“America is fighting the War on Terrorism for one reason: to Secure the American Homeland, whatever it takes. If that takes Empire, fine.”
Trent Telenko
I hope that the US destroys the North Korean Communist regime by the time I’ve posted this text. If there is a legitimate nuclear target anywhere on Earth right now, the North Korean plutonium refinery has to be it.
I also would give a cheer if Saddam Hussein were to end up dead in a traffic accident, or choke on caviar, or find breathing under a pillow difficult, or take a cruise missile up his fundament.
And I am crtainly not one of those people who hopes that lots of American troops die in Iraq over the next few months.
I fear that the British military capability is over-stretched and less effective than its champions would like us to believe. For this reason I am wary of jingoistic talk in London. I would prefer to hear about orders for a decent rifle, a decent tank, a fighter that’s actually operational and reassurance that the anti-chemical warfare suits work.
I also question the double talk about nukes in Iraq when the good reasons for toppling/killing Saddam are…
- he’s a national socialist tyrant
- he’s allegedly one of Al-Qaeda’s main financial and logistical backers.
I’m told there is evidence to back up this claim, so why the red herrings?
BUT, the comment which opens this posting worries me. First it is obvious that if President Bush were seriously taking this line (I don’t think he is, but Mr Telenko may know better), then Europe had better do a deal with the fundamentalists, because America is clearly prepared to sacrifice allies as part of “whatever it takes”, it has the ring of the Yalta betrayal about it. The history of Japan from 1902 to 1945 and its deteriorating relations with the British and Americans is a nasty precedent.
Second “if that takes empire, fine” is precisely the scenario in which libertarians should not (and many will not) support the US. Waco was not a crime because Americans were killed, September 11th would have been a crime if the only victims had been Latino office cleaners. “Homeland” is a very nasty term to the four thousand seven hundred million people who don’t have a US passport or a Green Card. If the War on Terrorism is about protecting the US at the expense of the rest of the world, we’ve got a new Iron Curtain coming down, this time in front of the Statue of Liberty.
I really didn’t expect my warnings about the long-term temptation of absolute power to be vindicated so quickly.
Yes but I do not think most Americans actually think that. As many if not more are profoundly isolationistic… and Trent after all is not a member of George Bush’s administration.
Americans tend to hang around in the far-flung places they have had the obligation to subdue just about as long as it takes for said location to get back up and running in some kind of decent fashion, no longer, for the same American public quickly finds other uses for the money it takes to support that operation.
Hence: No Empire !!
Homeland Security has an especially ominous ring to it considering how effective the FBI and CIA were in enforcing laws that were already in place prior to 9/11. The more this unravels the more it looks like preventative maintainence was specifically diverted because of our “good” friends in oil producing areas.
I haven’t met, or spoken with anyone who likes the sound of “Homeland Security”, much less the prying eyes and ears THEY intend to utilize. TIPS was particularly onerous to everyone I know.
Perry is correct. Most Americans would be perfectly happy to keep to the USA if our enemies would simply leave us alone. I can’t remember Trent’s original statement, but, if by ’empire’ he means unilateral self defense when necessary, he’s correct. It seems to me that terms such as ‘imperial’ and ’empire’ are now being over-used (and misapplied) on a regular basis.
‘ “Homeland” is a very nasty term to the four thousand seven hundred million people who don’t have a US passport or a Green Card. ‘
Are you suggesting that our first concern should not be national self defense within the US?
There is no such thing as a legitimate nuclear target, especially not when it includes the death of innocent civilians. As a libertarian who has been given the opportunity and privilege to visit North Korea twice, I would not be willing to sacrifice the life of any one of all the nice and well intending North Koreans that I have met. Unfortunately they are stuck in a horrible system with no freedom of speech and a totally planned economy, but that doesn’t make them less innocent.
