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Iraq Collapse Shows Bankruptcy of Interventionism – Article by Ron Paul

Iraq Collapse Shows Bankruptcy of Interventionism – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
June 2, 2013
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May was Iraq’s deadliest month in nearly five years, with more than 1,000 dead – both civilians and security personnel — in a rash of bombings, shootings and other violence. As we read each day of new horrors in Iraq, it becomes more obvious that the US invasion delivered none of the promised peace or stability that proponents of the attack promised.

Millions live in constant fear, refugees do not return home, and the economy is destroyed. The Christian community, some 1.2 million persons before 2003, has been nearly wiped off the Iraqi map. Other minorities have likewise disappeared. Making matters worse, US support for the Syrian rebels next door has drawn the Shi’ite-led Iraqi government into the spreading regional unrest and breathed new life into extremist elements.

The invasion of Iraq opened the door to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which did not exist beforehand, while simultaneously strengthening the hand of Iran in the region. Were the “experts” who planned for and advocated the US attack really this incompetent?

Ryan Crocker, who was US Ambassador to Iraq from 2007-2009, still speaks of the Iraqi “surge” as a great reconciliation between Sunni and Shi’ite in Iraq. He wrote recently that “[t]hough the United States has withdrawn its troops from Iraq, it retains significant leverage there. Iraqi forces were equipped and trained by Americans, and the country’s leaders need and expect our help.” He seems alarmingly out of touch with reality.

It is clear now that the “surge” and the “Iraqi Awakening” were just myths promoted by those desperate to put a positive spin on the US invasion, which the late General William Odom once called, “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.” Aircraft were loaded with $100 dollar bills to pay each side to temporarily stop killing US troops and each other, but the payoff provided a mere temporary break. Shouldn’t the measure of success of a particular policy be whether it actually produces sustained positive results?

Now we see radical fighters who once shot at US troops in Iraq have spilled into Syria, where they ironically find their cause supported by the US government! Some of these fighters are even greeted by visiting US senators.

The US intervention in Iraq has created ever more problems. That is clear. The foreign policy “experts” who urged the US attack on Iraq now claim that the disaster they created can only be solved with more interventionism! Imagine a medical doctor noting that a particular medication is killing his patient, but to combat the side effect he orders an increase in dosage of the same medicine. Like this doctor, the US foreign policy establishment is guilty of malpractice. And, I might add, this is just what the Fed does with monetary policy.

From Iraq to Libya to Mali to Syria to Afghanistan, US interventions have an unbroken record of making matters far worse. Yet regardless of the disasters produced, for the interventionists a more aggressive US foreign policy is the only policy they offer.

We must learn the appropriate lessons from the disaster of Iraq. We cannot continue to invade countries, install puppet governments, build new nations, create centrally planned economies, engage in social engineering, and force democracy at the barrel of a gun. The rest of the world is tired of US interventionism, and the US taxpayer is tired of footing the bill for US interventionism. It is up to all of us to make it very clear to the foreign-policy establishment and the powers that be that we have had enough and will no longer tolerate empire-building. We should be more confident in ourselves and stop acting like an insecure bully.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Neo-Con War Addiction Threatens Our Future – Article by Ron Paul

Neo-Con War Addiction Threatens Our Future – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
March 29, 2013
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William Kristol knows what is wrong with the United States. As he wrote recently in the flagship magazine of the neo-conservatives, the Weekly Standard, the problem with the US is that we seem to have lost our appetite for war. According to Kristol, the troubles that have befallen us in the 20th century have all been the result of these periodic bouts of war-weariness, a kind of virus that we catch from time to time.

He claims because of the US “drawdown” in Europe after World War II, Stalin subjugated Eastern Europe. Because of war weariness the United States stopped bombing Southeast Asia in the 1970s, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. War weariness through the 1990s led to Rwanda, Milosevic, and the rise of the Taliban. It was our fault for not fighting on! According to Kristol, our failure to act as the policeman of the world is why we were attacked on September 11, 2001. Of the 1990s, he wrote, “[t]hat decade of not policing the world ended with 9/11.”

That revisionism is too much even for fellow neo-conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz to swallow. In a 2003 interview, Wolfowitz admitted that it was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia that led to the growth of al-Qaeda:

“(W)e can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It’s been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina.”

But for Kristol and his allies there is never enough war. According to a new study by Brown University, the US invasion of Iraq cost some 190,000 lives, most of them non-combatants. It has cost more than $1.7 trillion, and when all is said and done including interest the cost may well be $6 trillion. Some $212 billion was spent on Iraqi reconstruction with nothing to show for it. Total deaths from US war on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have been at least 329, 000. None of this is enough for Kristol.

