The Mises View on the Looming "Government Shutdown"

Ron Paul on Fox News Discussing the Fed

David Stockman: The American Imperium is Coming to an End

Hail to the Spanker-in-Chief: The American Imperium is Finally Over

By David Stockman

Next week Congress can do far more than stop a feckless Tomahawk barrage on a small country which is already a graveyard of civil war and sectarian slaughter. By voting “no” it can trigger the end of the American Imperium—-five decades of incessant meddling, bullying and subversion around the globe which has added precious little to national security, but left America fiscally exhausted and morally diminished.

Indeed, the tragedy of this vast string of misbegotten interventions—from the 1953 coup against Mossedegh in Iran through the recent bombing campaign in Libya —-is that virtually none of them involved defending the homeland or any tangible, steely-eyed linkages to national security. They were all rooted in ideology—that is, anti-communism, anti-terrorism, humanitarianism, R2Pism, nation-building, American exceptionalism. These were the historic building blocks of a failed Pax Americana. Now the White House wants authorization for the last straw: Namely, to deliver from the firing tubes of U.S. naval destroyers a dose of righteous “punishment” that has no plausible military or strategic purpose. By the President’s own statements the proposed attack is merely designed to censure the Syrian regime for allegedly visiting one particularly horrific form of violence on its own citizens.

Well, really? After having rained napalm, white phosphorous, bunker-busters, drone missiles and the most violent machinery of conventional warfare ever assembled upon millions of innocent Vietnamese, Cambodians, Serbs, Somalis, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemeni, Libyans and countless more, Washington now presupposes to be in the moral sanctions business?  That’s downright farcical.  Nevertheless, by declaring himself the world’s spanker-in-chief, President Obama has unwittingly precipitated the mother of all clarifying moments.

The screaming strategic truth is that America no longer has any industrial state enemies capable of delivering military harm to its shores: Russia has become a feeble kleptocracy run by a loud-mouthed thief and the communist party oligarchs in China would face a devastating economic collapse within months were it to attack its American markets for sneakers and Apples. So the real question now before Congress recurs: how is it possible that the peace-loving citizens of America, facing no industrial-scale military threat from anywhere on the planet, find themselves in a constant state of war?  The answer is that they have been betrayed by the beltway political class which is in thrall to a vast warfare state apparatus that endlessly invents specious reasons for meddling, spying, intervention and occupation.

In pursuit of nothing more ennobling than raw self-perpetuation, the propaganda machinery of the warfare state—along with its media affiliates such as the War Channel (CNN) and the War Press (Washington Post) —- have over recent decades churned out a stream of vastly exaggerated “threats”, falsely transforming tin-pot dictators and tyrants like Ho Chi Minh, Daniel Ortega, Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and now Bashar Assad into dangerous enemies. At length, triggering incidents are concocted such as the phony gulf of Tonkin episode, the Madison Avenue based fabrications about Iraqi soldiers stealing babies from incubators in Kuwait, the vastly exaggerated claims of ethnic cleaning in Kosovo, and Saddam’s reputed WMDs.  Eventually, the drumbeat for military intervention is cranked to a fever pitch, and cable TV drives it home with non-stop telestrators and talking heads. Only after the fact, when billions in taxpayer resources have been squandered and thousands of American servicemen have been killed and maimed, do we learn that it was all a mistake; that the collateral destruction vastly exceeded the ostensible threat;  and that there remains not a trace of long-term security benefit to the American people.

Setting aside the self-evident catastrophes in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, even the alleged “good” interventions are simply not what they are cracked up to be by warfare state apologists. The 1991 Persian Gulf War, for instance, only insured that Saddam Hussein would not get the oilfield revenues from what he claimed to be Iraq’s “19th province” so that he could fund projects to placate his 30 million deprived, abused and restless citizens. Instead, the loot was retained for the benefit of the despicable Emir Al- Sabah IV and a few hundred gluttonous Kuwaiti princes.

Yet in the long-run, “saving” the Kuwaiti regime and its unspeakably decadent opulence did not lower the world price of oil by a dime (Iraq would have produced every barrel it could). And it most surely subtracted from national security because it resulted in the permanent basing of 10,000 U.S. troops on Saudi soil. This utterly stupid and unnecessary provocation was the very proof that “infidels” were occupying Islamic holy lands—the principal leitmotif used by Osama bin Laden to recruit a few hundred fanatical jihadists and pull off the flukish scheme that became 9/11.

