Many intelligent things were said at the Republican debate broadcast by the American Broadcasting System the other week. But, being of a negative cast of mind, I was more interested in the stupid things that were said.
Ron Paul listed “Korea” as one of the wars that American should not have fought and “lost” (well there goes the Korean American vote).
Mitt Romney said that government should back “universal healthcare”, as he had introduced in Massachusetts, because otherwise “people turn up to Emergency Rooms and this is expensive” – of course people are still turning up to Emergency Rooms and demanding free treatment in Massachusetts – in spite of Mitt Romney’s expensive new government scheme (which will get more and more expensive over time).
However, I believe that the most stupid thing said at the debate was from Mike Huckabee (a big tax increaser from Arkansas) who said that health care would be fixed if “everyone in America had the same healthcare as the members of Congress were given”.
There are 100 members of the United States Senate, and there are 435 members of the House of Representatives. And there are about 300 million Americans.
Paying the health costs costs of 535 politicians is a rather smaller burden than paying the health care costs of 300, 000,000 people.
Yet this piece of populist bullshit (for that is what it was) was cheered and applauded.
I believe Dr. Paul’s point was that America has gotten too used to fighting non-essential wars. Sure, we helped a lot of Koreans but at what price? The cost in American money and lives should always be the top priority. Just because the government has this special urge to save the world does not mean Americans are somehow tools of the state, to be used and dried out financially. I understand disagreements with Paul’s philosophy, but to call it stupid (especially when all he’s advocating is what the founders did) is kind of stupid in itself. Every war increases the power and scope of government. Paul argues that the less wars that are fought the better American liberties can be sustained. Obviously, the most practical foreign policy for such a philosophy has to be non-interventionism.
Seems to me that we did NOT win the Korean war, which, IIRC, is what Ron Paul said. I seem to recall a stalemate and a permanent occupation, holding the civil war in abeyance for 50 years at great cost, and receiving no benefit for it.
Of course, it is possible that the North would have beaten the South. But what if they had? They wouldn’t have had 50 years of food aid from the south to help prop up their government. Would it have fallen? I don’t know. Nobody ever knows these things. But what I do know is that fewer Americans would have died for something which was completely irrelevant to our national interests. Then again, we wouldn’t have had M*A*S*H. Draw your own conclusion on whether that goes in the gain or loss column.
Paul (Marks),
Have you found a transcript of that debate anywhere? There were some things said that I really want to see in print (like Tommy Thompson’s statement suggesting partitioning Iraq) that I really want to see in print. But I can’t find a transcript on the web site. You would think they would make transcripts a banner or button.
Possible? Close to a certainty.
A trick question? Like North Korea now, just for all of Korea.
I guess I am just not quite as turned on by the whole importance of nation states and their “national interests” as you are. And I find your use of the word “our” also interesting. I suppose my borders of “our” are more fuzzy than yours, i.e. lives do not just have to be American or British or whatever, to be relevant to me, which is not to say I am not also a bit of cultural chauvinist.
That is indeed true, but why should those 535 parasites get better treatment than the 300,000,000?
…paid for I should say by those 300,000,000.
Wrong. Here are the facts about the Korean war.
After WW2 it was agreed between the USSR and the USA to partition (Japanese occupied) Korea into two states, one under Russia’s “influence” (i.e. communist) in the north, and the other one under USA influence (i.e. free) in the south.
In 1949 the north (communist) Koreans attacked the south (the US did not have any troops there), in an unprovoked, surprise move, and within two weeks almost completed the conquest of the whole south.
Gen MacArthur, the governor of Japan, sent in immediately some US units from Japan, and managed, just barely, to stop the advance of the North, and hold on to a small perimeter around the port of Pusan in the extreme south of Korea.
Later he managed to beat the North Koreans, and to conquer almost all of the north. At this point the Chinese intervened and sent millions of Chinese soldiers to prop up the North. The Chinese pushed back the US army, MacArthur was sacked by Truman, and finally, the partition of Korea was reestablished.
The US succeeded in preventing the communists from taking control of the south, and enabled the South Koreans to become a prosperous, free nation of 55 million people (more or less the size of the UK).
And the US did not “occupy” neither did it administrate South Korea. South Korea was and is a fully free and independent nation. The US keeps to this day some troops in the South – but not as occupation force, their purpose is to guarantee the security of the south, to deter the North from a new attack. And they are there, and always were, at the invitation of the South Korean Government. (This is an anachronism today, but this is another issue).
The Korean war certainly succeeded. The South Korea of today is doubtlessly a big success story (though it took more than 40 years for democracy the establish itself firmly there). The advance of communism was halted.
“Who cares?” is another question. Whether this success justified the costs in blood and treasure that was paid – is a difficult question. Claiming that the Korean war was a failure (as the Vietnam war was) is clearly false.
I suppose my borders of “our” are more fuzzy than yours, i.e. lives do not just have to be American or British or whatever, to be relevant to me…
So long as the people marching out to these pre-emptive, ‘moral’ wars are doing so willingly and for handsome compensation. Do you agree that (hypothetically speaking) a draft to continue the war in Iraq would be against the interests of liberty?
Sure. But clearly the continuation (or not) of the war in Iraq is not dependent on running out of manpower.
