Madness, Propaganda, and War

"And what has hands and is not mad?"

—Be Well Assured

Historians who are not too nationalistic in their outlook generally concede that World War I was not started by any one country. Almost everyone concedes the war was madness, though various people ascribe the madness to various causes. Despite the academic analysis, most ordinary Americans have a shallow, uninformed view: America and Allies good, Germany and Central Powers bad. Implicit in that view is the misinformation that Germany was a military dictatorship that started the war because Germans wanted to conquer the world. The confusion is partly with what happened in World War II, when Adolf Hitler & friends really did come pretty close to conquering the world.

In our befuddlement it is hard to recall that the world had already been conquered. Allied powers tend to leave out that tiny fact when looking at the World Wars.

Most of the world in 1914 lay in colonial slavery to the British, French, Dutch (Netherlands), Italian, Belgian, and American Empires (especially if you add in Latin American nations run by puppets to the official U.S. colonies of the Philippines and Puerto Rico). Germany had a few colonies. Russia was an empire unto itself. The Ottoman (Turkish) Empire had been falling apart for over a century, and tearing it to pieces was a chief war aim of the British, French and Russian Empires. Japan's empire did not amount to much yet, just Taiwan and Korea.

To get to some points about World War I propaganda and the madness of World War III, the current situation, I'll assert that greed, nationalism, militarism, and imperialism drove all the major players, including the U.S. World War I was started by a common global mad mindset. As to the level of madness, the answer is an estimated 10 million dead, 21 million wounded, and 8 million missing in action. That does not include civilian casualties, though those were trivial compared to World War II, when numerous cities were bombed, firebombed, and vaporized.

Whole books have been written on propaganda in World War I. I'll focus on how poor German propaganda was compared to Allied propaganda. A main propaganda point was that Germany was the aggressor nation because it had invaded "poor little Belgium." But Belgium was neither poor nor peaceful. It was little, but it ruled the Belgian Congo, where some 10 million natives had been exterminated or worked to death in the two prior decades. As a result Belgians were among the richest people in the world. French and British Empire propaganda claimed that German soldiers were systematically killing Belgian children with bayonets. It was simply a lie. But Belgians had two decades of experience killing Congo children with bayonets. That was not propaganda.

You just can't believe what your own government tells you. I remember when I was first out of college, during the late 1970s, by night a punk rocker but by day working in a room full of old press association documents in the basement of the Pan Am building in New York City. There was a lawsuit about gender discrimination, and we had to read through every personnel folder of every wire service worker, marking anything suspicious related to the case (we were given guidelines. There were about 10 of us.) Of course a lot of the stuff was from Vietnam, and I did find a consistent pattern. If anyone sent to Vietnam to cover the war between 1960 and 1970 wrote a story that described American war crimes, or showed our "allies" in a bad light or the Viet Cong and their allies in a good light, a message went back. The message said, essentially, if you want to be an international war correspondent, instead of being sent back to cover high school football games in small towns, don't submit this shit. There would be another message going up the ladder, to where the government censored the news service, saying we censored this, so you don't have to.

And yet you need information to make decisions. Well, you and I don't get to make any important decisions. Political machines still pick candidates in the U.S. and then sell them to voters, mostly. The machine politicians get to make decisions. The ones their big doners tell them to make.

But they, the policital, economic, and military establishment, are in a constant state of psychosis, paranoia, and neurosis, feeding on the establishment's own misinformation machine. Has anybody besides me noticed that radical Islam was a minor problem in 1999, but after 15 years of war is a major problem? The U.S. destroyed regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, etc. and inspired a whole new generation of young people to join the Jihad, and is probably going to lose most if not all of those states to radical Islam in the near future.

A long, long time ago the U.S. did not like the European powers interfering with us, and so our leaders (whatever their other faults) proposed the idea of non-interference. A nation should not meddle in the internal affairs of other nations. But later, as America grew powerful, the lust for money corrupted our entire business, political, and even religious establishment. We had to interfere in Mexico, the Philippines, Cuba, and later just about every country in the world, so that our business guys could extract wealth from them. Also so that rival powers could be kept away from the carrion.

Now we reap the whirlwind. We may not be able to defeat ISIS. And if we do defeat ISIS, that will just give the anti-U.S. resistance another throw of the dice, and an even more proficient opposition will emerge. Like Roundup unready monster weeds. Ask a farmer at a farm near you. Will they stop with the current generation of monsters, or will they add new pesticides (and gene alterations) to the mix, and start the next round of survival-of-the-fittest weeds?

ISIS is radical Islamic, but other groups are already studying its recipe for success. Like the slavers who used the American revolution to come to power as the United States, and the Leninists who came to power when the original soviets were trying to set up a workers' democracy in Russia, the first ingredient is chaos. If you bring order to chaos, people will put up with quirks like having all men grow a long beard, or spouting quotations from Chairman Mao. And the chaos: that comes from bad government. Like how the U.S. Congress refuses to take care of U.S. infrastructure and refuses to deal with global warming and other creeping ecological disasters. That will bring chaos. Just give it time.

Self-determination in the Modern World

It never seems to end. There is fighting in the Ukraine. Israel continues its ethnic cleansing campaign. Having separated from Sudan, now the peoples of South Sudan are fighting among themselves. Iraq, Somalia, Thailand ... the list seems almost endless.

On the other hand, a lot of people with different ethnic heritages, religions, and customs get along just fine, almost all the time. America has its famous melting pot, if you are willing to overlook the earlier genocide against Native American Indians and discrimination against non-Europeans (and Irish, Jews, Italians ...). Partly that is because we have created a new nationalist identity, itself dangerous to other nations of the world. America has a high-proportion of modern people, who see religion as mythology and ethnic identities as old-fashioned. In a way "modern" people are globalists. A modern person can find people with similar outlooks almost anywhere in the world.

Individuals often hold modern and old-fashioned contradictions within themselves. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States from 1913 until 1921, was a racist, in fact one of the key intellectual architects of 20th century racial segregation. Perhaps because of his racism, rather than in spite of it, he proposed to the peace conference after World War I that people should have the right to "self-determination." National borders would be drawn by the people themselves, so that an ethnic group might choose to have its own nation, or to combine freely with other ethnic groups into a larger nation.

When Wilson and the American delegation got to Versailles they found there were a lot of people interested in self-determination. People in the British, French, German, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, and former Ottoman empires, for instance. Ho Chi Minh was there (think of all the trouble that could have been prevented had the conference granted Vietnam independence from France.) But none of the empires had any interest in granting freedom to their conquests, and Japan, France and the British Empire actually grabbed more territory. Being on the winning side trumped universal ideas of justice. Nor did it ever occur to Wilson to free Puerto Rico or the Philippines.

The Japanese asked that all Asian peoples be granted self-determination and freedom from (European) colonial domination. They also asked for a general provision against racism, which Woodrow Wilson personally nixed. The only new nations to emerge were carved out of the losers, Germany, Turkey, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Many of today's problems trace directly to the triumph of power and racism over justice at Versailles. Iraq, rather than being part of a larger pan-Arab nation, or being divided into Shiite, Kurd, and Sunni majority smaller nations, was created for British oil extraction. Palestine was divided off from Syria (which was given to the French) so that Britain could keep its promise to the Jews for their help in World War I. The nation now known as Jordan was given as a consolation prize to a pal of Lawrence of Arabia.

We cannot redraw the past, but modern people might well try to not repeat its obvious mistakes. I understand when ethnic groups and other minorities are, or feel they are, oppressed. That pushes them towards a desire for autonomy and independence. But nationalism, ethnic identification and racism are closely related. I think people do better when they trascend all that.

Adjusting borders in Africa, South America, and Asia that were drawn by European imperial powers makes some sense. This would have to be done on the principle of self-determination: let people draw their own lines. But many issues have no geographic solutions. Some minority groups have no majority areas. Many areas have complex mixtures of groups.

The better answer is to encourage the trend to a modern, friendly mindset based on the following principles:

Legal and economic justice for all.
Freedom of religion and expression.
Classic good governance: no corruption or favoritism of any kind.
Emphasizing our common humanity, not our cultural or physical differences.
Universal education in the generally accepted principles of ethics.

Human nature being what it is, setting things right will be a long, slow process. There have been several historical attempts to globalize an ethical system, usually a religion. I believe Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam all attempted to be universal religions, with a universal system of ethics for all people. Each failed, or at least has failed so far. Marxism (or more broadly, socialism including anarchism) also sought to be a universal cure for humanity. I think it is worth looking at each of the histories of these movements to see what they achieved and why they failed.

I believe the key is being universal, but not authoritarian. Universal tolerance and diversity can work as long as we share (and act on) core ethical values. Modern people do this. Modern people can treat anyone as an individual. Modern people do not oppress others. Modern people communicate and educate. Modern people show mercy. Modern people resort to self-defense only as a last resort, and never act as or facilitate aggressors.

