I'll Take "Idiot Pols" for $1,000, Alex ...

"Don't forget to phrase your response in the form of a question, Tom."

"Sure, Alex ... are America's idiot pols really stupid enough to start yet a third Asian land war, after losing two in the last decade, and this time with a country that counts Russia, China and India as allies, and that's three times as populous and more militarily advanced than the other two countries that have recently made the US their bitch?"

Despite the near-constant drumbeat and the wars and rumors of wars over the last few years, I've tended to discount the proposition that anyone could be that stupid. But I'm beginning to wonder. So:

I haven't found an organized event in St. Louis to attend, but I aim to misbehave for peace tomorrow, one way or another, even if it's all by my lonesome. Pray goest thou and do likewise.

No War, No Sanctions, No Intervention, No Assassinations

Image via Wikipedia

Clear, simple, to the point. A nice, simple set of values that all kinds of people should be able to get behind.

It's the platform, manifesto, talking points, everything of No War on Iran: National Day of Action, February 4th.

A lot of anti-war activities get bogged down in lengthy laundry lists of talking points and arguments from the "top," before they ever reach the larger numbers of people they're supposed to recruit or inflluence. They end up having something for everyone to disagree with.

This thing leaves everyone free to make their own arguments and not have to answer for someone else's stupid ideas. No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations. Anything else you want, bring yourself.

"Radical anarchist KN@PPSTER" and "sane policy advocate KN@PPSTER" are both down with the four points, for different but not really incompatible reasons.

From a policy standpoint, screwing with Iran is the silliest damn idea I've heard in a decade characterized by silly ideas.

The US has fought and lost two full-blown wars in Asia (and smaller ones in Asia and elsewhere) over the last ten years, draining its treasury and degrading its military (in both the moral and practical senses).

Launching a third major war, against an opponent three times as populous, with much greater regional support, and much more militarily advanced than either Iraq or Afghanistan ... well, if you were looking for  proof that the assorted War Colleges of the US armed forces have "special needs" classes, just check out the number of different crayon colors used in drafting that contingency plan.

Image via WikipediaFrom an anarchist standpoint, war (and preparation for war) is one of the primary instruments which the political class of every country, and their "transnational" partners, use to savage the freedoms and empty the pocketbooks of their subjects for their own benefit. 99% of the time, that's its only purpose. The other 1% of the time is when one particular clique of the political class is in real existential danger from another clique or cliques, and wants their subjects to bail them out.

So, get back to me if the war you're selling is revolutionary class struggle, productive (us) vs. political (them). Otherwise, I'm not buying. And this ain't that.

But that's all just me. I'm sure you have your own reasons. On February 4th, let's set those other reasons aside and stand together for no war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations.

Regarding "rising tensions in the Gulf"

Pearl of wisdom from a Union private crossing the Rappahannock into Fredericksburg, December 1862:

Shit! They want us to get in. Getting out won't be quite so smart and easy. You'll see.

Apparently Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative hasn't worked its way into US naval doctrine yet.

What Carly Fiorina can do for America

Carly Fiorina is running for US Senate in California. She's also the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and she's facing questions about the sale of HP printers and such in Iran.

These questions are being spun as potentially damaging to her campaign, and maybe they are. But there's one thing Carly Fiorina could say right now that would do America a lot of good, and it would go something like this:

You're damn right HP worked to find legal ways to work around the idiotic US embargo of Iran. Selling HP products in Iran is a good thing.

It's good for the company, good for the company's shareholders and good for the company's employees because it produces a profit and creates jobs.

It's good for our American customers because the more units we produce, the lower the unit cost, and therefore the price, goes.

It's good for our Iranian customers because we can offer them a better product at a better price than other companies can.

And it's good for America because the single best way to turn enemies into friends is to trade with them.

Embargoes don't work. They never have worked and they're not going to start working now, at least not if the objective is peaceful relations among people and nations. Sooner or later, as Bastiat reminds us, if goods don't cross borders then armies will.

Under my leadership, Hewlett-Packard went to great lengths, at great expense, to ensure that it remained in compliance with the letter of US law regarding export of our products. As to the wretched, un-American spirit of that law, I offer no apologies for repudiating it in thought and practice at every opportunity.

Such a statement might scuttle her Senate aspirations. Or it might not. Either way, it's something that needs to be said, and to be effective it will take someone like Carly Fiorina to say it.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Los Angeles Times:

Despite a violent crackdown on their protests and the closing off of legal channels to challenge a disputed election, opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went on the offensive today, decrying his government as "illegitimate" and vowing to continue their fight to have the vote annulled.

Jerusalem Post:
(h/t Memeorandum)

As the Iranian authorities warned the opposition on Tuesday that they would tolerate no further protests over the disputed June 12 presidential elections, a report emerged of the hangings of six supporters of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Speaking after Iran's top legislative body upheld the election victory of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sources in Iran told this reporter in a telephone interview that the hangings took place in the holy city of Mashhad on Monday. There was no independent confirmation of the report.

Without corroboration, I have to take Israeli reportage on Iranian politics with a grain of salt, but not too much salt -- Iran's clerical regime has a long history of politically motivated murder, so this wouldn't be exceptional in any way.

It's too late for surrender -- it's been too late for that since the minute the protests began. This thing is ugly, and it's going to stay ugly because ugly is the only language the mullahs understand. Better ugly in the streets, where some good might come of it, than behind closed doors in the regime's torture cellars. The choice is uprising in earnest or surrender without expectation of quarter.

Seize the day, and good luck.

Meanwhile, back at the A-Jad ranch ...

The demonstrators haven't given up.



I don't speak Farsi, but allegedly the chant is "death to dictators." I'm puzzled as to how these people are able to walk ... every one of them has NBA regulation size balls to still be out on the streets facing down the regime.