Actually, the “war czar” (America is sure getting czarist these days) wants to re-institute the draft.
I would like to see everybody living in a free, peaceful and prosperous Libertarian society, spread across several solar systems.
I never will see this.
My second choice is the existence of one or more free countries on the face of the earth, which are wise enough not to enslave their own people (through taxation and conscription) to prevent the enslavement of others. The problem is that to give them freedom, even assuming they want it (unlike the Iraqis) means lessening our own freedom. And if “the terrorists hate us for our freedom”, then giving it up would be the worst possible surrender. Of course, if they hate us for our belligerence, and we give that up, it’s a win-win, as I’m not willing to lose my freedom in order to keep my belligerence. That’s why I rarely walk around punching Socialists or Neocons in the nose, despite the temptation.
I think the korea war is considered a “victory” by the South Koreans simply becuase they are not part of North korea.
South Korea is an ecomomic powerhouse and the people of North Korea are eating each other to keep from starving to death.
From wikipedia:
South Korea is a major international economic power; it has the twelfth largest economy in the world (eleventh largest by purchasing power parity) and the third largest in Asia, behind only Japan and China (fourth behind China, Japan, and India by purchasing power parity). Its largest trading partner and export market today is China.[22] It achieved rapid economic growth through exports of manufactured goods and is one of the Four Asian Tigers.
Oh, no doubt they won. The question is, did America win?
There is an interesting analysis of the cold war which concludes that the Americans lost and the Russians won. This is because Americans came out of the cold war less free than they went in, and Russians came out of the cold war freer than they went in.
Of course, if you look at the governments, the American government won and the Russian government lost.
Even Soviet propaganda dared not to claim that America had lost the Korean war.
Jurgis BŠ«da, Vilnius
If the US implements universal health care, where will the Canadians go to escape universal health care?
Speaking of the Korean war as “lost” is false and dumb, and shows Ron Paul has no firm knowledge or grip of reality. (The correct thing to say, from his viewpoint, would be: it was a success, but the price paid was too high, so it was possibly a wrong decision).
He also showed his lack of judgement when he spoke of the Iraq war as “illegal” and “immoral”.
These positions of his are based on dogmatic ideology (on faith), and not on a grasp of reality.
The target of my post was Mike Huckabee, it did not occur to me that anyone would take seriously Ron Paul’s statement that the United States “lost” the Korean war – and that it should not have been faught in the first place.
However, I forgot about the man from 1968 (Rich Paul). It is “possible” that the South would have lost without American help – quite so, just as it is “possible” that 1 + 1 = 2.
But “so what” – well millions of people would have died and tens of millions would have been enslaved.
And then the Marxists would have gone after Japan and other places. “Domino theory” – no just standard communist practice.
So we have the old Rothbardian line. It does not matter about the rest of the population of the world – the United States can exist as an island of liberty in a sea of tyranny.
This faction of libertarian thought would have handed over the world to the German National Socialists and Japanese slave “Co Prosperity Sphere” in World War II (no I am not making this up – the late Murry Rothbard’s opinions are a matter of record).
And would have handed over the world to the communists during the Cold War (again I am not making this up).
The vast majority of humanity could be exterminated or enslaved – as long as the United States was O.K.
Except that the United States could not have survived as an island of liberty in a sea of tyranny. Certainly National Socialism, Marxism (and so on) are poor economic systems, but they do not instantly collapse -and with the resources of the whole world the forces of tyranny would have crushed the United States. The world would have gone into a “long night”.
By the way there is one more thing wrong with the Rothbardian line.
Murry Rothbard claimed that ff the United States was ever directly attacked he would support war – of course he managed to dodge the fact that the Japanese regime attacked the United States in 1941 (they were provoked……..) but in another case he would have a different position.
Perhaps Rothbard was being honest – I am prepared to accept that. But his main followers are certainly not honest.
How do I know that? Because it is not just “we gave them the gas” and we “lost” Korea, Ron Paul – take the example of Dr David Gordon.
How did this man of the Ludwig Von Mises intitute (and producer of the “Mises Review”) react to 9/11?
Did he support the counter attack in Afghanistan?
Of course he did not.
He made an artifical distinction between the A.Q. and the Taliban (which have the same ideology and many of the same people) and compared the Western operation in Afghanistan to the atomic bombing of Japanese cities.
No, yet again, I am not making this up. Dr Gordon used a “review” of an old book by G.E.M. Anscombe to make his claims (see “Can the State Justly Kill Innocents?” in the “Mises Review” Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2001).
So it is NOT just Iraq.
These people are “death to America” fanatics, who will side with ANYONE against the United States.
I can remember when Ron Paul was NOT like this – and I still believe he is being fed this stuff (“we gave them the gas” and so on) rather than just lying his head off.
As for the Iowa straw poll itself:
Well two statists came first and second.
Mitt Romney got 31.5% and Mike Huckabee got 18.1%
Sam Brownback who (as far as I know) at least does not want to make the Federal government any bigger, got about 15%.
As for the two candidates in the race who wish to make the Federal governent radically smaller.
Ron Paul got 9.1% (a respectable showing – clearly higher than T. Thompson, who was boasting that he was going to do really well, with 7. something per cent).
