Saturday 14th January 2012
Epigrams from My Sordid Past
10:14 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 5
Dipping into my books, I plucked out some of my favorite lines. FWIW:
From The Farm Fiasco (ICS Press, 1989)
* For sixty years, politicians have driven American farmers out of world markets and onto the government dole.
*Nineteenth-century reformers built their utopias on the expectation of an imminent change in human nature. Twentieth-century reformers have built Leviathans and then awaited a change in politicians’ nature.
* Reform is the opiate of the welfare state.
*The only solution to the “farm problem” is to depoliticize agriculture.
From The Fair Trade Fraud (St. Martin’s Press, 1991)
• Government cannot make trade more fair by making it less free.
• “Fair trade” is a moral delusion that could be leading to an economic catastrophe.
• The U.S. government has created a trade lynch law that can convict foreign companies almost regardless of how they operate.
• It should not be a federal crime to charge low prices to American consumers.
From Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin’s Press, 1994)
*America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.
*The key to contemporary American political thinking is the neutering of the State — the idea that modern government has been defanged, domesticated, tamed.
*A law is simply a reflection of the momentary perception of self-interest by a majority of a legislative body.
*The federal tax system is turning individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives.
*Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin’s Press, 1999)
• Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power.
• The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States – governments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of politicians.
• So much of political philosophy throughout history has consisted of concocting reasons why people have a duty to be tame animals in politicians’ cages.
• The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag others down.
• The growth of government is like the spread of a dense jungle, and the average citizen can hack through less of it every year.
• Trusting government nowadays means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people’s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives.
From Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years (St. Martin’s Press, 2000)
*Clinton exploited and expanded the dictatorial potential of the U.S. presidency.
*For scores of millions of Americans, Clinton’s “caring” was more important than his lying.
*The principle of government supremacy is Clinton’s clearest legacy.
*The better that people understand what Clinton did in office, the greater the nation’s chances for political recovery.
From Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave, 2003)
• Nothing happened on 9/11 that made the federal government more trustworthy.
• The Patriot Act treats every citizen like a suspected terrorist and every federal agent like a proven angel.
• The worse government fails, the less privacy citizens supposedly deserve.
• There is no technological magic bullet that will make the government as smart as it is powerful.
• Killing foreigners is no substitute for protecting Americans.
• It is impossible to destroy all alleged enemies of freedom everywhere without also destroying freedom in the United States.
• A lie that is accepted by a sufficient number of ignorant voters becomes a political truth.
• Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.
• In the long run, people have more to fear from governments than from terrorists. Terrorists come and go, but power-hungry politicians will always be with us.
From The Bush Betrayal (Palgrave, 2004)
• Truth is a lagging indicator in politics.
• The arrogance of power is the best hope for the survival of freedom.
• We need a constitutional amendment to make the federal government obey the Constitution.
• There are no harmless political lies about a war. The more such lies citizens tolerate, the more wars they will get.
• People have been taught to expect far more from government than from freedom.
From Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, 2006)
• Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.
• Instead of revealing the “will of the people,” election results are often only a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions.
• Bogus fears can produce real servitude.
• As long as rulers are above the law, citizens have the same type of freedom that slaves had on days when their masters chose not to beat them.
• Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.
• The more that democracy is assumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.
• Attention Deficit Democracy produces the attitudes, ignorance and arrogance that pave the way to political collapse.
++++
I welcome any suggestions. If there are lines that seem clunkish or lame, feel free to point them out - maybe the herd needs thinning out.
Unfortunately, since the list was already too long, I did not include any lines about the value of positive thinking.
James Bovard
Thursday 5th January 2012
Persian Gulf Folly Redux (1987)
11:07 am | Iran | Iraq | wool | Comments: 3
Following is a piece I wrote in 1987 on the Reagan administration’s idiotic intervention in the Persian Gulf. Versions of this piece appeared in USA Today and the Detroit News.
JUST ANOTHER AMERICAN SITTING DUCK
by James Bovard
Sentimentality now appears to be the soul of Reagan’s foreign policy. From charging into the Persian Gulf to wave the American flag - to sending cakes and Bibles and missiles to the Aytatollah’s regime - to rushing to negotiate an Arms control treaty with Soviets - our foreign policy is degenerating into a series of half-witted public relations schemes.
The plan to put U.S. flags on Kuwaiti oil tankers makes about as much sense as making Poland our 5lst state. The U.S. flagging of Kuwaiti ships is reminiscent of the U.S. putting Marines in Beirut - the same lack of clear goal, same lack of foresight, and same lack of strategy.
In Beirut, having our Marines standing tall - albeit with unloaded guns and a dozen other restrictions on their self-defense - was supposed to bring peace to Lebanon. As long as only a few Marines were killed each week, the absurdity was tolerable. But, after a truck bomb blew up the Marine barracks and killed over 200 Americans, the U.S. withdrew.
Freedom of the seas is a valuable principle - but it is a doubtful cause in the Gulf. We will be intervening to protect Kuwaiti ships - while Iraq continues its attacks on Iranian ships. Iraqi’s foreign minister, speaking on American TV on last week, implied that Iraq had no intention of stopping its bombing on Iranian shipping in the gulf.
Jumping into the middle of the Iran-Iraqi war is just one more example of our government’s habit of wandering into a barroom brawl and trying to fight while carefully holding one pinky up in the air.
Why take sides in a fight between two knaves? Iraq may be the lesser of two evils. But what difference does it make if one country’s leaders are destined for the seventh circle of hell, and the other’s are destined for the sixth circle of hell?
Kuwait is one of the richest nation in the world, and could afford to almost buy the the U.S. Seventh Fleet and provide its own protection. This is like the government providing free limo service to all the millionaires in New York City.
The Reagan Administration claims that since the Soviets are providing flag coverage for three Kuwait tankers, the U.S. is obliged to do the same. The Soviets are massacring millions of Afghans. Does that mean we should cross the Rio Grande and knock off a few million Mexicans?
Re-flagging Kuwaiti ships is based on the idea that we must match the Soviets point for point, move for move, in every arena in the world. But, this is both foolish and masochistic…
The key factor now in the Cold War - one little recognized by most commentators dazzled by Gorbachev’s speeches - is that the Soviet economy is slowly sinking. The Soviet Union is increasingly an “Upper Volta with missiles”, as the ECONOMIST termed it. The technological gap between East and West is widening by the month. No amount of minor tinkering will be able to overhaul an incredibly-badly built socialist engine. Soviet economic reforms are based on Hungarian so-called mixed economy - a miserable hodgepodge of measures that means deteriorating living standards in Budapest and soaring foreign debt for Hungary.
Time is on our side - as long as we don’t do something stupid like getting into a war with a bunch of wackos with Exocet missiles and F-15 jets. At the moment, Iran is more a pesky mosquito than a vital threat to our national interest. If Iran actually tries to close the Persian Gulf, then the U.S. and other western powers can conduct a surgical bombing run.
Our national interest requires more than mindless bellicosity in the Mideast, and mindless pacifism against the Soviets. If the best foreign policy is to run up the flag, let people shoot a few holes in it, proclaim victory and withdraw, re-flagging Kuwaiti flags is brilliant. At least for now, it is best to let Lloyd’s of London cover the risks of Persian Gulf shipping.
