Ted Galen Carpenter has given us, on the whole, an excellent and very useful book; but it contains a crucial flaw. Carpenter does not always follow the principles he expounds. He supports an interventionist scheme of his own: he not only supports Bush’s 2001 invasion of Afghanistan but wishes to expand the struggle against al Qaeda to Pakistan. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/8526/prudence-or-principle-a-critique-of-carpenter/
Prudence or Principle? A Critique of Carpenter
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Beginning with a false
premise, one may draw
a perfectly logical con-
clusion, albeit one that
is false.
Any discussion of this
Iraq debacle must begin
with this TRUE premise:
IT WAS AN inside JOB!
Begin there, folks!
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I agree with Deacon. If you want to understand what is really going on in the world you I recommend reading something by David Ray Griffin. He has a new book out called “The New Pearl Harbor Revisited”. His “Debunking 9/11 Debunking” is also a classic.
The acronym for Operation Iraqi Liberation spells OIL, so they changed it to Operation Iraqi Freedom. This really happened. So yes, it was an inside job headed by clowns like Dick Cheney. Iraq has 586 barrels of oil underground for every barrel brought to the surface. And that makes it the world’s largest oil reserve, even beyond Saudi Arabia.
The oil reserves in Iran will run out 15 years from now. That’s how little oil they have left. So, for all of Ahmedinejad’s bruhaha they may well be developing nuclear power for domestic use. And he’s nobody’s fool. He won’t shoot his country in the foot just to get even with Israel.
We know the reasons for Al Qeida’s attack on 9/11 – they cried themselves hoarse over the Israeli/Palestinian dispute for 60 years and in their eyes it was justified retaliation against the US. And considering our half-baked, one-sided “foreign policy” they may well be right. We’ll call the “A-Rab” a friend, but we’ll go with the Jews to the bitter end. So what else is new?
Saddam Hussein was used by us as a stool pigeon and by Bush in particular to “avenge” the threat that was made against his daddy. And in the process, Bush, Wolfowitz, along with their cronies and Cheney above all, got filthy rich in the process. Yes, this was an inside job.
EnEm: Inside job means that Al Qaeda was not responsible for 9/11.
David Gordon writes:
In what way would this pose a threat to America’s security interests?
Then near the end he writes:
Even with these sanctuaries, al Qaeda has not been able to inflict substantial damage on us since the September 11 attacks.
DUHHH!!!!!!!
Then in closing he writes:
However much one may value Carpenter’s book, then, it does not reflect a consistent noninterventionist stance.
Sorry sir. As the above illustrates you are the one who is inconsistent, and you certainly do not connect the dots.
David Gordon writes:
In what way would this pose a threat to America’s security interests?
Then near the end he writes:
Even with these sanctuaries, al Qaeda has not been able to inflict substantial damage on us since the September 11 attacks.
DUHHH!!!!!!!
Then in closing he writes:
However much one may value Carpenter’s book, then, it does not reflect a consistent noninterventionist stance.
Sorry sir. As the above illustrates you are the one who is inconsistent, and you certainly do not connect the dots.
An inside job means our own guys were responsible (for creating a situation that forced Al Qeida to attack).
Al Qeida was responsible for the attack. Our guys were responsible for making the conditions/reasons conducive for the attack.
Thanks
What we think abot Iran’s intentions don’t matter. What Israel thinks is important and Israelis believe Iran is developing the bomb to attack them. Iran will not stop developing a bomb so Israel thinks it has no choice but a preemptive attack. Once Israel attacks Iran, Iran will blame the US and war will spread. I don’t see any way out of this scenario.
The statements from my review that Dick Fox quotes are consistent. The first of these refers to the threat that would have been posed to the U.S. if, contrary to fact, Saddam Hussein had possessed WMD. A skeptical attitude toward this hypothetical threat is not, so far as I can see, contradicted by the fact that we suffered substantial damage on 9-11 from an attack that had nothing to do with either Saddam or WMD.
David Gordon writes:
Any regime that launched a nuclear or biological attack on America would face immediate annihilation. The knowledge that this would transpire suffices to deter those with these weapons from attacking us. Deterrence stood as a fundamental principle of American strategy during the Cold War. If it worked then, against a Soviet regime massively stronger than Saddam’s Iraq, why would it fail against him?
Actually, there is nothing elementary about it. First, deterence presupposes not just rational (not suicidal) regimes but highly competent ones as well. All Austrians understand or should understand anyway, that being rational does not in any way mean being correct or logical. Second, deterence during the cold war operated in a bi-polar world or as game theorists would call it a two player game. In such a game the permutations are relatively few and consequences can to some degree be anticipated. However, as the number of players goes up the complexity of the game becomes exceedingly difficult. This is actually the reason for the intense international interest in nuclear non-proliferation. In a multi-polar world conflicts can escalate to include powers that were not even a party to the precipitating event-recall WW I. Add nuclear weapons to the mix and you have a potential holocaust in the making.
With all due respect to Mr. Gordon, foreign affairs is not economics and despite the conceit of many Austrians they are out of their depth when they stray beyond economics.
“Any regime that launched a nuclear or biological attack on America would face immediate annihilation.”
You would think! But Iranians have denied this on many occasions. They strongly believe that the US does not have the determination to fight a prolonged war and does not have the will to nuke Iran. Like the Japanese, they are convinced they could inflict sufficient casualties to force us to retreat. When a top general suggested that Iran couldn’t defeat the US, he was promptly replaced by a member of the Revolutionary Guard.
The Iran va Jahan web site is a good source of news about Iran. Several articles there show that the Iranian prez has a very poor grasp of reality. In spite of 25% plus inflation, unemployment of more than 30% and about a third of the population living on less than $4 US per day, the Prez believes that Iran is on the verge of becoming the richest nation in the world, if only he could get rid of all of the negative economists in the country.
George, I don’t think it matters how many players there are in the game, because deterrence is always between two parties: the deterer and the deteree. Crime is deterred despite the variety of criminals and jurisdictions. Same thing with nuclear attacks. Much more, in fact, because the punishment for that is “immediate annihilation” of the entire military, government, or even people of the aggressor country. The only competence a country needs to possess is tight control over its nuclear, biological, etc. weapons. I think we can expect that from everyone involved.
And the reply to fundamentalist is that we ought to look at a regime’s actions rather than trying to read its leader’s mind. Iran has shown itself rational enough.
to deacon:
missing links is a reasonable attempt at reevaluating the attack. it doesn’t wed itself to any particular theory, but asks the right questions.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7877765982288566190#
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