Category Archives: Military

‘Are We Rome?’ Was A Question Asked and Answered Long Ago

Ancient History, Government, Iraq, libertarianism, Military, Taxation, The State, War

To the hackneyed question, ‘Are We Rome?’, John Stossel replies, “Not yet.” He is completely wrong, just as he was wrong to dismiss the “National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls,” to quote.

Mr. Stossel takes comfort in the fact that “we don’t kill people for sport. When we go to war, misguided or not, we don’t conquer or plunder. And when we win, we usually leave.” (July 18, 2013)

Who is he kidding? The US hunts down and kills very many innocents abroad by drone. It’s a bit of a sport—so much so that decadent New Rome has even established a “new medal that honors drone pilots and computer experts” for their long-distance killing prowess.

Courtesy of Uncle Sam, war-time slaughter has just been industrialized, streamlined, made more efficient in our times.

Compare the demographic and economic indices of countries the US has invaded—for their own good, of course, but without their consent—before and after the “merciful” intervention. You’ll get a better idea of the carnage than John Stossel allows.

Libya is no longer. Ditto Iraq. Afghanistan is not doing much better since Rome set up camp there.

Read “Casualties of the Iraq War.”

Read “Civilian casualties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present).”

Read “Deaths caused by Coalition forces” in Libya.

Again, contrary to the Stossel assertion, the latter-day Rome has mechanized the warfare-state’s killing and has refined its propaganda wing to an art—so fine an art that John Stossel has bought it hook, line, and sinker.

No-one attempting to tackle the ‘Are We Rome?’ question should be allowed to get away with failing to mention Cullen Murphy’s book by that name. This is a question that was asked and answered already. Superbly.

A 2010 column I wrote highlighted “the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America,” as illustrated in Murphy’s book, “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome.”

The federal payroll in Washington Murphy pegs at 360,000 (BO: Before Obama), calling this estimate a “convenient deceit,” as an “even larger number of people in the Washington area — about 400,000 — work for private companies that are doing government work.” Add to the above a quarter million people who live in the vicinity and feed off the government directly or indirectly; the lawyers and lobbyist, the wonks and accountants, the reporters and caterers and limousine drivers and panegyrists, and all the aides and associates whose job it is to functions as someone else’s brain.”
Don’t forget that the D.C. hood is home to your favorite oh-so gritty media personalities, who gather inside or near the Bubble to reap “the benefits of being at the center of the Imperium.” Back to their role model, Rome:
The biggest component of [Rome’s] prodigious intake was something called the annona, an in-kind tax levied by Rome on everyplace else, and collected in the form of grain, which was used to provide free bread for most of Rome’s inhabitants. … Eventually, the annona was expanded beyond grain to include olive oil and wine. If you think of the annona as tax revenue, which it was, then the revenue not only accomplished its stated purpose of feeding the city; it also supported large swaths of private-sector activity, from shipping to baking to crime. Some of this activity was encouraged with tax breaks and grants of citizenship. There was great wealth to be had off government contracts. … the annona remained [the Empire’s] essential lifeline, preserved at all costs.
“All life in Washington today derives ultimately from the capitals’ own version of Rome’s annona — the continuous infusion not of grain and olive oil but of tax revenue and borrowed money. Instead of ships and barges there are banks, 10,000 of them designated for this purpose, which funnel the nations’ tax payments to the city. This ‘never-ending flow of revenue creates a broad level of affluence that has no real counterpart anywhere in America.” Says Murphy: “Washington simply doesn’t look like the rest of America.” But its residents “fail to view this as bizarre.”

UPDATED: Boston (And America) Betrayed (Blaming Russia)

Barack Obama, IMMIGRATION, Intelligence, Islam, Military, Nationhood, Political Correctness, Republicans, Russia, Terrorism, The State

“Boston (And America) Betrayed,” now on WND, is the current column. Here’s an excerpt:

“What if anything did the unspeakably wicked, premeditated, Islam-inspired bombing of the Boston Marathon, on April 15, teach us?

Nothing much at all, other than that we’re immune to learning.

Sh-t happens, the country’s self-anointed cognoscenti keep instructing America. Don’t rush to conclusions.

If you’re media, milk Boston for all its worth. If you’re an ordinary American with a pulse, follow your leaders. Or their lick-spittles in the theatre of the absurd that is television news.

In short, everyone is said to be flummoxed about the motive for the murder spree.

And, with exceptions on the Right, America is marching in lockstep. Evil per se doesn’t exist. Those who do evil, must have been brainwashed, been hard done by, or have been afflicted with a mutation on the “moral gene.”

The putative perpetrators of an act that left three dead and many more maimed are the brothers Tsarnaev.

One of these two young Muslim-Americans has already been dispatched. On the lam after the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s descent into hell was hastened, on April 19, during a shoot-out with the Boston police.

You should also know that the two brothers’ path to citizenship and permanent residence here was without obstacles—at least, when compared to my own and that of my spouse.

This is quite understandable, given the priories and preferences established by the US Managerial State.

To no avail did Russian state security twice practically beg the FBI and then the CIA, in 2011, to place Tamerlan Tsarnaev on counterterrorism watch lists. It was pointless. The FBI turned the Russians down (as the Transportation Security Administration intensified its assaults on grandpa and grandma from the prairie).

Correction: By some circuitous route, the National Counterterrorism Center managed to add Tamerlan’s name to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE. But membership in the TIDE fraternity only got Tamerlan an invitation to a bash at the White House.