The Folly of Attacking Iran
10:14 am | Iran | Lying | wool | Comments: 4
Listening to the half-witted ratcheting up of hostilities by both the U.S. and Iranian governments reminded me of this piece I wrote for the Future of Freedom Foundation in the wake of George W. Bush’s Iraq victory speech. It is difficult to detect a learning curve in Washington in the subsequent 7+ years. Instead, the advocates of mass carnage continue to be hailed as if they were the true friends of humanity.
The Folly of Invading Iran
by James Bovard October 17, 2003
Some Bush administration officials and advisors are hankering for another war. To judge from the saber rattling and rumblings coming out of the White House, the next target could be Iran. But invading Iran would be an act of folly that would make the invasion of Iraq look almost prudent by comparison.
Almost no one alleges that Iran poses any threat to the security of the United States. There are no allegations that Iranian naval forces could seize Boston harbor, or that Iranian paratroopers could descend upon Miami, or that an Iranian army could surge across the Rio Grande. Instead, the case against Iran is based almost entirely on distant hypotheticals — and on the notion that the United States needs to completely dominate the Middle East.
Some Bush administration officials are clamoring for U.S. action against Iran. John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, declared on October 9, regarding an Iranian nuclear reactor, “The threat posed by Iran … has to be eliminated.”
But Bolton is a poor guide for the case for going war. For many months before the United States invaded Iraq, Bush administration officials assured Americans that Saddam Hussein had vast stores of weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to Americans. Since the U.S. army captured Baghdad in early April, no WMDs have been found. But Bolton offered a bizarre vindication for a war that killed thousands of Iraqi civilians and cost the lives of hundreds of American soldiers. In a May 24, 2003, speech sponsored by the National Defense University Foundation, Bolton revealed that the war was justified because of Iraqi “intellectual capacity” — because of “the continued existence of what Saddam Hussein called the ‘nuclear mujahadeen,’ the thousand or so scientists, technicians, people who have in their own heads and in their files the intellectual property necessary at an appropriate time … to recreate a nuclear weapons program.” With this all-inclusive standard, the U.S. government is now justified in attacking any potentially hostile nation that has a university with a good physics department.
Iran does have a nuclear program but Bush administration experts estimate that it could be six or seven years until they are able to have nuclear weapons — if that is what they seek to build. There are many other countries in the world that could also acquire nuclear weapons in that time period. And Israel has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. This is not a problem for the Bush administration, since pro-American governments are apparently entitled to unlimited numbers of WMDs.
The U.S. military might be able to defeat the Iranian military without too many American casualties — at least initially. However, Iran is a much larger country than Iraq and far more mountainous. Mountains are heaven-made for guerilla fighting.
Yet even if the United States can stop the current Iranian government, there is no reason to expect paradise to erupt in the aftermath. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Americans were told that the Iraqi people would greet American soldiers with hugs and flowers. More than 300 dead Americans later, it appears that Iraqi hatred of Americans is becoming more perilous every month.
One of the drawbacks of bombing a foreign country into submission is that the United States is often expected to rebuild what it destroyed afterwards. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, estimates that the cost of rebuilding Iraq could reach $200 billion — far beyond the Bush administration’s recent $87 billion budget request. This is money that the U.S. government does not have; as a result, Americans for decades to come will be paying heavily for the privilege of underwriting President Bush’s victory strut on the USS Abraham Lincoln last May 1.
Prior to invading Iraq, Bush talked as if overthrowing Saddam would bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Yet, seven months after the United States conquered Baghdad, Palestinian suicide bombers continue blowing up Israeli buses and cafes and Israeli jets and helicopters continue killing innocent Palestinian bystanders in their attacks on the cars and homes of “militants.”
Americans cannot afford any more Bush conquests. The Bush administration has already wrecked American credibility around the world with its Iraqi invasion. If Bush advisors want to conquer Tehran, let them do it themselves.
Monday 2nd January 2012
Ron Paul: Toppling Political Idols and Changing American Politics
10:46 am | Democracy | Ron Paul | Uncategorized | Comments: 9
As someone who was born in Iowa, I’m pleased to see many Iowans flocking to support Ron Paul.
The Washington Post has a tut-tutting front-page story today complaining that Paul’s 45-minute stump speech “outlines a view of the world so bleak it would make Chicken Little sound like an optimist.”
It is not surprising that a Washington reporter would be aghast at someone who spoke honestly about U.S. government policy. But hopefully Iowa voters will be far more realistic than Washington Post editorial writers. It is encouraging to see so many people enthusiastic about a politician who is not promising them handouts.
Ron Paul’s support is a gauge of how many Americans have caught onto to the prevailing doggerel from Washington. Many, if not most, of these folks will never “return to the fold” to docilely support whoever the Republican Party coronates as a presidential candidate later this year. Ron Paul is toppling political idols - and many Americans will never bow to those idols again.
The New York Times had an excellent piece last week on Republican candidates’ views on executive power. Ron Paul was the only candidate who declared that the President does not have a right to order the killing of American citizens on his own authority. The other Republican candidates sounded like Obama - who signed a bill on Saturday that gives the federal government dire new powers. The superb poster below features Obama - but it could just as well have included the Republican presidential candidates - except for Ron Paul.
[If anyone knows the author of this poster, shoot me an email and I will credit the creator.]
James Bovard
Wednesday 28th December 2011
“Was James Bovard Bit By a Mailman as a Child?”
3:47 pm | Uncategorized | wool | Comments: 5
The headline was the opening sentence of a letter written to the Los Angeles Times. The writer, Jim Washburn, was so upset that the Times clipped that first sentence from his published response that he posted it on his blog. He commented: “A few days previous, they’d run an op-ed piece by some blowhard named James Brovard complaining about the US Postal Service, claiming that the USPS has been intentionally slowing down mail delivery for decades, and essentially that they suck.”
Washburn (who also complained that the Times had never published any of the previous many letters he sent them) might not have noticed that the op-ed contained a heap of details on delivery slowdowns. No matter - as he proudly declared, “I happen to love the USPS.”
Never pays to argue theology.
I got a hoot out of his first sentence and thought it deserved to run another lap around the Internet.
The mail slowdown op-ed was syndicated by McClatchy and has been reprinted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Miami Herald, the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, Newark Star Ledger, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Sacramento Bee, the Tampa Bay Tribune, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Bangor (Maine) Daily News, the Savannah Morning News, the Juneau (Alaska) Empire, Tacoma, Washington News Tribune, Tulsa World, the Hanford (California) Sentinel, the Mississippi Sun Herald, Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.), the Fargo (North Dakota) Forum, the Bellingham (Washington) Herald, Westchester, NY Journal News, and, most important of all, Government Management Daily.
Someone named “Froggy” commented on the Cleveland Plain Dealer website:
“It is hard to improve upon ‘almost perfection’, but, the USPS has improved over the years. No where in the world can one have a letter delivered over three thousand miles(farther when sent to Alaska and Hawaii) in only three days and for only 44 cents. In my 75 years, I have never had a letter or package that was lost or damaged beyond what must be considered normal. Their are those who wish to privatize the postal service but, if it were to occur, two things are certain, the quality of service will certainly decrease while the cost surely will increase.”
