How "Moderate" Has Changed Its Meaning

I was rather shocked to hear a cable news discussion of Senator Hillary Clinton’s pledge to “totally obliterate them” if the Iranian government were to launch an attack on Israel. One pundit pointed out that that remark was a part of her campaign to appeal to “moderate voters.” The others all nodded sagely.

How is it “moderate” to pledge to “totally obliterate” a nation of over seventy million people? How did “moderate” change its meaning so drastically?

Showing How Millions of People Were Duped

The New York Times: “Behind Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand”

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Democracy, Liberty, Limited Government, Foreign Policy

The Northwestern University Law Review (Issue 102:1 (Winter 2008) has published my oral remarks during the 2006 Federalist Society panel/debate on “Limited Government and Spreading Democracy: Uneasy Cousins?” Judge A. William Randolph, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, National Democratic Institute president Kenneth Wollack, and French lawyer François-Henri Briard were the other participants. (Complete journal here.)

The remarks got a bit sharp at times.

Exchanging Rockets, Rather than Goods and Services

Playing cat and mouse with Gaza rockets

Dozens die in Israel-Gaza clashes

Justice, whether restitution of property or punishment for crime, is usually a noble goal, but peace, life, and co-existence are often more important.

Would that they could trade commodities and services, rather than rockets. As Jean-Baptiste Say noted in his important Treatise of Political Economy, “the sense of mutual interest begets international kindness, extends the sphere of useful intercourse, and leads to a prosperity, permanent, because it is natural.”

Your Papers!!!!

I’m on the Amtrak train to New York, where we were informed that we could be forced to provide identification, searched, refused access to the train, etc., etc.

Here’s Amtrak’s online statement of their security policy. Note the use of a passport* for identification….. Welcome to the new America.

It’s worth pointing out that demanding identification increases “security” not one whit. It’s entirely about making us feel that we are being watched. Terrorists already know that. It’s about demonstrating it to the rest of us.

**As John Torpey notes in his history of the evil document, “In order to monopolize legitimate means of movement, states and the state system have been compelled to define who belongs and who does not, who may come and go and who may not, and to make these institutions intelligible and enforceable. Documents such as passports and identity cards have been critical to achieving these objectives.” (p. 13) Now they insist not only in telling you who may enter the country, but who may travel within it.

A Republic, Not a Dictatorship

Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

James Madison, from “Political Observations,” April 20, 1795 in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Volume IV, page 491.

The issue of executive powers, unsurprisingly enough, won’t go away. For the latest installment, read “No, a President Can’t Do as He Pleases,” by Edward H. Crane and Robert A. Levy

I Respectfully Dissent

My colleague Roger Pilon has a fine intellect. But I cannot follow the logic of his recent endorsement of the “Protect America Act.” Like many of my colleagues, I was startled to see the establishment of rules restricting the ability of the administration to collect intelligence on Americans compared to central planning of an economy: “Congress, to say nothing of the courts, can no more manage such affairs than it can the economy.” I see no good grounds to compare the two. The establishment of restrictive rules — side constraints — on spying is quite different from attempting to direct the behavior of countless consumers and producers.

My colleague Timothy Lee has shown, to my satisfaction, that Roger has not properly grasped or dealt with the issues involved in the legislative debate.

The Congress is authorized to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus, as Article I, Section 9, which explicitly restricts that power, implicitly assigns the power to Congress: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases or Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The lawyers of the Cato Institute took the lead in opposing the attempt of the administration to suspend that writ.

But where is the Congress authorized to suspend the Fourth Amendment?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

New Resource for Afghanistan

AfghanPress.org

(Readers of Persian can also visit the Persian Lamp of Liberty, Cheragheazadi.org)

This is Terrible and Shocking to Hear, But a Process to Prevent It Happening Again Is Imperative

Ex-warlord confesses to 20,000 deaths

“I have been looking for an opportunity to tell the true story about my life — and every time I tell people my story, I feel relieved.”