Likewise, the “triumph” of Kosovo is pure gist from the national security propaganda mill. The true essence of the episode was a mere swap-out among the ethnic cleansers:  The brutal Serbian army was expelled from Kosovo so that the Albanian thugs of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army which was on the terrorist list until it was mysteriously dropped in 1998) could liquidate minority Serbs and confiscate their property—–a tragic routine that has been going on in the Balkans for centuries.

The recurrent phony narratives that generate these war drum campaigns and then rationalize their disastrous aftermath are rooted in a common structural cause: a vastly bloated war machine and national spying apparatus, the Imperial Presidency and the house-trained lap-dogs which occupy the congressional intelligence, foreign affairs and defense committees. This triangle of deception keeps the American public bamboozled with superficial propaganda and the media supplied with short bursts of reality TV when the Tomahawks periodically let fly.

But it is the backbone of the permanent warfare state bureaucracy that keeps the gambit going. Presidents come and go but it is now obvious that virtually any ideological script—left or right—can be co-opted into service of the Imperium. The Obama White House’s preposterous drive to intervene in the Syrian tinderbox with its inherent potential for fractures and blowback across the entire Middle East is being ram-roded by the dogma of “responsibility to protect”. In that context, its chief protagonists—Susan Rice and Samantha Power—-are the moral equivalent of Bush’s neo-con hit-men, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. In both cases, ideological agendas which have absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the American people were enabled to activate the awful violence of the American war machine mainly because it was there, marching in place waiting for an assignment.

And that truth encapsulates the inflection point now upon us. There should be no $650 billion war machine with carrier battle groups and cruise missile batteries at the ready to tempt Presidents to heed the advice of ideological fanatics like Power and Wolfowitz.  The cold war ended 25 years back, and like in 1919 and 1946 the American war machine should have been drastically demobilized and dismantled long ago; it should be funded at under $300 billion, not over $600 billion. The five destroyers today menacing the coast of Syria should have been mothballed, if not consigned to the scrap yard. No President need have worried about choosing sides among ethnic cleansers in Kosovo or Islamic sectarians and tribalists in Syria because his available tool-kit would have been to call for a peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, not a Tomahawk strike from warships in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In this context, Barack Obama may yet earn his Nobel Peace prize, owing to the Syria debate he has now unleashed. It will finally show that there is no threat to America’s security lurking behind the curtain in the Middle East—only a cacophony of internal religious, ethnic, tribal and nationalist conflicts that will eventually burn themselves out. Rather than the “new caliphate” of Fox News’ demented imagination, the truth on the ground is that the Islamic world is enmeshed in a vicious conflict pitting the Shia axis of Iran, Syria, Southern Iraq and the Hezbollah-Lebanon corridor against the surrounding Sunni circle which is nominally aligned with the Syrian rebels. Yet even the Sunni world is noisily fracturing, with Turkey and Qatar lined-up with the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf State aligned with the Egyptian generals. Meanwhile, Jordan cowers in the shadows.

The cowardly hypocrisy of the Arab League should tell the Congressional rank-and-file all they need to know about why we should stay out of Syria and shut down the CIA-sponsored rebel training camp in Jordan through which Saudi arms, including chemical weapons according to some reports, are being interjected into the slaughter in Syria.  If the Assad regime is truly an existential threat to regional peace and stability, let Saudi Arabia and Turkey take it out. After all, during the last several decades they have received a combined $100 billion in advanced aircraft, missiles, electronic warfare gear and other weaponry from American arms merchants financed by the US government.

Needless to say, the spineless Arab League/Saudi potentates who are now demanding “deterrence” never intend to do the job themselves, preferring to stealthily hold the coats of American mercenary forces instead.  The truth is that at the end of the day, they find the threat of Iranian retaliation far more compelling than ending Assad’s brutality or building a pipeline through a prospective Sunni-controlled Syria to supply Qatar’s natural gas to European markets.

That leaves the need to dispatch the final and most insidious myth of the warfare state: namely, the lie that Iran is hell-bent on obtaining and using nuclear weapons. Even the CIA’s own intelligence estimates refute that hoary canard. And whatever the proper share of blame ascribable to each side for failed nuclear negotiations in the past, the Iranian people have once again freely elected a President who wishes to normalize relationships with the US and its allies—notwithstanding the cruel and mindless suffering visited upon them by the West’s misbegotten economic “sanctions”. Indeed, if Obama had the wisdom and astuteness President Eisenhower demonstrated going to Korea, he would be now headed for a peace conference table in Tehran, not the war room in the White House.