There just are not enough of us, yet. But we can be found just about everywhere and anywhere. We just need to keep making more friends, and avoid corruption.

Why America Can't Afford Another Cold War

Russian national debt, 2012: $253 billion [source: CountryEconomy.com]

U.S. national debt, end of 2013: $17 trillion

A trillion is a thousand billions. Russia's debt was about 1/4 trillion.

America's debt is (or was recently) about 68 times as large as Russia's.

The American economy is also larger, so could service more debt.

Russian GDP (gross domestic output), was $2 trillion in 2012, per the IMF.

U.S. GDP was 15.7 trillion in 2012 so about 8 times as large as Russia's.

In other words, in relation to the size of their respective economies, the U.S. had about 8 times as much national debt as Russia.

Using other statistics, the debt of the Russian government is just 11% of its annual GDP. The The debt of the U.S. government is 101% of its annual GDP. [per Wikipedia, economy of Russia and economy of United States pages]

By my figuring, the U.S. government is already bankrupt, but no one wants to admit it. It cannot raise taxes significantly, its budget can't be cut further without widespread social unrest, and it cannot pay down the national debt, and won't even be able to pay the interest if rates rise to normal levels.

The U.S. is not exactly a paper tiger, but it is a deeply indebted tiger. If anyone blows a few U.S. aircraft carriers out of the water, there would be no money to replace them. Russia is one of the few nations that can blow U.S. vessels out of the water. The carriers should be saved to bully developing nations, their traditional role.

We can't even afford military posturing or a buildup in our number of troops. We have to keep the peace.

This essay is in response to Why Russian Can't Afford Another Cold War by James B. Stewart in the New York Times.

Peace Through Poverty: The Pentagon's New Budget

Today the Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is announcing the the Department of Defense will deal with a shrinking budget largely by reducing the number of paid soldiers, with additional cuts coming from some weapons programs. He would not be doing that if President Barack Obama had not signed off on the ideas. Congress will, as usual, muck with the plan, as each Representative and Senator tries to protect military spending inside his or her district, no matter how at odds with the Pentagon's plans. [See 2015 DoD budget speech transcript]

Bit picture, the ability of the U.S. to bully the other nations of the world will decrease. Bullying will be more selective. We will keep all 11 aircraft carriers, which are great for threatening or bombing nations that don't toe the American line, if they border an ocean. We won't have enough soldiers to easily invade and control large countries like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We should not need too. Imperialism was all fine and good from an economic, if not an ethical, standpoint, during the 20th century. But times have changed. Imperialism is a money loser. The U.S. has proven in the 21st century that it is quite capable of losing all the money it needs to domestically, without loosing even more abroad.

Anyone who does not understand that new roads and bridges in Afghanistan means potholes and collapsing bridges in the U.S. needs an economics course.

In the short run, at least, the American economy continues to recover from the deep dip of 2009. Unfortunately the nation already had a multi-trillion dollar national debt in 2000. Starting in 2002 the national deficit exploded to pay for the "war on terror," and despite that the economy nearly collapsed in 2008, due to the greed and stupidity of—admit it—not just Congress and Bush and Banks and mortgage brokers, but also relatively ordinary Americans who bought vastly overpriced McMansions and bungalows and ordinary track homes and condominiums. In other words, the same idiots, I mean citizens, who elect our Congress and Presidents.

Then in 2009 massive deficit spending began to try to revive the economy, keep people from starving, and prevent a rebellion. The result was a $17 trillion national deficit by the end of 2013. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates extraordinarily low, meaning the interest on the national debt was minimal, like those low-interest introductory mortgage offers of 2005.

As bits of the debt come due for payment the Treasury Department issues new debt. Unless the economy fails to revive, interest rates will rise. Short term debt pays the least interest, but is risky because it has to be renewed often. Long-term debt is safe once placed, but pays much higher interest. As I write this essay 3 month federal debt pays 0.043% per year, zero for practical purposes. 30 year debt pays 3.71%. 2 year debt pays 0.33%.

What the President and Pentagon are acknowledging is that as the average interest rate paid on U.S. debt increases, the amount of tax dollars available for all spending, including military spending, is going to decrease. 1% of $17 trillion is $170 billion. 5% is $850 billion. 10% is $1.7 trillion. Higher interest rates leave politicians 3 options: higher taxes to pay them, lower spending to pay them, or just taking on even more debt, no matter what the interest rate.

Wars and military spending no longer stimulate the economy.

World War II stimulated the depression-era economy, but initial conditions were different back then. There was little national debt when the depression began. The war started in Europe, resulting in a couple of years of peace during which the U.S. could sell anything it could make without actually being in the war.

Iraq and Afghanistan, in contrast, were pure expense for the American taxpayer. They drained the U.S. economically the same way World War II drained the British Empire. That empire, despite its size, fell apart in the 1950s. The Brits could not afford it any longer.

America can no longer afford an empire. Expect that it will be easier for regimes independent of the U.S. to prosper in the future. Expect sane U.S. Presidents (if there were such a thing) to be very careful before committing U.S. fighters to combat in large numbers. If a President wants to both keep up the economy and a military capable of defending U.S. territory, he won't want any international adventures further draining our empty coffers.

U.S. propagandists will probably come up with a better slogan for the new policy than "Peace through Poverty." But that is the era we appear to be heading into.

Opportunity Costs of War, Population, and Education

It should not be surprising that the leaders of the British Empire decided to use the same genocidal tactics as the Nazis in World War II. Americans used similar tactics against the Native American Indians and later against the Philippine Islanders and the Vietnamese (to keep the list short). Mass murder is a strategy that a lot of other leaders have used throughout history, limited only by their power and technologies.

Overlaying an indigenous group we can call Celts (though they also were a mix of invaders and indigenous peoples), the people we call English are a mixture of Germans (Angles and Saxons), Vikings, Danes (who were just well-organized Vikings) and eventually the Normans, who were slightly Frenchified Vikings.

If you enjoy Vikings on The History Channel, you can see the leadership qualities of later-day leaders in Ragmar Lothbrok, brilliantly played by Travis Fimmel. A calculating greed and willingness to unleash mayhem eventually allowed these barbarians and their descendents (including cultural as well as genetic descendents) to conquer most of the world.

Being allied with the British, we Americans have been taught a great deal about Hitler's (and Tojo's) war crimes, but very little about our own. But this essay is not meant to recount those crimes. Here they serve as fodder for an exploration of opportunity costs. As in so many things, it is easier to see opportunity costs in retrospective than in the present or in the future.

For a more detailed (but still brief) review of opportunity costs in World War II, specifically those associated with aerial bombardment, I would recommend "Opportunity Costs" by Edward Luttwak in the November 21, 2013 London Review of Books [subscription required], which in turn is a book review of The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945 by Richard Overy.

In summary, mass murder, including genocide, is not always the best tactic. The British did very little face-to-face fighting with the Germans; that was left to the Russians [resulting in an atheist holocaust]. The Germans wasted effort (men and materials) killing their perceived internal enemies. The British used up (threw away) astonishing resources in their failed attempt to firebomb Berlin (though they succeeded in firebombing other cities). If the atomic bomb (which the British helped develop) had not worked (or just taken longer to get working), it might be argued today that using the same resources to advance other high-technology weapons would also have forced Japan to surrender earlier, if not unconditionally.

Every choice made implies choices not made. Resources devoted to the military deprive the civilian sector, and vice versa. In California the current drought has intensified the usual fight over the allocation of water to farmers, fish, and urban/suburban uses. Opportunity costs are the losses created when resources are not devoted to a particular pathway.

Forcing (or tricking) an enemy to waste resources is a classic strategy. Much of modern warfare has been quantified: the cost of wiping out a village in Vietnam with napalm, as opposed to the cost of winning over the village by providing running water or other desirable goods. So too it is possible to quantify the opportunity costs that different strategies and tactics might inflict on an enemy. The reason Al Qaeda is, on the whole, winning its war against the U.S. and our (more or less) allies is not based on large masses of people buying a peculiar brand of Islam. Al Qaeda has encouraged the largest waste of resources in history, by the United States. Al Qaeda has grown its capabilities while the U.S. has reaped a national debt that will cripple it for the rest of history.

Even before 2001 the U.S. wasted a lot of money on its military establishment. It could be argued that military expenditures in the brief era between the end of the war on Communism and the war on Islam might have been necessary to maintain America's commercial empire. But clearly the decision to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq while building an unprecedented Homeland Security force (and not raising taxes to pay for it) meant making sacrifices in the domestic economy. We have had two major recessions since 2001. Meanwhile, China, mostly at peace with the world, has grown to be a serious economic rival.

Some opportunities slip away with time. Education is a good example. The children who did not get enough education in first grade in 2002 are now mostly in their first year of work (or unemployment) or first year of college. We are working on creating a full generation of people who could have been better educated if there had been less spending on security. They, in turn, are and are going to be less economically productive than they could have been.