The neo-con ideology promotes endless war, but neo-cons fight their battles with the blood of others. From the comfortable, subsidized offices of magazines like the Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives urge the United States to engage in endless war – to be fought by the victims of the “poverty draft” from states where there are few jobs. Ironically, these young people cannot find more productive work because the Federal Reserve’s endless money printing to keep the war machine turning has destroyed our economy. The six trillion dollars that will be spent on the Iraq war are merely pieces of printed paper that further erode the dollar’s purchasing power now and well into the future. It is the inflation tax, which is the most regressive and cruel of all.

Yes, Americans are war weary, concedes Kristol. But he does not blame the average American. The real problem is that the president has dropped the ball on terrifying Americans with the lies and imaginary threats that led to the invasion of Iraq. Writes Kristol: “One can’t, for example, be surprised at the ebbing support of the American public for the war in Afghanistan years after the president stopped trying to mobilize their support, stopped heralding the successes of the troops he’d sent there, and stopped explaining the importance of their mission.”

If only we had more war propaganda from the highest levels of government we could be cured of this war-weariness. Ten years ago the US invaded Iraq under the influence of neo-conservative lies. Those lies continued to promote US military action in places like Libya, and next on their agenda is Syria and then on to Iran. It is time for the American people to shout “enough!”

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article has been released by Dr. Paul into the public domain and may be republished by anyone in any manner.

Consequences of an Interventionist Foreign Policy – Article by Ron Paul

Consequences of an Interventionist Foreign Policy – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
September 23, 2012
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The attack on the US consulate in Libya and the killing of the US Ambassador and several aides is another tragic example of how our interventionist foreign policy undermines our national security. The more the US tries to control the rest of the world, either by democracy promotion, aid to foreign governments, or by bombs, the more events spin out of control into chaos, unintended consequences, and blowback.

Unfortunately, what we saw in Libya last week is nothing new.

In 1980s Afghanistan, the US supported Islamic radicals in their efforts to expel the invading Soviet military. These radicals became what is known to be al-Qaeda, and our one-times allies turned on us most spectacularly on September 11, 2001.

Iraq did not have a significant al Qaeda presence before the 2003 US invasion, but our occupation of that country and attempt to remake it in our image caused a massive reaction that opened the door to al Qaeda, leading to thousands of US soldiers dead, a country destroyed, and instability that shows no sign of diminishing.

In Libya we worked with, among others, the rebel Libyan Fighting Group (LIFG) which included foreign elements of al-Qaeda. It has been pointed out that the al-Qaeda affiliated radicals we fought in Iraq were some of the same groups we worked with to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya. Last year in a television interview I predicted that the result of NATO’s bombing of Libya would likely be an increased al-Qaeda presence in the country. I said at the time that we may be delivering al-Qaeda another prize.

Not long after NATO overthrew Gaddafi, the al Qaeda flag was flown over the courthouse in Benghazi. Should we be surprised, then, that less than a year later there would be an attack on our consulate in Benghazi? We have been told for at least the past eleven years that these people are the enemy who seeks to do us harm.

There is danger in the belief we can remake the world by bribing some countries and bombing others. But that is precisely what the interventionists – be they liberal or conservative – seem to believe. When the world does not conform to their image, they seem genuinely shocked. The secretary of state’s reaction to the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi was one of confusion. “How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction,” she asked.

The problem is that we do not know and we cannot know enough about these societies we are seeking to remake. We never try to see through the eyes of those we seek to liberate. Libya is in utter chaos, the infrastructure has been bombed to rubble, the economy has ceased to exist, gangs and militias rule by brutal force, the government is seen as a completely illegitimate and powerless US puppet.  How could anyone be shocked that the Libyans do not see our bombing their country as saving it from destruction?

Currently, the US is actively supporting rebels in Syria that even our CIA tells us are affiliated with al Qaeda. Many of these radical Islamist fighters in Syria were not long ago fighting in Libya.  We must learn from these mistakes and immediately cease all support for the Syrian rebels, lest history once again repeat itself. We are literally backing the same people in Syria that we are fighting in Afghanistan and that have just killed our ambassador in Libya! We must finally abandon the interventionist impulse before it is too late.

Representative Ron Paul (R – TX), MD, was a three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President. See his Congressional webpage and his official campaign website. 

This article has been released by Dr. Paul into the public domain and may be republished by anyone in any manner.

Military “Cuts”: Don’t Believe the Hype – Article by Ron Paul

Military “Cuts”: Don’t Believe the Hype – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
August 23, 2012
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Grover Norquist, the influential conservative activist, recently made some very frank and sobering remarks about the U.S. military budget.  Unlike many conservatives, Mr. Norquist understands that American national security interests are not served by the interventionist foreign policy mindset that has dominated both political parties in recent decades.  He also understands that there is nothing “conservative” about incurring trillions of dollars in debt to engage in hopeless nation building exercises overseas.