So how would that be different than life under the postal monopoly?
On the Juneau Empire website, “Mama T,” in a post headlined “Private, Profit, reduced services,”
Nothing has gotten better with privatization…just more expensive. Who’s got stock in Fed X and UPS? Ya know…we are talking about some inside trading by our lawmakers. Oppps…I mean INFORMED trading…which is not exactly illegal…YET. Someone could have a stake in the Post Office demise.”
Ya, like its captive customers.
In the Bangor Daily News, “mcmaineacjam” commented:
Wow, it takes two days instead of one to mail a letter, it is the end of the world. More interested in storing letters then delivering them, some one is prone to exageration. I’ll bet he is not interested in paying extra, as is offered , to get it there overnight. Hire a courier servise to mail a letter from LA to New York and see how much it costs.
Relying on the Postal Service’s “Express Mail” is worse than Russian Roulette, as far as the chances of the mail actually arriving on time - despite a massive surchage.
A comment on the Mississippi Sun Herald entitled “Slick Solutions Inc” observed:
The solution I suspect is to outsource the Post Office to corporations like our military did. No thanks late bloomer
As I noted on this blog last week, I am vehemently opposed to permitting the Postal Service to have its own drones.
From posting on the Miami Herald site,
federal crime to provide better mail service than the government”.Then How did UPS and FedEx with guaranteed delivery times eat the Post Office’s lunch over the last decades ?
What’s with this forever delivery time ? I put a letter to NY Friday, they got it yesterday, Monday morning the week before Christmas.
Then I see the answer is the last line of the article:
James Bovard is the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy.”. So it’s not that Bovard is dumb, it’s that he thinks we are.As I see it the PO’s big problem is the bulk of most deliveries is junk. I have a PO box so that that crap never makes in my home. There’s also email of course.
So believing that people can make wiser choices for mail service than government permits somehow means that I think people are dumb? In reality, it has long been the defenders of the postal monopoly who insist that people are unfit to choose what is good for them.
I am surprised how the little detail about the monopoly applying only to first class mail seems to have been brushed aside.
Christy-Sue Huber, commenting on the Westchester, NY “Journal News” site-
“I don’t know what post office you are using. I have used the post office on a daily basis for the last 50 years and have never had a problem. I guess you didn’t see the FedEx driver who threw the TV over the wall instead of delivering it as expected. This does not make FedEx bad. I don’t now of any business that does not goof now and then.” To err is human.” Oh, I forgot, only government workers make mistakes.
Christy-Sue should get an award from the Postmaster General. She just provided a new motto for the Postal Service: “To err is human.”
Tuesday 27th December 2011
MP3 of Dallas Interview on Santa, Postal Snafus, Etc. with Brian Wilson
11:11 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 8
Brian Wilson and I had some fun this morning on Dallas station KLIF.
I am waiting for the defamation lawsuits to arrive from the city of Boston and from the Postal Service.
You can download or listen to the show by clicking the following:
Obama’s Dictatorial Assassination Program
10:30 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 3
Freedom Daily, October 2011 (posted online 12/23/11)
Obama’s Dictatorial Assassination Program
by James Bovard
The Obama administration now claims the authority to kill American citizens without a trial, without notice, and without any chance for targets to legally object. The “targeted killing” program of George W. Bush’s administration has been radically expanded to include Americans far from any war zone. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified last year that the targeting-to-kill decision depends on “whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us.” But that is a very vague standard, especially for use in capital punishment. And the list of officially designated terrorist groups has little or nothing to do with whether organizations actually pose significant danger to the United States.
The poster boy for the targeted-killing program is Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric who is reported to be in Yemen. The Obama administration touts allegations that Awlaki helped spark the slaughter at Ford Hood, Texas, that he inspired the attempt to destroy a jetliner on Christmas Day, and that he has done other dastardly things that the government has not yet disclosed (for our own good, of course). Awlaki might well be a four-star bastard, but government press releases and background briefings have not previously been sufficient to justify capital punishment.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued to compel the government “to disclose the legal standard it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.” The Obama administration responded by invoking the doctrine of state secrets, effectively claiming that national security demanded that its policies be kept hidden. By invoking the “state secrets” doctrine, the feds don’t even have to explain why the law doesn’t apply to their actions.
In oral arguments in federal court in November 2010, Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter asserted that no judge has legal authority to be “looking over the shoulder” of the Obama administration’s targeted-killing program. Letter declared that the program involves “the very core powers of the president as commander in chief.” When Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008, entitling the president to kill Americans without a trial was not one of the reforms he promised. (A federal judge derailed the ACLU lawsuit.)
The main difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration is that the Obama team publicly claims the authority to do what Bush’s lawyers claimed behind closed doors. Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, told a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee in early 2006 that Bush could order killings of suspected terrorists within the United States. When Newsweek contacted the Justice Department to verify this novel legal doctrine, spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos stressed that Bradbury’s comments occurred during an “off-the-record briefing.” Newsweek’s revelation generated no media stir. Apparently, unless the government disclosed that it had actually begun assassinations within the United States, it was a nonstory. In an open Senate hearing later that year, Bradbury declared, “Under the law of war, the president is always right.” That legal/moral standard simplifies matters immensely, especially when the commander in chief is killing American citizens.
The Obama administration has been as power-hungry as the Bush team. A New York Times article late last year noted, “There is widespread agreement among the administration’s legal team that it is lawful for President Obama to authorize the killing of someone like Mr. Awlaki.” It is comforting to know that top political appointees concur that some “law” gives them the authority to kill Americans. But that is the same “legal” standard the Bush team used to justify torture. Since Bush’s lawyers told him that waterboarding wasn’t torture (despite a hundred years of U.S. court decisions to the contrary), the president was blameless.
There are other ominous parallels with the worst abuses of the Bush administration. When Bush decreed in November 2001 that he had the authority to perpetually detain anyone as an enemy combatant, solely on the basis of his own assertion, administration defenders rushed to assure the media that the new policy did not apply to Americans or inside the United States. Seven months later, after Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and labeled an enemy combatant, the administration acted as if only fools would believe the president would not use his boundless power any way he could.
Similarly, Obama’s power grab has not spurred much opposition, perhaps in part because it is assumed to apply only to killing Americans abroad (hopefully farther away than Niagara Falls, Canada). But the basis of the policy is that the entire world is a battlefield, and thus that the president has unlimited “commander in chief” powers everywhere.
Unfortunately, some of the suggested “reforms” for the targeted-killing program are as harebrained as the policy itself. A New York Times editorial piously declared, “Dealing out death requires additional oversight outside the administration. Particularly in the case of American citizens … the government needs to employ some due process before depriving someone of life.”
And what is the Times’s standard for sufficient “due process” before government hit squads snuff Americans? The feds should “establish a court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes wiretaps on foreign agents inside the United States.” The FISA court is one of the biggest farces in Washington. The court rubber-stamps more than 99 percent of all wiretap requests; the judges hear only the government’s side, since government targets are never permitted to dispute official assertions. And the FISA court completely failed to prevent the proliferation of other illegal wiretaps of Americans by the U.S. government. But the New York Times — which has done some of the best work exposing this power grab — apparently believes that a mere sham of oversight should be sufficient to sanctify government killing.