What the people of North Korea need is less, not more, aggression from the US. A sound reaction to the nuclear threat is to channel off the immediate aid to the country, not by sending off a nuclear bomb or attacking the country in any other way. Free trade and a dynamic global demand did much more for the liberty we today see in Vietnam than the thousands and thousands of lives that were sacrificed during the Vietnam War.
There is another simple reason for taking out Saddam Hussein. The job was left half fininished a decade ago, and it was hoped that sanctions and the like would lead to Saddam eventually falling. Instead, we have sanctions that are being used as an grievance by Saddam and America’s enemies everywhere. Look at all the children who are starving and/or without medical care because of the sanctions applied by those nasty Americans. Such suffering is in fact largely caused by Saddam Hussein, but a great many Arabs feel sympathy for the argument (and whatever the cause, I feel plenty of sympathy suffering Iraqis, and I think it is vile that the cradle of civilization is now the place it is). Al Qaeda uses it in its training videos. The situation with sanctions is an ongoing sore to the Arab world, and one that needs to be removed.
N. Korea and Iraq are very different as foes.
N. Korea already has nuclear weapons and the missiles to drop them on Seoul and Tokyo as well as an artillery able to reach Seoul already in place.
N. Korea is a haggard, lunatic regime left over from cold war communism. It, like Cuba, is the last of its kind since even China is now moving to a market economy though maintaining political control.
Iraq is still trying to develop armaments comparable to those of N. Korea and buys them at present in small numbers.
Iraq is part of a whole region inflamed with Islamism, the new communism in effect.
The similarities between N. Korea and Iraq are that both communism and Islamism find their most susceptible hosts in partially westernized populations. Each was lead, and betrayed, by partially westernized elites educated by western ‘missionaries’ themselves infected with messianic philosophies devoid of practical insight. The result in each case was a generation of emotional and intellectual cripples who gathered misfits and thugs, the rejects of their own societies, and mounted coups. In each case the general population suffers. When those regimes are toppled, as in former Soviet satellites and as in Afghanistan, there is dancing in the street.
A studied response to N. Korea will be very different from the response to Iraq though they are both the result of the slow and painful transition of feudal societies to modernity since they are at different stages of the transition.
N. Korea’s natural allies, the Russians and the Chinese, are more advanced and less obstreperous than in the past. Dithering and diplomacy with N. Korea is more sensible since they are alone and in decline.
Dithering and diplomacy are just what Islamism needs to grow stronger. They have a valuable commodity with which to buy technology, and a growing population. Europe is in transition to becoming Islamist too since they are too tired and complacent to even breed to replace themselves. This demographic time bomb is nearing detonation with the average age increasing and fertility declining. Soon Europe will be utterly dependent on the vigorous loins of Islamic women to produce the workforce to support doddering European pensioners. A tipping point will be reached where the Islamists free the chocks on the European wheelchair and push them down the stairs.
Technology is advancing at an increasingly accelerated pace. Nano, bio and computer technologies are predicted by many to following variants of “Moore’s Law” of increasing power. If so, the next couple of decades may see increasingly sophisticated armaments in the developed world as well as the trends noted above for Europe and the Islamic world. India and China, as well as the Americas and perhaps Australia, will watch solemnly as Europe implodes and Islamism rises.
American empire is not a sensible concern for the coming decades. There simply aren’t any places on the globe worth dominating, they would cost more than they are worth. They are not even worth defending since they seem determined to destroy themselves. Containment and quarantine seem more useful, a delaying tactic in hopes of rapid technological advancement that might make other options feasible.
Fabian, don’t tell me you are actually buying the North Korean line about “U.S. aggression.” To do so is an act of willful blindness.
Also, whatever happens to the North Korean citizenry is purely the responsibility of their government. If the NK government doesn’t want to risk the lives of their citizens, then they shouldn’t pursue a nuclear program. We don’t even have to bomb them to kill vast numbers of relatively innocent North Koreans–we simply have to stop sending them food.
NK is dangerous–trying nuclear blackmail on the U.S. after we made a good-faith agreement is a terrible idea.