Speaking at the Center for the National interest last week, Norquist stated that “We can afford to have an adequate national defense which keeps us free and safe and keeps everybody afraid to throw a punch at us, as long as we don’t make some of the decisions that previous administrations have, which is to over extend ourselves overseas and think we can run foreign governments.”

He continued: “Bush decided to be the mayor of Baghdad rather than the president of the United States. He decided to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan rather than reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That had tremendous consequences… Richard Nixon said that America’s national defense needs are set in Moscow, meaning that we wouldn’t have to spend so much if they weren’t shooting at us.  The guys who followed didn’t notice that the Soviet Union disappeared.”

When a prominent DC conservative like Grover Norquist makes such bold statements, it shows that public support for a truly conservative foreign policy is growing.  The American people simply cannot stomach more wars and more debt, especially with our domestic economy in tatters.

The American people should reject the hype about so called defense “cuts” from both side of the political spectrum.  When the Obama administration calls for an 18% increase in 2013 military spending, those who propose a 20% increase portray this as a reduction!

Even the supposedly draconian cuts called for in the “sequestration” budget bill would keep military spending at 2006 levels when adjusted for inflation, which is about as high in terms of GDP as during World War II.  It’s also more than the top 13 foreign countries spend on defense combined.  Furthermore, sequestration only cuts military spending for one year after taking effect.  In future years Congress is free to reinstate higher military spending levels– so under sequestration the most drastic case would mean spending $5.2 trillion instead of $5.7 trillion over the next decade.

Is there any amount of money that would satisfy the Pentagon hawks? Even if we were to slash our military budget in half, America easily would remain the world’s dominant military power.  Our problems don’t result from a lack of spending. They result from a lack of vision and a profound misunderstanding of the single biggest threat to every American man, woman, and child: the federal debt.

Representative Ron Paul (R – TX), MD, is a Republican candidate for U. S. President. See his Congressional webpage and his official campaign website. 

This article has been released by Dr. Paul into the public domain and may be republished by anyone in any manner.

Sunk Costs: There’s No Crying Over Spilled Milk – Article by Steven Horwitz

Sunk Costs: There’s No Crying Over Spilled Milk – Article by Steven Horwitz

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The New Renaissance Hat
Steven Horwitz
July 29, 2012
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Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan is fond of saying, “It takes varied reiterations to force alien concepts on unwilling minds.” That aphorism is surely true. Many basic ideas in economics require repeated attempts at explanation, and a variety of applications, before people fully grasp them and their importance. The one I want to focus on today is the concept of sunk costs and the related sunk-cost fallacy.

Understanding the concept of sunk costs first requires that one understand that, for economists, what matters for decision-making is what we call “action on the margin.” By “the margin” we simply mean the action we will take with respect to the concrete choice before us. When deciding whether a particular choice is worth making, the economic way of thinking tells us to compare the additional benefits that will come from that choice to the additional costs it will entail. This type of thinking then counsels: “Choose the option that delivers the greatest net additional benefits.”

Focusing on the additional benefits and costs that come from that specific action is what economists mean by acting on the margin. To forestall one objection, I will point out that what counts as a benefit or cost is of course subjective to the chooser. You and I could be in the identical situations but appraise the costs and benefits differently, and thereby end up making different choices. Economics says nothing about what should count as a benefit or cost, only that, whatever one chooses to count as benefits and costs, one should focus on the additional, or marginal, benefits and costs of a particular option and go with the one delivering the greatest net marginal benefits.

Irrelevant for Next Decision

An implication of this point is that costs that have already been incurred and that will not change with any of the specific choices now at the margin should be irrelevant to one’s decision. These are what we call sunk costs: The resources cannot be recovered, hence the costs are sunk. Such sunk costs should not matter for one’s next decision; only the costs now at the margin of choice count. No matter what we choose next, we can’t change the fact that we spent those resources in the past.

The idea of the irrelevance of sunk costs is all around us in folk wisdom and other places. For example, good poker players understand the idea when they say, “Don’t throw good money after bad.” Sometimes novice players will think, “Well, I’ve already bet five dollars on this hand, so I might as well see it through.” Good poker players know this is bad thinking: What matters is whether your hand is worth making the next bet. That you’ve bet five dollars already is beside the point. Bygones are bygones. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. There’s no crying over spilled milk.

People who understand the sunk-cost fallacy know to beware when they hear people use phrases like, “You should get your money’s worth” or “You should finish what you started.” For example, suppose you pay a hundred dollars for a gym membership and never use it. Someone says to you, “You really should go to the gym and get something for your hundred dollars.” The problem, however, is that the money is gone whether you go to the gym or not. The relevant question is whether on any given day the benefits of exercising are worth the costs of going to the gym (or giving up your next best alternative). That’s action on the margin. The money spent is irrelevant.