The civil war, which killed an estimated 250,000 people in this nation of 3 million, was characterized by the eating of human hearts and soccer matches played with human skulls. Drugged fighters waltzed into battle wearing women’s wigs, flowing gowns and carrying dainty purses stolen from civilians.

Before he led his fighters into battle, wearing only a pair of lace-up boots, Blahyi said he made a human sacrifice to the devil.

The sacrifice was typically “the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart which was divided into pieces for us to eat,” he told The Associated Press on Saturday. He appeared before the commission Jan. 15.

Another Way of Accounting for the Iraq War

Tyler Cowen in the Washington Post on “What Does Iraq Cost? Even More Than You Think.”

Freedom as an Option for Pakistan

“A Charter of Liberty,” from the Alternate Solutions Institute. I’m a fan of the work done by the ASI, which is one of the few in the region to reject collectivist and statist extremism of all kinds and to stand for individual liberty and the rule of law. Dr. Ahmad’s articles make the case for freedom very eloquently and intelligently.

Not a Good Sign for the Administration's "Stay the Course" Approach

CNN: “New Iraq policy prompts angry words at the State Department”

The sharpest comments came from Jack Croddy, a 36-year veteran of the Foreign Service.

To loud applause from his fellow workers, he asked how the State Department could protect people in Baghdad or the Iraq countryside when “incoming is coming in every day. Rockets are hitting the Green Zone.”

Let Us Hope Wider War Is Avoided, but the Turks Did Provide a Lesson in Constitutionalism, If Nothing Else

The likelihood of military action between Iraq and Turkey is quite frightening. I hope that cooler heads prevail and that the Iraqi Kurdish leadership makes it clear that they do not support at all the fanatical campaign of the PKK, regardless of the injustices to which Turkish Kurds have been subjected. There are other solutions than terrorism against innocent people, of which the PKK is guilty. I hope that the various parties find a solution to the PKK problem, as well as to the issue of the rights of Kurds to their own language, without igniting the region in a wider war.

That said, the Turkish government has at least shown the strength of their parliamentary system, in contrast to those who argue for unlimited powers of the US president to make war: “Turkish MPs today gave the green light to military operations in northern Iraq…”

Imagine that. They actually had a parliamentary debate before approving military action. How novel.

Straight Talk on Iran

Evil? Sure. Reason for War? No way.

Fareed Zakaria offers some rational thought on relations with Iran: “Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad? Conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history’s greatest mass murderers.”

A nuke in Iran is cause for concern, but not for preemptive war. Let us hope and pray that the drive to go to war with Iran fails. It’s definitely underway. The war drums are rumbling. Before it’s too late, it’s important for rational people to plot the non-end of the world.

A Tale That Needs to be Told and Retold

Today’s New York Times tells the story of a French priest who is documenting the horrors of the extermination of Ukrainian Jews by the National Socialists: “A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukrainian Jews’ Fate.”

The hard thing is to imagine how anyone could do such things:

Other witnesses described how the Nazis were allowed only one bullet to the back per victim and that the Jews sometimes were buried alive. “One witness told of how the pit moved for three days, how it breathed,” Father Desbois recalled.

I was recently loaned a very interesting little book that warned the world in 1938, Address Unknown, by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor. It’s a short book and a good read. (The plot twist is very “1930s,” but appropriate.)

Presidency or Dictatorship?

George Will poses some excellent “Questions for Mukasey.”

The first is especially good:

The Bush administration says “the long war” — the war on terrorism — is a perpetual emergency that will last for generations. Waged against us largely by non-state actors, it will not end with a legally clarifying and definitive surrender. The administration regards America as a battlefield, on which even an American citizen can be seized as an “enemy combatant” and detained indefinitely. You ruled that presidents have this power, but you were reversed on appeal. What do you think was the flaw in the reasoning of the court that reversed you?