“‘Homeland’ is a very nasty term to the four thousand seven hundred million people who don’t have a US passport or a Green Card.”
I don’t have a U.S. passport or Green Card, and it isn’t very nasty to me. Vaguely creepy, but not very nasty.
I suggest that readers of Samizdata go to this link:
http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/default.asp
Then read the following four articles in this order:
The Giants of Flight 93
Fall 2002
http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/articles/20021017.asp
Two American Traditions in the War On Terror
Fall 2002
http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/articles/20021028.asp
The Bush Administration and American Nationalism
Fall 2002
http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/articles/20021120.asp
The World’s Coming Encounter With Andrew Jackson
Fall 2002
http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/articles/20021128.asp
These are the “money paragraphs” from the last article in the series as far as Samizdata is concerned:
“The American people won’t tolerate being attacked at home by foreign terrorists. This is THE dominant factor in the war against terror. Americans’ definition of victory here is security from attack at home, which even the Democratic Party does not understand, let alone foreigners. This war began when we were attacked at home and will end when further danger of that has passed. We’re fighting for our security at home, not to create a better world elsewhere, but the latter is all the Democratic Party proposes.”
And
“Europe’s peril arises from different issues. They do not seem to have noticed that America’s new ”National Security Strategy” – http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html – entails pre-emptive regime change there, including the EU’s, albeit by peaceful means. Governments inhibiting Europe’s “return to strong economic growth” threaten “vital” “U.S. national security interests”. Such blunt statements by a hyperpower are ominous.
That document is a useful guide to what is coming – elimination of terrorist regimes with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in order of threat to America, then elimination of terrorist regimes, then elimination of failing/shaky states possessing WMD if they won’t give those up, elimination of terrorist-supporting regimes (including the EU’s, though the Bush Administration won’t admit this), and finally elimination of such factors fostering terrorism as is feasible, which might include the mere existence of otherwise acceptably behaved tyrannical regimes of Islamic countries. This is a tall order, even for the U.S., and questions are properly raised about American ability and willingness to see this through.
Which brings us back to the American people. Failure to defeat terrorism means further attacks at home, so lack of resolve is not an issue. Ditto for ability. Americans in general, particularly their Jacksonian element, tend to believe in using all available force when involved in a serious war, and being attacked at home qualifies as one. Walter Russell Mead said in Special Providence: “The only reason Jacksonian opinion has ever accepted not to use nuclear weapons is the prospect of retaliation.”
The United States will use whatever means are necessary to win the war against terror, up to and including genocide against whole countries and peoples. See the Autumn 1997 article by Polmar & Allen in Military History Quarterly for what would have happened to Japan had it not surrendered in 1945. The American people, unlike those of Europe and Israel, have a very tribal attitude towards enemy civilian casualties in a major war. Those concerned about fanaticism by foreign peoples are ignorant of American history and power. Japan was fanatical. A clash of civilizations involving the United States would be short, brutal and totally one-sided – significant portions of Asia and North Africa might be reduced to subsisdence-level agriculture and population levels.”
Perry de Havilland, I don’t have to be a member of the Bush Administration to know what its policies are.
Please read the text at the following link regards American security and foreign policy:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html
It makes very clear that candidates for “regime change” and “elimination” include any government or non-government entities that are supportive of terrorism.
The E.U.’s financial support of the “non-terrorist social services wing” of Hamas counts as “terrorist supporting” in the American ledger.
So does the Saudi support of the world wide madrassas system of education.
bob in the hills,
The reason “Homeland Security” was chosen as the name by the Bush Administration was because “Civil Defense” was to politically incorrect among Cold War era Democrats to be acceptable and all the other proposed department names sounded worse.
“There is no such thing as a legitimate nuclear target, especially not when it includes the death of innocent civilians.”
Horse shit.
Sometimes nuclear attacks are necessary to break the will of fanatical opponents. That was historically the case with Japan.
And it is most especially the case when the alternative to nukes was worse. As was also the case with Japan.