‘”Unemployment compensation’ for the elder terrorist (who was unable to work on account of vocational training in Dagestan), college aid for junior, cellphones to both courtesy of the feds, attorneys on retainer to field run-ins with the law, housing, hospitalization—you name it, the Tsarnaev brothers got it. …”

The complete column is, “Boston (And America) Betrayed,”Read it on WND.

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UPDATE (4/26): BLAMING RUSSIA. Did you know that it was not enough for the Russians to have warned our dumb-ass “treason class” of the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev—they were supposed to do the footwork for us?

Yes, this argument is advanced by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). The ponce’s case is essentially the one princess Condoleezza made, framing the intelligence she had as not amenable to “action.”

In other words, because FBI laggards refused to develop the information—the outcome of their treason becomes someone else’s responsibility.

POLITICO:

The FBI did a “very thorough job” of checking out Tamerlan Tsarnaev after being tipped off to his potential extremism, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on Sunday, blaming Russia for failing to provide any further information.

UPDATE II: Living in Police State USA And … Loving It (Economic Inefficiencies)

Constitution, Crime, Fascism, Homeland Security, Law, Military, Private Property

“Not only did the militarized domestic law enforcement complex put the City of Boston under martial law, but nobody seems to have found it out of the ordinary, much less outrageous,” writes fellow libertarian Thomas Mullen.

“Yes, a few journalists … raised a finger. But, for the most part, nobody seemed to mind that the entire city was under military siege, complete with paramilitary units in full battle gear, battlefield ordinance and tanks. Tanks!”

“How did we get here? 238 years ago to the day, the inhabitants of the very same city started a war and seceded from their union over a mere infantry brigade attempting to disarm them. Now they cheer those who violate their rights much worse than the British ever did.”

“When Lee Harvey Oswald was similarly suspected of killing a police officer after assassinating the President of the United States, Dallas was not put under martial law. No tanks rolled through the streets. Oswald was armed at the time of his arrest and attempted to shoot the arresting officer, whose thumb stopped the hammer of Oswald’s pistol from discharging the weapon at point blank range.”

“It is noteworthy that the military siege was called off several hours before Tsarnaev was captured. In the end, he was found and taken into custody by the same methods that any other criminal has been for most of U.S. history.”

“So, there was no cause and effect relationship between the state show of power and the apprehension of the suspect. …”

MORE FROM MULLEN @ The Washington Times Community Pages.

UPDATE I: ECONOMIC INEFFICIENCIES. And what about the economic inefficiencies of the public production of law, so to speak? The costs of this operation in proportion to the dangers posed?!!!! Imagine what a dozen or so private hires (SEALS in the employ of the private sector) would have accomplished by stealth, and while being held to the standards of a private company: “You do damage to innocents and property, you get sued.”

UPDATE II: Updated: As to efficiencies, in case you forgot, it took “100,000 U.S. Troops To Find Osama bin Laden.”

Decoding North Korean Foreign Policy And … Ours

Foreign Policy, libertarianism, Military, Politics, The State

“The antics of North Korea’s rulers are a perfect illustration of the principles” Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo calls “’libertarian realism,’ i.e. a theory of international relations that attributes the actions of states in the international arena entirely to the internal politics of the actors.”

“Instead of responding to real events abroad,” avers Raimonodo, “policymakers are chiefly concerned with responding to pressures from various lobbyists and domestic power brokers. This is because their one overriding goal is to maintain and expand their own power – a goal the rulers of North Korea share with our own. It doesn’t matter what kind of system we’re talking about: dictatorships, democracies, and everything in between – all foreign policy is determined by internal political conditions, and is only peripherally concerned with what goes on outside of that context. If you wondered how it was possible that US foreign policy has become so disconnected from reality – well, now you know.”

The rhetorical hysteria coming out of North Korea is par for the course: this is, after all, the country’s chief (and only) export. Washington knows full well Pyongyang has neither the means nor the intention to attack the United States, in spite of the comic-opera threats – and yet we’re acting as if the threat is real. In response, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that we’re beefing up our missile defenses on the West Coast – “just in case.” Scheduled US-South Korean military exercises featured nuclear-capable jets “mock bombing” North Korea – a provocation that ignited a sulphurous response from Pyongyang.
The US has stood squarely in the way of all real peace efforts on the Korean peninsula: when it looked as if the South Koreans were taking the prospect of reunification with the North seriously, Washington put the kibosh on the process. Now that the daughter of a former South Korean dictator has been elevated to the South Korean presidency, prospects of a renewal of the initiative are remote. In this context, Washington’s routine provocations have a much bigger effect on the North, which sees itself in an impossible situation. The Hermit Kingdom is poorer, and more isolated than ever, and this has produced the internal dynamics that are driving the actions of the North Korean elite.
Little is known of internal political developments in the North, but the transition from one Supreme Leader to the next is surely problematic in any authoritarian system – and doubly so in a “communist” monarchy. There has long been tension between the ruling Korean Workers Party and the North Korean military, and apparently this ratcheted up to an unusual degree last year with reports of an assassination attempt on Kim Jong Un, culminating in a gun battle in the streets of Pyongyang.
The atmosphere of crisis generated by the North Korean media, and the government’s wildly belligerent pronouncements, in all likelihood have to do with the internal political situation, and bears little if any relation to events outside the country. North Korea’s “military first” policy, which puts military procurement ahead of economic development, has been costly: there are reports of a looming famine this month. As economic conditions worsen, the stability of the regime may be put at risk, in which case Kim Jong Un will need the military to back him up. The recent fall – and sudden rehabilitation – of Gen. Kim Yong Chol, head of the increasingly important Reconnaissance General Bureau, may be a clue to the regime’s murky internal conflicts. Another clue is the position of

MORE @ Antiwar.com.