However, Tom Tancredo got 13.7%
Of course Tancredo will not win. But it is good to see that someone can avoid saying things like “we gave them gas” and the West “lost” Korea and pile up a decent number of votes.
It also shows that “pro war” libertarians (I deny that I am “pro war” as I was against the operation in Iraq in 2003 and still think it was a mistake) are actually have greater numbers than “anti war” libertarians.
“Tom Tancredo is not a libertarian, he is for restricting immigrartion” – errrr so is Ron Paul.
By “libertarian” I mean (in this context) someone in favour of getting rid of a lot of Federal government programs.
It seems that the tradition of men like Frank Meyer still lives.
By the way Ludwig Von Mises himself was in politics a lot closer to men like Frank Meyer than the death-to-America crowd who (now he is dead) claim to speak in the name of Mises.
Actually, he never said that the war was lost. You probably want to check the actual source material on youtube.
The neocon debating manual says very clearly:
1) Start with a misquote of Ron Paul
I heard the word “lost” Rich Paul – so stop trying to spin things. And the debate was on A.B.C. (the youtube debate was a Democrat one). I have no interest in how the Ron Paul people are trying to spin things – I heard “lost”, just as I heard “we gave them the gas” in the interview after the Fox debate.
You see when people have actually watched an event – spin does not work.
Nor am a neocon (as you know perfectly well).
Although I would rather be a social democrat neocon than a supporter of the southern slave power (1861-1865) the Kaiser (1914-1918 – not just 1917-18 as Rothbard made it quite clear that he held Britain and the other allies responsible for the war), the Nazis and the Japanese “co prosperity sphere” (1939-1945) the communists (1945-1991), or the Islamic nutters (to present).
Are there any enemies of the United States in the last century and half that you Rothbardians would not have sided with?
Midwesterner asked about a transcript.
I went to the A.B.C. site and watched the thing direct (it was in bits – which was very irritating).
I do not like transcripts – they tend to be like the Congressional Record, where people get to “correct” their remarks.
One mistake that I did make.
Senator Sam Brownback did NOT get about “15%” it was about 17%.
I apologize.
I say again that my target in the post was Mike Huckabee. I was not very interested in Ron Paul’s latest antics. Although I am glad that Tom Tancredo beat him by so large a margin (in spite of coverage for Ron Paul in the “New York Times” and other places).
So you are really saying the USA in, say, 1946 (i.e. the segregationist, homosexual persecuting, military conscripting, gold confiscating, New Dealing USA), was more free than it is now under mean old BushMcHitler?
Brownback and Huckabee did well because of the pandering to farmers. Brownback is enthusiastic about the ethanol scam, and Huckabee never shuts up about the importance of protecting the yokels. This kind of rubbish always goes down well in Iowa, where it is axiomatic that the public treasury exists to provide the clodhoppers free booty.
‘Has anyone ever heard of a farmer making any sacrifice of his own interests, however slight, to the common good? Has anyone ever heard of a farmer practicing or advocating any political idea that was not absolutely self-seeking — that was not, in fact, deliberately designed to loot the rest of us to his gain? Greenbackism, free silver, government guarantee of prices, all the complex fiscal imbecilities of the cow state John Baptists — these are the contributions of the virtuous husbandman to American political theory . . . . Yet we are asked to venerate this prehensile moron as . . . the foundation stone of the state’- HL Mencken
Tancredo just panders to idiots as well. Banning LEGAL immigration, nuking Mecca, supporting creationism. A Klansman would find little to object to there.
Ron Paul did well considering that he spent little money in Iowa and had only been to Iowa twice before. And he never promised any pork to the farmers.
Considering Paul is the only anti-war republican candidate, he would have probably got all his votes even if Giuliani, McCain, and Fred Thompson had been in Iowa. Romney, Huckabee, Brownback, and Tancredo would have all probably lost votes had the ‘front runners’ appeared.
Well Russians are more free now than they were in 1946 or 1926 (although they are not so free with Putin as they were with Yeltsin).
But then the Cold War was not against “Russians” or “Russia” it was against the Soviet Regime (the Marxists who murdered more Russians than even Hitler did).
This is one of the great fears I have about the difference between the modern conflict and Cold War.
The majority of the people in the Soviet Union and other places (including Vietnam) were not Marxists.
But the majority of people in Iraq (and so on) ARE Muslims.
“But they do not follow the interpretation of Islam (i.e. that all nonMuslims must be exterminated or enslaved – all over the world) that some radical Sunni and Shia groups do”.
But that it is a difficult distinction.
When I had dealings with Russians (and people of other nations) back in the 1980’s what mattered was “are they Reds or not” sometimes that was hard to tell (because Reds might pretend to be non Reds – or non Reds might be blackmailed because of family back home and so on) but the basic point was simple enough (even for someone as crap as me).
But the modern conflict is much more difficult.
It is not “are they Muslims” – they are all Muslims. Nor is it a matter of “Sunni and Shia” as some Sunni are O.K. and some are not, and some Shia are O.K. and some are not.
Anyone in the game these days must be utterly confused by all this (and that does not bode well).
By the way do I think the America of the Congress elected in 1946 (the so called “do nothing” Congress of 1947-1949) was less or more free than the United States of today.
I would say (in opposition to you Perry) that it was MORE free.
But then I am (like you) a white, male, hetrosexual.