A Cause for Shame

This map of “Displaced Iraqis Around the World.”

Seen on AndrewSullivan.com.

What a Victory in the War on Terror That Was

Convicting this guy on a charge quite different from the occasion for his original detention was well worth violating the U.S. Constitution and subverting the rule of law. The Bush administration must be proud.

A Travesty of Justice

The Jose Padilla case is a good example of why legal procedures and procedural rights are so important. My colleagues Tim Lynch and Bob Levy on this deeply disturbing case.

A Presumption in Favor of Prudence?

Stephen Bainbridge has an interesting essay up about foreign policy over at Andrewsullivan.com, “On Non-Interventionism.” It´s a helpful dose of wisdom, but…. a presumption in favor of prudence suggests that other principles, which are to be applied prudently, need not be articulated. That seems quite wrong-headed to me. A general presumption in favor of non-intervention is itself prudent; it´s not the alternative to prudence. A prudent approach will know when to resort to war (very, very rarely, if ever), but the presumption should be for non-intervention. That would by itself be prudent.

Libertarianism and War

Randy Barnett offers an intelligent defense of his Wall Street Journal column here (and in the other links at the bottom of that post). It’s still not a defense of the case for the Iraq war, but he is clear that that’s not what he’s offering. The discussion, including the back-and-forth in the comments is important and enlightening.

Please note my original posting on Randy Barnett’s article here.

Danish Decency

Danish army evacuates 200 Iraqis

The New York Times Intones

I Look Forward to a News Conference Announcing U.S. Disengagement

A bit of hard-headed thinking seems to have reached the upper levels of the commentariat. Today’s New York Times has a long editorial calling for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, “The Road Home.” The writers have the courage to admit that there are no really attractive options, or at least no options without costs. The civil war is underway; withdrawal itself has costs (moving hundreds of thousands of people and millions of tons of stuff is difficult, costly, time-consuming, and dangerous); it’s impossible to control the outcome; there may be no happy ending.

A central bit of wisdom is the recognition that the prospect of indefinite U.S. military occupation makes it virtually impossible for the various warring parties to come to their own accommodation, for the simple reason that they all know that any local agreement can be upset if it’s not pleasing to the White House (or other regional players, such as Iran). Moreover, there is no way to know for sure that they will reach any stable peaceful agreement.

Americans should hang their heads in shame for the way that the U.S. government treats people from Iraq. The Times put it neatly, albeit without as much indignation as the subject deserves:

The United States has the greatest responsibilities, including the admission of many more refugees for permanent resettlement. The most compelling obligation is to the tens of thousands of Iraqis of courage and good will — translators, embassy employees, reconstruction workers — whose lives will be in danger because they believed the promises and cooperated with the Americans.

Those who eagerly supported the decision to go to war should, whether loudly or quietly, lobby Congress and the Administration to allow entry to the U.S. for translators, elected mayors, cooks, clothes washers, and others who worked with the Americans and who staked their future on the promises of the American government. It’s the least they could do.

Finaly, there is a major lesson to be learned, one that the Times editorialists did not draw: a policy of non-intervention is recommended by both morality and interest.

(When I was in Iraqi Kurdistan I was asked whether the U.S. would stand by the Kurds. I explained that American government has substantial popular input into policymaking and that it’s difficult for such systems to sustain costly military commitments — especially involving combat and death — for long. I told them to be ready for the day that the U.S. would leave. I hope that they listened.)

An interesting inteview

Hassan Butt on NPR about his turn from radical terrorism toward a modernized form of Islamic toleration.

One of Many Reasons Why the Invasion of Iraq Was a Mistake

It provided other states in the region with a relatively low-cost way to bleed America, both in the literal sense and in the financial sense: “Coalition raids target flow of Iranian aid to insurgents.” Indeed, the Bush administration managed to take out the two main neighboring enemies of the Iranian state (Saddam and the Taliban) and at the same time to provide a wealth of opportunities to attack U.S. forces with impunity. What more could the radical mullahs in Tehran have wanted?

