Hello Vigilantes,
It's time for another weekend issue of TDV. As you might have noticed, the blog was a little quiet this week… that's because I've been on the road, starting with the Silver Summit in Spokane which was a truly excellent conference. And now I am writing to you from San Diego at Libertopia which has also been great so far.
But, the world does not sit still while the original dollar vigilante is in transit! What a week!
I don't even know where to begin. This week alone there were many significant events including serial killer Barack Obama's involvement in yet another killing – this time of Muammar Gaddafi. Also this week, Obama announced the US will withdraw from Iraq. Plus, in our little part of the world, Max Keiser lashed back at us for our blog post, “Does the Economy Need a Referee?“.
I'm going to save any comments on Gaddafi for a future date. There are so many things to discuss about what occurred this week in Libya that I want to be able to sit down and give a good overview rather than just some quick points made in between sessions here at Liberopia. But, in regards to the Iraq pullout, I enquired with two good friends of mine who have high level knowledge of the American military for their thoughts on Obama's Iraq pullout. One is Private Parts… the other is new to the TDV blog and goes under the pen name “Ethan Hunt”. And, Ed Bugos wrote in this week with a rebuke to Max Keiser's attack.
THE US OUT OF IRAQ
When I want information about the US military I always go to my two friends, Private Parts and Ethan Hunt. TDV subscribers are familiar that Private Parts was a high level NCO in Iraq for many years and is currently contracting in Afghanistan and writes monthly in the TDV newsletter for the “Dispatches From Within The Belly of the Beast”. His writings and insights are read with great interest by many. Ethan Hunt served as an operator and advisor to Iraqi Special Operations Forces during the height of violence and participated in several high profile operations that received significant international media attention. His unique experiences granted him a raw perspective on the corporate marketing aspect of war.
Here are their responses when I asked them what they thought of the announcement that the US will withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year.
Private Parts:
It's about time! Doug Casey called it “the most criminally stupid military operation in history”… and considering that China and Russia got almost as much as the US did with Iraq's oil service contracts, how can anyone argue with the “most criminally stupid” assessment? I don't remember seeing China or Russia spending a trillion dollars over there, or sacrificing 4,500 of their young men and women. Could it be there is a better way to advance your nation's “strategic interests” around the world than by invading other countries?
On Obama, is there ANY campaign promise that he hasn't broken yet? Or at least TRIED to break? He only failed to break the “troops out of Iraq by the deadline” promise by his own negotiating incompetence! He was TRYING to keep troops in Iraq past the 2011 deadline, but in the end PM Maliki told him flat-out there was just no way the parliament would agree to give US troops immunity from Iraqi prosecution into 2012 and beyond, which is what the DoD demanded.
Don't worry though, we'll still be pouring money into that black hole with very little to show for it. We're still going to have thousands of American contractors and DoS civilians over there next year. But this certainly looks like the end of the road for having (military) “boots on the ground” at least.
Granted, we've kept thousands of troops in each of the gulf states for decades now (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE), but Iraq is different. Those countries were already used to having foreigners do all their manual labor. And, obviously, we never invaded them or killed any of their innocent civilians.
In my opinion, the defense budget will probably be the first to get gutted (of the three sacred cows I mean: SS, medicare/medicaid, defense), out of necessity, in the next year or two when our empire implodes. And with Iran now pulling the strings in the Iraqi govt. quite proficiently, I just can't see the Iraqi parliament ever agreeing to give US troops immunity from prosecution during any potential deployments in the future. So this withdrawal EOY 2011 really should be it.
FYI, I've already seen (contractor) job postings in Libya. Private security companies are still hiring like crazy to protect ships in the Gulf of Aden. And, of course, Erik Prince (Blackwater's founder) is still quietly building up his mercenary army to protect the UAE royals. It really does look like private forces are the wave of the future. At least my buddies will always be able to find work 🙂
I'll have much more on this in our November issue of TDV. Until then, I better get back to doing nothing.
Thanks Pvt. Parts. And now, here is what Ethan Hunt's thoughts on the pullout:
So, Obama has announced that all combat troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.
First rule of political speech analysis: Look for unstated back doors. In this case, let's look at the statement:
- Combat troops. Are advisors considered combat troops? In fact, are US troops in Germany or Okinawa considered combat troops?
