Bryan Caplan argues for avoiding war. But bad people are always willing to fight. If good people are not willing to fight, they will surrender in a succession of small steps, and bad people will rule. Without England declaring war, the Nazis would have ruled by 1942. Without Reagan encouraging a multitude of small wars, the communists would have ruled by 1990 (more…)
Archive for the ‘war’ Category
In favor of war
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010No moderate Islam, and not many moderate Muslims
Sunday, March 28th, 2010How many Muslims are moderate? In the recent Iraq election, moderates gained, just barely, a plurality. Not a majority, a plurality. To govern, they will need the support of some violently immoderate people. They have a plurality because the various different kinds of extremist hate each other, splitting the extremist vote. (more…)
Allies and enemies
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010You will observe that Obama regime is full of noisy outrage that Israel is building housing in Jerusalem, most of which will be occupied by Jews, as Israel has been doing for the past forty years, ever since it seized the rest of Jerusalem and announced that all of Jerusalem, Jerusalem undivided, was the eternal and indivisible capital of the nation of Israel.
Compare and contrast with Obama’s “quiet diplomacy” on the Iran’s nuclear program. Continuing to build housing in all of Jerusalem, is, it seems, worse than developing nuclear weapons. (more…)
Torture the underpants bomber
Sunday, January 10th, 2010Fifty eight percent of those polled favor “aggressive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding” for Umar Farouk.
He should be asked who gave him the bomb, and where they gave him the bomb. We should then kill everyone in the general vicinity of where the bomb came from. Not because we cannot afford to lose a few planes and a few passengers every now and then, but because we cannot afford to be successfully coerced by our enemies.
War is hell. In war, one must kill the innocent. Those who will not use such means, lose.
It is doubtless more important that the innocent go free than that the guilty be punished. It is, however, considerably less important than that evil does not gain power over us.
During the Malayan war the British imprisoned everyone who looked Chinese. That hundreds of thousands of innocent men women and children were temporarily imprisoned by the British saved them from being enslaved for life by the communists.
We are losing this war: Observe that honor killings go unpunished in Britain. We are afraid, we are coerced. I google the British news for honor killings. The only ones being prosecuted are the kind that would be prosecuted in Saudi Arabia – those where a male Muslim was killed or non family killed the girl – which type of honor killing is rare and unusual compared to the normal case where extreme coercion by family to control the sexual activity of young girls gets out of hand. So, we see prosecutions for the rare case (male killed), and no prosecutions for the common case (young girl killed by relatives)
You cannot coexist with a religion that simply is not willing to coexist except on the basis of supremacy. If you try to do so, you get what we have been getting. Getting your cut throat for unkind reference to Islam slides by imperceptible degrees into full blown Sharia law, which gradual transformation we observe in process along the bloody borders of
Islam.
That is the way Islam conquers. It not that we cannot afford a few casualties. It is that we cannot afford the domination.
The extraordinary inanity of nation building
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009The counter insurgency planners have presented a clever plan on how they propose to counter Afghan insurgency by building an Afghan nation.
When first I saw slides from this presentation, I assumed them to be parody, but no, they are the real thing. The people planning this war really are this stupid, crazy, and evil.
COIN experts demonstrating their amazing expertise
There are a great pile of slides, and they all look like the above. Hat tip The Austrian Economists.
I did a search for blog posts linking to this amazing pile of essence of evil madness, to find the New York Times treating it with the solemn respect that one would be ruler of all mankind should give another would be ruler of all mankind. Democracy’s Arsenal also displays the semblance of profound respect for this moronic madness, but from his image selection, his tongue is well and truly in his cheek.
The Taliban have a notorious tendency to mistake the customs of their tribe for the word of God, but at least they do not mistake themselves for God.
Against Libertarian Imperialism
Thursday, November 26th, 2009Faré on Distributed Republic criticizes the Rothbardians for supporting the enemies of their country.