Powell Calls for Closure of Gitmo

According to the Washington Post,

Making it clear that he “would not let any of those people go,” Powell said, “I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our more federal legal system.” He said he sees no problem in detainees having the right of habeas corpus and getting their own lawyers. “Isn’t that what our system is all about?”

You don’t even have to go that far to question the slick move to locate the prison on Cuban soil, which was used as justification for the claim that it is therefore not subject to the jurisdiction of the American legal system.

Andrew Sullivan Sums It Up

If they were captured by someone, they must be guilty, right? And if they’re guilty, then anything goes. And if they confess to anything after months of torment, then it just goes to show that they must have been guilty.

There are reasons for procedural safeguards and for at least some judicial review. The Bush administration has demonstrated that, at least.

My Interview in a Tunisian Paper

I was interviewed by a Tunisian journalist whom I met at a conference Cato co-sponsored in Morocco. Here’s the interview in Mouwatinoun. (The name of the paper means “Citizens.” You have to scroll down to page 10 of the PDF.) The interview in English is in the rest of this blog entry.

Question 1 : The Middle Eastern countries have in common their economic wealth on the one hand, and their democratic “poverty”, what are the reason for that according to you?

That is one of the most important questions that political scientists and economists face today. First, however, it’s worth a moment to clarify some issues. Average per capita income in most middle eastern countries is not high. It’s much lower than even poor Eastern European countries. Because some countries have oil, many people think that those countries or the people in those countries are rich. That’s a mistake. The existence of natural resources is not the primary cause of a nation’s wealth, as Adam Smith explained so long ago in his famous book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” A natural resource, if it is monopolized by the state — and oil is a very good example — can make your country very poor. If a country enjoyed the rule of law and well defined and legally secure property rights before oil was discovered, the oil becomes a source of prosperity. Consider the USA, Canada, Great Britain, and Norway as examples. But if the rule of law and legally secure property rights were not well established and then oil was discovered, it turned out to be a curse, because it was monopolized by the state or by ruiling dynasties and that source of wealth to the rulers obstructed the evolution to democracy. When the state depends on income from a resource, such as oil, and not on the support of the people through broad-based taxes, then people become dependent on the state, and that is not a good recipe for democracy.

The causes of the relative economic decline of most middle eastern countries are complex, but mainly they center on the lack of the rule of law and accountable government. The reasons for that lack are harder to explain. One scholar who has addressed the issue is Professor Timur Kuran, a professor of law and economics and the King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California. His article “Why the Middle East is Economically Underdeveloped: Historical Mechanisms of Institutional Stagnation” is helpful to understanding the complex root causes. [The Essay is available on Misbahalhurriyya.org.]

Russia is an example of a country that is losing its hard won democracy because of the influx of oil revenues to the state, which is strengthening itself against civil society. Much the same process is going on in Venezuela. There is a short-term increase in wealth, but the long-term conditions of prosperity — democracy and limited government — are undermined, with terrible consequences for the medium to long term.

Question 2: Why do internal reform movements fail in influencing the nature and form of government in the region?

You do like to pose very difficult problems! If I knew the definitive answer, I would be sure to share it with everyone. I think that there is probably not just one reason and that the situations of countries differ enough to make a general answer of little value. The biggest problem is that the core ruling groups have managed to create forms of dependency on them from other groups in society. That process was well described in the 17th Century by the French writer Etienne de la Boetie in his “Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.” Generally speaking, some degree of economic freedom and security for property are conditions for the emergence of successful democratic transitions. A middle class that is secure in the possession of property and that has the means to promote an open political system will be more likely to succeed in dislodging entrenched ruling groups. That was the case with the transition of South Korea and Taiwan from dictatorships to rather stable democracies. One thing bears remembering: transitions that are violent almost never result in democratic outcomes, even if that’s the desired outcome. Violent transitions set the precedent for yet more violent transitions and typically result in government by coup d’etat, rather than democracy.

