Brownian Motion At The Border

Economy, IMMIGRATION, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism

I suppose the Wall Street Journal and other “lite libertarian” sources will point to the Brownian Motion at the Mexican border to make the case that illegal immigration creates jobs. Have not sandwich makers, baby formula dispensers, gamers, recreation- and welfare providers, psychologists, lawyers, tattoo-removers, rubbish collectors, vaccinators—have they not all rushed to the border to cater to the invaders? Ergo, as Erik Rush would put it, quod erat demonstrandum; Q.E.D.; case proven.

Blessed are the cheese makers at the border too … Don’t want to forget them.

By the way, it is all a big parasitical, welfare expansion.

Via National Review:

… Border Patrol officials have taken responsibility for the well-being of the illegal immigrants, providing sandwiches and water three times a day. “You would not believe how many sandwiches I’ve made over the course of my career,” Cabrera says. In Nogales, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have brought in vendors to provide food, while FEMA has sought to provide counseling and recreational activities, according to FoxNews.com. Cueto says the children are being vaccinated before being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. ICE is then transporting them to military bases in California, Oklahoma, and San Antonio, Texas, according to CBS Houston.

UPDATED: JUNGE FREIHEIT

Classical Liberalism, Europe, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer

It’s official and I’m delighted: JUNGE FREIHEIT, a German weekly newspaper of excellence, has welcomed me as a columnist. I thank my editor, Moritz Schwarz, for his warm welcome, cordiality and professionalism (the kind I’ve yet to encounter in the New World).

Our German readers can now follow this column and other worthy writers in JUNGE FREIHEIT.

UPDATE (6/15): The May 9 edition of JUNGE FREIHEIT features an interview with this writer about Into the Cannibal’s Pot. You’d be hard-pressed to find interested parties in the American print press—and the German press must navigate politically correct speech codes, enforced across Europe.

On The Ground In Iraq

Iran, Iraq

Patrick Cockburn offers a cogent, matter-of-fact account of the latest developments in Iraq:

Iran is moving to stop the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) from capturing Baghdad and the provinces immediately to the north of the capital.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is taking a central role in planning and strategy in Baghdad in the wake of the disintegration of the Iraqi army in the country’s north, an Iraqi source has told The Independent.
With the Iraqi army command completely discredited by recent defeats, the aim of the IRGC is to create a new and more effective fighting force by putting together trustworthy elements of the old army and the Shia militias. According to the source, the aim of the new force would be to give priority “to stabilising the front and rolling it back at least into Samarra and the contested areas of Diyala”. The Iraqi army has 14 divisions, of which four were involved in last week’s debacle, but there is no sign of the remaining units rallying and staging a counter-attack. MORE…

On June 11, Cockburn wrote: “Iraq Crisis: Capture of Mosul Ushers in the Birth of a Sunni Caliphate”:

The capture of Mosul by Isis means a radical change in the political geography of Iraq and Syria. Moreover, the impact of this event will soon be felt across the Middle East as governments take on board the fact that a Sunni proto-caliphate is spreading across northern Iraq and Syria.
The next few weeks will be crucial in determining the outcome of Isis’s startling success in taking over a city of 1.4 million people, garrisoned by a large Iraqi security force, with as few as 1,300 fighters. Will victory in Mosul be followed by success in other provinces where there is a heavy concentration of Sunni, such as Salahuddin, Anbar and Diyala? Already, the insurgents have captured the important oil refinery town of Baiji with scarcely a shot fired by simply calling ahead by phone to tell the police and army to lay down their weapons and withdraw.
These spectacular advances by Isis would not be happening unless there was tacit support and no armed resistance from the Sunni Arab community in northern and central Iraq. Many people rightly suspect and fear Isis’s bloodthirsty and sectarian fanaticism, but for the moment these suspicions and fears have been pushed to one side by even greater hatred of Iraq’s Shia-dominated government.
This may not last: Iraqi government officials speak of a counterattack led by special “anti-terrorist” forces that are better trained, motivated and armed than the bulk of the Iraqi army. It may be that the Kurds will use their peshmerga troops in Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces to drive back Isis and create facts on the ground in areas often rich in oil, in Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces. A successful counter-offensive could happen but the failure of the Iraqi army to retake Fallujah, a much smaller city than Mosul, in the six months since it fell in January does not bode well for the government. If the Isis advance takes more towns and villages, then the territory lost to the government may become too large to reconquer.
But Isis too has its weaknesses: in the past it has isolated itself by its fierce determination to monopolise power, impose fundamentalist Islamic norms and persecute or kill all who differ from it. MORE …

The Military, The Mission And The Sunk-Cost Fallacy

Economy, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Military, Reason

Again and again one hears it repeated that our “brave men and women of the military,” having sacrificed for Iraqi “freedoms,” must be furious to see the gains they made squandered. Thus, goes the argument made by Stewart Varney (for example) of Fox Business, today, more resources must be committed forthwith in order to redeem the original (misguided) commitment of men, money and materiel to Iraq.

This is the sunk-cost fallacy, as explained by the Skeptic’s Dictionary:

When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can’t stop now, otherwise what I’ve invested so far will be lost. This is true, of course, but irrelevant to whether one should continue to invest in the project. Everything one has invested is lost regardless. If there is no hope for success in the future from the investment, then the fact that one has already lost a bundle should lead one to the conclusion that the rational thing to do is to withdraw from the project.
To continue to invest in a hopeless project is irrational. Such behavior may be a pathetic attempt to delay having to face the consequences of one’s poor judgment. The irrationality is a way to save face, to appear to be knowledgeable, when in fact one is acting like an idiot.