. Their effect was to hand the Kremlin, Mr. Putin, and the state security services, from which he came, far too much power to silence a free press and undercut nearly all political challengers.”

Yet similarly, in the aftermath of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration moved swiftly to expand American executive power past the already potent capabilities of the imperial presidency into the realm of a “presidency on steroids.” For example, Bush claimed that during wartime, the president could disregard congressionally passed laws, especially statutes requiring court-approved warrants for surveillance of Americans. Such rule by executive fiat is usually what petty dictators do. Bush also unconstitutionally detained terrorism suspects, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely without trial and then approved torture, which was prohibited by U.S. and international law, on them. So politicians in the United States can also use terrorist attacks to grab more power in the name of enhancing security.

Even more blindly, the Times condescendingly preached to Putin that,

“If Russia is to have any hope of defeating extremism, Mr. Putin is going to have to focus less on promoting his own power and more on the root causes of the conflicts in the Caucuses. He can start by heeding his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, the current president who has urged that the Kremlin address the underlying inequities that feed militancy, including poverty, joblessness, and official corruption. Brute force alone will not work this time either.”

And this from the flagship newspaper in a country that for many years has refused to examine the root causes of the 9/11 attacks and, in fact, has allowed its politicians to do more of the same. Had the American media and members of Congress actually examined Osama bin Laden’s writings to attempt to honestly determine his motives for attacking the United States, the unnecessary long-term occupation of Afghanistan and the feckless invasion and occupation of Iraq might have been prevented before they made the problem of blowback anti-U.S. terrorism worse. Bin Laden has been clear that he attacks the United States because of its intervention in and military occupation of Islamic lands.

Although it is easy to pick on the Times, the newspaper’s view merely reflects the lack of introspection by the U.S. political elite and American society about the ill effects of a U.S. foreign policy of overseas interventionism and hostile foreign reactions to it. But then the pot should not call the kettle black, but rather try to clean up its own act first.

© 2010 The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He also has served as Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), and has testified on the military and financial aspects of NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee, and on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Eland is the author of Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy, as well as The Efficacy of Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool. He is a contributor to numerous volumes and the author of 45 in-depth studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in American Prospect, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences), Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Conservative, International Journal of World Peace, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. Dr. Eland’s popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Providence Journal, The Hill, and Defense News. He has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight,  NPR’s Talk of the Nation,  PBS, Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, CNN Crossfire,  CNN-fn, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), Canadian TV (CTV), Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, BBC, and other local, national, and international TV and radio programs.

Wire Report

Justin Logan -Associate Director of Foreign Policy Studies, The CATO Institute

Justin Logan is associate director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is an expert on U.S. grand strategy, international relations theory, and American foreign policy. His current research focuses on the formation of U.S. grand strategy under unipolarity; the growing role of counterinsurgency (COIN) and nation building in U.S. foreign policy; and the intellectual lineage of COIN. He has authored numerous policy studies and articles on topics including international relations theory, U.S. China policy, U.S. Russia policy, stabilization and reconstruction operations, and the policy approaches to a nuclear Iran. His articles have appeared in the Harvard International Review, The National Interest, Orbis, the Foreign Service Journal, The American Conservative, Reason, The American Prospect, National Review Online, the Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. He has made regular appearances on a variety of broadcast media including the BBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Voice of America, and others. Logan holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from American University. He lives in Washington, DC.

(WIRE/CATO) – Recent war games and public statements from U.S. military commanders are reinforcing what should have been clear some time ago: A U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran would have significant but unpredictable consequences.

American and Israeli intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program is of uneven quality, but excellent, near-perfect intelligence would be required to make any strike successful. There is the real possibility that an attack would set back Iran’s progress by only a few years, while rallying Iranian citizens around the regime they seem to be increasingly challenging at present. The Iranians have a host of asymmetric capabilities, some of which they would likely use to respond to a foreign attack. This could complicate the American withdrawal from Iraq and ongoing operations in Afghanistan, and potentially cost American and Israeli (to say nothing of Iranian) lives. Most importantly, there is the prospect of an escalation spiral that could lead to a full-blown war and possibly regime change in Iran followed by chaos, potentially across the region.

Beyond immediate policy questions, though, there are general lessons for U.S. foreign policy: Military violence is a tool of limited utility. American threats can frighten weaker countries, encouraging them to seek nuclear deterrents. Willful diplomatic isolation is counterproductive. Finally, inserting ourselves as the balancer-of-first-resort in every region of the world is a costly and unnecessary strategy that discards America’s natural strategic advantages and plays to our weaknesses. The sooner these lessons are digested by the U.S. foreign policy elite, the better.