Question 3: While it was proven that democratization through foreign military intervention has negative consequences as in the Iraqi case, do you think that the American intervention under the premise of reforming the region had the opposite results?

It’s probably too early to give a definitive answer to this question. I am generally skeptical that democracy can be injected into a country from outside. The normal rule is that it has to be generated from within. The U.S. could, I think, do a better job of promoting democracy simply by setting an example, rather than by intervening in the political processes of other countries. Such intervention has rarely resulted in democratic outcomes and is better avoided. I think that the Americans are learning that. I hope so.

Question 4: The American administration under George Walker Bush in that direction (sic.) is trying to contain political islamist movements and to create “moderate” groups while pressuring Arab governments to integrate those in their political processes, do you think that this policy would empty democratic [reform] from its substance?

I’ll be direct and honest. I don’t think that the officials of the U.S. government generally know enough about Arab political systems to exert positive influence. Many of them — maybe most or even all of them — may have good motivations, but good motivations are certainly not enough. You also have to have understanding and wisdom and they seem to lack that and often find themselves merely being manipulated by governments and factions. Some governments have suppressed moderate opposition in various ways and that has left a choice of either the governing regime or people who offer a very radical and intolerant alternative. That has proven useful at manipulating the population and also at manipulating foreign governments.

Question 6: on another topic, American media speaks rarely of Tunisia, and American political and human right organizations have little interest in Tunisia, what is the reason for that in your opinion?

There are many countries that are not discussed much in the American media and many of them offer much more dire human rights problems than Tunisia. They tend to get more attention from human rights organizations to the extent that they are engaged in widespread acts of killing or genocide, such as in Sudan or Rwanda, and to the extent that they are considered by the government to be strategically significant. Tunisia, as a result, gets less attention than many other countries.

Question 6: you wrote “By attempting to rob from some to give to others, a state merely creates universal poverty, except, of course, for those who manage to gain supreme power, and who never lack for palaces and expensive cars. The defense of justice against aggression and violence must be the primary concern of the state. When the state itself becomes an instrument of aggression and violence, democracy itself is in danger.” How can this equation be inverted by turning the state from a means by which one would get rich and accumulate wealth to a tool guaranteeing justice for all?

Now you’ve asked the hardest question of all! We now know very well what policies produce prosperity and a healthy society: the rule of law that is enforced through an independent judiciary; well defined and legally secure property rights; freedom of trade; a free press; limited government and a tax system that is low and relatively simple. As Adam Smith said in 1755, “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” The evidence that Smith was right is well established in the studies of the “Economic Freedom of the World Report” (www.misbahalhurriyya.org/efw). But what we don’t know, or at least we do not have a good understanding of, is how to produce the policies that produce good results. The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto addressed that question in his book “The Mystery of Capital” (De Soto’s work is also available on Misbahalhurriyya.org), which offered some insights, but more thinking is needed to understand how we move from lack of the rule of law and lack of property rights to the rule of law and security of rights.

One thing we do know is that a liberal mentality is a part of the transition; by that I mean a desire for freedom and justice but without revenge. Successful transitions to freedom almost always happen by changing minds, not merely by changing rulers. If we want to live in freedom, justice, and prosperity, we must change minds.

Thank you for this delightful opportunity to chat. You posed some very, very difficult problems.

And the State of Liberty in America.....

Void Where Prohibited by Law

The eroding state of civil liberties in America in the face of the “War on Terror” is laid out quite neatly in this Podcast interview with Bruce Fein.

An Eloquent Indictment from a Chastened Former Interventionist

Andrew Sullivan (“Al Qaeda’s Enabler”) has come a long way, admitting his error in supporting the invasion of Iraq and offering an intelligent diagnosis of the disaster of US foreign policy, especially under this especially disastrous administration.