The national debt ($17 trillion), which may have complex sources but which I think can be fairly blamed on an inappropriate response to Al Qaeda, is now seriously limiting what the federal government can accomplish. It can stand as a proxy for the opportunity costs of bad political decision making. As interest rates rise the payments on the debt will cut further into the budget. I project that within five years both military and education budgets will need to be cut dramatically, at the same time taxes are raised, if the U.S. is to avoid bankruptcy.

Population control and (its close relative) global warming are time-sensitive issues where the bulk of the opportunities have now been lost. A one-and-done (1 child per family) global program would take so long to institute that the bulk of its effects would likely take place long after some other cause (war, disease, and famine, most likely).

Global warming is not likely to decelerate. Manufacturing more solar panels just adds more greenhouse gasses now, making people feel good about their energy consumption and breeding habits. Stopping global warming would require a bottoms-up fundamental change of how humans live, even if the population began to fall for some reason. Global warming itself won't kill many people, not anytime soon. It will cause negative feedback, but at too slow of a pace to be of much help reducing the homo sapiens plague.

Is there hope for the human population of the world? In Barack Obama's speeches, yes. But not in his policies, or those of other world leaders.

But don't worry, the U.S. and global economies should continue to pick up until the next round of free-market or government-mandate human folly precipitate another crisis. Environmentalists will use slightly less energy than their non-enviro neighbors, who are limited only by their ability to cope with their energy bills. People will pass on their culture of failing to educate, failing to take care of the planet, and failing to take the long view.

Pessimistic analysis is not popular. Happy talk is the order of the day. But I did not want to miss the opportunity to be straight with you on Darwin Day.

Korea, What is Wrong?

The government of North Korea is trying to launch a satellite into orbit. Since by U.S. definition North Korea is evil, it is assumed by our corporate security state apparatus and their loyal followers that the launch is just a practice for an offensive, inter-continental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

A little bit of historical review may put the matter in perspective. Despite having an advanced civilization, Korea has always been caught between two more powerful advanced civilizations, those of China and Japan. After the U.S. went on a bullying expedition to Japan in 1854 [See Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan] the Japanese decided they had to modernize or be swallowed up like other Asian nations had been by imperialistic predators.

By then the predators were carving up their rival China, and so Japan took advantage of Chinese weakness to regain "stewardship" [my word choice] over Korea. This took three steps. After Japan won the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, China granted clear independence to Korea. Then Japan won the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and Japan made Korea a protectorate. The U.S. went along with that because we had just massacred about 2 million people in the Philippine Islands and did not want an increasingly powerful Japan taking advantage of the situation there to gain control of U.S. sugar plantations there. [See U.S. Conquest of the Philippines]

Of course all along most Koreans wanted an independent nation, and multiple underground independence organizations existed. When World War II came along they became particularly hopeful. Their hopes were inflated by promises from the Allies that after Japan was defeated Korea would at last take its place among the world's independent nations.

After the Democratic Party of the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and the Japanese surrendered unconditionally (they had been trying to surrender conditionally for months), the Japanese military prepared to return to Japan from Korea and Manchukuo (Manchuria). The Korean independence organizations began talking about how a new Korea would be run. U.S. commercial interests, the Pentagon and Harry Truman did not see it that way. U.S. troops were rushed in, ostensibly to accept the surrender of the Japanese troops in Korea. Because Russian troops had been fighting in Manchuria, just north of Korea, the U.S. agreed that they could temporarily occupy the northern half of Korea.

Then the Russians and U.S. each decided that instead of allowing the Koreans to govern themselves in a unified country, the occupiers would pick winners and losers among the political groups in the regions they occupied. Korea was divided in half, which none of the Korean nationalists liked. But Korean communists got control of the north, and U.S. puppets got control of the south. Moderate, pro-democracy groups were shunted aside in both the north and the south.

When the Russians and Americans finally withdrew their troops, the communists in the north decided to re-unite the country. They easily won a civil war with the fascists in South Korea. But that was politically unacceptable to Harry Truman. The U.S. invaded South Korea. We had the blessings of the United Nations, but then again the U.N. had been set up to further the agendas of the U.S., and the French and British empires.

The Viceroy of Japan, Douglas MacArthur, had the Koreans whipped, but made the mistake of moving to invade China to re-establish war lord Chiang Kai-Shek as its, well, war lord. The Chinese reminded Douglas that white people don't automatically win wars (MacArthur had executed a couple of Japanese generals as war criminals for the crime of having defeated him in battle back in World War II.) After a lot of people died, the U.S. ended up with just half of Korea. The Chinese withdrew from North Korea, but the U.S. occupiers stayed.

So you have to ask yourself, even if you are an American, who is in the wrong here? The foreign invaders, the Americans, or the natives? Are North Koreans, or Koreans of any kind, sitting armed to the teeth on America's borders? I know of none. But U.S. troops, armed to the teeth, sit on North Korea's border. Has Korea ever invaded the United States? No, but the United States has invaded Korea.

I admit the communists have made a mess of the situation, but then they were put in a very weird situation. Their country was torn asunder, and most communist soldiers and party members were killed by U.S. troops during the Korean War. In the south communists and even non-communists who did not walk right were simply rounded up and slaughtered. So Kim Il-sung and a bunch of idiots started bossing Koreans around. They had to allocate a disproportionate share of their economy to defending their southern border. There was nothing inherent in communism that led the nation to economic disaster. China's Communist Party has proven that communism can develop an economy just fine.

So Kim Jong-un is now supreme leader. Maybe, instead of being just an idiot with an inheritance, he is smarter than we think. Maybe with his advisors they can figure out a way to make North Korea livable. My point would be that the U.S. has no business there. Let the Koreans in the south work out their future with the Koreans in the north as best they can.

As to nuclear weapons, again I remind you that only one political party on earth has ever used them, and that party, the Democratic Party, used them against large numbers of civilians living in two urban areas. If there were a world government interested in justice and peace (I don't think the U.N. constitutes such a government), its priority would be to take atomic weapons away from the U.S. first. And send all U.S. troops home. And try Barack Obama, George W. Bush and their crews for war crimes.

See also: The U.S. Conquest of Korea

China, Aircraft Carriers, and U.S. Bonds

Before getting to the Chinese aircraft carrier issue, let me point out one very important thing missed by almost all commentators.

Osama Bin Laden triumphed, even though he was dead. His secondary goal, after helping to defeat the old Soviet Union, was to defeat the United States. He never expected to invade the U.S. and force everyone to wear beards and turbans. He used his followers' minimal resources to cause an economic and military collapse. The downgrading of U.S. debt (bonds) by Standard & Poor's was a public assessment of the success of Al Qaeda. Americans spent too much energy on global military dominance, too little energy on building a sustainable national economy. We lost, and everyone intelligent now knows we lost. We could still retrieve the situation by using our democratic system to take power away from the ruling corporate security state, but it looks like we are too stupid and lethargic to even do that. So, on to Chinese aircraft carriers.

The cry babies at the Pentagon, led byLeon Panetta, don't want the Chinese navy to have any aircraft carriers. In their minds Chinese aircraft carriers would shift the balance of power in the China Sea and require a buildup of the U.S. Navy in the Western Pacific. Which would require a bigger Navy budget.

The real question should be, given the history of China and aircraft carriers, why don't the Chinese already have a half dozen aircraft carriers? The answer is that China has not been a global military aggressor [Yes, I know, Tibetian nationalists and Vietnamese would disagree]. Of course, any country with a military is in some danger of becoming a military aggressor, but the Chinese Communist Party has a much better history of restraint than the United States Democratic Party does.

China, in the later 1800s and early 1920s, was being torn apart by the Great Powers. In 1914, During World War I, a Japanese proto-carrier, the Wakamiya, lowered 4 seaplanes in the sea, which then attacked German forces in Tsingtao (Qingdao), a German colony in China. No matter how you define the term "first aircraft carrier," by the 1920's these ships were being built by all the great powers, including the United States, Britain, Japan and France. By World War II naval battles were largely won or lost by aircraft launched from the carriers. The Barbaric U.S. attacks on Vietnam were also largely carrier-based.

The United States has been bullying nations with its aircraft carrier based terror bombing for closing in on a century now. Who are Barack Obama and Leon Panetta to tell the Chinese they can't have their own aircraft carriers for defense?

If Chinese aircraft carriers are not for defense, why should U.S. aircraft carriers classified as "defensive?" Aren't they inherently aggressive vessels, used only for war crimes? Including the current war crimes in Afghanistan?

If Panetta and the corporate security state he so proudly serves had half a brain left, they would negotiate a global treaty to decommission all aircraft carriers. Then China would not need to build new ones. Then the U.S. might have some money for schools or to invest capital to create jobs. Or to pay off those bonds that Standard & Poor's and others have suggested are less than sterling investments.

