Osama bin Laden is dead. What now? Gene Healy offers his usual dose of common sense:
We now have nearly 100,000 troops in-country chasing what President Obama’s CIA director admits are “50 to 100″ al Qaeda operatives, “maybe less.”
Posted in International
I was going to write something about this. But Radley beat me to it, and he said it far better than I could: Osama bin Laden may be dead, but he still won. Read the whole thing.
Not only did he spawn two long-term wars between the U.S. and Muslim countries — and for some reason we’re now in a third — but the cost in lost civil liberties has been enormous.
May his victory be a temporary one.
Posted in International, Security Theater
Chris Preble explains the five basic rules for going to war. Libya fails on at least four of them.
Posted in International
Tagged cato, chris preble, christopher preble, libya, libya war, war, weinberger/powell doctrine
“I have decided to repeat George Bush’s mistakes.”
Posted in International
Tagged foreign policy, libya, libya speech, middle east, obama, president obama
Tragedy struck Japan this morning. It will be some time before we know just how many lives the tsunami took, and how much damage was done. But pundits are already saying dumb things.
Larry Summers, who should know better, committed the economists’ cardinal sin this morning: he fell for the broken window fallacy. The sunny side of the destruction is that it will boost the economy. Just think of all the jobs that will be created by the rebuilding process!
Over at the Daily Caller, I gently correct Summers. Natural disasters are bad for the economy. All the rebuilding activity in the next few years will only get Japan back to where it was. If the tsunami had never happened, all that energy could be put to creating new wealth. Disasters are just that: disasters.
It all but disappeared when President Obama was elected. Apparently it was mostly a partisan phenomenon.
I predict the same thing will happen to the tea party movement if a Republican wins in 2012.
Posted in International, The Partisan Mind
Don Boudreaux makes good sense on why country of origin labels only tell part of the story of where a product comes from:
Yes, Mr. Hoch’s socks say “Made in Swaziland,” but who developed the computer software to operate the loom that wove the cloth used to make his socks? Who designed the loom itself? Who figured out how to transform crude oil into the elastic in the socks? Who devised the method for pooling risks so that the Swaziland factory is profitably insured against fire and that the cargo ship carrying his socks to America is profitably insured against sinking?
Don concludes:
In fact, Mr. Hoch’s socks – and nearly everything else that he consumes – should be labeled “Made on earth,” for they truly are global phenomena.
Read the whole thing. Keep it in mind the next time someone grouses –falsely — that America doesn’t make anything anymore, or that Americans buy too many goods from foreigners.
Richard Holbrooke passed away on Monday from heart surgery complications. He was a high-ranking diplomat who advised four presidents through three wars. He also had his private doubts about Afghanistan, but he never expressed them publicly.
According to The Washington Post, Holbrooke’s final words were “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” May Congress and President Obama make that wish come true.
Armies can fight wars. But they cannot build nations. Defense-unrelated missions such as Afghanistan that put U.S. troops in harm’s way are not worth the human cost.
Posted in International
Posted in General Foolishness, International
According to a new poll, the average American thinks that 25 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid (or, more accurately, government-to-government transfers). They would like it cut to about 10 percent.
The actual figure is under 1 percent.
As Aid Watch’s Laura Freschi points out, that means most Americans want to increase government-to-government transfers ten-fold from current levels while also cutting them in half.
That most people think like this is a major reason why cutting the federal government’s $3.5 trillion budget is so difficult. The issues that people get worked up about tend to be small potatoes, in budgetary terms.
Besides transfer payments to other governments, earmarks are another lightning-rod issue. But even if earmarks were abolished entirely, that’s only about 2 percent of the budget. It would put the smallest of dents in spending.
Entitlement spending is the single largest driver of current and future deficits. That’s where the battle is. Aid spending and earmarks are not threatening to bankrupt the country. Social Security and Medicare are. And those programs are extremely popular. No politician with an eye on 2012 would be willing to cut them.
The government has made promises it can’t possibly keep. But most people refuse to believe that. So they don’t. As a guarding mechanism, they instead make grand assumptions about how much things like transfer payments to other governments and earmarks cost.