Yet Another Slander on the KGB

What must the Fever Swamp be thinking now? (A Russian former KGB officer should be charged with the murder by poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, the UK’s director of public prosecutions has recommended.) How will they save their heroic Eurasian political leader from such slander? Stay tuned…..

Good on ya', Ron

Ron Paul has refused to be bullied over his reasoned dissent from U.S. foreign policy. Good for him.

Are YOU a Terrorist?

Very disturbing…

According to the state of Pennsylvania, it seems that a lot of people are...if they:

*Oppose gun control;

*Believe that juries have the power not to convict people who break unjust laws;

*Believe that the federal government has no legal authority to interfere with taxes or require licenses.

Uh-oh… would James Madison be a “terrorist”?

A Rather Serious Mistake in the Washington Post

Today’s Washington Post has a rather interesting article about the violence directed against the Estonian Embassy and Ambassador in Moscow, “Protesters in Moscow Harass Estonian Envoy Over Statue.”

The article states,

For many Estonians, the statue is an uncomfortable symbol of what they view as the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union, whose troops drove out the Nazis in 1944. The country gained independence in 1991.

Here’s my letter to the author:

Dear Mr. Finn, Your article in the Post on May 3, states, “the statute is an uncomfortable symbol of what they [Estonians] view as the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Uhion, whose troops drove out the Nazis in 1944. The country gained independence in 1991.” The country was not “viewed” as occupied; it was occupied by the USSR, on October 18th 1939, and then annexed by force in August 1940. It was later invaded and occupied by the Third Reich (from 1941 to 1944), and then by the USSR again. I encourage you to check such matters before writing (unintentionally) misleading prose such as appeared in your article.
Cordially,
Tom G. Palmer

George Tenet Putting Himself in a Worse Light

Ugh

I’ve been listening to the discussions about George Tenet’s new finger-pointing book (and fingers certainly should be pointed). His new gloss on his “slam dunk” statement is clear:

“We can put a better case together for a public case. That’s what I meant,” Tenet told “60 Minutes.”

In other words, he now says that he did not imply a “slam dunk” case that Saddam had prohibited weapons, but rather that he meant that convincing others of that was a “slam dunk.” In other words, it would be easy to fool the public. That’s supposed to put him in a better light? It sounds a lot worse to me. A lot.

Michael Scheuer, in today’s Washington Post, skewers Tenet for insisting to Bob Woodward that he warned the administration about the dangers of Al Qaeda attacks. As he notes, he could have mentioned that during his testimony under oath:

“I was talking to the national security adviser and the president and the vice president every day,” Tenet told the commission during a nationally televised hearing on March 24, 2004. “I certainly didn’t get a sense that anybody was not paying attention to what I was doing and what I was briefing and what my concerns were and what we were trying to do.” Now a “frustrated” Tenet writes that he held an urgent meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001, to try to get “the full attention of the administration” and “finally get us on track.” He can’t have it both ways.

Note: I find Scheuer’s take on such issues interesting, but he’s far too much of a gung-ho “kill ‘em all!” type for me. In a conversation with a small group he told me that we had to be much harder against terrorists and not worry about collateral damage, which I challenged, only to be told that he didn’t really care how many others were killed if we got bin Laden. That can’t be right and it didn’t convince the others in the conversation, either. He makes a milder version of that outrageous claim in his Washington Post article:

“The hard fact remains that each time we acquired actionable intelligence about bin Laden’s whereabouts, I argued for preemptive action. By May 1998, after all, al-Qaeda had hit or helped to hit five U.S. targets, and bin Laden had twice declared war on America. I did not — and do not — care about collateral casualties in such situations, as most of the nearby civilians would be the families that bin Laden’s men had brought to a war zone. But Tenet did care. “You can’t kill everyone,” he would say. That’s an admirable humanitarian concern in the abstract, but it does nothing to protect the United States. Indeed, thousands of American families would not be mourning today had there been more ferocity and less sentimentality among the Clinton team.