See also: history of the aircraft carrier

Obama Withdraws Slowly from Afghanistan

Ah, to relive my youth, when President Richard Nixon slowly withdrew U.S. troops from Vietnam.

The Bush-Obama plan to impregnate Afghanistan with American values has failed, at least in the short run. No one in Afghanistan cared much for industrialism, capitalism, Christianity, free public secular education, or pork hot dogs. Most of the nation will go back to lamb, poppies, pomegranites, and melons. Why go through industrialization when it's just the painful, pre-apocalypse phase before non-mechanized agriculture?

Once the troops are gone, most Afghanistan families will remember one thing: their dead relatives. The carnage was fantastic. Towards the end Obama's weaponized drones attacking weddings, funerals, and hash fests gave the nation a real Terminator 3 feeling.

Why the slow withdrawal, with its implied ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity? Did anyone tell President Barack Obama that the Nobel Peace Prize medal is not a get out of war crimes trials free card?

The slow withdrawal is Obama's trademark. He has always been a politician without substance, ever since he first ran for office backed by the Democratic Party of Chicago. Like most politicians, he knows he can't please all the people all of the time, and if he took solid positions on important issues, he'd displease most of the people some of the time. He is an artist, for sure, at saying what swinging voters want to hear. "You never wanted me in, baby? Why didn't you say so? I'm pulling out, but slowly, because I don't want it to hurt."

His core Democratic Party voters have been against the war in Afghanistan since at least 2006. He has to withdraw to please them if he wants a second term as President. But he does not want to p.o. the corporate security state people who really run things now. Those drones will be used against the American people, I guarantee you, but not until they are fully tested in Afghanistan. So instead of getting the hell out, which is what most people thought they were electing Barack to do in 2008, he rammed the U.S. in even further during his first two years in office.

Now he can pull out a few troops. The war is over! We won! Stop that media coverage! Barack Obama is both the Victory President and the Peace President.

The truth is in 2012 there will be more U.S. troops (and paramilitary types) in Afghanistan than there were when George W. Bush left office in January 2009.

What could be sicker than that? "Progressive" Democrat Party activists. They will repeat the mindless slogans of the corporate security state as long as there is a Democratic administration. They will do anything for a Democratic Party electoral win. They are a herd of ... I don't want to disgrace any mammal species here ... canaries that sing of disaster in their gilded cages, but just keep going along with the program.

When Nixon withdrew from Vietnam, he was afraid of revolution in the United States. The left in 1972 did not mean the middle of the Democratic Party. To be on the Left in 1972 you had to be at least in Democratic Socialists of America. Preferably you were an Anarchist. If your personality was bent out of shape enough you could be a Marxist, Trotskyist, Maoist or even Stalinist or SLA. We have no significant equivalent to that "New Left" of the 60s and 70s today. Maybe that is just as well, all the groups were too dogmatic to be much good at revolution, much less actual governance. But they made you feel like there were alternatives to snakes like Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.

Then again, we can always hope that between the idiot Republicans and idiot Democrats the U.S. government will reneg on its debts real soon, and implode. I'm sure the corporate security state has its contingency plans for that situation, but they probably won't need them, because the real plan is to order the right people to make the right compromises and muddle through a couple more years of American capitalism in decline.

Yet the War Goes On

It is a strange day when the leading contender for the Republican Party nomination for President puts himself firmly to the left of a Democratic President on the issue of national security. In yesterday's Republican debate Mitt Romney did just that. Of course he hedged a bit, saying that the war was expensive, we had killed Osama bin Laden, and not exactly calling for a total, immediate withdrawal.

Big Brother is indeed watching, and laughing. In 2006 the Democratic Party captured control of the House of Representatives largely by pretending to be against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the war went on. In 2008 the housing bubble popped, so in the election that year the economy was the central issue. Barack Obama won, playing the typical politician who implied he was against the war without saying so. In the meantime President George W. Bush's troop surge in Iraq did have its intended effect, allowing a basically democratic government to function their. President Obama was able to withdraw troops from Iraq, forgetting to give the ex-President credit for the situation.

Attention centered on Afghanistan in 2009, and Obama decided to try his own troop surge their, largely using veterans of the Iraq war. The Taliban has been beaten back in some areas, only to pop up in others.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has a little debt problem on its hands. Between the Bush Tax Cuts (supported by most Democrats in Congress back then, though they would like to only remind their wealthiest donors of that fact), the economic suicide after the bubble burst, and the ongoing hundreds of billions spent on wars, the U.S. has become the world's beggar.

Some Republicans (and here I even include some Republican politicians, for instance Mitt Romney) realize there is a relationship between war spending, national debt, and their own fortunes. Only a few months ago they thought they could just cut back on services (welfare, food stamps, Medicare, Social Security) for Democratic Party constituencies and achieve a balanced budget. Now they are looking at two formerly untouchable gods: taxation and defense spending.

It is simple. Mitt Romney is no pacifist. He is no Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern. But he would rather cut military spending that raise taxes. The easiest way to cut military spending quickly is to get the hell out of Afghanistan.

If the vote were today, I'd vote for Romney, not Obama. I know Romney might be lying, he might continue the war if elected President. But Obama has already shown himself to be a liar, a fraud, and a war criminal.

Hopefully a strong Green Party or Independent contender will emerge, because Romney is far from my ideal candidate. Or maybe there is a Eugene McCarthy out there somewhere, and Barack will get what he deserves: a one term Presidency.

Afghanistan War Loses Support in Congress

“If we’re going to cut programs for children who need milk in the morning, if we’re going to cut programs for seniors who need a sandwich at lunch, if we’re going to cut veterans benefits, then, for God’s sake, let’s bring back our troops from Afghanistan.” Thus said Representative Walter B. Jones in a recent speech in Beaufort, North Carolina. Jones is not a Democrat. He is a Republican, and a very conservative Republican on most matters. His district is likewise very conservative, and includes one of America's largest Marine Corps bases, Camp Lejeune (where I was born and raised).

Congress is beginning to rebel in earnest against Barack Obama's war policy in Afghanistan. Recently Jones and Democrat Jim McGovern of Massachusetts sponsored an amendment to H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2012, to speed the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region. The vote on H. Amdt. 344 (follow the link to see how your Rep voted) to require from the President "A plan and timeframe on accelerated transition of military operations to Afghan authorities." That is pretty tame by my we should have never gotten in standards, but 8 Democrats joined 207 Republicans to vote against it. 26 Republicans and 178 Democrats voted for it. The amendment failed.

What is going on? Why is the Community Organizer President wasting U.S. blood, and $10 billion a year or so in taxpayer money, on occupying Afghanistan? Why are otherwise ideologically pure Republicans turning against the occupation?

I have observed that whether people are left, liberal, moderate, conservative or right-wing, some reality will seep in through ideological filters some of the time. Mostly people buy into ideological and (filtered) factual bundles because they have limited time and knowledge; it is the easy way to go. But push their noses close enough to manure, or roses, and most people can tell the difference, regardless of ideology.

Right-of-center is a bundle of people, but beware of over-generalizing. No every right-of-center person fits the leftist view of being a biblical fundamentalist war mongering anti-immigrant anti-environment racist. Very few, in fact, fit that description. Avoid talking about the Bible and even the fundamentalists can be pretty astute about real world issues.

The people of the United States of America has been in a new world of hurt since the Great Recession began. A good many people who were middle-income learned suddenly what it is like to be at the bottom. To want to work, but to have not jobs available. To need to patch something, but be unable to afford the patching material. To lived crowded in with relatives that, truth be told, they would just as soon see once a year at a family reunion.

The Afghanistan war never made sense to me and my peace movement friends. The U.S. could have saved over $100 billion and many lives by sending in the CIA, not the Marines. In the end it was the CIA that got Bin Laden.

So what is wrong with President Obama? We aren't in community organizing mode anymore. Barack is now in the eye of the corporate security state. He has not visited the grieving parents of the children the U.S. military has "accidentally" killed in Afghanistan. He has not stood as a soldier and watched people watching him, hoping he would step on an IED. He lucked into the Presidency without having any real accomplishments before arriving in that esteemed office. He wanted to be President, and for that he was more than happy to become the most important piece on the military-industrial complex chess board.

Community Organizer has lately shown willingness to take lunch away from American children to appease two bullies, the Pentagon and the super-rich Americans who are happy to deduct heavy taxes from their employee's payrolls but don't want to (and mostly don't) pay taxes on inheritance, dividends, and capital gains.

If you can't smell what's happening here, you have lost your sense of smell. In a contest between Barack Obama and Walter B. Jones, I'd vote for Walter. Hopefully more Republicans will join Jones in the next vote on funding Afghanistan that comes before Congress. After all, the Constitution says Congress is supposed to make policy. The President is only supposed to carry out the laws and policies enacted by Congress.