Blank checks for killing enemies of the state is the same recipe for domestic tranquility that most dictatorships have used throughout history. Un fortunately, it is a standard that many Americans might embrace. Consider the enthusiasm by some conservative commentators for the proposed assassination of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. If Assange were killed, it would only fuel demands for broader target lists of enemies.
The Obama administration’s position “would allow the executive unreviewable authority to target and kill any U.S. citizen it deems a suspect of terrorism anywhere,” according to Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pardiss Kebriaei. But the feds have a long history of making false terrorism accusations. Bush declared in 2005 that “federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted.” But only 39 people were convicted on crimes tied to terrorism or national security between 2001 and 2005, as a Washington Post analysis found.
Obama’s doctrine of “targeted killing” of American citizens is at least as much an assassination of the Constitution as anything George W. Bush did. Yet, most of the media have ignored the issue or treated it like an arcane legal dispute of interest only to people in desert hideaways 6,000 miles away.
One consequence of the hubbub over whether Obama needs court permission to kill American citizens is that the notion that the U.S. government is entitled to kill foreigners on a whim is no longer even disputed. WikiLeaks and other sources have documented the killings of many innocent Iraqis, and other sources have confirmed that many of the Pakistanis killed by U.S. drones were hapless bystanders. Such fatalities are almost always ignored in Washington. Or, at most, they are treated as blunders, not crimes — mistakes that could make it more difficult for the U.S. government to extend its sway or achieve foreign-policy goals. That is the same mindset that permeated Washington from the mid 1960s onwards as the Pentagon relied on carpet-bombing in both South and North Vietnam. The Washington Post reported in 1965 that American pilots “are given a square marked on a map and told to hit every hamlet within the area. The pilots know that they sometimes are bombing women and children.” And policymakers could not be blamed for the deaths of the cartographically damned. Harvard historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, the author of Collateral Damage, noted, “The U.S. armed forces deemed large parcels of the South Vietnamese countryside to be ‘enemy base areas’ or ‘enemy supply areas.’… Within this territory … any building, vehicle, or person could be targeted.” U.S. bombing killed between one and two million civilians between 1965 and 1973.
Do Americans have any rights that the government is still obliged to respect? Perhaps the only right that Americans would still possess is the First Amendment’s forgotten right of petition. If the government tries to kill you and fails, you can write a letter complaining to your congressman. If the government succeeds, members of your family can write that letter. Except that protesting might get them added to the hit list.
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.
This article originally appeared in the October 2011 edition of Freedom Daily
Listen Live -On Dallas Radio with Brian Wilson 10 am Eastern Tuesday 12 27
9:59 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 1
I will be on the air with guest talk show host Brian Wilson on Dallas’s KLIF radio this morning at 10 a.m. Eastern time.
You can listen on the air at AM 570 in parts of Texas or listen live online by clicking here and tapping the Listen Live button.
Wednesday 21st December 2011
Wall Street Journal: “Confessions of a One-Season Santa Claus”
9:42 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 12
< from Thursday's Wall Street Journal editorial page-
Confessions of a One-Season Santa
by James Bovard
When I asked one girl what she wanted for Christmas, she gritted her teeth: ‘I want you to leave.’
In the fall of 1977, I moved to Boston seeking literary triumphs and intellectual stimulation. As a 21-year-old college dropout from the mountains of Virginia who had just sold his first article, I assumed I could easily rack up more sales in the big city. But my submissions struck out everywhere, and the financial wolves were soon howling at my door. After seeking refuge in the Boston Globe’s Help Wanted ads, I found myself front and center at a Santa Claus prep session run by the Western Temporary Services.
After completing the 28-minute training program, I was dispatched to a Filene’s department store in the distant south suburbs where I met the Boss Lady from Hell. She looked me over, grimaced, snorted and growled: “I hope you’re not like those Santas that damn temp agency sent last year.”
“Why? What’d they do?” I asked.
“The first one was a drunk who would sneak into the bathroom and hit his flask and then drool on kids while slurring the names of his reindeer. The second pranced around like he was Peter Pan. The third was the worst—he seemed perfectly normal till he dropped trousers with a hundred kids watching.”
I made a note to double check the belt on the Santa outfit.
Boss Lady greeted me every day with the traditional Boston “Howahya? . . . LISTEN!!! I don’t like the way your hair looks under the wig! And I thought I told you to shave that red beard. And don’t be snacking while you’re on the job. Now, get out there and look jolly.”
I worked as a restaurant Santa, circling the dining room and visiting families as they munched their mediocre cuisine. After getting kids to recite their Christmas gift wish list, I handed them a little bag of goodies. It was holy writ to never promise that a child would receive a specific gift, else Filene’s would suffer the parents’ undying wrath.
This was my first and only experience being a minor deity. As I approached, some kids would jump up and down in their seats, and if there were two or more children at the same table they often had shouting contests.
But not all the children treasured their visit with Santa.
I walked up to one agitated 4-year old, blond-haired girl hunkered down in her chair and clutching the arm rests like a life raft. When I leaned over and asked what she wanted for Christmas, she gritted her teeth: “I want you to leave.”
One evening, I saw a dark-eyed, dark-haired, 7-year-old boy standing in the entrance staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. I stopped and gave him the biggest grin of the night. “Santa, you have a weird laugh,” he sputtered as he clung to his mother’s skirt.
The boy had a point. My laugh has always been rambunctious and it became rowdier when I occasionally slammed down a beer or two before commencing Claus work. It wasn’t my fault that the happy hour at the nearby pub commenced just before my shift started. The same laugh that spooked some young Bostonians got me ejected almost 20 years later from the Supreme Court press box.
Toward the end of my final night on the job, the high-strung assistant restaurant manager—who had almost fired me the previous night after she caught me poaching a piece of apple pie—signaled to follow her to the soda fountain section of the restaurant, far from the prevailing hubbub, for a special guest. As I readied the jollity, Boss Lady Jr. tapped me on the shoulder: “The little girl is blind.”
There sat two of the most tranquil people I had seen the entire holiday season. The mother was resting her left hand lightly on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl looked to be 6 or 7 years old, with light brown hair and a gentle smile that bloomed across her face when her mom announced, “And here comes Santa Claus.”
I encouraged the girl to touch the fake Santa beard. Unlike some kids, she did not attempt to yank it off as if she were capturing the enemy’s flag.
I have forgotten what she requested for Christmas, but it was reasonable. She didn’t ask for a pony and a French au pair and every Barbie doll and accessory produced since 1957.
Speaking softly, I described some of the Christmas decorations in the restaurant. She seemed to enjoy my comments, so I rattled on about the meaning of Christmas. I had seen a lot of warmth between parents and children that season, but the bond between this mother and daughter was more precious than any other. There was such a radiance from her mother’s love, I knew that girl would have a wonderful Christmas.
Visiting with that mother and daughter rejuvenated my holiday spirit in a way that a bowl of spiked egg nog never could. In later decades, when the Christmas season sometimes seemed burdensome or hollow, thinking back on that pair has helped put a sparkle back in my eyes. And I count my blessings that I no longer have to don a garish suit, false whiskers and a stuffed pillow to rake in $3.50 an hour frightening children with my laugh.