Additional Costs Worth It?

The same is true of the argument that we should “finish what we started,” say, in Afghanistan or Iraq. We can’t change the past and undo the deaths and financial costs of those wars. The real question is whether the benefits of continued intervention are worth additional costs, regardless of what happened in the past. Are billions more spent and many more dead Americans and their victims worth it for the supposed additional gains of continuing those wars?

Sunk costs are sunk. Eventually, of course, in facing new decisions, we can rethink the old decision that sunk those costs in the first place (such as, should we renew the gym membership, or should we enter a new war?). But until then, the past is irrelevant because whatever we choose, we can’t change it. What matters for the economic way of thinking is decision-making on the margin: the additional benefits and costs of the options in front of us right now.

Understanding that choice is always on the margin and that sunk costs are sunk can help you make better decisions in your personal life and spot fallacious reasoning by politicians. This is just another illustration that good economics is the key to critical thinking and good citizenship.

Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University and the author of Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective, now in paperback.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

The Costs of War – Article by Ron Paul

The Costs of War – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
May 2, 2012
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This month Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced the addition of some 1,900 mental health nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to its existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff in attempt to get a handle on the epidemic of suicides among combat veterans. Unfortunately, when presidents misuse our military on an unprecedented scale – and Congress lets them get away with it – the resulting stress causes military suicides to increase dramatically, both among active duty and retired service members.  In fact, military deaths from suicide far outnumber combat deaths. According to an article in the Air Force Times this month, suicides among airmen are up 40 percent over last year.

Considering the multiple deployments service members are forced to endure as the war in Afghanistan stretches into its second decade, these figures are sadly unsurprising.

Ironically, the same VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was forced to retire from the Army by President Bush for daring to suggest that an invasion and occupation of Iraq would not be the cakewalk that neoconservatives promised. Then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who is not a military veteran, claimed that General Shinseki was “wildly off the mark” for suggesting that several hundred thousand soldiers would be required to secure post-invasion Iraq. Now we see who was right on the costs of war.

In addition to the hidden human costs of our seemingly endless wars are the economic costs. In 2008, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.” Stiglitz illustrates that taking into account the total costs of the war, including replacing military equipment and caring for thousands of wounded veterans for the rest of their lives, the Iraq war will cost us orders of magnitude greater than the 50 billion dollars promised by the White House before the invasion. Add all the costs of Afghanistan into the mix, wrote Stiglitz, and the bill tops $7 trillion.

Is it any wonder why our infrastructure at home crumbles, healthcare is more expensive and harder to come by, and unemployment together with inflation continue their steady rise? Imagine the productive power of that seven trillion dollars in our private sector. What could it have done were it in private hands; what may have been discovered, what diseases might have been cured, what might have been built, how many productive jobs created?

With the bills coming due for our decade of reckless military action, the cuts rarely come from the well-connected military industrial complex with their lobbyists and powerful political allies. In President Obama’s 2013 budget, troop strength is to be cut significantly while enormously expensive and largely superfluous weapons systems emerge essentially unscathed. As defense analyst Winslow Wheeler wrote this month, costs of the “next generation” fighter, the F-35, will increase by another $289 million. This despite the fact that the fighter is badly designed and already outdated, a “virtual flying piano” writes Wheeler.

The military contractors building monstrosities like the F-35 are politically connected and thus protected. Unfortunately, returning military veterans are less so. In the same 2013 budget, the White House proposes to increase medical and pharmaceutical costs paid by veterans while reducing their cost of living increases. And how many years of increasingly alarming mental illness and suicide statistics has it taken for the modest increase in resources to be made available?

Those who predicted the real costs of our decade of global military conquest were ridiculed, scoffed at, and fired. History has now shown us that much of what they warned was correct. America is clearly less secure after a decade of unnecessary wars. It is more vulnerable and closer to economic collapse. Its military is nearly broken from years of abuse. Will we come back to our senses?

Representative Ron Paul (R – TX), MD, is a Republican candidate for U. S. President. See his Congressional webpage and his official campaign website. 

This article has been released by Dr. Paul into the public domain and may be republished by anyone in any manner.

Refuting Ayn Rand on War – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Refuting Ayn Rand on War – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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Mr. Stolyarov directly responds to Ayn Rand’s statements regarding the morality of war and refutes her point by point. Mr. Stolyarov shows that war, because of the deaths of innocent civilians, is thoroughly anti-individualistic, and Ayn Rand’s position on war is inconsistent with the fundamental ethical principles of her philosophy of Objectivism.

References
– Ayn Rand’s statements at the Ford Hall Forum
– Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein: “‘Just War Theory’ vs. American Self-Defense” –
The Brook/Epstein essay illustrates the kinds of atrocities one would have to embrace to take Ayn Rand’s arguments on the morality of war to their logical conclusion.