See also the NY Time article, An Antiwar Republican, No Longer His Party's Pariah

Bribes, Corruption and Lost Wars

Corruption, the taking of bribes by politicians and government employees and the theft of public funds, is a nearly universal practice. But it is also a spectrum, with come governments having very little corruption, and ranges to governments that exist almost exclusively. South Vietnam (the Republic of Vietnam) during the 1960s is noted for its high degree of corruption. It is generally agreed that government corruption was one of the main reasons the government eventually collapsed and the south was unified with North Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

I am reading Understanding Vietnam by Nilm L. Jamiseson and a section on the cultural aspects of corruption in Vietnam explained what happened in a way I had never considered. This contrasts with other histories I read that described the corruption, but implied it was simply due to defects in human character. This new understanding also sheds light on the collapse of the Chiang Kai-Shek regime in China in the late 1940s. It also explains a lot about many of today's regimes, including, on a smaller scale, the behavior of all too many individuals in local government in these United States of America.

It fits in too with what one of my political science professors told me about the Rhode Island state legislature, back in 1974. He said the salaries of the legislators were kept low so that only wealthy businessmen or corrupt political hacks could afford to hold office. To be a full time politician, to server the people full time, elected officials needed major supplements to their incomes. Those could only come from illegal donations, diversions of campaign funds, or outright bribes.

In Vietnam (I will call South Vietnam just Vietnam from this point forward) traditional status was highly dependent on wealth. However, leaders were supposed to show their wealth by providing feasts for their villages, and through other forms of ostentation public distribution of their wealth. In a village economy men competed for status by sharing with the less fortunate. Their families had priority, of course, but it was not too bad of a system.

When the U.S. invaded (invited by puppet governments) in the 1960s the shock to the Vietnamese economy was profound. Government employees, including military employees, changed in a few years from being highly respected and decently paid members of a mainly traditional society to among the poorest citizens.

American privates had higher salaries than Vietnamese generals. For that matter, call girls whose clients were American enlisted men made more money. The influx of American money drove inflation, but while America paid for military supplies and all sorts of economic programs, no one thought to make payments to the Saigon regime to increase the salaries of soldiers and bureaucrats. High-ranking military officers would moonlight as taxi drivers to try to make enough pay to keep their families from losing face due to poverty.

Their wives came to the rescue, and that was also due to cultural traditions. In Vietnam women had traditionally done the marketing and small scale craft making that kept families afloat. Men, mostly, did not engage in business. While men went about their hierarchically controlled, government-dictated lives, women had to do more than make ends meet: they had to maintain their family's status in society. "During the late 1960s and early 1970s it was often impossible to be a dutiful and virtuous family man and a dutiful and virtuous military officer or civil servant ... his womenfolk kept reminding him that prices were up again in the market and the children needed new shoes." Women ran the free market show, which largely consisted of diverting American-donated goods into the black market. "As Madam General called Madam Colonel who called Madam Head Clerk ... the daily flow of money and of goods throughout the country was anticipated and careful plans were formulated for diverting some percentage of this bounty."

This looking deeper contrasts with A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan, which is better at providing insight into the American side of the war. Americans were concerned about the corruption of Vietnamese officials and military men, but their answer was classroom training about the importance of good governance standards. That they paid their girlfriends more than they paid men they expected to die fighting communists did not seem to cross anyone's mind.

In America now there is an argument that public sector workers are paid too much, particularly because they get pensions and medical benefits far more generous than those most ordinary workers get. I think it comes down to individual cases. We want government employees to make enough money to motivate them to come to work every day, work effectively all day, and be immune to bribery. We want there to be enough employees so that the work gets done. Such a system cannot be perfected, only worked toward. We need to keep pay fair. Some want it on par with the private sector, but in the private sector fairness is not an issue. The system favors underpaying those lowest in the hierarchy and overpaying those highest on the corporate ladder. It all comes down to specifics, which vary by locality and job title.

Corruption has its own cultural momentum. Simply raising pay is not a sure way of stamping out corruption. Lowering pay somewhat is not likely to cause most honest civil servants to suddenly be selling their souls. Nevertheless, poor pay in the long run does breed corrupiton and incompetence.

A single word, corruption, encapsulates a wide variety of social pressures. Americans thought that the corruption of Vietnam was due to weak ethical values in the national culture. American soldiers did not need to steal food from peasants to fill their bellies. Their corruption was at a higher level, the corruption of an entire nation by wealth from industrial production and imperialist domination.

That era of American global economic supremacy is coming to an end. The corruption (lack of self-control and external control) of the banking sector and Wall Street almost brought the entire nation to its knees in 2008. The same gang funded Barack Obama's presidential campaign, just like they funded Clinton and Bush before him. So we have had much talk of reform, but very little reform.

Millions of people died violent deaths in Vietnam during the French and American interventions and civil war. Corruption was problem, but it was also a symptom of the larger problems of that era. The problem now is we still have an American economy and government built for imperialism. The cracks in that system will continue to widen as the imperialist overhang continues to crumble.

Extradition, Canada, and War

Maybe the U.S. won't go to war with Pakistan, maybe we will be too busy in our war with Canada.

The pretext for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was that the government of the country, controlled by the Taliban, refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden when the U.S. government demanded that after the successful al-Qaeda attack on September 11, 2001. I don't believe refusing to extradite a criminal is grounds for war, but the United Nations failed to protect Afghanistan from U.S. aggression, or even to condemn the U.S. Thus the de facto standard for international relations seems to have become that refusing to extradite is an act of war.

Given that, expect war between the U.S. and Canada soon. According to the Associated Press, on Friday the Canadian Court of Appeal confirmed a lower court decision to not extradite Abdullah Khadr to the United States. Mr. Khadr was wanted on the same charges as Osama Bin Laden, terrorism, specifically supplying al-Qaeda with weapons used to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Of course, the U.S. will not actually go to war with Canada over the issue. Nations refuse to extradite people to other nations all the time. It usually is no big deal. The United States itself harbors many people convicted of crimes in other countries. Some times we extradite them, some times we don't. For instance, if some one had been found guilty in Iraq of murder, but the murder had been an act of resistance to the Saddam Hussein regime, the U.S. would certainly have refused to extradite.

If if refusal to extradite a government's allies is not a pretext for war (my position, and seemingly one in accord with international law), then there was no legitimate pretext for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. George Bush and crew, and Barack Obama and crew, are simply war criminals.

If it is okay to fly a few troops into Pakistan to capture a criminal wanted in the United States, why was that tactic not used in Afghanistan in the first place? The CIA could have located Osama while the U.S. engaged in endless negotiations with the Taliban. Then would could have grabbed or killed Osama. We would have violated international law, and the Taliban would have been mad, but we would not be in an endless ground war in a nation not worth conquering.

We went to war against Afghanistan because we are ruled by a cabal of people who profiteer from war. George W. Bush was a failure as a manager of an oil company, but by attacking Afghanistan while most Americans were too emotional about the September 11 attacks to think clearly, he made himself popular. The price paid by the American people was the destruction of America from within by greed running out of control. We did not pay the price until the economic collapse of 2008.

The last time we fought a war with Canada, in the War of 1812, Canada was part of the British Empire, and we lost the war. We lost it rather badly, truth be told (see Life of Jackson: Battle of New Orleans). We launched the War of 1812 with the idea of grabbing Canada and Florida to add to the United States.

So the real question is, does the U.S. ruling class want Canada at this point of our history. If they do, the Abdullah Khadr decision can be used as a pretext for war. Otherwise, it will simply be forgotten.

U.S. Close to War with Pakistan

Recently the government of Pakistan asked the government of the United States of America to stop making remote-guided drone bombing attacks within Pakistan's borders. Friday, April 22, the U.S. defied the Pakistan government and launched an attack that killed 23 people in North Waziristan, including five women and four children. Thus in one stroke President Barack Obama and his administration committed war crimes by becoming (again) an aggressor nation and by targeting civilians.

Ostensibly Pakistan is still a U.S. client nation, but the region is in rapid flux, and likely a covert war between the U.S. and Pakistan has commenced. Neither side will want to declare war at first. The U.S. almost never declares war because it is almost always an aggressor and only Congress can declare war, where one or two Senators are likely to oppose a declaration, and give good reasons. For Pakistan to declare war first is to invite both the destruction of its economy by bombs dropped by the U.S. Air Force, and possibly invasion by India. Neither nation will want to go to the United Nations (U.N.) either. The U.N. was set up to be an instrument of American (and originally, British) imperialism, but the U.S. would certainly get some sound criticism there.

Pakistan was carved out of the Indian subcontinent by the British when they could no longer maintain their empire. By setting up a primarily Islamic state in Pakistan and Hindu state in India, the British maintained a divide-and-conquer strategy. Since India set itself up as neutral but friendly to the old Soviet Union, the U.S. chose Pakistan for a client state. Also troubling was Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan. The border, also established by the British, did not run along tribal lines, instead splitting several large tribes in two (tribes large enough that they would allowed to be nations if they were white Christian tribes in Europe). Throw in Kashmir, with its Islamic majority and Hindu overlords, and the whole area has always been what is euphemistically called geographically unstable.