I look at total tax and government spending, and at the vastly less economic regulations (by the end of the so called “do nothing” Congress anyway).
I suppose that, I should keep in mind such facts as blacks in the south having to use different toilets and lots of other more nasty things.
Rather than selfishly thinking “for a guy like me it would have been wonderful – I could have walked into a decent job, kept most of my pay, could afford medical bills, been safe on the streets…… and everyone was nicely dressed in the late 1940’s, and the music was good to”
I suppose the think is to look beyond the self.
Of course the Cold War was not optional (something the Rothbardians forget) had the United States not have opposed the communists it would NOT have been left as an island of (relative) liberty in a sea of tyranny.
I’m not finding the word Korea anywhere in the youtube footage of the ABC poll. That’s annoying, since I know he used the word, and I have seen the footage. Does anybody have a pointer to a segment that includes this statement?
I’m not sure if I can use the ABC site under Linux.
While I’m looking, I will reiterate that there is a difference between “supporting a government” and “not wanting to go to war with a country”. For example, I do not support socialized medicine. None the less, I have been very consistent in my opposition to going to war with either the U.K. or Canada. Just because you guys are not living the way I think you should does not mean that I feel the need to kill you. I would rather deregulate the health care system in America. If you see the results of that, and want to abandon Socialism, more power to you. If you don’t, best of luck to you. Either way, unless you try to impose socialized medicine on America, you have my guarantee that I will not support the invasion of your country.
Well, I sure don’t qualify as one of Rothbard’s main followers. I have never had any interest in following anybody. That’s why managing Libertarians is like herding angry cats. And I don’t agree with his position on WWII. Regardless of provocation, America was attacked, and responded as she should have. It would have been nice if we had not provoked Germany as we did, (for example, firing on U-boats on sight, and claiming that attacking the ships of foreign belligerents was an attack on the U.S. if there happened to be Americans on board), but it wasn’t even Germany that attacked us. Quite properly, we declared war on Japan when she attacked us, and quite properly, we waited until Germany declared war on us before we declared war on them.
Of course, somebody is certain to point out that Iraq attacked us on 9/11. Sorry, wrong, try again. Iraq was not involved in 9/11. Afghanistan was. Which is why Ron Paul voted to go to war with Afghanistan, and why I support his decision.
This is difficult, however. Since I live in Michigan, I would have been very grumpy if Clinton had declared war on Michigan after the Oklahoma City bombing.
To answer that question definitively is impossible, since it is impossible to sum apples and oranges. Is the right to keep and bear arms greater or less than the right to be gay? Who knows? I suspect that gay gun banners and a fundamentalist gun owners would give different answers. Then there is the issue of fundamentalist gun banners and gay gun owners. The issues are incomparable.
I can say that we gave up many freedoms during the cold war. We developed a huge intelligence apparatus, used it against our own people, increased taxation massively, intervened into the market, produced propaganda, lied to our own people about what we were doing, destabilized foreign governments (creating many of the problems in the middle east in the process), and made “national security”, extremely broadly defined, a magical incantation which stopped all debate and eradicated the rule of law.
Of course, we do not know and never will know much of what was done in the name of the cold war. That is the most troubling aspect of the entire thing, to me. When the government reserves the right to lie to it’s own people, who holds them accountable? How can a representative democracy work if those “represented” do not know what their “representatives” are doing? If you do not want to pay for an operation which everybody denies, but which exists, for whom should you vote? In these ways, we lost much of our freedom.
Perhaps, one day, historians will be able to tell us how much.
Murry Rothbard claimed that ff the United States was ever directly attacked he would support war…
Everyone does that:
Back during the Vietnam War, we always swore that if our country was
attacked we would come to its defense. The point we were making was that that
it was America that was attacking Vietnam, not the other way around. Of
course we believed that nobody would be crazy enough to actually attack
America. The planes that hit the World Trade Center proved us wrong. How are
we peaceniks going to keep our ancient word?
Stew Albert (The quiet Yippie)
BTW – That forum, now closed, gives excellent insight into the mindset of the New Leftists of the Vietnam War era.
“We developed a huge intelligence apparatus, used it against our own people, increased taxation massively, intervened into the market, produced propaganda, lied to our own people about what we were doing, destabilized foreign governments (creating many of the problems in the middle east in the process), and made “national security”, extremely broadly defined, a magical incantation which stopped all debate and eradicated the rule of law.”
Speaking as one who has been an outspoken Libertarian/Constitutionalist since the early ’60’s, just what is this “We” shit? You’ve spent too much time listening to “Progressives”. And I’ve spent far too much energy arguing against collectivism, over the last 40 years, to put up with being included in some bullshit ‘We” with the very statist jackasses I’ve pushed back against all my life.
Speak for yourself.
That is why I criticize our attack on Iraq, but am not concerned about Afghanistan. Iraq may have wanted to attack us, but they were incapable, until we send a bunch of our people into Iraq for easy attack.
Paul Marks — “And then the Marxists would have gone after Japan and other places. ‘Domino theory’ – no just standard communist practice.”
Has anyone here read Chang and Halliday’s “Mao — The Unknown Story”?