This quote was from Holsinger’s “The World’s Coming Encounter With Andrew Jackson” article — _See the Autumn 1997 article by Polmar & Allen in Military History Quarterly for what would have happened to Japan had it not surrendered in 1945._
When you search for it. (Use the term “When a Democracy chose Genocide” over on strategypage.com search engine) You find that the plan in question called for the use of _500,000 TONS_ of chemical agents by B-29 as a preliminary bombardment of Japan prior to Operations Coronet and Olympic.
This was the gassing of the entire Japanese urban population from the air like bugs.
And that was solely the strategic air campaign.
The bombardment of beach fortifications, lines of communication and military staging areas was in addition to that and was the province of US Army artillery, naval gunfire and USAAF and USN tactical air power.
This would have added 10-20% chemical munitions to the initial bombardment.
Drat, the article Tom Holsinger wrote on this has scrolled off Strategypage.com.
The following is a major clip of the article in question. I saved it for my files in May 2002 from Strategypage.com.
The original Polmar article spoke of 500,000 tons of chemical munitions being shipped to the Pacific theater in late 1945 to support the B-29 campaign. It seems I confused that number with the 56,000 ton preliminary strategic bombardment number Holsinger quotes below. Sorry about that.
“When A Democracy Chose Genocide
The United States government decided on June 18, 1945, to commit genocide on Japan with poison gas if its government did not surrender after the nuclear attacks approved in the same June 18 meeting. This was discovered by military historians Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen while researching a book on the end of the war in the Pacific. Their discovery came too late for inclusion in the book, so they published it instead in the Autumn 1997 issue of Military History Quarterly.
Polmar & Allen ran across references to this meeting in their research and put in a Freedom of Information Act request for related documents. Eventually they received, too late for use in their book, a copy of a document labeled “A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic.” The word “retaliatory” was PENCILED in between the words “possible” and “use”.
Apparently there were only five of these documents circulated during World War Two. The document was requested by the Chemical Corps for historical study in 1947. In an attempt to “redact” history, another document was issued to change all the copies to emphasize retaliatory use rather than the reality of the US planning to use it offensively in support of the invasion of Japan.
The plan called for US heavy bombers to drop 56,583 tons of poison gas on Japanese cities in the 15 days before the invasion of Kyushu, then another 23,935 tons every 30 days thereafter. Tactical air support would drop more on troop concentrations.
The targets of the strategic bombing campaign were Japanese civilians in cities. Chemical Corps casualty estimates for this attack plan were five million dead with another five million injured. This was our backup to nuking Japan into surrender. If the A-bombs didn’t work, we were going to gas the Japanese people from the air like bugs, and keep doing so until Japanese resistance ended or all the Japanese were dead.
Genocide is defined by treaty as the murder of a large number of people of an identifiable group, generally a nationality or religion, which number comprises an appreciable percentage of the total group. Five million dead is 6.4% of then 78 million people in the Japanese Home Islands, so this proposed gas attack would certainly have qualified as genocide.
What brought the United States government to that decision was the prospective casualties of a prolonged ground conquest of Japan against suicidal resistance, after Japanese Kamikaze attacks and suicidal ground resistance elsewhere had thoroughly dehumanized them to us.
The American people certainly would have supported such tactics at the time, especially as Japanese Imperial General Headquarters issued orders a month later, provided to us courtesy of code-breaking (MAGIC), to murder all Allied prisoners of war, all interned Allied civilians, and all other Allied civilians Japanese forces could catch in occupied China, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Malaya, etc., starting with the impending British invasion of Malaya in late September 1945. The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal. They’d probably have killed at least an additional 50 million people, more than had died in all of World War Two to that point, before Allied armies could eliminate Japanese forces overseas.