Both India and Pakistan now have nuclear weapons, but India is a wealthier, more populous, more technologically advanced nation. India has drifted into the U.S. camp during the past 20 years, what with Russia turned capitalist and the vast and rapidly growing Indian-American business community. That has left Pakistan the odd man out, with poor choices all around. China has grown to be more of an ally, but it also is anti-Islamic, and is a dangerous business rival. Afghanistan would make a good ally, but it brings its own problems, including its American puppet government.

Internally Pakistan is in turmoil. In addition to its tribal and class divides, it is in a cultural crisis. It is close to being a modern, technologically (and academically) sophisticated nation, but it also has a majority of people who subscribe to various Islamic fundamentalist sects. Over time it might have undergone more cultural modernization, but the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (and crimes against Palestine, and Iraq), and the association of the U.S. with Christianity (an even older and more absurd religion than Islam) have done much to revive religious fervor.

Pakistan has a democratic government, and that means you can have factions in power that are pro-Taliban, or pro-U.S., but almost everyone considers themselves a Pakistani nationalist. Given past patterns, the U.S. will now try a variety of tactics. The CIA will undermine, or even attack or assassinate, Pakistani politicians, soldiers, and cultural leaders who are seen as too pro-Taliban (or pro-Chinese). The U.S. will accidentally bomb some Pakistani Army regular soldiers, just to give the generals a taste of what a real war could be like. The U.S. may bribe India to initiate a few skirmishes at the border.

In turn, Pakistan will provide better support for the Taliban. They will let arms and money flow into Afghanistan, and perhaps provide even more advanced weapons. When those weapons hit U.S. troops, the Pakistan military will claim they were stolen. The U.S. will then upgrade bombing runs to include destroying Pakistani army military dumps anywhere near the Afghan border.

After that, everything depends on the political situations in each nation. My guess is that since Barack Obama has entirely alienated the peace voters in the U.S. since taking office, he'll choose to look tough going into the 2012 elections. He can't afford another quagmire in Pakistan, so he'll probably open up unrestricted bombing, just as the U.S. started bombing Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War.

As primitive as the Pakistan military is compared to the U.S., it has proximity to its advantage and is several of cuts above the Taliban. The Pakistani Army could be in Kabul in two weeks (after sufficent preparation). Since they would be invited by and welcomed by the Afghani people, they would not be engaging in an act of aggression. Maybe that would be best for everyone, if the U.S. had the wisdom to mind its own business for a change.

Fearing a Ten or Eleven

If the late Japanese earthquake had been a 8.0 (on the Richter scale), there would have been almost no damage in northern coastal Japan. The sea walls would have stopped the tsunami, saving thousands of people from drowning. The waters would not have washed over the nuclear power plant backup generators, leading to overheating to the edge of catastrophe. But the quake measured in at 9.0, which is 10 times as powerful as 8.0. A Ten would be another 10 times as powerful, or 100 times as powerful as an Eight.

Human fear comes in a lesser variety of magnitudes. The emotional intensity of fear from social embarrassment can be greater than the fear created by a real, potential death situation. Fear guides more human action than most people will admit. Because of our limited emotional range, we tend to exaggerate small risks and minimize larger risks.

Somewhere out there is a Ten. Somewhere out there is an Eleven, even. A scenario of apocalyptic proportions. Strangely, it is hard to prepare for a Ten or Eleven. Hence we have stopped preparing for a nuclear war. If an atomic weapon goes off over a city, survival in that city is purely an accident, and probably an unhappy one.

Instead, depending on our personalities and cultures, we might fear immigrants, germs, vaccinations, foods containing wheat or peanuts, ideas, or a harsh word from some local community member.

Some fear, however, is rational. That is, our emotions and our pragmatic responses line up with real danger pretty well. We avoid hot things and electrified things. Most of us don't drive too fast, most of the time. We don't jump off high spots, and we don't drink from containers marked poison.

Social and economic fears occupy a middling ground that tell us much about a person's character. Some of us think nothing of telling a boss to "take this job and shove it," others never leave a job unless they are fired. Some feel safe dressed conservatively, others go out of their way to dress strangely. Some are savers, some spendthrifts. Mostly these choices are not life endangering, but those who are overly afraid of society can be crippled, while those who are socially fearless may also find themselves friendless.

The recent recession looked like it might develop into a Nine or Ten, but in retrospect it was a warning shot, an Eight. This illustrates the danger of generalization, because the recession affected some Americans (and global citizens) not at all, while for some it was economically catastrophic, resulting in bankruptcy, or even death.

Famine used to be the big worry of people and governments. Because the history of the United States is largely the history of converting near-wilderness to farmland, famine has not been an issue here. During the Cold War, when officials worried about Atomic War, the U.S. put together a food reserve system (which also helped keep farm commodity prices high). Now there is very little in the way of stored food or production reserves of food in the U.S. Yet almost no one worries about that. People on the West Coast and in China have been hoarding Iodine this last week, but they expect food to be available in the usual places the next time they shop, and for as far as they can see into the future. Because they do it every day, they forget that driving to the supermarket is more dangerous than almost anything else they do.

In the end, we all die. Yet we fear death not just for ourselves, but for our friends and loved ones. We grieve when someone we knows dies; we even grieve for our pets. Yet we must accept death, both our own and for others. To deny death is to deny reality, and that leads to all sorts of problems, including many people being trapped by their fears in religious cults that suck the life out of life.

Most of the risks we run are inherent in where we are born, geographically, economically and culturally. Being born in a refugee camp brings different risks than being born in a mansion of the possessors of the land where the refugees once lived. Most of the world's people are neither refugees nor millionaires. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is famous for saying "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," during the Great Depression, but then again he was from an incredibly wealthy family and had an nice salary as President of the United States on top of that.

We all figure out what is going on as best we can. Calm, wise people can prepare for the Fives, Sixes, and Sevens of life. With an Eight you hope you survive the initial shock, then deal with the hand that is dealt you as best you can. As to Nines, they are rare, and survival is mostly pure luck. When the Tens and Elevens come, one can only hope they are local, not global, and that they are in someone else's locality.

No Nukes, No War, No Service

Ever since working as a paralegal on the WPPSS debacle I have been resolutely against the building and operating of nuclear power plants, including the development of fusion reactors (current reactors use nuclear fission). WPPSS, Washington Public Power Supply System, planned to build 5 nuclear power plants back in the 1970s and 80s. Fortunately they screwed up so badly that only 1 plant was actually built, although 2 others were started. The result was an economic disaster (and the consequent litigation, hence my employment). Between that, the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl nuclear emission disasters you would have thought nuclear power plants would would be dead, finis, not on the table. But there are two powers in the universe greater than the atom: human stupidity and greed.

President Barack Obama has been a supporter of building more nuclear power plants in the United States. His excuse is the need to cut back on greenhouse gases. Campaign donations to the Democratic Party grease those skids too. So far even the Japanese disaster has not altered Obama's mind. I'm writing him a letter. Close the damned things down as soon as possible. Don't wait for an earthquake.

There will be a power shortage if the world turns off its nuclear plants. Some will want to burn more fossil fuels to make up the difference. I think people should turn off a lot of unnecessary stuff. Turn off the entire military establishment of every nation, for starts. Turn off all air conditioning. Limit heating in winter to what is really essential. Walk or bike to work.

We can't stop earthquakes or hurricanes, but we can stop war. The U.S. has been the worst military offender since it became the biggest military power after World War II. We do need a military. We need about 10,000 trained men to protect us from the Canadians, and another 10,000 to protect us from the Mexicans. Or we could just merge our three nations into one big happy family, and just keep a cadre of officers trained at the military academies in the remote case that we need to ramp up to protect us from some other nation.

My Democratic Party friends, rather than leaving the party because it is a war crimes organization (an organization that has repeatedly ordered war crimes to be committed) want to defend Barack Obama and crew against the Tea Party and Republican Party. No thanks. It will only take the Tea Party two to four years to destroy the American Economy as we know it if they come to power. That is not my favored scenario. I'd like to see the Green Party or its equivalent in charge of governance. But as far as getting rid of the military and nuclear power plants, letting the Tea Party unleash anarchy on the land is a better bet.