I just finished the section on Korea, and I need to go over it again with intensive cross-referencing to a good deal of my library — Acheson (“Present At The Creation”), various Cold War histories (e.g. — Yergin, Malia) and biographies (Stalin, Acheson, Rusk, et. al.). It’s really remarkable stuff.
Mao really was the commie nightmare under the bed and Stalin was, to a great though definitely limited extent, happy to have him. This is, to me, a whole new angle on the Korean War and its implications. In important aspects, Mao was practically insane. He had delusions, for instance, of putting five hundred submarines to sea. Economically, this was just never going to happen, but these delusions don’t mitigate his essential ferocity and ambition. If Chang and Halliday have the facts right, Korea was Mao’s war, and it was near the least of what he had in mind. He was explicit about Japan, the Philippines, and Malaya, not to mention Vietnam.
There just isn’t any room for doubt, anymore and if there ever was, about the communists’ global ambitions.
“Iraq may have wanted to attack us, but they were incapable, until we send a bunch of our people into Iraq for easy attack.”
This is simply not true. It is so obviously not true that it amazes me to see it. If we’re going to talk about capability, then I cannot for the life of me understand what’s so difficult about grasping how easy it was for Saddam to finance, train, facilitate, fund, arm, feed, clothe, and entertain any and every two-bit savage who’d commit his life to smashing some Big American Thing, somehow. September 11 demonstrated real imagination in how to do that, and it is inconceivable to me that he would not have exploited anyone he could who had anything like it in mind.
Rich Paul – “Of course, somebody is certain to point out that Iraq attacked us on 9/11. Sorry, wrong, try again. Iraq was not involved in 9/11. Afghanistan was. ”
Of the 19 hijackers on 9/11, 15 were from Saudi Arabia, 2 were from Egypt, 1 was from the UAE and 1 was from the Lebanon. It was planned by a Pakistani (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) in Hamburg. Others implicated in the attacks were a French person of Moroccan extraction (Zacarias Moussaiou) and a Brit (Richard Reid).
On October 4, 2001 the Taleban government of Afghanistan offered to turn Osama bin Laden over to the Pakistani government. On October 7, they offered to try him in an Islamic court. On October 14, they offered to transmit him directly to the USA, an offer which prompted George Bush’s statement that he did not negotiate with terrorists.
The government of Afghanistan may well have been odious, and may have had links to the people who did, but it did not attack the USA on September 11th, 2001.
Korea was a failure in the sense that people who paid for the war were led to believe that such actions were part of the cataclysm between the free West and the Communist East. If we didn’t fight such wars (including Viet Nam) the world would fall in a domino effect into the arms of communism. So we fought Korea to a stalemate, costing thousands of lives, with a massive subsidy in terms of protection thereafter (it was much easier for S. Korea (and Japan) to thrive economically when they didn’t have to foot the defense bill). Meanwhile N Korea is a belligerent nation rattling its sabers every so often and the aid pours in, no need for old school war for conquest with these fellows, just make a few threats and booty rolls into the national treasury (extorted of course from the taxpayers of the “free” countries). If that’s a victory for the US I don’t want to see defeat.
We also went into Viet Nam which cost tens of thousands of lives which we “lost” and there is no two ways about that. It also plunged us into economic misery for the decade of the 70’s (the oil embargo didn’t help, but the economic decline to pay for the war began before the embargo). And for what? Russia has always been The Bear whether communist or not, and we now trade freely with Communist China. So what was the threat really about that we had to fight so long and hard for – for a loss and a stalemate costing thousands of lives and millions in war costs and transfer subsidy? Thank god we did, or we might have a government that has sought and continues to seek to spend every dollar that I have earned and implement laws that strike at the very root of my value system, rolling back and negating the decisions I have made. I’m certainly glad Russia never came over the polar ice cap and enslaved us.
The saddest part of the whole shebang is that I have no doubts that we could have out and out won a conventional war in Korea and Viet Nam if we had really wanted to. But they were bureaucratic wars. They were public relation moves with muscle. Then one has to question the tactic of leading the masses on that this is the struggle of ideologies and then fight it with a sharp stick and a rock. We fought both wars with our hands tied behind our back. And one comes to realize that our Statists had little interest in fighting the war like it was truly a struggle against evil. Their interests were somewhat different. The Cold War with its few hotspots was a protracted struggle between Statists, and if ours were better it was a relative thing, and by my reckoning the inheritors of the Cold War States have both moved closer together toward a Corporo-fascist model that is much more alike than different. And so “victories” if there have been any, aren’t imputed to those who wish to be free, they were victories for the ever calcifying Statist regimes.
The saddest part of the whole set of quotations is just how ready THE REPUBLICANS are now to embrace Socialist Healthcare. It just shows how far left, and just how centralized and Statist we have become, and I am trying to find where the victories lie.
A last thought, as there are quibblings between various sets of libertarians here against those elsewhere, these concepts are a MINOR watershed in my opinion. There are libertarians who see a great struggle against evil that the wars in Korea and Viet Nam were justified, and others that agree that Communism was evil but fighting it incorrectly merely gave greater powers to our own Statists with little real security in return. Meanwhile there would likely be substantial agreement on almost every other front. There should be little reason to blow the whole thing out of the water.