Allison Bricker

WASHINGTON D.C. – Speaking to a standing room only crowd in the ballroom of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Representative Ron Paul of Texas addressed attendees of CPAC 2010 with an energy and passion usually reserved for the stump. After being largely dismissed by the old-media and political status-quo during the 2008 Presidential campaign, the reception for Doctor “No” at this year’s annual conservative gathering mirrored the response he routinely received at campaign stops and still garners at his speeches before the energetic college crowd. Driving home his message of smaller Constitutional government his speech was interrupted several times by standing ovations and loud chants of “End the FED”, the latter a reference to his bill to finally allow for a full and complete audit of the FEDERAL RESERVE, H.R. 1207.

The cheers continued to echo throughout the ballroom as he spoke to the necessity of realigning American Foreign Policy to that of the Founding Generation and classical not neo conservative philosophy.

Source(s): CPAC • MinnesotaChris YouTube Channel • C-SPAN

The Smoking Argus

(OFFICIAL STATEMENT) – WASHINGTON D.C. – Things seem to be unraveling quickly for the new administration. The latest unemployment numbers are worse than the last reports. For all the billions of dollars spent and committed to fixing our economic problems, the situation is only getting worse. This was to be expected by those who understand the root causes of the problems. Throwing money around and creating more government programs is both simplistic and damaging to the economy. Of course, the administration claims that we would have been much worse off without these efforts. You can’t improve this situation by adding to our mountain of public debt for the benefit of big banks and other special interests. The American people know this. When will Washington learn?

In addition, the president’s plans for healthcare reform – or health insurance reform – are becoming more and more unpopular as details are examined. But because of all the alarmist rhetoric, politicians in Washington feel obligated to pass something, even if it doesn’t help. Rarely are liberty and prosperity at greater risk than when politicians feel they must “do something”. It is frightening to watch Washington toy with our healthcare purely for political reasons.

However, the saddest shortcoming of this administration is its utter failure to pursue a more peaceful foreign policy. Just last week up to 90 people, apparently mostly civilians, were killed in Afghanistan in an airstrike, and the violence is only getting worse. The administration is mulling over how many more troops they will send as part of their “Afghan Surge” with advisors getting it exactly backwards. They qualify sending fewer troops as “high-risk” and sending more troops as “low-risk”. This is not the perception at all if you were to ask the families of those being sent over. The best answer would be to stop risking any of our troops for the sake of what is, for all intents and purposes, a violent occupation, helping no one.

But all of these problems and their wrong-headed solutions come from one greater problem – which is not understanding the reasons that we are here. The economy is in bad shape because of too much government intervention producing a myriad of unintended consequences and perverse incentives. Healthcare is broken because the doctor-patient relationship has been broken down by hyper regulation and too much government interference. Afghanistan is a mess because they ignored the mission approved by Congress – to seek out those who attacked us on 9/11. They have instead gotten sidetracked with nebulous interventionist tasks such as promoting democracy and nation building. Eight years later, there is no real progress. The Soviets bankrupted themselves fighting in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan and we’re about to do the same. If we would just look to history it would be self-evident that there is nothing left to win in Afghanistan, and everything to lose.

Most of all, we need to understand that we don’t understand Afghan culture and politics, and for that reason alone, intervening in their affairs is unlikely to produce positive results. The best thing we could possibly do now is to bring our troops home, from Afghanistan, from Iraq, from Japan, from Germany, from all occupied countries, and concentrate on mending badly damaged relationships around the world. Free and honest trade has always been the best way to do that, without fail. Not understanding the benefits of peace, freedom, and nonintervention will always bring about catastrophe.

—END OFFICIAL STATEMENT—

Related Material(s)
	Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Straight Talk, “Government Solutions Lack Understanding” Transcript (13.6kb PDF)

Source(s): U.S. House of Representatives, Texas 14th Congressional District, Representative Ron Paul web page • The Smoking Argus YouTube Channel “Rep. Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk: Government Solutions Lack Understanding”

Allison Bricker

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – Representative Ron Paul of Texas spoke to a packed crowd of students in Nunemaker Hall located on Loyola’s main campus this past Wednesday. The lecture covered monetary policy of the FEDERAL RESEVE and our nation’s continued foreign policies, both issues that brought throngs of formerly apathetic voters to his 2007 campaign for the Republican Presidential Nomination.

In addition, Dr. Paul offers his opinion on the economic recovery policies begun under former President George W. Bush and continued under President Obama, and the effectiveness of such programs as “Cash for Clunkers”. The lecture  runs approximately sixty-minutes and is contained in its entirety within the YouTube video Playlist below.

Source(s): Loyola University Newsroom, Office of Public and External Affairs, “Ron Paul speaks at Loyola University Sept. 2″ Press Release • YouTube Channel Fallout 2600

The Smoking Argus

CAMPAIGN for LIBERTY OFFICIAL STATEMENT: Dr. Paul discusses the NPRK’s detonation of an atomic device and how they achieved that technology using subsidies from the Clinton Administration.