Meanwhile, I want to express my deepest sympathies for the people of Japan, particularly those harmed in the recent tragedy. Until 1850 the Japanese militarists were content to stay isolated on their islands and abuse their own peasants. After the U.S. invaded Okinawa and Japan, they decided they rather liked the American modern style and did their best to imitate our society. Despite imitation being flattery, this imitation eventually involved cutting into America's ability to rape and pillage Asia, so FDR ordered the crushing of Japan (which started well before Pearl Harbor, with U.S. attacks on Japanese and Chinese troops stationed). After World War II the Japanese gave up on military power but still aspired to industrial power, and had quite a run. The recent earthquake would have happened just the same no matter what the human course of history, and seaside villages would have been just as drowned. But the nuclear tragedy is a purely human tragedy, built of human stupidity and arrogance that many Japanese bought into. Hopefully when the dead are buried and memorialized the next step the Japanese people will take will be to close all their nuclear plants.

2014 is the New 2011

The United States and NATO announced they would continue to occupy Afghanistan through at least 2014. The prior "we will have won the war and be ready to leave our puppet Afghan army to suppress the people" date was 2011.

It is very, very clear that the U.S.A. has not prevailed in Afghanistan.

There is a fundamental reason for that. Except for a few Afghans on the American payroll, no one in Afghanistan likes the American occupation. That does not mean they like the Taliban, the group most likely to rule Afghanistan when, or I should say if, America ever exits.

It is getting to be a rather long war. In 2002 the U.S. dropped in a load of weapons to the Taliban's enemies in Afghanistan, an assortment of tribes and warlords who did not fancy some other group giving them orders. With some air support and occasional support from U.S. troops, these allies were able to destroy the Taliban government. The puritanism of the Taliban had made it unpopular with many Afghans; puritans always do that.

That was under President George W. Bush. Except that it is important to keep in mind that important matters are not decided by U.S. Presidents, they are decided by a permanent military-industrial complex that supplies the very information even Presidents use in their decision making. Having "won" in Afghanistan, Bush then invaded Iraq.

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, it only took a couple of years for U.S. allies to make themselves unpopular. The Taliban were not some elected party that quickly fell apart when the campaign donations ceased to roll in. Afghans are a pretty astute people, on the whole. As bad as the local Taliban can be at government, they are mostly preferred to war lords. And even the war lords are to be preferred to rule by the United States, Russia, or NATO.

So the Taliban administered justice, and let up on some of the puritan stuff. U.S. allies administered corruption and injustice. The Taliban, by 2006, were the de facto real government of much of Afghanistan.

That year the Democratic Party ran many of its campaign for Congress on the idea that the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. A few candidates were probably sincere about this, but most just wanted votes and knew quite well they were not willing to take on the military-industrial complex. Plus if they used their majority in Congress to cut off funds for the wars, they would not be able to recycle the campaign issue in the 2008 elections.

In 2008 many American voters thought that a vote for Barack Obama and for Democratic Party candidates in general was a vote for peace.

Instead, Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress expanded the war in Afghanistan.

Don't think they, and their Republican Party allies, are stupid. All of them know that no imperial power has ultimately won a war of occupation in this last century. They know they cannot win in Afghanistan. They don't want to win in Afghanistan. They want to serve the military-industrial complex. And the military-industrial complex wants to serve itself. It does not want to admit that it no longer is backed by sufficient economic muscle to tell everyone in the world what's what. But it does want to test its old weapons, buy new ones, and give the troops combat experience. The industrial part of the complex never saw a taxpayer dollar it didn't like.

In 2009 Barack Obama said he would send more troops, and that would allow the U.S. to withdraw most troops in 2011. He was buying time for his masters, the military establishment.

The people of Afghanistan are still going to be in Afghanistan in 2014. Some will be willing puppets, but not enough to keep themselves in power if the U.S. withdraws its support.

Just figure the 2014 date is meaningless. Except that it is 2 years after the 2012 election. Expect both military-industrial complex owned parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, to pledge to get out of Afghanistan by 2014 during the 2012 elections.

How can you tell when a politician is lying?

Self-defense, Aggression, and Third Parties

Most people understand the difference between aggression and self-defense, but at times they need to be reminded with regard to a particular situation.

If you are in your house and someone enters it without an invitation and begins to steal or engage in violent acts, you have a right to defend yourself using force, up to and including killing the aggressor (in theory you aren't supposed to kill a thief unless they are also threatening, but most people won't second guess your feeling threatened).

If you are trespassing in someone else's house and they shoot at you and miss, you don't suddenly gain the right to self-defense. You have the right to run for your life or beg for mercy.

On the other hand, if a thief has surrendered and is no longer a threat, you have to wait for the police to arrive. You can't kill them legally, even though you could have just a few seconds before the surrendered.

Most people see the analogy to prisoners of war. The moment a soldier has surrendered, even if they were trying there best to kill you just a few moments earlier, they are protected under law. Killing them becomes a war crime. In the heat of battle this rule can be hard to remember, but it is a basic standard of civilization.

Other attempts to extend the basic concepts of self-defense to larger bodies, including nations, have not gone well to date. Nationalist perspectives tend to warp any interpretation of factual events. Nations that have long histories of going to war with each other often use past wars as justification for why present aggressions are "self-defense." We want to allow nations to defend themselves against aggression, but of this has freuqently resulted in aggression being characterized as defense.

Two issues that complicate international matters are divided houses and third parties; they often go together. Imagine a family where two spouses are quarrelling and heading towards divorce. One spouse calls on outside friends to come over and throw out the other spouse. The other spouse grabs a gun and starts shooting. From the shooter's view the situation is self-defense, but the families of the people who are shot will feel there relatives got a legitimate invitation, and so will see it as murder.

Now imagine a much bigger house with a whole bunch of quarrelling families or ethnic groups or classes. That would be a nation. If one group feels it is losing a power struggle, or a civil war, it may call in outside help. Is the third party nation that helps a losing faction aiding in their self-defense, or are they an aggressor invading someone else's house? People usually judge this based on which faction they like. I believe any interference by an outside nation has to be counted as aggression, and therefore as a war crime. Otherwise there is always a pretext for aggressive war. A nation wishing to attack or absorb another nation can always find some discontented people in the victim nation to issue the invitation.

The Vietnam War is a good example of why nations should never interfere in the internal affairs of other nations, at least not by force of arms. To summarize a much more complicated situation in the context of this discussion of third parties and self-defense, before World War II Vietnam was a colony of France. There was a Vietnamese independence movement. After Marshal Petain set up a French Catholic fascist regime to cooperate with Hitler, Vietnam was turned over the the Japanese, mainly because they were going to take it anyway, but some French troops remained.

After World War II the English, Americans, French and Dutch mainly reneged on their rhetoric about national self-determination and ending colonialism. Vietnamese nationalists were not just upset when the French returned with their Parisian arrogance. They kicked their butts in war, even though the U.S. aided the French. But the imperialists had made some Vietnamese allies, who were mainly Catholics. After the French lost they declared they were really nationalists too. The Catholic friends of America and France set themselves up as the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese regime, twice betrayed by the United States, leaned to the communist nations of China and the Soviet Union.

When the U.S. started fighting against Vietnam (with soldiers in the South and bombings of both the South and the North), it was by invitation to President John F. Kennedy. The Northern branch of the family was winning the family argument even in South Vietnam. The invitation came from Ngô Đình Diệm (Ngo Dinh Diem), the first self-appointed ruler of South Vietnam.

The U.S. soldiers were in the Vietnamese house, but were they aggressors? They had been invited, but by a minority-based government with no popular support beyond its Roman Catholic cadres (the majority of people in South Vietnam were Buddhist).

In retrospect, the U.S. should have refused the invitation. The U.S. lost the war and in the process ruined its own economy and lost a vast amount of international prestige.

Winning, of course, would not have made things right. A successful thief and murderer is still a thief and murderer.

What about when bad things are happening in a nation, like genocide? That certainly adds another variable to the argument. The analogy might be a woman calling the police to help deal with a murderous spouse. The problem is that this argument puts you on a slippery slope. Hitler argued, when taking over an assortment of territories before World War II got into full swing, that he was protecting the ethnic Germans living in those territories. The argument opens the door to all sorts of other arguments for invading other nations. Including invasions based on religion or political ideology.

So I'll stick with the general rule that no nation ever has the right to invade another nation. Nations have the right to defend their own borders; that is all. That is my analysis of the ethics of these general situations.

Kidnapping, Slavery, and Islamic Terror: To the Shores of Tripoli

Earlier today I had a discussion with a military guy, in this case a defense contractor highly-paid consultant type, I think.

Soon I was saying, "The U.S. military has always been used for aggression. It has never been used for self defense. First it was used to steal native American tribal land. No, first it was used to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion and establish the Federal Government's authority to collect taxes under the new Constitution. Then we did our first attacks on the Islamic nations, under President Thomas Jefferson. You know, the raids on the Barbary 'Pirate' states."

That was in 1801, I now know because I looked it up in my Bailey's The American Pageant, A History of the Republic. Tripoli is a city in present-day Libya.

"That was self-defense," my new friend said. "They were capturing American ships and citizens and holding them for ransom!"