****
Mr. Bovard, the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy” (Palgrave, 2006), is working on a memoir.
Tuesday 20th December 2011
Good News: Americans Finally Recognize Congressmen as Rascals
2:16 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 3
From an interview today with Press TV:
The historical low approval rating of Congress signals that most Americans may be finally paying attention to the ‘dishonesty’ of Congress, according to James Bovard of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
“More Americans may finally be paying attention to what Congress is doing. I’ve been surprised for decades that far more Americans do not disapprove of the dishonesty, of the negligence, of the lack of oversight and all the power grabs that happen on a routine basis by the U.S. Congress.”
Speaking to Press TV’s U.S. Desk on Tuesday, Mr. Bovard said “Most of that 11 percent [that approve Congress's job] are people who have relatives or friends in Congress.”
A report by Gallup Poll on Tuesday showed that job-approval ratings for Congress have reached a new low, with only 11% of adults giving lawmakers good marks. The job-approval rating is the lowest in Gallup history since it started asking in 1974.
You can hear the brief early morning monologue by clicking or downloading the following: james-bovard-final-1
Postal Service Vindicated in L.A. Times
11:10 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 2
The Los Angeles Times ran a couple letters defending the Postal Service today in response to last week’s piece on nearly 50 years of intentional mail slowdowns.
I was especially hurt by the statement that I had “maligned” the Postal Service. Geez, I bend over backward to give the government a break and I still get my chops busted. Pulling punches just doesn’t pay.
The first letter claims that our mail service is far better than that in any foreign country. I suggest that gentleman spend some time in Germany. Their service is faster and far more reliable than what is offered by the U.S. Postal Service.
++++
Los Angeles Times December 20, 2011 Tuesday
SECTION: MAIN NEWS; Letters Desk; Part A; Pg. 20
Some stamps of approval
Re “U.S. mail: Slow and slower,” Opinion, Dec. 16
James Bovard maligns a venerable American institution and the thousands of its hard-working employees.
I’ve used U.S. mail for many years, from writing and receiving V-Mail in the South Pacific during World War II, to buying and selling on EBay today. The service has been excellent. Any traveler to another country will discover how efficient, fast and reliable our postal system is compared to others.
Our government should completely subsidize the U.S. Postal Service and quiet its haters, who want to privatize mail delivery.
The U.S. Postal Service is the best deal in town. Try sending a letter or package with any private delivery service and find out for yourself.
Larry Macaray
Fullerton
******
::
Bovard’s attack on the U.S. Postal Service has some great lines, notably, “The Postal Service has often acted as if mail delivery was a mere nuisance distracting from the gainful pursuit of pensions.” But his piece in no way reflects the service I use and enjoy six days a week.
Are postal workers overpaid? I wouldn’t know, but I do know they are overworked and understaffed and do a fine job of delivering the packages from which I make my living faster and cheaper than other carriers.
I have yet to encounter a postal employee who wasn’t devoted to his or her job.
Jim Washburn
Costa Mesa
Thursday 15th December 2011
Los Angeles Times: Postal Service’s Almost 50-Year Intentional Slowdown of Mail
9:39 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 12
Los Angeles Times Op-Ed December 16, 2011
U.S. mail: Slow and slower
The Postal Service has been intentionally slowing down first-class mail for almost 50 years.
By James Bovard
The U.S. Postal Service announced plans this month to phase out overnight delivery of first-class mail. Postal officials are portraying the decision as a painful but necessary budget-induced departure from a long history of exemplary service. In reality, the Postal Service has been intentionally slowing down first-class mail for almost 50 years. It’s time to end the post office’s monopoly on letter delivery.
In 1960, the post office’s annual report announced “the ultimate objective of next-day delivery of first-class mail anywhere in the United States.” But official standards for overnight delivery were lowered later that decade, trimming the target zone from statewide to areas conveniently covered by mail-sorting centers. At a high-level meeting in 1969, postal management decided “to no longer strive for overnight mail delivery and to keep this a secret from Congress and the public,” the Washington Post reported in 1974. Management also considered cutting costs by educating Americans not to expect prompt service, according to the Post.
Back in 1764, colonial Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin — yes, that Benjamin Franklin — proclaimed a goal of two-day mail delivery between New York and Philadelphia. In 1989, the Postal Service’s goal was two-day delivery from New York City to next-door Westchester County, N.Y. Under the new standards, the target for overnight first-class delivery was reduced from a 100-to-150-mile radius to often less than 50 miles. The Postal Service estimated that the changes could add 10% to the average delivery time for first-class mail, which was already 22% slower than it had been in 1969.
In 1989, Postmaster General Anthony Frank claimed that the standards would “improve our ability to deliver local mail on time.” But this was simply because the Postal Service lowered the definition of “on time.” Frank also defended the reduced standards by noting that Mexico’s mail service did not have an official overnight delivery goal for any of its mail. The Postal Inspection Service concluded that post offices “generally have a negative attitude toward service improvement, even when the capability is there at no additional cost.”
In 1996, partly to counter its widespread “slacker” image, the Postal Service began bankrolling a Tour de France bicycle racing team. But this did not deter the service from again hitting the brakes on the mail.
Beginning in 2000, the Postal Service quietly slashed delivery targets in much of the nation for first-class mail going beyond local areas. A 2006 Postal Regulatory Commission report found that the Postal Service scorned federal law requiring the “highest consideration” to speedy mail delivery. Instead, “administrative convenience resulted in mapping coverage of the two-day standard exclusively in terms of surface transportation.” The commission found that “postal patrons in several Western states, including California, experienced far more service downgrades than those in other parts of the country.”
The Postal Service has often acted as if mail delivery was a mere nuisance distracting from the gainful pursuit of pensions. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2006 that the Postal Service fails to “measure and report its delivery performance for most types of mail.” The GAO also found that the Postal Service’s “outdated standards are unsuitable as benchmarks for setting realistic expectations for timely mail delivery, measuring delivery performance or improving service, oversight and accountability.”
The Postal Service has gotten away with scorning its customers because it is effectively a federal crime to provide better mail service than the government. The Postal Service has a monopoly over letter delivery (with a limited exemption for urgent, courier-delivered letters costing more than $3). The monopoly, which dates back to the 1840s, has become more indefensible with each passing decade.
When people bought “forever” stamps, they didn’t realize that the name referred to the delivery time, not stamp prices. The American people can no longer afford a monopoly more interested in storing letters than in delivering them.
James Bovard is the author, most recently, of “Attention Deficit Democracy.” He has been writing about the Postal Service since 1978.
My Drunken Wisdom on Foreign Aid on Fox News
9:56 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 4
I had a couple cameos in the two-part Fox News report this week on foreign aid. At one point in the sit-down interview with Fox’s John Roberts, he mentioned a couple foreign aid “success stories.” I doubted the success claims but I commented that there had been so many programs over the years, that….. Well, here’s the one sentence outtake Fox used:
JIM BOVARD, AUTHOR/FOREIGN AID CRITIC: “Sort of like if you have a drunk throwing darts at a dart board from 50 feet away, every now and then, there’s going to be a dart that hit.”
