no third solution » Warfare State
Afghanistan Has Not Been Liberated
Although I agree with the official policy, that U.S. soldiers shouldn’t be proselytizing, didn’t they “liberate” Afghanistan? U.S. Central Command’s General Order Number 1 forbids troops on active duty — including all those based in Iraq and Afghanistan — from trying to convert people to another religion. Trying to convert Muslims to another faith is a crime in Afghanistan. [Yahoo!] In light of this fact alone, I would say “no, Afghanistan has not been liberated.” But the U.S. military has far more important things to worry about than whether one rogue soldier plans on distributing Pashtun-translations of the Bible to Afghani people. For example, dozens — perhaps a hundred Afghan civilians are dead as a result of a bombing raid carried out by the U.S. on Monday night, this is not … Read entire article »
Filed under: Government is Slavery, Left Libertarian, Warfare State, World Politics
The Cost, Per Capita, of Occupying Iraq
In Immigration: Open the Borders, I pointed to a Juris Naturalis post about immigration, in which the author was addressing “Christians amenable to liberty” on the benevolence of open immigration. This week, I found myself browsing another post at Juris Naturalis, this time, a very short but to-the-point anti-war plea. We should’ve just moved all the Iraqis here, he says. A novel idea, indeed! The author ntoes that the explicit, monetary cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has to-date is between $500 B and $900 B, although some estimates have suggested that it could be as high as $3 Trillion. Playing with the $900 Billion figure, he concludes that this has cost something like $32,000 for each man, woman, and child in Iraq. If he had used the … Read entire article »
Filed under: immigration, Warfare State, World Politics
When Soldiers Are Quartered, War is Imminent
Recently, it’s been announced that the U.S. Military expects to have at least 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011, which according to Anna Christensen of the ACLU, may be “the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority.” I had no intention of commenting on that trend, until I noticed that someone found my blog with the following queries, which dovetail nicely with the expansion of military powers: … Read entire article »
Filed under: American Politics, Government is Slavery, Warfare State