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.

UPDATED: Oh For Hussein’s Reign Again

Foreign Policy, History, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Neoconservatism

What’s unfolding in Iraq, with ISIS, is no more than a progression along a predictable continuum, the starting point of which was an American invasion that unseated a very effective law-and-order leader: Saddam Hussein. The lawlessness we brought to Iraq with our messianic “faith-based initiative” has facilitated the manifestation of “divisions that have riven the region for four millennia.”

As much as I wanted to say something new about the predictable progression of Iraq, under American tutelage, from rogue state to Islamic state—I found most of what needed saying in a column dated December 2006, titled “At Least Saddam Kept Order”:

… If Iraqis appear ungrateful or disoriented, it is because they are busy … busy dying at rates many times higher than under Saddam. In the final days of Saddam’s reign of terror, i.e., in the 15 months preceding the invasion, the primary causes of death in Iraq were natural: “heart attack, stroke and chronic illness,” as the Lancet reported. Since Iraq became a Bush object lesson, the primary cause of death has been violence. …

… Hussein’s reign was one of the more peaceful periods in the history of this fractious people. What a shame it’s too late to dust Saddam off, give him a sponge bath, and beg him to restore law and order to Iraq.

Secretly, that’s what anyone with a head and a heart would want. We could promise solemnly never to mess with him again—just so long as he kept his mitts off nukes, continued to check Iran (which he did splendidly), and minimized massacres. To be fair, Saddam’s last major massacre was in 1991, during which only 3,000 Shiites were murdered. That’s less than Iraq’s monthly quota under “democracy.”

No one is praising Saddam, yada, yada, yada. But even the Saddam-equals-Hitler crowd cannot but agree that Iraq was not a lawless society prior to our faith-based intervention. Even the war’s enablers must finally admit that under our ministrations Iraq has gone from a secular to a religious country; from rogue to failed state.

Put yourself in the worn-out shoes of this sad, pathetic people. Would you rather live under Saddam—who was a brutal dictator, but did provide Iraq with one of the foundations of civilization: order—or under a force made up of ideological terrorists, feuding warlords, and an “Ali Baba” element, all running rampant because they can, and where not even mosques provide a safe haven from these brutes and their bombs?

MORE.

Recommended: “INK STAINS AND BLOOD STAINS.”

UPDATE (6/13): There is one thing that is not allowed on the Facebook Timeline: adjudicating afresh the crimes against Iraq. I did serious time on this—years. And I feel very strongly about the distortion of this reality—still. The writings are archived, easily accessible for those who are still morally confused.
One of our Facebook Friends has used particularly bad language to describe the crimes against Iraqis. I don’t love Aditya’s language. I believe we do have younger, more impressionable Friends on the Timeline. But his passion is spot on. So his post stays, and he is asked to keep it cleaner next time. And frankly, what was done in Iraq by the US is immeasurably filthier than mere words.

The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)

Capitalism, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Military, Uncategorized, War

“The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has done some “conscious uncoupling” from reality. The term was disgorged by a celebrity, Gwyneth Paltrow, to announce a separation from her spouse. In the same breath, the actress bemoaned her gilded, glamorous life, and offended America’s military sacred cow by comparing the cyber-attacks she endures to the experience of war.

As heir to a political dynasty founded by a powerful man, Hillary has received millions of dollars to write books. Over the years, she and husband Bill Clinton have made hundreds of millions from both book deals and speaking engagements. Yet in a recent ABC interview, the former “First Housewife” complained about emerging from the White House not only “dead broke, but in debt”: “We had no money when we got there and we struggled to … piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.” …

… But on CNN, love is in the air. Viewers have expressed a belief that Hillary would restore the country to the Clinton years of peace and prosperity. Bill Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998, as well as a Sudanese pharmaceutical company that turned out to be the main manufacturer of medicines and vaccinations in Sudan. And he strafed the Serbs in 1999. Stateside, Bill butchered 76 men, women and children in Texas. Alas, so long as Hillary steers clear of another Waco, and confines her murderous sprees to killing far-away people from high above—few boots on the ground—her countrymen will consider her a peace-maker.

While prosperity during the Clinton years was due less to Clinton-economics than to Reaganomics and a Republican Congress not yet completely comatose—in fairness, Bill does grasp something about prosperity. “This is good work,” he famously said about Mitt Romney’s much-maligned work at Bain Capital. Hillary, conversely, has no economic acumen. “There are rich people everywhere, and yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries,” she grumbled at the Clinton Global Initiative, in 2012. According to economist George Reisman’s cogent analysis—and contra Mrs. Clinton’s crushing ignorance—“a highly productive and provident one percent provides the standard of living of a largely ignorant and ungrateful ninety-nine percent.” As for Obama’s putsch for a North-Korean style health care: Instead of aborting it, Hillary will guarantee that Obamacare reaches full-term gestation.