I’m always happy to come on to a TV program and add a little tone.
The prior night, they popped in a sentence from me counterpointing quotes from foreign aid backers:
JIM BOVARD, AUTHOR/FOREIGN AID CRITIC: “I think it’s a great idea to start the foreign aid budget at zero and then leave it there, because there’s simply not evidence for the vast majority of countries that the foreign aid has helped them.”
I am looking to track down copies of the actual broadcast segments. If anyone has any suggestions or leads, I’d be much obliged.
James Bovard
Tuesday 13th December 2011
On Fox News Tonight, Probably - on Foreign Aid
2:36 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0
Just received an email from Fox News regarding an interview that I taped with them last Wednesday. The topic was foreign aid - a subject near and dear to my heart.
“We just wanted to let you know that the two part series will begin airing tonight on Special Report with Bret Baier, which is on Fox News in the 6 p.m. hour. Approximate air time is 6:20 p.m. but that can change depending on other news today. Part two will air tomorrow night around the same time.”
I don’t get cable news at this point. If anyone out there could run a tape or digital copy of the program, I would greatly appreciate that!
UPDATE CORRECTION: I was wrong about watching it live on the internet at live.foxnews.com. Didn’t work.
James Bovard (jim@jimbovard.com)
Monday 12th December 2011
Karzai Solves Mystery of Afghan Corruption
8:48 pm | Afghanistan | Barron's | Uncategorized | Comments: 2
Afghan frontman Hamid Karzai announced this past weekend that foreigners are to blame for the rampant corruption his country. It is true that foreign aid has helped bring out the worst in many Afghan wheeler-dealers. But Karzai and his cronies would likely be looting regardless of whether Uncle Sam air-dropped billions onto his land.
New York Times, December 12, 2011
Karzai Says Foreigners Are Responsible for CorruptionBy ALISSA J. RUBIN
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan blamed foreigners on Sunday for the corruption of Afghan officials and demanded that the United States extradite the former chief of the Afghan Central Bank in connection with the collapse of Kabul Bank, the country’s largest financial institution.
The former governor of the Central Bank, Qadir Fitrat, is living in Virginia. He fled Afghanistan, saying he feared for his life after he was involved in making public the massive fraud at Kabul Bank and removing its senior management.
Neither of the top bank officers nor any of the major shareholders, who include a brother of Mr. Karzai’s and a brother of the first vice president, Marshal Fahim, have been prosecuted, although all of them are still in Afghanistan.
Referring to Mr. Fitrat, Mr. Karzai said, “The government of the United States should cooperate and hand him over to us.”
“Bring Fitrat and hand him over to Afghanistan to make clear who is to blame,” he said. “But our hand can’t reach to America.”
Mr. Karzai made the remarks at an event sponsored by the United Nations to mark International Anti-Corruption Day. Afghanistan is one of the world’s most corrupt countries, tying for second worst in rankings by Transparency International, which tracks perceptions of global corruption.
****
Following is a slightly different perspective from Barron’s -
SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 2011 The Anti-Corruption Charade By JAMES BOVARD
If there’s free money to steal, there will be more stealing
In much of the world, governing is a synonym for looting. Unfortunately, American and European foreign aid has a long history of accelerating the looting. Foreign aid created a generation of kleptocracies—governments of thieves—in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Mercedes-Benz automobiles became so popular among African government officials that a new Swahili word was coined: wabenzi—”men of the Mercedes-Benz.”
A 2009 Council on Foreign Relations report noted that “many public officials in Africa seek re-election because holding office gives them access to the state’s coffers, as well as immunity from prosecution.”
Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo, author of the recent book, Dead Aid, wrote: “A constant stream of free money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power.” Numerous other studies over the past dozen years showed that countries that receive more foreign aid tend to have higher corruption.
Former President George W. Bush responded by creating the Millennium Challenge Corp. to reward foreign governments for moderating their greed (see “Bribing for Honesty,” Editorial Commentary, Barron’s, Feb. 21, 2005). Bush proudly though incoherently announced: “We won’t be putting money into a society which is not transparent and corrupt.” (He probably meant “corruption-free.”)
But the Millennium Challenge Corp. quickly became another garden-variety foreign-aid program, not posing a real challenge to corruption. Governments such as those of Georgia, Paraguay and Mozambique received MCC windfalls, despite their well-deserved reputations for venality and theft. MCC’s rhetoric didn’t deter the Bush administration from lavishing foreign aid on notorious regimes such as those that ruled Nigeria, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan.
Easy Promises
Afghanistan is the latest exhibit for foreign aid as a political weapon of mass destruction. In a January 2002 speech at Georgetown University, newly designated Afghan ruler Hamid Karzai gave personal assurances that foreign aid his nation received would be properly spent: “We have to promise that we will not cheat our own people. If there is cheating, corruption, I will stop it.”
More than $50 billion of aid poured into Afghanistan in the following years. The flood made Afghan politicians far more rapacious. Economists in the 1990s had dubbed this tendency the “voracity effect,” and, according to Mohammad Yusin Osmani, chief of the Afghan government’s High Office of Oversight, the surge of aid helped intensify corruption throughout the country.
Between 2005 and 2009, Afghanistan’s “corruption rating” went from merely bad to worst in the world (except for Somalia, which doesn’t have a government), according to Transparency International, a highly respected campaigner against corruption. Average Afghans believe that corruption has doubled since 2007, according to a recent survey by an Afghan-based nonprofit, Integrity Watch.
A United Nations study found that most Afghans identified corruption as the nation’s biggest problem. Foreign aid-spurred corruption is turning average Afghans against the Karzai government. Most Afghans in a recent survey declared that the pervasive corruption was helping the Taliban’s revival.
U.S. military officials tout Kandahar as the most important battleground in the Afghan campaign. But the governor of Kandahar denounced his own government officials and police officers as “looters and kidnappers,” according to the Washington Post.
Easy Applause
The Obama administration has responded with huffing, puffing and posturing. In late 2009, President Barack Obama gave Hamid Karzai a six-month deadline to “eradicate corruption,” according Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After his re-election campaign was caught stealing more than a million votes, Karzai promised, “Fighting corruption will be the key focus of my second term in office.”
In May 2010, President Obama hailed Karzai at a White House ceremony for “the progress that has been made, including strengthening anticorruption efforts.” In June, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited Kabul, and proclaimed that “we applaud” President Karzai for his anticorruption actions. Yet Karzai’s complaints led to the scuttling of U.S.-backed anticorruption teams that were nailing tainted Afghan officials.
The popular uprisings against Arab dictators earlier this year are further evidence of the failure of U.S. aid to promote good governance or political decency. The U.S. has provided more than $40 billion in aid to Egypt over the past 30 years—roughly equivalent to the personal fortune possessed by Hosni Mubarak when he was driven from office a few months ago. Regardless of how brazen the Egyptian élite’s thefts became, U.S. taxpayers were still forced to bankroll Mubarak and cronies.
Easy Policies
Foreign aid will continue to be toxic as long as politicians continue to be politicians. Imagine how Americans might react if some foreign entity foisted trillions of dollars of free spending money on the U.S. president and the ruling party in Congress. Yet we are supposed to believe that carpet-bombing a foreign nation with dollars is benevolent.