So let the sun shine in. Perhaps the unruly backbenchers on Capitol Hill will now learn that they have been sold out by their betters on the jurisdictional committees, such as knee-jerk hawks like Senators Feinstein and Melendez, who chair the key Senate committees, and Mike Rogers who chairs the House (alleged) Intelligence Committee. If they do, they will understand that the US has no dog in the Middle East hunt, and that the wise course of action would be a thorough-going retreat and disengagement from the internecine conflicts of the Levant, North Africa and the Persian Gulf, just as Ronald Reagan discovered after his nose was bloodied in Lebanon.  But however the current debate specifically unfolds, the good news is that the world greatest deliberative body is now back in charge of American foreign policy. By long standing historical demonstration, the US Congress specializes in paralysis, indecision and dysfunction. In the end, that is how the American warfare state will be finally brought to heel and why the American Imperium will come to an end—at last.

Another Imperialist War in Syria

After many months of bloodshed and waiting for the inevitable, President Obama announced over this last weekend that he will use military force against Syria. He has also stated that he will "seek" "Congressional authorization" before using military force. This at first may sound like a positive nod towards the Constitution's clear prescription that only Congress may declare war. But just by calling it a "Congressional authorization", it gives the impression that it will not be crafted like a Constitutional declaration of war. As Daniel McAdams has noted,

The administration's first draft looks a lot like the disastrously broad authorization passed after the attacks on 9/11 that Bush and then Obama have used for years to conduct global warfare. There is no reason to doubt that the draft as written would give the president all the authority he needs to attack Iran the minute the ink is dry. It has no sunset and is not restricted to the "shot across the bow" that Obama has stated he intends. 

And as Ron Paul has pointed out, the President has made it clear that any Congressional authorization is inconsequential to the fact that Presidents often act on their own authority, as Obama has done before in Libya. 

So why Syria? The U.S. government is peddling the claim that the regime of Assad has used chemical weapons against it's own people on August 21, resulting in the deaths of a few hundred civilians. But there is no concrete evidence that proves that the Assad regime is responsible for the attack. For all we know, the anti-Assad rebels or another third party could have been responsible for the attack. But desperate to bring the country into another no-win war, the U.S. government will continue to believe it's own lies. A war in Syria will not bring peace or stability to the region or stop the Assad regime from waging war against his people. It will inevitably lead to a wider war, while possibly triggering increased Russian and possibly Chinese involvement and intervention in the Middle East. A war in Syria will also lead to a further destabilization of the entire region that has already been plagued by what seems to be perpetual war. It seems that the U.S. government is gearing up for Iraq 2.0. It is astonishing that the U.S. government will attempt to justify a war on similar grounds that it did to justify a previous war (Iraq 2003) that were later found to be false. 

There is no good case or justification for any war against Syria. Syria has not directly attacked the United States homeland and does not have the military capability to invade and conquer the United States. Syria certainly does not threaten America national security. Being the policemen of the world has made the U.S. less safe, less prosperous and less free. And as stated before, the truth of the matter is that there is no concrete proof that the Assad regime even used chemical weapons. But even if it did, does that alone justify American intervention into Syria? It does not. As Doug Bandow has put it "the use of chemical weapons does not justify war. Syria is not a party to the claimed “international consensus” against chemical weapons, having never joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. Although classed as a weapon of mass destruction, chemical agents are difficult to deploy and not uniquely deadly. At least 99 percent of the battlefield deaths in World War I were caused by other means." 


Daniel McAdams puts it more succinctly:


It does not matter whether or not Obama gets Congressional approval for the strike. It does not matter whether 50 percent plus one in Congress vote in favor of an attack on Syria. It does not matter whether some form of chemical weapons were used in the war in Syria. It does not matter who used them if they were indeed used. It does not matter whether the Saudis are demanding that we overthrow Assad. It does not matter whether the Turks are demanding we overthrow Assad. It does not matter whether the Israelis demand that we overthrow Assad. 

What matters is that there is no grounds for the US to make war on Syria. It has not attacked us; it does not threaten us. On the contrary, by arming and training the jihadist rebels fighting against the Syria government, it is the US that is threatening Syria. It is the US that is the aggressor. It is the US government that through its actions opens the US to all manner of retaliation in response to its initiation of aggression in Syria and elsewhere.

A debate on weapons or a vote in Congress or the mad ravings of the neocons and humantiarian imperialists means precisely nothing in light of this simple truth.

Nonintervention and neutrality, the Jeffersonian principle of "peace, commerce and honest friendship will all nations-entangling alliances with none" should be the course that the U.S. pursues in Syria and the rest of the world. American foreign policy should be reoriented towards protecting the United States from imminent invasion or attack by another government instead of military adventurism or destabilizing other countries in a quest for empire via military and political dominance. There is no moral, economic, or constitutional justification for an empire comprised of over 800 military bases in over a 135 countries around the world. The only just wars are defensive wars and only a return to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers on foreign policy will put America on a course back towards prosperity and liberty. 

