http://lnk.nu/select.nytimes.com/6rn.html

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December 6, 2005

Op-Ed Columnist

The Hubris of the Humanities

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

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The best argument against "intelligent design" has always been humanity itself. At a time when only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and only 13 percent know what a molecule is, we're an argument at best for "mediocre design."

But put aside the evolution debate for a moment. It's only a symptom of something much deeper and more serious: a profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.

One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.

The problem isn't just inadequate science (and math) teaching in the schools, however. A larger problem is the arrogance of the liberal arts, the cultural snootiness of, of ... well, of people like me - and probably you.

What do I mean by that? In the U.S. and most of the Western world, it's considered barbaric in educated circles to be unfamiliar with Plato or Monet or Dickens, but quite natural to be oblivious of quarks and chi-squares. A century ago, Einstein published his first paper on relativity - making 1905 as important a milestone for world history as 1066 or 1789 - but relativity has yet to filter into the consciousness of otherwise educated people.

"The great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the Western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had," C. P. Snow wrote in his classic essay, "The Two Cultures."

The counterargument is that we can always hire technicians in Bangalore, while it's Shakespeare and Goethe who teach us the values we need to harness science for humanity. There's something to that. If President Bush were about to attack Iraq all over again, he would be better off reading Sophocles - to appreciate the dangers of hubris - than studying the science of explosives.

But don't pin too much faith on the civilizing influence of a liberal education: the officers of the Third Reich were steeped in Kant and Goethe. And similar arguments were used in past centuries to assert that all a student needed was Greek, Latin and familiarity with the Bible - or, in China, to argue that all the elites needed were the Confucian classics.

Without some fluency in science and math, we'll simply be left behind in the same way that Ming Dynasty Chinese scholars were. Increasingly, we face public policy issues - avian flu, stem cells - that require some knowledge of scientific methods, yet the present Congress contains 218 lawyers, and just 12 doctors and 3 biologists. In terms of the skills we need for the 21st century, we're Shakespeare-quoting Philistines.

A year ago, I wanted to ornament a column with a complex equation, so, as a math ninny myself, I looked around the Times newsroom for anyone who could verify that it was correct. Now, you can't turn around in the Times newsroom without bumping into polyglots who come and go talking of Michelangelo. But it took forever to turn up someone confident in his calculus - in the science section.

So Pogo was right.

This disregard for science already hurts us. The U.S. has bungled research on stem cells, perhaps partly because Mr. Bush didn't realize how restrictive his curb on research funds would be. And we're risking our planet's future because our leaders are frozen in the headlights of climate change.

In this century, one of the most complex choices we will make will be what tinkering to allow with human genes, to "improve" the human species. How can our leaders decide that issue if they barely know what DNA is?

Intellectuals have focused on the challenge from the right, which has led to a drop in the public acceptance of evolution in the U.S. over the last 20 years, to 40 percent from 45 percent. Jon Miller, a professor at the Northwestern University medical school who has tracked attitudes toward evolution in 34 countries, says Turkey is the only one with less support for evolution than the U.S.

It's true that antagonism to science seems peculiarly American. The European right, for example, frets about taxes and immigration, but not about evolution.

But there's an even larger challenge than anti-intellectualism. And that's the skewed intellectualism of those who believe that a person can become sophisticated on a diet of poetry, philosophy and history, unleavened by statistics or chromosomes. That's the hubris of the humanities.

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

- Albert Einstein

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http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1205-32.htm

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Published on Monday, December 5, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Counter-Recruitment Day Sweeps U.S. Colleges

by Maya Schenwar

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When the Solomon Amendment, the law that requires universities to allow military recruiters on campus, first passed in 1995, the bill's co-sponsor Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) declared an intention to "send a message over the wall of the ivory tower of higher education." On December 6, the "ivory tower" will send a message back. In court, the oral argument will be presented for FAIR v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court case which will decide the fate of the Solomon Amendment. On the street, thousands of students, teachers and peace activists will participate in the National Day of Counter-Recruitment, holding rallies and educational events in almost every major city. The day of protest, organized by Campus Anti-War Network (CAN) and endorsed by Cindy Sheehan, Howard Zinn and Kathy Kelly, is expected to be the largest student counter-recruitment action organized around the Iraq War to date.

"A military that is an unequal employer and that funnels people into an immoral war should not be able to recruit on campus," said Ian Chinich, a member of Rutgers Anti-War and an organizer of the December 6 protest. "We hope that the public and the anti-war movement realize that counter-recruitment is one of the most effective strategies for fighting against the war and is also a moral imperative."

