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The Weekly Capitalist by Jeff Harding
Jeff Harding publishes The Daily Capitalist, a blog on economics and finance. He is the president of Montecito Analytics, LLC, and is a real estate investor who lives in Montecito.
All War, All The Time
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here ought to be a War Channel, you know, like 24-hour sports or entertainment channels. That way we would have one place to go to keep up on the countries the U.S. is at war with or is planning to make war on. There are so many wonderful opportunities for us right now. Why? Because our military is everywhere. You would be shocked to know how many U.S. military bases and installations there are around the globe. All over Europe, the Middle East and Asia. A few in Africa. Then there are military advisers who are just about everywhere. I checked out Africa, and there were military teams acting as advisers in just about every country. These advisers aren’t all combatants but act as trainers and consultants to local armed forces. Sometimes the government sends in advisers secretly, so we don’t really know everywhere we are involved. Recently, we were informed that we had secretly sent a military team (less than five soldiers) into Somalia (remember Black Hawk Down?) to “promote peace and security.” Lots of luck on that whole thing. Dark forces from Somalia recently attacked a mall in Nairobi because of Kenya’s involvement there (67 killed; 175 wounded; no one caught). Yours truly just happened to be in town that day. Not fun. You get the picture: We are everywhere. And the problem with everywhere is that it enhances our chances to go to war.
Same Old, Same Old The nasty bit is that more often than not, our leaders lie to us about the casus belli (justification for war). Take Vietnam as an example. Kennedy lied, Johnson lied, Nixon lied. We lost and 58,000 Americans paid the price.
Need I even mention Iraq? Bush declared war on Saddam Hussein in 2003 based on trumped-up accusations. 4,489 Americans were killed in Iraq because of bad judgment. We are out of Iraq, sure, but we are still providing weapons. I would humbly suggest that Iraq was and is a miserable failure of U.S. policy. Iraq is falling apart and violence is on the rise as Sunnis and Shia vie for power. Al-Qaeda is back, too. Only the Kurds are happy, as they have oil and autonomy. Afghanistan is a bit more complex. We had reason to attack because of 9/11. The first phase was an impressive success as CIA paramilitary forces quickly routed al-Qaeda and Taliban forces and took over the country. During that phase, only 61 Americans were killed. It was a success until our ADD president, unable to concentrate on Afghanistan, decided he would take down Saddam Hussein. The result? Since 2003, Taliban forces moved back in and 2,254 more Americans were killed. We still have about 38,000 troops in Afghanistan. If you think Afghanistan will stand as a monument to American nation building, you’ll be wrong. I wish them well, but the reality is that the Afghanis will ultimately revert to what has always worked for them: dictatorship and/or balkanization. You would think that these massive policy failures would give pause to our leaders when they start rattling their sabers. Apparently not. Take Syria. Our peace-loving president was on the cusp of committing U.S forces to aid rebels by enforcing a no-fly zone and carrying out air strikes against Assad’s military installations. How can we stand by and let Assad kill his own people by using poison gas, he asked. Republican
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leaders more than wholeheartedly agreed with him. Then Vladimir Putin stepped in, taking his cue from a John Kerry gaffe, and announced that Assad will destroy his supplies of poison gas. Oops, no more casus belli. “Stand down, Senator McCain!” I’m guessing that President Obama was quite relieved at this turn of events. Can you imagine what would happen if we waded into a civil war in Syria? There may be some good guys there, but increasingly
“You would think that these massive policy failures would give pause to our leaders when they start rattling their sabers. Apparently not.” the opposition is fractionalizing, and radical Muslim fundamentalists are carving out their bits of the country. Our latest opportunity is Ukraine. It appears that we were up to our necks in encouraging the overthrow of Putin’s pet autocrat, President Viktor Yanukovych. Not saying he was a good guy; he wasn’t, but once you open Pandora’s box you’ve got to expect consequences you may not have expected. Like Vlad taking Crimea. Or Vlad threatening eastern Ukraine. Or Vlad cutting back natural gas supplies to Europe (hasn’t happened – yet). Oh, what to do? I have an answer: Keep our pistol holstered and stay out. Let Europe take the lead on this one. Why is defending Ukraine in our national interest? It isn’t, but it may be in Europe’s interests. Putin has ambitions, no doubt. But he’s outmatched us here. He’s outmatched Obama and he certainly outmatched Bush. There’s no plan B; not much to see here folks, move along.
History Repeats Itself (Again and Again and… ) How does war mania get traction? It’s the politicians. In Syria, war hysteria was whipped up by horrible images of gas victims, especially little children whose dead faces stared back at us. The press was the worst promoter of these atrocities. But why is this any worse than the hundreds of thousands slaughtered in Sudan, Chad and Northern Nigeria? We sat and watched then because it wasn’t in our national interest to intervene. Yet Obama was ready, willing and able. What about freedom-loving Ukraine? It’s a country on the brink of disaster. Few freedoms, much corruption, bad government. It would be nice to see them have a true revolution whereby the entire country was liberalized, but what are the chances of that? We have underestimated Putin and now we have no real leverage on him. John McCain just called Russia a gas station. Maybe so, but Europe needs them to keep pumping natural gas westward. McCain would lead us to brinksmanship with them for what goal? To compare Putin’s takeover of Crimea to an appeasement like Hitler taking Czechoslovakia is historically and factually inaccurate. Say he regains control over those marginal territories like Moldova and Belarus – so what? They’ll hardly notice the change. Do we care? Should we care? Russia will continue to stagnate as a second-rate economy because of cronyism, corruption, bureaucracy and Russian ennui. They aren’t to be feared. In the movie The Fog of War and in his book, Robert McNamara, on looking back at our involvement in Vietnam, rather candidly admits that events tend to overtake men in power, that dangers are exaggerated, that power has its limits and that true facts are rarely understood. He should have added that leaders lie to the people. It is a sobering thought. Why do we keep making the same mistakes?
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