Many libertarians, after Rothbard, start from the correct assumption that one’s government is one’s first and most direct enemy, to the conclusion that one should always side with the enemies of one’s current oppressor.
Rothbardians are wrong in supporting our enemies and the government is right to do something about them, the trouble is that the government is not very effectual or successful in doing something about them, while at the same time forbidding private citizens from acting.
Imperialism is not libertarian, colonialism can be.
Obviously I want the US to win in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our enemies to lose – which issue Rothbardians seem alarmingly confused about. But we are having problems in Dar al-Islam, and have alway had similar problems for a thousand years, due to diseconomies of scale in the application of force. The Rothbardians are wrong in that we really do need to kill people and break stuff but governments are not in fact very good at killing enough people and breaking enough stuff. Our past successes in this thousand year war have always involved meeting centralized state violence with centralized state violence, and decentralized non state and micro state violence with decentralized privatized and semi privatized violence. Centralized violence against the likes of the Taliban will work no better than centralized violence did against the Barbary pirates or the Saracens.
Imperialism worked and was good for everyone when the East India company was robbing the natives, for the Company was a colonialist. It became a disaster when the British government took over the East India Company and tried to do good to the natives from afar.
A big central government is bad at building local roads, and it is bad at providing law and justice. To the extent that good old fashioned Cecil Rhodes imperialism substituted competent civilized white stationary bandits for ignorant primitive and savage native stationary bandits, it was a huge improvement. Instead of being robbed by vicious cannibal rapists, the natives were robbed by people who mostly upheld private property rights, freedom of trade, and organized the building of roads. To the extent that imperialism substitutes distant do gooder bureaucrats in a foreign capital city for local primitive and savage stationary bandits, it is a disaster. It is better to be ruled by a local illiterate cannibal rapist despot than a Harvard educated bureaucrat located in Washington.
One of the best of the old imperialists, a man who was on the transition from brigand to bureaucrat, was Sir Stamford Raffles, a man who was willing to turn a city into a desert, and who rewarded troops by permitting them to ravage a city, a man who on a clerk’s salary somehow mysteriously had gold enough to buy princes by the dozen and support armies on the march. He a spy who charmed people while arranging their deaths, and a brigand. Everyone loved him, and thought what a kind and gentle ruler he was. When he was replaced by men who were wholly bureaucrats efficiently representing the will of London, men who did not enrich themselves to any extraordinary extent, no one liked his replacements.
Rhodes and Raffles were better for those they ruled than London bureaucrats nor has governmental military action served Christendom sufficiently well in the war with Dar al Islam. We never got anywhere in the war with the Barbary pirates till the French started settling their lands. Until the colonialists arrived, the Barbary pirates would just surrender, then promptly unsurrender.
The peace of Vasvár in 1664 depressingly resembled the innumerable “peace” agreements that Israel has made.
Our installation of Karzai depressingly resembles Charlemagne’s assistance to Ibn al Arubi. When Israel removed the settlers from Gaza, rockets followed. Therefore, when the settlers were there, they were preventing rockets.
This post has been corrected: The earlier version was overly critical of Faré.
Judaism is racism, says the British Court of Appeals
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009A Jewish school, partially funded by the British taxpayer, has been ordered it cannot define Jews by descent, because this is “racism”. Unfortunately, Judaism does define Jews by descent. If the effect of the ruling was merely that Jewish institutions, being “racist” cannot receive government funding, this would not be too bad, but unfortunately, Britain prohibits “racist” association generally, so the ruling logically prohibits Jewish association generally, thus the practice of Judaism generally.
“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,… [Whether the reasons were] benign or malignant, theological or supremacist makes it no less and no more unlawful.”
Judaism is not going to be suppressed tomorrow, the government will not immediately proceed with all the logical implications of the ruling, but this is the beginning of a long slow end. When England went Protestant, it allowed Jews in. As it goes Muslim, it is going to send them out.