Win or lose -- and whether or not what they win turns out to worth a plug nickel -- I find it impossible not to stand awed by the courage on display.

In other news: Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and Billy Mays are still dead.

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit, via memeorandum.

Various and sundry thoughts on Iran

Some agreement, some disagreement with Eric Dondero:

I agree with Eric that there's a degree to which the libertarian movement is "AWOL" on Iran. Or, more to the point, the libertarian movement is pre-occupied with the prospect of US intervention in Iran, and not paying enough attention to Iran itself.

They're dying in the streets over there, folks, and what they're dying for is some version of the idea of freedom. We could argue all day over whether that version would pass Rand/Rothbard muster, but I don't think that's particularly relevant. The impulse is there, the flame is lit, and that flame deserves to be fed and fanned, not ignored or scoffed at or, especially, snuffed out.

I'm trying to be a consistent libertarian here.

One the one hand, I don't support foreign military interventionism by governments (which means that I favor the Libertarian Party, which deals in that arena, either keeping its organizational mouth shut or coming out against intervention).

By the same logic, though, I don't recognize national borders as legitimate barriers which should prevent individuals (or non-state organizations) from supporting struggles for freedom anywhere, any time, by any moral means, even if only by way of saying "we're with you."

Of course, perhaps we can do more than that. There may be some small effect from the whole "green your Twitter pic, change your time zone" stuff. Maybe we can smuggle some pro-freedom propaganda into the mix over there. Hell ... I suppose an Abraham Lincoln Brigade type project (perhaps renamed to preempt paleo conniptions) isn't entirely out of the question.

Sadly, I have to disagree with Eric on his description of this as a "fall of the Berlin Wall" moment. I suspect it's going to look a lot more like a "massacre at Tiananmen Square" moment. All the more reason to feed the flame now -- perhaps it can be kept alive, even at a slow burn, instead of being snuffed out entirely.

This is what theocracy looks like

Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated. -- Thomas Paine

Say it with me one more time

Last year, I wrote:

The quickest way to remove the mullahs from power in Iran is also the approach dictated by libertarian foreign policy prescriptions: Lift all sanctions, bring down all trade barriers, and announce that the US will henceforth treat Iran (or, to put a finer point on it, Iranians) as ... friends!

The consensus I'm seeing on all sides of the "Iran policy question" in US political circles, from "nuke'em 'til they glow then shoot'em in the dark" hawks to absolute non-interventionists is that the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was possibly a case of outright election theft and almost certainly, at the very least, a manipulated and corrupted poll.

If that's the case -- if the majority was silenced at the polls and is now being suppressed in the streets -- what I wrote last year is more applicable than ever. Here's another snippet:

Lift the sanctions, declare friendship ... and the theocratic regime in Iran would be lucky to last a year.

The US lacks the moral standing to criticize Iran for vote-rigging, etc. -- we have yet to deal with our own stolen presidential election of 2000 or with the highly plausible allegations of large-scale fraud in the two presidential elections since (the alleged Republican "Diebold coup" in Ohio in 2004, or the Democrats' alleged nationwide registration fraud operation through their ACORN proxies in 2008).

Instead of censuring, or attempting to bring pressure on, Iran's government over the kind of stuff that happens here all the damn time, the US government should just take away that government's biggest bogeyman, its trump card -- the US as Great Satan. Doing so would add momentum to the obvious popular discontent and, I predict, lead relatively quickly to a revolution, maybe even a relatively peaceful one, that would put a regime more friendly to the west in power.

I wonder if Obama has the stones for this kind of Hail Mary?

Raising the Barr, part 2: Iran

Hat tip to Susan Hogarth for calling attention to this (on the LP Radicals discussion list):

Jun 10
Press Conference, "Time to Talk with Iran"
West side Terrace of the House Canon Office Building
10:30 am Edt

This is a unique opportunity for Bob Barr to truly shine as the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate. Barr, who graduated from high school in, of all places, Tehran, can claim a familiarity with the Iranian people and culture that no other candidate of any party comes close to ... and he can bring that familiarity and a libertarian policy perspective effectively to bear on US foreign policy vis a vis Iran.

Quoth Barr, as late as last year:

Should Washington simply sit back and leave Iran alone — free to support terrorist groups and regimes in other countries, including Iraq, and to develop a nuclear capability? Of course not. Even considering that our lengthy and continuing occupation of Iraq has greatly strengthened Ahmadinejad, the United States has a clear and legitimate stake in what happens in Iran and with regard to matters in which that regime is involved elsewhere. ... Positive steps could include strengthening economic and political pressure on Iran, and increased efforts to quietly but actively build on the deep base of political understanding that already exists among a large segment of the Iranian population (and including the more than one million Iranian-Americans).

Hopefully his perspective has changed since then. Hopefully he has realized -- as the American experience versus, among others, the Cuban Communist regime and the Iraqi Ba'athist regime prove -- that not only do sanctions not work, they have precisely the opposite effect of that allegedly intended. They entrench tyrants and allow those tyrants to continue in power.

The quickest way to remove the mullahs from power in Iran is also the approach dictated by libertarian foreign policy prescriptions: Lift all sanctions, bring down all trade barriers, and announce that the US will henceforth treat Iran (or, to put a finer point on it, Iranians) as ... friends!

It was American support for the Shah's regime that allowed him to rule autocratically -- and that produced the Islamist backlash which led to the revolution and the ascent of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranian people are not, by inclination, backward. It is only American sanctions and sabre-rattling which have allowed the mullahs to continue in power by brandishing a powerful foreign enemy at their subjects.

Lift the sanctions, declare friendship ... and the theocratic regime in Iran would be lucky to last a year. Hopefully Barr will unveil exactly such a program next week.