The horror would not have stopped there. An estimated ONE THIRD of the Japanese people (25-30 million) would have died of starvation, disease, poison gas and conventional weapons during a prolonged ground conquest of Japan. The Japanese Army planned on locking up the Emperor, seizing power and fighting to the bitter end once the US invasion started. Thank God for the atom bomb – killing 150,000 – 200,000 Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved 75-80 million lives. One of whom would have been the writer’s father, an infantry lieutenant who survived Okinawa.
So the United States has within living memory made a decision to commit genocide on a whole people as a matter of state policy. We didn’t have to do it because the Japanese Emperor knew we’d do it.”
/snippet.
Fabian’s Vietnam analogy is a good one. The North Korean State is moribund. It will expire of natural causes just like all the other stalinist regimes in the world. The best thing to do is trade with it, not bomb it.
Cydonia
Human life is holy. It is something that we do not have the right to take away, unless we are acting in self-defense. In order to refer to horseshit, as Trent Telenko did, when debating the possible “death of innocent civilians” in North Korea, I assume one either has to hold a very pragmatic view of human life or be a die hard utilitarian (probably both).
There have already been some major economic reforms in North Korea during the past six months. Unfortunately, these measures have been quite similar to what we would call a Keynesian stimulation of the aggregate demand, with costly inflationary effects upon the economy. Nevertheless, it seems as if there actually is an understanding among the leaders for the need of economic reform. During the past few years the foreign trade has been growing, and the citizens have been allowed to trade with one another on local farm markets. And perhaps even more important, foreigners (such as I) have been allowed to lecture in economics, law, etc. I think these are the first signs of an eventual transition.
There are some very good, and nearby, examples of turning a planned economy into a market economy. By deregulating the pricing system of rice and by simultaneously altering land tenure arrangements, the Vietnamese government was able to reverse the food deficit in the 1990’s, moving from being a net importer of rice to being a net exporter of some 1.5 million tons of rice. Examples, such as this, of letting the rice price rise freely and by providing incentives for farmers to increase their yields, could very well influence the North Korean government. This is especially true at a time when approximately a third of the population is directly fed by international food aid from organizations such as UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program, and the Red Cross.
I think the worst thing the United Stated could do for the security of the world at this moment is to provide dictators, such as Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein, with evidence of the United States being an aggressive country. And war clearly is an act of aggression.
Fabian Wallen said:
>Human life is holy. It is something that we do not
>have the right to take away, unless we are acting
>in self-defense. In order to refer to horseshit, as
>Trent Telenko did, when debating the
>possible “death of innocent civilians” in North
>Korea, I assume one either has to hold a very
>pragmatic view of human life or be a die hard
>utilitarian (probably both).
Mixing politics and religion is always a bad idea.
Your fuzzy headed denial of reality on this is not unlike that which resulted in 9/11. There are large numbers of people who are better off dead and who use innocent hostages to avoid retaliation.
You cannot be deterred from acting on account of the lives of innocents.
This was the choice Putin faces in his Moscow theater hostage crisis. He made the right call because he managed to save _some_ of the innocents. Triage is never pretty, but it is often necessary in an imperfect world.
Nation-States cannot play by the rules of individuals. Especially when they are dealing with enemy cultures/peoples that have gone psychotic and want to kill them.
The firebombing and nuking of Japanese cities plus the Russian invasion of Manchuria were necessary preconditions in order for the Japanese Emperor to enforce surrender on the IJA.
The firebombing of German cities by Bomber Harris and the US Army Air Corp, and the death of two million German refugees fleeing the Russian Army in the winter of 1945 were necessary for pacifism to take root in modern Germany.
Coherent and cohesive cultures like Germany and Japan’s in WW2 did not require more than 10% of their population’s dead to attain a reality adjustment to the cultural norms.
Psychotic Barbarian cultures require you to kill at least half of the population to get the survivors attention. Example: The pacifist Bahia faith in Islam today is the decedents of the hassassins — the Assassins — that survived the pursuit of the Mongols.
That fate is what seems to be coming for the Palestinians. It is only the fact that doing so would wound the self-image of the Jewish state that has precluded it to date.
Americans would not put up with what Israelis have