American leaders are far more concerned with buying influence than with safeguarding purity. Foreign aid is often little more than a bribe for a foreign regime to behave in ways that please the U.S. government. One large bribe naturally spawns hundreds or thousands of smaller bribes, and thereby corrupts an entire country.
There is no bureaucratic cure for the perverse incentives created by flooding foreign nations with dollars. It would be far more honest if American politicians openly admitted that aid corrupts recipient nations, but that such damage is justified when it underpins U.S. foreign policy. Taxpayers suffer enough without also having to endure politicians’ bogus humanitarian boasting.
Tuesday 6th December 2011
70 Years After Pearl Harbor: New Book On FDR’s Lying Path to War
5:37 pm | Lying | Uncategorized | Comments: 2
Wednesday is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Americans have still not learned all the details of what the U.S. government knew prior to the attack. The Japanese attack was inexucsable, but Franklin Roosevelt’s actions played a far greater role in that debacle than most Americans realize.
Thomas Fleming’s FDR and the New Dealers War is a superb study of the machinations inside the White House prior to the attack. Fleming is one of the most eloquent American historians of moden times.
Pat Buchanan has an excellent column on George Nash’s new book -Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath. I have not yet seen the Nash book, but here’s a chunk of Buchanan’s write-up:
Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?
Posted By Patrick J. Buchanan On December 5, 2011 @ 7:43 pm In
On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan.A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Said ex-President Herbert Hoover, Republican statesman of the day, “We have only one job to do now, and that is to defeat Japan.”
But to friends, “the Chief” sent another message: “You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bit.”
Today, 70 years after Pearl Harbor, a remarkable secret history, written from 1943 to 1963, has come to light. It is Hoover’s explanation of what happened before, during and after the world war that may prove yet the death knell of the West.
Edited by historian George Nash, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath [1], is a searing indictment of FDR and the men around him as politicians who lied prodigiously about their desire to keep America out of war, even as they took one deliberate step after another to take us into war.
Yet the book is no polemic. The 50-page run-up to the war in the Pacific uses memoirs and documents from all sides to prove Hoover’s indictment. And perhaps the best way to show the power of this book is the way Hoover does it — chronologically, painstakingly, week by week.
Consider Japan’s situation in the summer of 1941. Bogged down in a four year war in China she could neither win nor end, having moved into French Indochina, Japan saw herself as near the end of her tether.
Inside the government was a powerful faction led by Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye that desperately did not want a war with the United States.
The “pro-Anglo-Saxon” camp included the navy, whose officers had fought alongside the U.S. and Royal navies in World War I, while the war party was centered on the army, Gen. Hideki Tojo and Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, a bitter anti-American.On July 18, 1941, Konoye ousted Matsuoka, replacing him with the “pro-Anglo-Saxon” Adm. Teijiro Toyoda.
The U.S. response: On July 25, we froze all Japanese assets in the United States, ending all exports and imports, and denying Japan the oil upon which the nation and empire depended.
Stunned, Konoye still pursued his peace policy by winning secret support from the navy and army to meet FDR on the U.S. side of the Pacific to hear and respond to U.S. demands.
U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew implored Washington not to ignore Konoye’s offer, that the prince had convinced him an agreement could be reached on Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and South and Central China. Out of fear of Mao’s armies and Stalin’s Russia, Tokyo wanted to hold a buffer in North China.
On Aug. 28, Japan’s ambassador in Washington presented FDR a personal letter from Konoye imploring him to meet.
Tokyo begged us to keep Konoye’s offer secret, as the revelation of a Japanese prime minister’s offering to cross the Pacific to talk to an American president could imperil his government.
On Sept. 3, the Konoye letter was leaked to the Herald-Tribune.
On Sept. 6, Konoye met again at a three-hour dinner with Grew to tell him Japan now agreed with the four principles the Americans were demanding as the basis for peace. No response.
On Sept. 29, Grew sent what Hoover describes as a “prayer” to the president not to let this chance for peace pass by.
On Sept. 30, Grew wrote Washington, “Konoye’s warship is ready waiting to take him to Honolulu, Alaska or anyplace designated by the president.”
No response. On Oct. 16, Konoye’s cabinet fell.
In November, the U.S. intercepted two new offers from Tokyo: a Plan A for an end to the China war and occupation of Indochina and, if that were rejected, a Plan B, a modus vivendi where neither side would make any new move. When presented, these, too, were rejected out of hand.
At a Nov. 25 meeting of FDR’s war council, Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s notes speak of the prevailing consensus: “The question was how we should maneuver them (the Japanese) into … firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”
“We can wipe the Japanese off the map in three months,” wrote Navy Secretary Frank Knox.
As Grew had predicted, Japan, a “hara-kiri nation,” proved more likely to fling herself into national suicide for honor than to allow herself to be humiliated
Out of the war that arose from the refusal to meet Prince Konoye came scores of thousands of U.S. dead, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the fall of China to Mao Zedong, U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the rise of a new arrogant China that shows little respect for the great superpower of yesterday.
If you would know the history that made our world, spend a week with Mr. Hoover’s book.
******
James Bovard
Thursday 1st December 2011
MP3 - Hammering Foreign Aid Corruption and Afghan Lies on Antiwar.com Radio
2:32 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 4
Antiwar.com radio host Scott Horton and I had a jolly time exposing the frauds behind Afghan aid and other foreign policy charades.
It is amazing how Afghan aid would retain any credibility in the American media. Why the ignorance and the kowtowing to the Official Line from the White House, Pentagon, and Karzai?
Scott made an excellent analogy late in the show on the parallels between Waco and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
You can listen to the interview by clicking on the following MP3s -
untitled-1”
antiwar-afghan-aid-12-01-2011-part-21
[Note: I am experimenting with recording the program via RadioSure. I will be curious whether the digital files will be of the same quality as those posted by Antiwar.com tomorrow or later this week.]
James Bovard
Wednesday 30th November 2011
Dying to Corrupt Afghanistan
2:21 pm | Afghanistan | Terrorism | wool | Comments: 8
from the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Daily (posted online today)
Dying to Corrupt Afghanistan
by James Bovard
American soldiers are dying so that Afghan politicians can continue looting U.S. tax dollars. Foreign aid has long been notorious for creating kleptocracies — governments of thieves. The $50+ billion foreign aid that the United States has dumped on Afghanistan over the past decade is a textbook case of how foreign handouts drag a nation down.
Corruption has been a huge issue ever since the United States installed a puppet government in Afghanistan. Following is a partial timeline of the major developments:
In January 2002, shortly after the United States announced that Afghan exile Hamid Karzai would be the new Afghan ruler, Karzai promised to prevent any corruption with foreign aid. He assured donors that he would take “personal responsibility” to protect their contributions from abuse.
By September 2003, Karzai was vigorously backtracking on his promise to end corruption. In a New York speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, he declared, “There are too many things that we cannot do something immediately about, and corruption is one of those things. The people are complaining very much. They are angry because of it. It’s something that worries me too very much.”
In December 2003, Karzai proudly announced the creation of an “independent graft-busting agency.” The presidential decree creating the agency promised that it would “monitor governmental organizations in order to prevent bribery and corruption in the country.” Reporting on the decree helped Karzai’s image in Washington, but no other impact from the change was perceivable.