Private Property is the Essence of Liberty

The following is a reprint from the Mises Institute of a section of Chapter 10 of Ron Paul's book "A Foreign Policy of Freedom".  

By Ron Paul

Privacy is the essence of liberty. Without it, individual rights cannot exist. Privacy and property are interlocked. If both were protected, little would need to be said about other civil liberties. If one’s home, church or business is one’s castle, and the privacy of one’s person, papers and effects are rigidly protected, all rights desired in a free society will be guaranteed. Diligently protecting the right to privacy and property guarantees religious, journalistic and political experience, as well as a free market economy and sound money. Once a careless attitude emerges with respect to privacy, all other rights are jeopardized.

Today we find a systematic and pervasive attack on the privacy of American citizens, which undermines the principle of private property ownership. Understanding why the attack on privacy is rapidly expanding and recognizing a need to reverse this trend are necessary if our Republic is to survive.

Lack of respect for the privacy and property of the American colonists by the British throne was a powerful motivation for the American Revolution and resulted in the strongly-worded and crystal-clear Fourth Amendment. Emphatically, searches and seizures are prohibited except when warrants are issued upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, with details given as to place, person and things to be seized. This is a far cry from the routine seizure by the federal government and forfeiture of property which occurs today. Our papers are no longer considered personal and their confidentiality has been eliminated. Private property is searched by federal agents without announcement. Huge fines are levied when federal regulations appear to have been violated, and proof of innocence is demanded if one chooses to fight the abuse in court and avoid the heavy fines.

Eighty thousand armed federal bureaucrats and law enforcement officers now patrol our land and business establishments. Suspicious religious groups are monitored and sometimes destroyed without due process of law, with little or no evidence of wrong doing. Local and state jurisdiction is rarely recognized once the feds move in. Today, it is routine for government to illegally seize property, requiring the victims to prove their innocence in order to retrieve their property. Many times they fail due to the expense and legal roadblocks placed in the victim’s way.

Although the voters in the 1990s have cried out for a change in direction and demanded a smaller, less-intrusive government, the attack on privacy by the Congress, the administration, and the courts has, nevertheless, accelerated. Plans have now been laid or implemented for a national I.D. card, a national medical data bank, a data bank on individual MDs, deadbeat dads, intrusive programs monitoring our every financial transaction.

The Social Security number has been established as the universal identifier. The Social Security number is now commonly used for just about everything: getting a birth certificate, buying a car, seeing an MD, getting a job, opening up a bank account, getting a driver’s license, making many routine purchases, and, of course, a death certificate. Cradle-to-the-grave government surveillance is here and daily getting more pervasive. The attack on privacy is not a coincidence or an event that arises for no explainable reason. It results from a philosophy that justifies it and requires it. A government not dedicated to preserving liberty must, by its very nature, allow this precious right to erode. A political system designed as ours was to protect life, liberty, and property would vigorously protect all citizens’ rights to privacy; this cannot occur unless the property and the fruits of one’s labor, of every citizen, is protected from confiscation by thugs in the street as well as those in our legislative bodies.

The promoters of government intrusion into our privacy characteristically use worn out clichés to defend what they do. The most common argument is that if you have nothing to hide, why worry about it? This is ludicrous. We have nothing to hide in our homes or our bedrooms, but that is no reason why Big Brother should be permitted to monitor us with a surveillance camera.

The same can be argued about our churches, our businesses, or any peaceful action we may pursue. Our personal activities are no one else’s business. We may have nothing to hide, but, if we are not careful, we have plenty to lose — our right to be left alone. Others argue that to operate government programs efficiently and without fraud, close monitoring is best achieved with a universal identifier, the Social Security number. Efficiency and protection from fraud may well be enhanced with the use of a universal identifier, but this contradicts the whole notion of the proper role for government in a free society. Most of the federal programs are unconstitutional to begin with, so eliminating waste and fraud and promoting efficiency for a program that requires a violation of someone else’s rights should not be a high priority of the Congress. But the temptation is too great, even for those who question the wisdom of the government programs, and compromise of the Fourth Amendment becomes acceptable.

I have never heard of a proposal to promote the national I.D. card, or anything short of this for any reasons other than a good purpose. Essentially all those who vote to allow the continual erosion of our privacy and other Constitutional rights never do it because they consciously support a tyrannical government; it is always done with good intention.