Another wily fox called Bill (O’Reilly) has defended Mrs. Clinton’s riches as capitalism’s reward for hard work. Not quite. Hillary has accrued wealth by using the predatory political process to wield power over others. Although she has pudding for brains, Gwyneth Paltrow, on the other hand, has made a living in the honest, productive, non-predatory and salutary ways of the free-market. Paltrow’s affluence, unlike Hillary’s, is a reward for assets she peddles to people who choose to purchase them. …

Read the complete column. “The Paltrow Of Politics (Minus Looks & Ethics)” is now on WND.

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UPDATED: We Are The World, We Are The Children (‘The Barbarians Control The Gate’)

IMMIGRATION, Labor, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Nationhood

“The children, the children, it’s all about the children. We are the United States, what do we do about the children?” That was Fox News’ Megyn Kelly showing off her humanitarian credentials, regarding the crossing of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America into America (WND). This “humanitarianism” invariably means that working people in the US, with children of their own to mind, are roped into supporting the children of the world.

Via Fox News:

Illegal immigrant minors are crossing into the U.S., and border patrol is overwhelmed and unable to care for them. The government has been putting them on buses and “dumping” them on street corners in cities like Phoenix, Ariz. Military bases in Texas, California and Oklahoma are also being used to house them.
The problem could reportedly go from bad to worse. Officials say 6,560 unaccompanied minor aliens crossed the border in 2011. This year, it’s estimated that the number will jump to more than 90,000.
This is a crisis of the federal government’s creation, and the fact that the border remains unsecure – now apparently intentionally – while this operation continues full-steam ahead is deplorable,” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said in a statement.

Michelle Malkin reports that “military bases are stealthily being used to redistribute, house, process, and release the illegal border crossers,” who arrive on base by the planeload.

Word about America’s free-for-all immigration policies has reached the untapped pool of potential dependents, across central America.

Via KRGV.COM:

Central Americans say news reports in their countries are encouraging them to make the journey north to the United States. A mother and child told CHANNEL 5 NEWS that the message being disseminated in their country is, “go to America with your child, you won’t be turned away.” …Bercian Diaz said she has no family in the United States. Her hope of staying here relies on her little girl. She said the message in her country is that America’s borders are open to all families.

Where’s the humanity for Americans working to support the president’s charities?

The right thing to do is to send these people back whence they came, and ask liberal bleeding-hearts stateside to send their own money, in the form of donations, to these illegal immigrants IN THEIR HOMES OF ORIGIN.

UPDATE (6/13): Pat Buchanan on “pitchfork populists”:

Talk radio, led by Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin, pounded Cantor on the issue of illegal immigration, the emotive power of which our Beltway elites will never understand.
For like Eurocrats, the leaders of our Beltway parties call to mind the “sophisters” and “calculators” of Edmund Burke’s depiction.
They do not understand people of the heart to whom illegal and mass immigration means the disappearance of the country they grew up in and the dispossession of their children of what is most precious to them. …

A good one from Diana West:

It isn’t that the barbarians are at the gate. The barbarians control the gate. …
… Children are usually just children, but when 130,000 of them are expected to storm the border in the coming year, they more closely resemble an advancing column, a kind of foreign legion of child-mercenaries raised abroad with cynical promises of booty in the form of cradle-to-grave taxpayer charity.
But who will fight “children”? This is the audacity of this latest Obama “crisis”: Trojan horse as “humanitarian crisis.” For the literary set, call it “Camp of the Saintlets,” a twist on the prophetic “Camp of the Saints,” the 1973 novel by French author Jean Raspail envisioning an apocalyptic “invasion” of Europe by successive boatloads of Third World nationals, which is today old news out of Spain, Italy and other nations. …
… Of course, there is an undeniable genius to this form of border attack. All “the kids” from the rest of the world (do you really think Central America is the end?) have to do is serve as pitiful proxies of the assault. Once vanquished by pangs of conscience, however false, we’ll support them forever. We’ll have to. Have you taken a look at your local police department’s massive and bristling military hardware lately? Just shut up and watch as this newfangled children’s crusade turns our border, the concept of nationhood itself, into dust. Welcome to Obamaland.
Of course, even the 17-year-old gangbangers among the youngsters aren’t the masterminds or generals. Like American citizens, they are pawns, dupes, lured by promises Washington may indeed extract from Us, the People. “Go to America with your child, you won’t be turned away,” one Guatemalan mother told a radio station in the Rio Grande Valley. She is right. Come one, come all. …