In June 2004, Karzai visited Washington in part to “fight back against charges of corruption that have come up against” him, CNN reported.
In December 2004, Newsweek interviewed Karzai and headlined his promise to deliver an “honest, accountable, and austere government.”
In 2005, as the conflict in Iraq heated up, attention shifted away from Afghanistan. However, between 2005 and 2009, Afghanistan’s “corruption rating” went from merely bad to worst in the world (except for Somalia, which doesn’t have a government), according to Transparency International, a highly respected nonprofit.
By November 2007, even Karzai had become outraged by the pervasive looting. He declared at an Afghan conference on rural development,
All politicians in this system have acquired everything — money, lots of money. God knows, it is beyond the limit. The banks of the world are full of the money of our statesmen. The luxurious houses [built in Afghanistan in the past five years] belong to members of the government and parliament, not only in Kabul, but here and there. Every one of them [has] three or four houses in different countries.
On January 1, 2009, the New York Times declared, “The state built on the ruins of the Taliban regime now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.” One Afghan truck driver bitterly told a reporter, “Every man in the government is his own king.”
Also in January 2009, a United Nations study reported that 60 percent of Afghans identified corruption as the nation’s biggest problem — even worse than the war with the Taliban. The report estimated that Afghans must pay more than $2 billion in bribes to government officials and others each year — equivalent to almost a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product. That would be akin to Americans’ paying more than $3 trillion in bribes each year. One official noted, “The Afghans say that it is impossible to obtain a public service without paying a bribe.”
The Obama years
In August 2009, Afghanistan had a presidential election. The U.S. government hoped that the result would legitimize Karzai and spur international support for his regime. The PR exercise was marred after Karzai’s team was caught stealing a million votes. Regardless of the pervasive vote fraud, the Obama administration still insisted that Karzai was a “legitimate” leader.
In September 2009, Pentagon officials touted Kandahar as the most important battleground against the Taliban. The Washington Post reported that Kandahar “is filled with ineffective government officials and police officers whom the governor calls looters and kidnappers. It is the corruption of the police — and that alleged of senior government officials — that many Kandaharis say has been the principal reason for the Taliban’s resurgence.”
In October 2009, when the U.S. government was still considering whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported that “one U.S. military official said discussions within the Obama administration are ongoing about whether it is even possible to ‘surge’ enough troops to overcome the corruption.” The fact that the U.S. foreign aid spurred the corruption was left out of that particular discussion.
In November 2009, Karzai became indignant that anyone would doubt his government’s anti-corruption bona fides: “Where we have found facts on corrupt practices by senior government officials, we have acted: they have gone to prison. We like our partners to have a lot of respect for Afghan sovereignty. Afghanistan is extremely sensitive about that.”
In December 2009, in his West Point speech announcing plans to send far more American troops to Afghanistan, President Obama declared,
The days of providing a blank check are over. President Karzai’s inauguration speech sent the right message about moving in a new direction. And going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance. We will support Afghan ministries, governors, and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable.
Obama received applause for the speech’s commitment to good government, and business continued as usual in Afghanistan.
In January 2010, at his inauguration for his second term, Karzai proclaimed, “Fighting corruption will be the key focus of my second term in office.” Washington applauded.
In May 2010, Obama and Karzai held a joint press conference, and Obama slobbered all over his foreign tool:
In his inaugural address, and at the London Conference, President Karzai committed to making good governance a top priority. And I want to acknowledge the progress that has been made, including strengthening anti-corruption efforts, improving governance at provincial and district levels, and progress towards credible parliamentary elections later this year.
In June 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder praised Karzai for his anti-corruption efforts, saying, “We applaud President Karzai for his actions and encourage him to continue his efforts, as much work remains to be done.”
Later that month, American newspapers had front-page stories of the Karzai government’s squelching bribery investigations of its top officials. Even more damaging were reports that billions of dollars in cash had been openly (and illegally) transported from the Kabul airport to Dubai. Rep. Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid, declared,
The alleged shipment of billions in donor funds out of Afghanistan and allegations of Afghan government insiders impeding corruption investigations are outrageous. I do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until I have confidence that U.S. taxpayer money is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords, and terrorists.
Lowey’s indignation did nothing to prevent the Democratic leadership from deluging Afghanistan with billions of dollars of more aid in a bill Congress passed later that year.
U.S. payoffs
In July 2010, Integrity Watch Afghanistan released a survey that concluded that Afghan corruption had “doubled since 2007.” The report noted,
[Corruption] threatens the legitimacy of state-building, badly affects state-society relations, feeds frustration and the support for the insurgency, leads to increasing inequality (which spurs social conflict, violates basic human rights on a daily basis, and impedes the rule of law according to Afghan standards), hinders access to basic public services (which impacts the poor most severely), and has a major negative effect on economic development.
In August 2010, Karzai demanded an investigation of U.S.-backed anti-corruption teams who were nailing tainted Afghan officials. Defense Secretary Robert Gates “assured Afghan officials that any efforts to stamp out corruption need to be led by the Kabul government,” according to the Washington Post.
In September 2010, the New York Times revealed that the CIA had been making secret massive cash payoffs to top Afghan government officials in order to protect them from corruption. The Times explained, “Called ‘top-up raises,’ they had been paid by the American government to keep qualified people and insulate them from corruption and political interference.” As long as the payoff recipients followed U.S. orders, there was apparently no danger of “political interference.” One U.S. government official explained, “The corruption we need to combat is the corruption that undermines the fight against the Taliban.” Thus, as long as the officials who were accepting the secret payoffs appeared to be anti-Taliban, there was no problem.
The purpose of anti-corruption declarations in Washington and Kabul is to provide a fig leaf for propping up the most corrupt government in the world. Unfortunately, as long as American voters perceive American politicians as opposing corruption, the politicians are absolved — notwithstanding that their policies ensure that the corruption will continue.
Pervasive corruption is the inevitable result of dumping massive quantities of U.S. dollars on foreign governments. The ultimate purpose of foreign aid is to buy allegiance and submission abroad. For politicians, buying allegiance isn’t corrupt — it is simply politics.
There is no bureaucratic cure for the perverse incentives created by flooding foreign nations with U.S. tax dollars. It would be far more honest if American politicians openly admitted that foreign aid corrupts recipient nations while supposedly advancing U.S. interests abroad.
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. This article originally appeared in the September 2011 edition of Freedom Daily
Tuesday 29th November 2011
MP3 of Brian Wilson Show Interview on Senate Vote for Military Crackdown on the Homefront
10:27 pm | Congress | Elective Dictatorship | Rule of Law | Comments: 4
Brian Wilson and I had a good time lambasting the Senate for voting to empower the U.S. military to seize and indefinitely detain American citizens on the homefront. It is amazing to see 44 Republican senators race over a cliff to give absolute power to a president they claim to abhor. As long as some government official proclaims that someone is a terrorist suspect, the feds are off the leash.
You can hear the MP3 from today’s WSPD Toledo talk show by clicking on or downloading the highlighted text -
brian-wilson-show-11-29-2011-indefinite-detention
James Bovard