To say Korea was a victory depends on what you consider American war aims were. The UN resolution that Truman used to send troops to Korea without a congressional declaration of war only concerned protecting South Korea (containment). But the war soon turned into trying to ‘rollback’ communism by invading North Korea. Containment was a success, rollback was a disgraceful failure. Containment however was achieved by October 1950 though. Trying to ‘rollback’ communism extended the war for more than two and a half years. I suppose China may have got involved even if the UN troops had stopped at the 38th parallel. But the invasion of North Korea certainly did bring the Chinese into the war, and made it impossible to conquer North Korea without greatly expanding the war. So the war became a stalemate, and stayed that way. Therefore, if rollback was the aim of the war, the war was a failure.
Rich Paul said: Actually, the “war czar” (America is sure getting czarist these days) wants to re-institute the draft.
No, he doesn’t “want” to do that.
I’ve read the same reports, and read what he actually said, which was not “wanting to re-institute the draft”.
See Here for the transcript of the interview. He says only that the draft is something it “makes sense to consider” when answering a question about the draft posed to him by the interviewer, about the future.
He also says “Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well.” – this is not the rhetoric of someone who “wants” to re-institute the draft. Or at very least, “wanting” to do so is not exposed in his words, if one bothers to read them directly.
I am left with the question of why you’re telling us he does “want” that – is it because you didn’t read the interview (or closely enough)? Because someone else told you he “wanted” that and you didn’t doublecheck? Or because you think we won’t doublecheck?
In charity, I’ll assume one of the first two options until confirmed otherwise.
First of all I AGREE with most of what Cynic said about the Iowa straw poll. After all I said that Ron Paul got a respectable pile of votes (about 9%) – I was not being sarcastic, I meant it.
I do not think that the front runners would have taken votes from Tancredo, not that he has any chance of winning of course. Tancredo basically takes the votes of people who want a radical reduction in the size of the Federal government (far too radical for most Republicans) – but do NOT want to hear about “we gave them the gas” or stuff listing “Korea” in wars the West lost – lose which ever was the exact word.
Rich Paul accused me of misquoting Ron Paul – I have never played that game with anyone in my life. My memory may not be 100% anymore (and my hearing is not 100% either) – but I know what the gist was in this case. After all the man was speaking without any distracting noises in the background, and I was looking at his face as he spoke.
By the way – has Rich Paul (or anyone else) considered how effective Ron Paul might be if he just gave the prepared reply and then SHUT UP.
Then “neo cons” would not get to “misquote” him.
If he had not produced the off the cuff comments in the interview after the Fox debate (no doubt because what someone had fed him just came to the top of his mind – I can not believe he prepared that “we gave them gas” stuff) then I would not have been shocked – and I would not have typed it up (and NEITHER WOULD ANYONE ELSE).
As for A.B.C. debate – my target really was Mike Huckabee (a person I consider dangerious – whereas Ron Paul has no chance of winning at all). I just put in the line from Ron Paul because it was good lead in for a joke about losing the Korean American vote.
If Ron Paul had just said (as I am sure he was supposed to say) “we marched into Iraq and we should march out” and then (if had time to fill up) just listed the cost of the Iraq was in lives and money, I would not have typed anything (how could I, Rich Paul – after all everyone knows that is Ron Paul’s position, there would have been nothing to type).
Clue – the people I consider the bad guys in the race are NOT Ron Paul.
They are people who might WIN and who would (by their own record and statements) INCREASE the size of the Federal government.
In short the bad guys (as opposed to the useless guys or whatever) are Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee (it says a lot about the state of the Republican party that they came in first and second).
“As a British guy you should not stick your nose in at all” (someone is bound to say it) – as I have been “sticking my nose in” since the election of 1980 it is a bit late to stop now.
Besides which British people have been involved in all sorts of things over the decades – and if we were good enough for those things…..
Lastly Rich Paul’s point about not “siding with” Nazi Germany and so on.
O.K. “my bad” (as the Californians say). You want to stay neutral.
But the United States could not have survived as a semifree island in a sea of world tyranny – it just would not have worked. The world tyranny (whichever tyranny came out on top) would have used the resources of the world to crush the United States – long before any economic problems caused the world tyranny to collapse.
Nor would the world then return to, semi, freedom – no it would have been the “long night” (civilizations have died before and they do not just jump up again when what killed them goes away).
And, although I thought the Iraq war was a mistake and still think so (that is not the same thing as thinking the West can just “march out”), “stop the world I want to get off” will not generally work now either.
My longer comment will turn up in due time. But I missed out one of Billy Beck’s points.
Yes I have read “Mao: The Untold Story” and it is a great work.
It is not written by libertarians (or even conservatives), but, in a way, that makes it stronger.
It is written by a Chinese lady (the author of “Wild Swans”) and her Western liberal husband trying to honestly relate the history one of the great evils of the world.
Well, it looks like I overstated the statement of the czar. Mea culpa.
America gains very considerable benefits from trading with South Korea today. I don’t know if these benefits justiry having fought a war fifty years ago, but they should be mentioned.
South Korea is a country that largely through its own efforts went from being extremely poor to being a modern, rich, technologically sophisticated industrial country in about 40 years. It did so in a manner that is rather too authoritarian for my taste, and the government was (and still is) much more interventionist in the economy than I approve of. (I much prefer what might be described as the “Hong Kong option”, although that is not actually free market enough for me either).
