Bush/Cheney policy of privatization of the "Warfare State"...

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....has created government subsidized "merchants of death" and that allows big corporations like Halliburton to assist the Bush regime in it's dirty business of conquest and imperial domination. So says the following article from the Ludwig von Mises Institutes Journal website:

<snip>
Sunday, October 10, 2004


Government Contractors versus Real Business
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.



If socialists of old resented Pravda for giving them a bad name, free enterprisers ought to feel the same about the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Its defenses of profit, capitalism, and privatization often cry out for correction, if only to save the good name of free markets from being invoked to protect capitalists from careful moral scrutiny.


For here we have the editorial page coming to the defense of Halliburton against attacks by Democrats. The page claims that the Kerry-Edwards ticket is criticizing this mega-well-connected, warfare state pillager as a proxy for all of American business. True or not, the Journal is guilty of something far worse: defending Halliburton on grounds that this parasite embodies the very heart of free enterprise.


The Journal says:


Senator Kerry tried to back away from his primary-season labelling of companies that send jobs abroad as "Benedict Arnolds." Now he's back attacking Halliburton for doing business overseas. All of this marks a striking return to the Old Democrat distrust of all private enterprise, which held that if it moves, tax it, if it keeps moving, regulate it, and when it stops moving, subsidize it. The idea of anyone making a dime of profit by taking over a government function and doing it better is anathema on the Kerry ticket, and the idea of that person then going into public service even worse.

<much more, link>

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1643

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1. Here is an earlier but very much related article to my post....

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Sunday, October 10, 2004


A Dangerous Form of Outsourcing
by Grant M. Nülle


Many of my fellow Austrians have shown the outsourcing of the production of goods and services in the marketplace to be beneficial to society at large.The same cannot be said, however, for subcontracting foreign policy. Indeed, the American government's propensity to outsource certain aspects of its military activities to regional governments or local non-state organizations has rendered Washington's already reckless and aggressive brand of adventurism all the more dangerous to the world and America itself.

Hiring local agents to further the diplomatic or military objectives of expansionist states is not a new phenomenon; history is rife with ambitious imperial powers utilizing indigenous labor and intelligence to outmaneuver competing hegemonic rivals.

Since Central Asia abuts India, that derided bastion of outsourcing, and Central Asia is the focal region (alongside the Middle East) of America's purported foreign policy endeavors, it will serve as a timely example of what is wrong with the wrong kind of outsourcing. The rebels and states that the US has funded and backed have become the US's biggest foreign-policy problem, even as the US adopts new friends and hypocritically averts its eyes to their violation of stated American values.

The story beings in December 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, exploiting the trans-Afghan highway built by Moscow but financed by Washington to quickly establish a presence throughout the country. Eric Margolis's War at the Top of the World, an excellent account of the conflict, describes how beginning in the early 1970s the contending superpowers both realized the strategic importance of this Central Asian nation and subsequently vied for Afghan allegiance, much like the Kiplinger's aptly named nineteenth century "Great Game," which pitted Imperial Britain and Russia in a struggle for regional preeminence.

Margolis describes how a surprised and disoriented Carter Administration mulled employing tactical nuclear weapons to halt what was interpreted as the USSR's march through Afghanistan and Iran to the Persian Gulf, thereby obtaining a chokehold over Western oil supplies. The nearest American ground forces were located some 7,000 miles away, would take 30 days to assemble in theatre and would still confront overwhelming Soviet numerical superiority.

Fortunately for the United States, an ally was available in neighboring Pakistan, namely President Zia ul-Haq. Convinced that the USSR was also intent on running roughshod over Pakistan en route to the Arabian Sea, the wily general planned to foment indigenous resistance to ensnare the Soviets in Afghanistan. Pakistan's vaunted Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) was tasked to arm, equip and train the Afghan mujahedin with Western and Arab largesse. Unable to confront the Soviets directly, the United States and its allies opted to subcontract the war fighting out to the mujahedin and its Pakistani patrons.

In tandem with the U.S.-Pakistan condominium, individuals and organizations hailing from the ummah, or Muslim communities, from around the world began to directly or indirectly participate in the jihad against the godless Soviets. Afghan delegations fanned the globe in search of contributions for the religiously inspired undertaking. The staunchly anti-communist, Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood (among other entities) began to organize, raise and dispatch monetary aid and volunteers to Afghan mujahedin units via the Pakistani conduit. More than ten thousand Muslims comprised the Islamic International Brigade, one of the primary contingents that waged war against the USSR.

The state relies on incessant warfare to consolidate preeminence over the territory it controls and aggrandizes its international standing.

Once in Pakistan, aspiring mujahedin received insurgency training from the ISI, America's CIA, Britain's MI6, and Saudi intelligence as well as fervently aggressive religious instruction from on-site Islamic preachers. According to Margolis, the CIA secretly collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood to procure recruits, money and Eastern Bloc arms and introduced the Afghan resistance to the war's decisive weapon—the Stinger missile. Pakistan's logistical support ensured that the arms and other covert assistance provided by the United States and its Western and Arab allies, which by 1988 was exceeding $600m per annum, found its way into the hands of the mujahedin, including the Islamic International Brigade.

The combination of Western aid and weaponry, Pakistani logistical prowess, and the indefatigable and motley array of mujahedin bogged Moscow's military machine down in the Afghan quagmire, prompting Mikhail Gorbachev to call for the Soviets to beat a retreat, which occurred by the middle of 1989.

<more, link> http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1497

The Bush/Cheney foreign policy has been complete folly!