Nashi ("Our People")

A video documentary on Russia’s new chauvinist/nationalist/authoritarian/statist state-sponsored youth movement. (It’s in French.)

Hat tip to Nathalie.

Islamist Violence

I’ll be in Rabat and Casablanca over the next few days and I’m happy to say that Moroccans are overwhelmingly appalled at the violence of the Islamist extremists here. In addition, it seems that the police are rolling up the terrorist network here, so there is good reason for optimism for the country’s future. It’s a really beautiful country, full of friendly and cordial people and, thanks largely to connections with the libertarians of France, a small but growing number of libertarians. (I’ve also met a number of intellectuals who regularly read the Misbah al Hurriyya [Lamp of Liberty] libertarian website.)

Civil Rights Leadership

I’ll be speaking in Morocco at the Civil Rights Leadership Seminar at Al-Akhawayn University this week. I’m in Paris today, which means spending the whole day and evening doing work in the hotel lobby bar (with its very efficient wifi).

How States Get Started: Darfur

Just Like the Early States-Men

“[T]here remains a relatively small number of farming villages such as Kuteri where people are struggling to maintain dignity under the yoke of the government-backed Arab militiamen, who eat their food, drink their water and lounge under the spare shade of low, twisted trees.”

From the Washington Post, “A Darfur Village Bears Up Under Janjaweed Yoke.”

The paragraph above is followed by another, which shows how people realize that surviving and paying tribute and homage is, for most, better than resisting and being killed or fleeing:

“‘We think that here, we are freer,’ Ahmed said. ‘We are better than we would be in the camps.’”

The standard account — horse-riding nomads conquering settled agricultural populations — was written by Franz Oppenheimer and Alexander Rüstow. (Rüstow’s great work was excerpted and published in English as Freedom and Domination: A Historical Critique of Civilization.

My Article in Al Hayat: "The Mistaken Campaign to 'Spread Democracy'"

A condensed version of the talk I gave at the Federalist Society (in a quasi-debate format with William Kristol**) appeared today in one of the most important publications of the Arab World, Al Hayat, “الحملة الضالة « لنشر الديموقراطية»”

**I’m the third speaker, before Kristol.

Reasoned Comment on the Lebanese Crisis

Michael Young of Beirut’s Daily Star offers a helpful guide to the Lebanese crisis at Reason.com, “Can Anyone Fix Lebanon?: International aid can’t change the climate around Beirut.”

Young doesn’t discuss the occasion for the current crisis, which is very important to keep in mind. Hezbollah is demanding the overthrow of the government and a new government that would give their party a veto power over the national government — despite lacking the votes in parliament — in order to veto a criminal investigation into the murder of Rafik Hariri. Why? Because they fear that the evidence will point where everyone thinks it points: Damascus, one of their sponsors. That’s the foundation for Hezbollah’s threatening campaign for a new “national unity” government, i.e., one in which they could veto proceedings against the killers of the country’s former prime minister.

The Surge "Strategy"

The January 11, 2006 Cato Podcast by Patrick Basham on President Bush’s “Surge ‘Strategy’” was quite insightful. (Click here and scroll down to January 11.) The situation is spiraling ever more rapidly downward and it’s unlikely that more U.S. troops are going to do anything more than cement a victory by one side in a vicious sectarian civil war.

The Final Step in the Disastrous Implementation of a Disastrous Decision

And now, A Recipe for Being in the Middle of a Horrifying Civil War (one that, it should not be forgotten, was occasioned by the decision of this government to invade).

Debate on Foreign Policy at Federalist Society

But Where Are They Going?