However, these are minor quibbles. As an example of how development can occur, and merely as a demonstration that development can occur, South Korea is truly inspiring. Disregarding for a moment the benefits to the South Koreans themselves, I am happy that the world has this example simply because of the possibilities it demonstrates. If America did not fight the war, the modern South Korean economy would not exist, and the world would be a worse place for this. For this reason I am extremely glad that America chose to fight the Korean war.
‘I do not think that the front runners would have taken votes from Tancredo, not that he has any chance of winning of course. Tancredo basically takes the votes of people who want a radical reduction in the size of the Federal government.’
Tancredo gets the support of those that are really anti-immigrant. He has them in the bag. And Iowa is receptive to such a message, even if it is only really because the illegals threaten all that fat pork that the Iowa yokels gorge on. But the ‘nuke Mecca’ talk suggests he’s out to get the votes of those who want a ‘tough guy’ president. Giuliani and McCain, with all their belligerent rhetoric could probably have taken some votes from Tancredo. Admittedly, Tancredo has the Ann Coulter psychopath vote, because I doubt even Giuliani would ever consider nuking Mecca.
Actually Ron Paul is as “anti immigrant” as Tom Tancredo is. And for the same reason – the government spending the illegals lead to.
As for Ann Coulter (“psychopath” oh come on, that is not being cynical that is going along with establishment propaganda) the lady does not support Tancredo.
Paul, like the average Republican, is anti-illegal immigrant. Tancredo is more extreme. He wants a moratorium on all immigration- legal or illegal.
And by ‘the Ann Coulter psychopath vote’, I meant the kind of people who agree with her lunatic ideas on the Middle East (ones that even National Review thought were so extreme that they had to get rid of her) and would think dropping a nuclear bomb on Mecca would be a good idea.
I’m still not convinced that, had we not fought in Korea, that there would be a single, Communist, Korea. I see three possibilities:
1) A single, Communist, Korea
2) A single, Free, Former Communist, Korea
3) A divided Korea, as we now have.
I think that it is unlikely that the South would have been able to retake the North, but history makes funny turns, and it is not impossible.
There is also the question of what would have happened if we had prevented the North from winning the civil war in Korea, but then left, instead of invading the North. Note that until we invaded the North, China was not (openly) involved, at our losses were pretty light.
Considering that without the US, they would have been treading salt water, very unlikely indeed.
I am reminded of Ayn Rand, when she wrote about the people who said “this freedom thing is very idealistic, but we need practical solutions”. The built in assumption is that the more evil a thing is, the more successful it will be. I believe the opposite to be true.
I believe that the evil of Communism and the impracticality of Communism are inseparable parts of the whole. They are the nature of the beast. Left to it’s own devices Communism will destroy itself.
The same is true of Socialism, including the subset National Socialism. The Nazis had looted the unpopular groups of their own country, where they were able to stir up a fervor. They were less successful in France. They might have been able to conquer territory, but they would not have been able to hold it, because nobody outside of Germany was likely to be converted to a philosophy that Aryans were superior to them.
But of course, it doesn’t much matter to me from an American public policy point of view, because they declared war on us, so therefore, we destroyed them. I have no problem with this.
WWI was much less clearcut. And had we stayed out of WWI, there might well not have been a WWII. But Wilson had to “spread democracy in the middle east” … oh, wait, that was Bush … Wilson was “making the world safe for democracy”. I get the various stages of the perpetual war for perpetual peace mixed up sometimes. They’re all so similar.
Without US (and Commonwealth) support South Korea would have been fucked and Rich Paul’s option (1) would have come to pass. The holding of the very small Pusan perimeter was only possible because of the actions of the USAF based in Japan supporting the lads on the ground. Inchon was a triumph but MacArthur ballsed it up by straying too close to the Chinese border and bringing Mao’s hordes into play. So, I guess it’s time for one of my favourite US presidential quotes:
I didn’t fire MacArthur because he was a dumb son of a bitch, though he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was half to two thirds of them would be in jail.
– Harry S Truman
If we hadn’t (ultimately) held the line in Korea then I wouldn’t have a Samsung vacuum cleaner that sucks like a Bangkok ladyboy on whizz and a population roughly equivalent to these dear islands would be living in the Dear Leader’s Juche paradise rather than suffering terribly from being oppressed by capitalist decadence.
MiG-train inbound, 3 o’clock, angels 38.
Actually I probably preferred SEAD and armed recon (just love those rockets) in an F-80 (beautiful handling and none of that swept-wing tip-stall nonsense). Though I suppose I also loved dueling with MiGs in the stratosphere in my custom skinned Sabre – “Julie’s Jet” – named and carrying the nose art for a certain French actress.
Nick (leader Viper Flight, rtd, virtual).
Rich Paul
You know nothing about Korean war – please stop writing about it.
Cynic.
The context of the “nuke Mecca” comment was a question about an atomic attack on the United States.
Of course the comment was light hearted (and very dumb – because one does not make light hearted comments about nuking things), but if the attack could be proved to have been directed from Mecca……
After all Mecca has been destoyed before (by various factions of Muslims) – even the rock itself is a reconstruction (hint, never mention any of this to a Muslim).