The Guardian is lecturing Britain’s chief Rabbi on what the Jewish religion should be. It is a reasonable enough lecture if given by one private citizen to another, and I am sure that lots of Jews have said the same thing, but a very menacing lecture when backed by court and state. And if Jews comply with this perfectly reasonable lecture, chances are that next year something else, not quite so reasonable, will be found that is wrong with Jews.
Shmuley Boteach very passionately argues that the court, and the guardian, is full of $#!%, similarly Spengler, and Secular Right but whether or not they are full of $#!% they are full of menace.
Muqata suggests it is time for all Jews to get out of Britain. Not yet it is not, but that is the way the wind is blowing.
Political correctness kills people
Sunday, November 8th, 2009Section 3 of the US constitution.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan adhered to our enemies and gave our enemies aid and comfort. He then waged war against the united states, shooting 43 soldiers who were not carrying arms at the time.
When he adhered to our enemies and gave them aid and comfort, he should have been (if not charged with treason) dishonorably discharged on the basis that he was unwilling to perform his contract with the united states army, which paid for his education.
Because political correctness holds that Islam is the religion of peace, Major Nidal Malik Hasan cannot be charged with treason, since it cannot be acknowledged that a very large proportion of Muslims are guilty of treason, probably most of those who take their religion seriously. Indeed. If you are an American Muslim, you are guilty of treason against the US, or treason against Dar al Islam, one or the other.
Because political correctness holds that women can fight fires just as well as men, some of the requirements for firefighters, notably the ability to carry an unconscious man to safety, have necessarily been eliminated. And so people burn to death in fires.
And similarly, millions die each year from malaria, which could be easily prevented, but political correctness forbids it.
Fighting to lose in Afghanistan.
Sunday, November 1st, 2009Hillary has just announced that it is fine by her for Karzai to steal the election.
“that bestowed legitimacy from that moment forward”
Democrats of the Vietnam generation long for a re-run of Vietnam. Karzai is militarily incompetent, an enemy of western civilization, and is fighting to lose, thus to allow him to steal the election is defeatism, guaranteeing the Vietnam quagmire that Democrats long for. Next stop, conscription, compulsory voluntary community service.
The correct response, as I have long argued, to this and to each of Karzai’s previous grave provocations, is to put him in a sack, and drop the sack on Pakistan’s presidential palace from ten thousand feet as a message to the president of Pakistan.
This Afghan government is clearly a disadvantage in our efforts to slay our enemies. If Afghanistan can only be governed by enemy tyrants, why should we permit it to be governed? Propping up governments is hard, costly, and bloody. Propping up illegitimate enemy tyrannies is stupid.
In Afghanistan we are already defeated. From now on, it is just a theatrical display of American weakness and impotence, to the great rejoicing of our enemies within and without.
Betraeus, the candidate to smash the GOP
Friday, October 16th, 2009Hot air tells us that:
What gives him this magic power to unite the GOP?
Well, it seems that this terrible GOP is foolishly and obstinately in favor of terrible and foolish GOP principles:
Over the past couple of decades, the American people have grown more pro-environment, more culturally tolerant, and more suspicious of the unregulated free market, and yet the Republican Party has responded with a series of litmus tests for its presidential candidates that represent the political equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “la la la, I can’t hear you.
Fortunately, for the GOP, the good General Petraeus opposes every single principle that matters for the GOP base, with the sole exception that he wants to conduct an unpopular war against Afghans to force on them a moderate version of Islam, a animatronic version of Islam, a version of Islam that actually is the religion of peace, that treats women with dignity, refrains from executing apostates, and so on and so forth.
Creating a fake version of Islam that fits nicely into the pretty multicutural rainbow and getting Afghans to swallow it is not a realistic military objective. In fact it is not even a military objective. Soldiers kill people and break things. Military objectives are the kind of objectives you can achieve by killing people and breaking things.
So a general who has been conducting a losing war will unite the GOP behind everything it hates, plus a policy of continuing to lose the war for the next four years.