- Logistical issues. There are 40,000+ US troops in Iraq. It is Christmas in 9 weeks. That is a lot of airlift to get them back, unless they use ships. There is also an unnamed amount of equipment that has to be shipped home. That is apart from the taxpayer property that will be left with the Iraqi Military, which of course will in short order be available on eBay or the black market to the highest bidder. Oh, by the way, did I mention that there is an ongoing war in Afghanistan that competes (and takes priority, presumably) when it comes to logistics. If Obama is serious, book your Christmas plane tickets now because airfares are getting a shot in the arm. Yes, commercial airliners may be called to bring the dough boys home.
- RealPolitik. I have never been much of a guy to figure out how a politician thinks, because despite my numerous character flaws, even I am unable to muster the insincerity and depraved indifference to human suffering that they natively possess. That being said, let's try to put the pieces together: The US just accused Iran of seriously breaching social etiquette. And, who overruns a country, spends a crap load of money while doing it, just to give up what little scraps are left? Plus, don't forget, they have oil.
Barry may get the boys home and meet the specific points of his words, but the US meddling in Iraq is far from over. We may not see 18 year old boys return with 4 limbs missing or in a box (something which has been dropping precipitously since early 2008). The real truth is at this point the US has not participated in what most people term “combat operations” for quite some time. As a result, there are around 30 “hostile incident” related fatalities in 2011.
Personally, I think logistically it is almost impossible to pull 50,000 people out in 9 weeks in any form of orderly fashion (given there is another war to fight). From a bigger picture, the point is largely insignificant. These guys have been hanging out on bases, eating ice cream and surfing Facebook. Of the fatalities this year, only two have been killed by small arms fire. The rest are roadside bombs and rocket/indirect attacks. Not to minimize the tragedy, but the point is that the US presence has dropped to what the German presence was in Scandinavia in early 1945. Waiting for the bitter end while doing nothing to get yourself needlessly killed.
Trust me, the US presence in Iraq is only entering a new chapter.
Thank you Ethan.
To try to refine the thoughts of Pvt. Parts and Ethan Hunt into a few sentences, they both seem in agreement that this isn't a big change in the grand scheme of things but it does indicate that we may be moving to a different chapter in how the US military will operate. Looks like the contractors – which is where the real dirty money is – will not be out of work anytime soon.
And, to those who may be thinking that this may be the beginning of the end of the USA's foreign occupations, it should be noted that in the same week that Obama announced a pull-out from Iraq he also invaded Uganda – although hardly anyone noticed.
ED BUGOS' RESPONSE TO MAX KEISER
Max Keiser apparently had a response to our blog post directed at him this week. Here it is:
“Those arguing against the need for referees (i.e. the state) hide behind the non-argument that ‘the referee is the state and we don’t need a state.’ If any of these ass hats had a brain they would understand that the state we have is the state we asked for and voted on. If we don’t like the state, we need to get a new one. This is what revolutions are all about. This is what GIABO is about. This is what’s happening in Greece at the moment. The state has failed to represent the people so the people are seeking a regime change. The state in America after the reforms brought in after the 1929 crash gave rise to the ‘American Century.’ No state, no American century – as just one example. Anyone who says, ‘competition is the referee’ has obviously not read any Adam Smith or has any idea whatsoever about any of the ideas that came out of the Enlightenment. I’m tired of this intellectual laziness masquerading as insight when it’s just squawking by birdbrains with too much time on their hands.”
I don't have the time nor the interest to do a full rebuttal to this. Nor do I think it is worthy of a response. First he dismisses the entire theoretical concept of freedom, anarchism and Austrian economics by saying it is a “non-argument. Then he calls me and by extension everyone involved in libertarianism, anarchism or Austrian economics as being “intellectually lazy”? There are hundreds of books and decades of research that have been painstakingly done by people like Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Walter Block, Hans-Herman Hoppe, Lew Rockwell and countless others to all but prove the state is nothing but an unnecessary evil.
Someone is being intellectually lazy, Max, and I don't think it is the entire libertarian/Austrian economics movement. One side wrote a cogent, civil piece. The other side wrote a paragraph of name calling with no reference to anything to back up his statements. We leave it to the reader to decide who is more intellectually lazy.
That said, Ed Bugos almost lost it when he read Max's comments. He takes any attack on freedom from pro-statists very personally. Here is Ed Bugos' rebuttal:
Intellectual laziness? Birdbrains? Too much time on our hands? I have had many a progressive lament about how unenlightened I am. The irony is that every one of them has read less than me, and usually nothing of consequence. And Max's comments again proves that to be true. Only someone who matches Max’s description of me would hold out Adam Smith as the final arbiter about this debate.