"So," I said, having a thought I never had before, "if you kidnap people, that is a pretext for a just war?"

"Of course it is," he said. "All U.S. wars have been just wars."

"Let's stick to the war against the Pasha of Tripoli for a moment. At that time, was slavery legal in the United States of America."

"Slavery is a different issue. I am not for slavery, and I am not a racist."

"Fine, but slavery was legal, right?"

"Yes."

"And importing slaves was legal, right?"

"But at some point we made importing new slaves illegal."

"But not at that point. I could be wrong, but I think that was later. [it was 1808] So where did these slaves come from?"

"Africa."

"And Tripoli was in?"

"Africa."

"So the United States of America was kidnapping Africans, by proxy anyway, and keeping them as permanent slaves. Whereas the Islamic states just were taxing the passing of ships in their waters, and when Jefferson decided he would not pay the tax, they confiscated our ships, and in effect kidnapped some of our citizens."

"We weren't taking slaves from Tripoli," he countered. "The slaves we were taking had a right to fight back, and probably a lot of them did. And we had a right to send in the Marines at Tripoli."

"Nice parting of the waters, there," I admitted. "But that just leaves Jefferson and the U.S. military as hypocrites. We could have used military force to shut down the slave trade in Africa, and we could have gone ahead and had a civil war in the U.S. to end slavery here. Instead we attacked an Islamic state because we did not want our merchants to have to pay taxes to sale ships through their waters."

"And we kicked their butts. Right or wrong, we always kick their butts."

And we are always the defenders of all that is good and just. A few white people landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts and Jamestown, Virginia in the early 1600's, and using only-self defense and hard work ended up with an empire that includes not just 50 states and a bunch of territories, but military bases and political puppets all around the world. Semper Fidelis.

[quotes are to the best of my memory. The other guy probably remembers how he won the argument.]

Who Will Pay the War Tab?

Who will pick up the tab? On the micro scale, everyone has experienced this question, typically at restaurants. In society, when services are given to the poor, the unfortunate, or even those who competently avoid taking responsibility for themselves, either donors pay or taxpayers pay the tab.

Then there is the War. Mostly in Afghanistan these days, but it could flare up any minute in Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Korea, etc. There are direct costs to the occupation of Afghanistan, and then there is the ongoing, bone-crushing cost of maintaining the U.S. military establishment as a whole. There is no doubt that U.S. taxpayers are picking up this tab. But taxpayers are a varied lot, and pay or evade a wide variety of taxes.

Yesterday's vote in the U.S. Senate on special funding for the occupation of Afghanistan illustrates some interesting shifts in the tab-picking-up dynamic. Some Senators in the Democratic Party and some Senators in the Republican Party voted against the funding. The Democratic Party naysayers want a timetable for withdrawal set. The Republican Party Nays had voted against the amendment to attach a withdrawal timetable for the bill. They voted against the bill itself because no provision was made to raise the money for it; it would add to the deficit. So they want the meal, They are worried about who will pay the tab.

American taxpayers have run up an enormous tab. It is called the National Debt. There is interest on the national debt, which itself makes up a big part of the Federal budget each year.

Back when the Dems were the outs and wanted to be voted in, they opposed the war as pointless. Now the leadership of the Dems, including the President, sound exactly like the leadership of the Republicans did just a few years ago. Only the Republicans, given their self-inflating, gun-toting constituency, can't oppose the war openly. There are no votes there. What they can do is point to the way the Democratic Majority is taking out a mortgage on America, at variable interest rates, with no ability to pay if either interest rates go up or the economy cycles back into recessionary mode.

Who will pay the tab? With the Democrats in power, the Republicans are worried that taxes on the "rich" will be raised. After all, you can't squeeze tax dollars out of income-less people living in Obama-villes. The rich already pay a lot of the tax burden, but they also get some pretty good breaks, like not paying taxes on capital gains until the capital is sold, which is typically only when they die. I would rather be rich and pay at higher tax rates, but once you are rich you get used to spending your money like anyone else. Higher taxes for the rich could mean waiting a year before buying a new Bentley, or taking a few days less vacation on the French Riviera, or having to fire one of the maids. That is the kind of irritant that makes rich people put pressure on their politicians.

You know how it goes. "Sure Bob, last year I raised $100,000 for your campaign, but then you raised taxes and now Sally Sue's vacation budget is $250,000 short."

In case you have not noticed, in Democratic majority districts the rich have to pick up two tabs. One is for the presumed winners, the Democrats, and the other is for the Republican Party candidates, to keep their hopes alive and the pressure on the Democrats.

Talk about a quagmire. The Democrats can't get out of Afghanistan without a "victory" because that would make them vulnerable to the Republicans. The Republicans are really, really worried about the future tax burden (and everyone should be), and the smarter ones are beginning to realize that the military part of the military-industrial complex has gotten to big compared to the industrial part. Too much industry has left the U.S.A., leaving a service-based economy that can't pay for the industrial goods we import.

Once I was working as a waiter in a pizza joint and a table of customers ran out on me. The restaurant owner, chewed me out thoroughly, but did not carry out his threat to take the tab out of my miniscule wages. He had to pick up the tab.

When taxes get high, evasion becomes commonplace. Some blame the Greek crisis on that phenomena.

Before dining out, which I seldom due since my wife and I both prefer cooking ourselves, I like to negotiate who is going to pay the tab. I don't like surprise. I especially don't like heavy drinkers who suggest that the tab be split "evenly." The federal deficit and national debt are one big surprise waiting to happen. There is absolutely nothing in our legal codes about who exactly is going to pay that tab.

Adolf Hitler, Peace Maker?

I like bizarre bits of true history, bits that don't fit into how we normally look at historical figures and institutions.

You have to be careful about saying anything nice about Adolf Hitler, mostly because he did not do very much that was nice, and partly because you get attacked as being a simpathiser even if you are just trying to clarify the historical record so people can be objective about history. While I have made it clear in many other essays that I hate Fascism, some one reading this one essay in isolation might miss that point.

I found this historical detail in John Toland's The Rising Sun, volume 1, page 65. In December, 1937, after Japanese troops captured Nanking (see Battle of Nanking), the Japanese government really, really wanted peace with China, which is to say with its leading war-lord, Chiang Kai-shek. They had already made peace with a number of war lords in northern China, and had no intention of making peace with the other claimant to Chinese governance, the Communist Party of China, which back then was actually holding elections in the areas it controlled.

In 1937 Adolf Hitler was busy in Europe trying to unite all German-speaking people into a consolidated German state; he had threatened war but not conducted it. But, for all his racism, Adolf Hitler had friendly relationships with both Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese government headed by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye (or Konoe, according to Wikipedia). In Chiang Kai-shek's case, the German military had been training and advising Chinese troops for decades, and a little war with Japan was a good chance to test weapons and tactics. In Japan's case, both nations were very anti-communist and afraid of Russia (then the U.S.S.R.), and had joined together in the Anti-Comintern Pact.

Had Hitler succeeded, he might have won a Nobel Prize. And having won a Nobel Prize, maybe he would have thought twice before using military force to take back the areas of Poland that had been taken from Germany at the end of World War I.

But probably not. Giving the Peace Prize to Obama did not stop him from escalating the U.S. wars of aggression in Afghanistan or Somalia. Barack Obama, I am pretty sure, likes to think about himself as a peace-loving guy. It is just that like the Japanese leaders of the 1930's, he just wants peace his way. Who doesn't?

Why did Hitler not bring peace to East Asia in 1937? Franklin D. Roosevelt decided it was not in the interest of the United States, and encouraged Chiang Kai-shek to keep fighting. During the relatively pacifist Republican administrations of the 1920's (Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover) the United States had partially disarmed, and during the Depression the military was further weakened by the need to shift the federal budget to New Deal welfare programs. Roosevelt was keen to make Japan and China both part of the U.S. commercial empire; the more they fought, the easier it would be for the U.S. to knock them both over when it became convenient. The more trouble Chiang was in, the more dependent he would be on the U.S.

Hitler did not seek peace because he was a good guy. He wanted the Japanese and Chinese to stop bickering so they could both fight his own arch enemy, the Soviet Union (and Chinese communists). Whether Roosevelt's intentions were good or bad can be debated, but his decision to push China to continue the war meant that China would be torn by war until the victory of the Chinese Communist regime in 1950. Given how demolished China was by 1950, it is remarkable that this year its economy will become the second largest in the world.

In effect in December 1937 Chiang was weak, and had to decide whether he would be a U.S. puppet or a Japanese puppet (a third realistic choice was becoming a Soviet puppet). Being the U.S. puppet, all he got in the end was Taiwan.

Theodore Roosevelt got a Nobel Peace Prize for helping the Japanese and Russians negotiate and end to their war in 1904. Given Roosevelt's belicosity and role in the Spanish American War and the Philippines genocide, apparently there is no barier to highly aggressive past and future war criminals receiving the prize.