At the annual meeting of the Federalist Society last November I spoke/debated about the issue of “Limited Government and Spreading Democracy: Uneasy Cousins?” (See the list of speakers below.*) The issue was about the role of the state in “spreading democracy,” whether to do so at the point of a bayonet, with tax dollars, or by setting the best example. In my presentation, I pointed out that there has been a loss of liberty at home due to our president’s reckless policies and that the policies abroad have generally caused chaos and death (Iraq does come to mind) without delivering much in the way of democratic liberalism.

The audio of the debate is now available online.

The discussion was on the long side (and one of them, Briard’s, refers to a Powerpoint, but can be understood without it), so if you want to listen, set aside a little time. I think that it will be interesting, nonetheless. (Considering the audience, I sought to uphold some version of the foreign policy vision on which president Bush had campaigned in 2000: a humble foreign policy.)

*Fran�§ois-Henri Briard, Delaporte, Briard & Trichet and President, The Federalist Society, Paris Chapter; William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard; Mr. Kenneth Wollack, President, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; Moderated by Hon. A. Raymond Randolph, United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit.

National Socialism Appraised Early On

David’s Medienkritik, which reports on media coverage in Germany, has done a signal service by making available an essay by S. Miles Bouton from The American Mercury, “Why Germany Endures Hitler.” It’s a most interesting essay, written when so many intellectuals were hailing the emergence of collectivism.

Now Part of the Negative Side of the Execution

The execution of Saddam, which was, I think, a necessary step, has a very serious downside: it provides confirmation among the majority Sunni Arab population (and other Sunnis, as well) of a conspiracy among “Crusaders,” Shi’a, and the Persians to destroy the unity of the the Arab world. The BBC offers a small flavor, ” No Arab euphoria at Saddam death.”

All the more reason for the U.S. to disengage from the region.

UPDATE: Robert Baer’s take on the issue, “Saddam the Martyr.”

FURTHER UPDATE: I saw the telephone-camera video of the execution. It was a very disturbing confirmation of the sectarianism of the act, which promises worse in the future. It’s clear that some of the participants in the conflicts want simply to inflame them further, with al Qaeda in Iraq doing so very effectively on one side (the destruction of the Golden Shrine in Samarra was a deliberate and effective trigger to sectarian revenge attacks by Shi’a) and by the forces of Moqtada al Sadr, on the other. The picture continues to get bleaker and bleaker.

An Interesting Dispatch from Beirut

The Clear Message of Hezbollah’s Opponents

Michael Totten’s Middle East Journal has an insightful essay posted from Beirut.

A Small Entry in the "Plus" Column

Saddam will finally hang from a rope. I’m against the death penalty in almost all cases, but a very few require it. Let’s hope that it helps to bring some peace to a war savaged country. It may even provide a good occasion for the U.S. to announce that Iraqis are going to have to face down the terrorists and the militias themselves, for as long as people expect the indefinite presence of American forces, there is less incentive than otherwise to negotiate and little reason to think that deals cut by locals will be respected or stable, and therefore little reason to cut those deals.

A Muslim Voice Against Radical Political Islamism

Anwar Ibrahim: A Courageous Voice for Liberty
My colleagues are very pleased to translate, publish, and widely disseminate throughout the Arabic world the writings of Anwar Ibrahim, a courgeous voice for freedom and justice from Malaysia. Dr. Ibrahim, who has spoken at Cato Institute events, wrote an essay for the Far Eastern Economic Review, “Radical Islam in Southeast Asia,” which has now been posted on the Lamp of Liberty website and syndicated to newspapers throughout the Middle East. Among the publishers that have run it so far are Al Wast of Bahrain, Al Ghad of Jordan, SudaNile of Sudan, and Albawaba.com.

They’re currently working on translating his article “Universal Values and Muslim Democracy” into Arabic.

A Little Nebraska Realism

Senator Chuck Hagel in the Washington Post, “Leaving Iraq, Honorably.”

Explosions That Are Felt Around the World

Today has been another terrible day in Baghdad. I cannot escape the constant awareness of the suffering of the innocents there. I hope that the bastards wh