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is the very first book I’d ever read about economics – not the last, like Max. I read it in my first year of university, almost three decades ago. I've since read many books on economics… enough to have discovered that in reality, Smith was a plagiarizer.
Here is what Murray Rothbard said about Adam Smith:
“The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong; that, even in an age that had fewer citations or footnotes than our own, Adam Smith was a shameless plagiarist, acknowledging little or nothing and stealing large chunks, for example, from Cantillon. Far worse was Smith's complete failure to cite or acknowledge his beloved mentor Francis Hutcheson, from whom he derived most of his ideas as well as the organization of his economic and moral philosophy lectures. Smith indeed wrote in a private letter to the University of Glasgow of the ‘never-to-be-forgotten Dr. Hutcheson,' but apparently amnesia conveniently struck Adam Smith when it came time to writing the Wealth of Nations for the general public” – The Adam Smith Myth, by Murray Rothbard: http://mises.org/daily/2012
Not only did he screw up the theory of value, which gave Marx a toehold in his Communist Manifesto and confounded the classical economists about the paradox of value, but as Rothbard noted, he was a shameless plagiarizer of everything that was correct. Rothbard of course has read more books than me and Max five times over. He’s no birdbrain. Indeed, it was Rothbard’s lineage, the Austrian School, who started the marginal revolution and developed the “subjective theory of value” which solved the paradox that the classical economists, on the shoulders of Smith, could not. For readers who aren't aware, the classical economists could never figure out why water, which was the substance of life itself, was so cheap while diamonds were so dear. The reason they couldn’t figure it out was because Smith’s concept of value was not derived by acknowledging consumer tastes and preferences with the values of the factors that go into the production of those goods ultimately derived from those consumer goods. He thought that the value of something was determined by the costs of the factors of production. And to explain the paradox he divided the theory of value into two conceptual frameworks: use-value and value in exchange. Water had use-value to Smith, but it had no value in exchange – not because it was abundant as we all know today – but because apparently the value of diamonds was created by the work that went into them.
Max, if you read that and wonder to yourself, what’s wrong with that… well, then our case has been made. Not coincidentally, it is in this world where the establishment thinks like Max that we have been arm waving about how the State education monopoly is responsible for this state of affairs.
How is it a non-argument to claim that the state is unnecessary? What kind of uneducated nimrod would say such a thing?
It was a valid argument in Rothbard’s eyes. Now, anyone is free to disagree, but they are delusional if they would say that Rothbard, the modern day intellectual beacon of our anti-statist movement, is prone to “intellectual laziness” or has “too much time” on his hands!
Max says, “If any of these ass hats had a brain they would understand that the state we have is the state we asked for and voted on.”
Who asked for this state? Who voted on it? Not me. I don’t vote.
Max, the dull thinker that he is, might retort that therefore I have even less of a right to complain.
These stupid objections are easy to handle, but Max won’t buy it. Some people are not ready to question the things that their daddy told them. I’m being coy now, but that is because I remember my father talking like Max. He hasn’t read anything about this stuff either. In fact, he hasn’t even read Adam Smith.
Yet he agrees with you Max.
Unfortunately, neither of them (Max nor my father – God bless him) can grasp the myths that their view of the world lies on.
Max was right about one thing; if we don’t like the state that’s what revolutions are all about. But, unlike you liberals, we are consistent. In our view, the revolution is underway; it is intellectual; it is not violent. The anarchists that adopt violence as their method do not speak for our creed.
Anarchy is not chaos. Smith did not understand the spontaneous order, let alone value.
What is happening in Greece is that the people who depend on the state are extorting society through violence. It doesn’t matter to them that society clearly cannot afford such a bloated referee. They will resort to any violence to get their way. What is happening in Greece is precisely what is wrong with the state.
Max ends his commentary by saying he is tired of intellectual laziness masquerading as insight. I tire too Max, of statist liberals attacking us and holding out Adam Smith's book as though it is the end-all, be-all, when in fact it is a mostly plagiarized book with a litany of errors and misconceptions that have all been proven by the Austrian school.
If Max read that book and stopped there then that explains his stunted mental growth. There's been a few books since then Max, try reading a few before you waste our time.
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
This edition of the Weekend Vigilante was far too serious for what I had in mind. I wanted to make the weekend blog more on the lighter side. So, I will try to salvage it now with my favorite video of the week from one of the dazed and confused Occupy Wall Street protesters. He may be a nephew or relative of Max Keiser, judging from his deep intellectual ideas on how the system should work:
PHOTO OF THE WEEK
And, here's a funny photo that made me look twice.
Have a great weekend!