And, of course, there was heavy fighting in Mecca as recently as 1979 (between Muslims and Muslims) and hundreds of Muslims are trampled to death in Mecca every other year, for example when some people get over excited at the stoning ceremony (it is not people who have stones thrown at them – it is an area which represents satan, but there are vast numbers of people in a small area, so it does not take many people to lose control of themselves for everything to go wrong).
It depends on how one views things.
Let us say the interpretation of Islam that holds that all nonMuslims should be exterminated or enslaved became the mainstream view (both among the Sunni a and the Shia) then destroying the main place of the enemy could be argued for – especially if it was done when millions of the most devout Muslims were completing the haj. Of course (as things now stand) I can think of no quicker way of MAKING this the mainstream interpretation of Islam than to nuke Mecca (so, yes, nuking Mecca would be very silly).
However, nothing much is done now.
For example, 80,000 Muslims who wish to restore the Calphate (and these are very much the sort of of Muslims that take hold the above interpretation of Islam) recently met in Jakarta (chatting happily about future World Trade Centre and Bali bomb type attacks) and – well nothing was done at all.
“But you could not just have taken out the conference centre” – no doubt you are correct (people should not be killed for their words – only for their deeds).
But I was put in mind of a Nurenburg rally.
Bombing a Nurenburg rally before 1939 would clearly have been wrong – but after the war started?
Yes, I know, that would have been wrong as well (part of the whole terror bombing policy concerning Germany – which, like so many others, I have written in opposition to). A lot of people went to the rallies because they liked the colours and the music, or because their friends were going – and so on.
Huh? The best argument for the USA staying out of WWI was that they were actually irrelevant to the outcome as the Allies were going to win regardless, it just might have taken slightly longer. And US involvement had very little to do with the causes of WWII in Europe.
Moreover, the USA did not destroy Nazi Germany for daring to attack it, the Communist Soviet Union destroyed Nazi Germany, with the Western Allies in very much a supporting role.
I do not agree that the Allies would have won the First World War without American support.
In 1917 Russia was knocked out of the war and Italy could not (without support) even hold its own against Austro-Hungary (Serbia and and Romania having already been knocked out).
On the Western Front, Britain and France could barely hold their own against Germany.
Without American support the best that could be hoped for would have been a stalemate (with the Germans being supplied with food and raw materials from the east – with Russia having been knocked out) and a compromise peace.
Alternatively the Germans might have managed to win on the Western front.
Whether a compromise peace or even an Imperial German victory would have been better than what really happened is a moot point. Not one I am going to debate here.
Rich Paul made a point about evil destroying itself, for example because socialism is a bad economic system it would have collapsed whatever the United States did.
Perhaps in the long term Rich Paul – but the short term is what matters in conflict.
Economic collapse would not help a world where civil society had already been destroyed – and NO civil society does not always return fast (sometimes there is chaos and horror for centuries).
“Evil is not strong” (or whatever it was) – yes it is, at force and fear. If a man does not understand the power of evil he will not the first thing about war or serious conflict. kindess and gentleness are helpless at such times.
I do not know whether Ayn Rand thought that being nice and obeying the nonaggression principle could win wars and other conflicts (although I doubt that the lady did) but if Ayn Rand thought that she was mistaken.
Actually as Ayn Rand was in Russia at the time of the Civil War I can not believe that Rand believed what Rich Paul says the lady did.
Rand objected to the Whites not believing in anything (actually they did – but different Whites believed different things, it was a mess), the lady did not think they could have won if they had been more soft and kindly (tried to sell the Reds stuff and engage in civil interaction with them, non aggression principle style).
It was never violence that Ayn Rand objected to – it was violence without any set of principles (for example what is one fighting FOR – not just AGAINST). “The Reds were fighting for plunder and rule by terror, the Whites were fighting for nothing – the Reds won” (that I do remember Ayn Rand saying (the lady thought it was true in Vietnam as well as Russia).
War is about violence, savage pittyless violence. Kill or be killed.
A side that says “we will not be evil” is a side that says “we agree to be exterminated”.
Thinkers like Murry Rothbard should not be followed in time of war or serious conflict.
I feel that America always wants to save the world but yet we can’t even save ourselves. We have as many poor people as a third world country does. Who are we to decide whats wrong and whats right for other countries to do. Lets stay out of people’s bussiness specially if they dont want our help. Ok Bush
Jokonda
My name is not Bush – it is Paul Marks. Clue – I am not exactly a fan of no-child-left-behind or the medicare extention (I was not in favour of going into Iraq in 2003 either).
Also the main point of my post was to attack a stupid (or dishonest – or both) Republican for what he said about HEALTH CARE (not Iraq).
Still I will reply to what you have said.
Firstly you would have been more effective if you had not said the bit about “not wanting our help” – both the democratically elected government of Iraq and the democratically elected government of Afghanistan could tell the Western forces to go tomorrow (and they would). What you should have said is “so what that they want our help – that does not mean that yet more Western lives and taxpayers money should be tossed down these holes”.
As for the bit on the American “poor” – the idea that yet more welfare money would have been given to these obese people if had not been for Iraq, is a point in FAVOUR not AGAINST the Iraq operation. It lends strength to the argument that “if the government had not wasted the taxpayers money in Iraq they would have wasted in some other way – they would not have stopped taking the money from the taxpayers”.