Source(s): Campaign for Liberty

The Smoking Argus

Dr. Ron Paul (R-TX) appeared on “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News” this past Saturday to discuss the failure of the bailouts, President Obama’s continuation of President Bush’s imperial foreign policy, and how even in the case of the Civil War, killing one another is always a poor solution to the problem regardless of complexity or scale. Mr. Hughley compliments Dr. Paul’s forthrightness and asks the big question, will he run again in 2012.

Allison Bricker

(Video Content) Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) spoke to attendees of the CPAC conference this past Friday. He received a much warmer welcome than his appearance last year during his campaign for President.

Joseph Marohl

Cindy McCain reportedly said today that Obama has “waged the dirtiest campaign in American history.”¹ Well, at least she limited it to American history, sounds more believable that way, perhaps.

This coming from the wife of the man whose 2000 South Carolina campaign was torpedoed by the Bush/Rove cadre, who spread the rumor that their adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually her husband’s love child with a black prostitute?

So, how does all this work, exactly? You just say stuff, out loud, that you pulled out of your butt, knowing that, whatever it is and however little evidence you could give to back any of it up, someone somewhere is going to hear this shit and believe it? And, not to worry, in a month’s time, no, wait, in a week, no, in three days, you can deny you ever said a word of it?

So here’s the strategy, as I understand it—and for this Karl Rove gets to be called a “genius,” albeit an evil one?—one, say stupid shit; two, see who picks up on it; three, get pollsters to calculate how the public is responding to it; and then, four, drop it if nobody picks up on it, or spin it if somebody pays it some attention—in which case: (a) if the public can see through the bullshit (rarely happens in time for it to matter much), you claim to be misquoted, or, better, persecuted by the media, or, more likely, (b) if the public buys it, you run with it for all it’s worth.

So I watched the second debate, a cold Stella Artois in my hand, my apolitical, irreligious, non-portfolio-bearing, and perfectly beatific little dog curled up beside me like a Helvetica comma—just to watch the dirt fly.

I wondered how many times Obama was going to say he agrees with McCain this time. Dirty.

I wondered how many times McCain was going to call Obama naïve and inexperienced to his face, and Obama would just stand there and take it. Ooh, Barack, you make me feel nasty.

I watched the debate on CNN only because I had watched the first two debates on CNN.

This one, unlike the other two, was formatted as a “town hall” meeting. It’s no more a real debate than the other kind—the candidates still pretend simultaneously that they didn’t hear the question and that they have in fact already answered the question, only YOU weren’t paying attention. In fact, unlike a real debate, these debates put the burden of proof on the audience—can you eke out any substance from this shit?

In terms of style and ease, Barack Obama won the evening.

Obama stepped close to the studio audience to answer the first question (about the economy); McCain stepped even closer. Later, Obama paced the semicircle to look every audience member in the eye; immediately after, McCain followed suit. I envisioned that in just a matter of minutes both candidates would be cuddling up in somebody’s lap. It didn’t happen, but the sense of competitive chumminess was unmistakably thick in the air.

This was theater, folks, mixed with the giddy tension of a tough job interview. Obama took it in stride, warming up as the debate wore on. McCain did fine, too, though exhibiting less grace than the Democrat. He wasn’t awful, but he smelled of self-pity, desperate and ingratiating chuckles, cloying obliquity, and flop sweat.

Obama spoke to the promise of the future and the importance of fairly sharing the burden of recovery and progress. McCain repeated his record in the Senate—in curiously vague terms: he’s done “a lot” and he’s made unpopular choices, disliked by his own party almost as much as by the Democrats.

And, oh yes, he would not raise taxes.

Obama responded, pointing out that the current tax code benefits the wealthy much more than ordinary workers. He urged revising taxation, lowering taxes for everyone making less than $200,000 a year, including the majority of small businesses.

Short of exchanging actual blows, Fight Club style, the two candidates, especially Obama, were livelier , more aggressive than they were in the first debate, especially on the issue of foreign policy.

Granted, I have already decided my vote is going to Obama. But I found it difficult to follow almost everything McCain had to say tonight. Obama made impressions and gave me something to think about. McCain used the same old lullabies—weak in specifics and coherence, rich in bumper-sticker-style cant, fleshed out with the same inflated language The Big Lebowski mocked effectively in George H.W. Bush’s speeches: “This aggression will not stand.” He even repeated, word for word, his sound bites from the first debate, e.g., looking into Putin’s eyes and seeing three letters: K G B.

Historically, though, these debates usually have little impact on how people intend to vote. I’ll be surprised if this one is an exception. No doubt McCain supporters can find something endearing in their candidate’s fumbling, dry-throated responses to fairly direct questions. These supporters may likewise judge Obama harshly for his talkiness and phlegmatic serenity, typifying his manner as “elitist.”

But, setting aside partisanship, or trying to, I find it hard that anyone could judge the results differently than I do: For flexibility and agile intelligence, Obama was the winner tonight. McCain, though not disastrous, and in spite of decades of public service, seemed unready, unprepared, and unfocused.

Source(s): ¹The Tennessean.com/