Yet the Solomon Amendment now curbs most counter-recruiting efforts: schools that prohibit recruiters or do not provide them with "equal access" to campus are denied all federal funding. In 2002, the law was toughened, so that even if only one department of a university-for example, its law school-bars recruiters from campus, all federal funds are withheld, including critical money for medical and psychological research that the nation depends on.

Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), a national organization of law schools that is serving as the plaintiff in the case against the Solomon Amendment, argues that the mandate to allow recruiters on campus violates universities' constitutional right to freedom of speech.

"Just as civil rights advocates have a First Amendment right to boycott a racist business, law schools have a First Amendment right to boycott discriminatory employers," said Joshua Rosencrantz, one of FAIR's attorneys, who calls the Solomon legislation a violation of schools' right to freedom from compelled speech. He also cites a freedom of association violation: the Solomon Amendment attempts to control the people and organizations with whom universities ally themselves.

Though the parties challenging the Solomon Amendment in court oppose recruiters mainly for their discriminatory policies, the organizers of the December 6 day of protest also oppose them on anti-war grounds. The Solomon Amendment makes the military's messages of violence a mandatory part of students' college experience, says Counter-Recruitment Day endorser Kathy Kelly, who coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence in Chicago.

"It is foolish and dangerous to rule that U.S. education facilities must instill military culture and the solutions pursued by the U.S. military in every institution of higher learning," Kelly said.

Counter-Recruitment Day organizers also hold that military recruiters use deceptive, manipulative strategies to convince students to enlist. The recruitment drive is aimed primarily at lower-income Americans, says Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, an NYU student and a head organizer with CAN.

"Recruiters take advantage of the inequality and segregation of this country, in which a whole segment of society is written off, and hold up joining the military as a way out," Wrigley-Field said.

According to a recent CAN report, recruiters often lead students to believe that joining the military will enable them to pay for a college education. Yet only 15 percent of soldiers complete a college degree, and less than 10 percent use Army funds to do so. In terms of job training-another promise the military makes to new recruits-an American Friends Service Committee report notes that veterans earn 11 to 19 percent less than non-veterans with similar backgrounds.

"It's very sad to realize that young people graduate from colleges loaded up with loans to repay and that one of the only means to get assistance with education is to enlist in the military," Kelly said. "How much wiser it would be if U.S. wealth and productivity could be directed toward assisting young people, with no requirement to join the military; to learn languages, learn skills desperately needed in third world countries, and learn the basics of community development."

Counter-recruitment, then, is not simply about getting recruiters out of the schools: it's about presenting young people with alternatives to enlisting. Many of the Counter-Recruitment Day actions will involve direct protests staged at recruiting stations, in which protestors will distribute information to potential recruits. The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, an endorser of the Dec. 6 protests and a key player in the counter-recruitment movement, councils prospective recruits in the dangers of military involvement, non-military ways to finance college and alternative service learning opportunities.

In the past couple of months, the counter-recruitment movement has seen a string of successes. Sixty percent of voters in San Francisco approved a proposition last month to kick recruiters off campuses and fund non-military scholarships. The first national student-organized anti-recruitment day, Not Your Soldier Day of Action, rocked 40 campuses on November 17. As the verdict on FAIR v. Rumsfeld draws closer, activists are crossing their fingers for another victory, hoping that if given the chance, schools will say no to recruiters on campus.

"The majority is with us in opposing the war and military recruitment," Wrigley-Field said. "It's time to get that majority organized to get recruiters out of our schools."

To find out about National Counter-Recruitment Day events near you, see www.campusantiwar.net.

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Maya Schenwar is a recent graduate from Swarthmore College and has written for In These Times and Conscious Choice magazines, as well as for Common Dreams. Her work has been syndicated on Alternet, the Alternative Press Review, Chicago Indy Media and U-Wire. She loves to sing, write stories, dance around the kitchen and think of good names for bands she will never have.

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"The American military, from top to bottom is a hideous blight on our planet. There are no innocents in this massive killing machine. There´s no ´honour´ in volunteering for the worlds largest terrorist organization, now under the command of the deceitful, criminal cabal led by George W. Bush. American soldiers are well trained to kill, and obviously, to torture, and they go off to Iraq all of their own ´free will." They know that they will kill, and that they may die. There will not be any "honour," or "glory" for these stupid youngsters who continue to volunteer themselves for ´duty´ in Bush´s appalling adventure. These soldiers, including the 2000 dead, by taint of their volunteer status, are each PERSONALLY responsible for the murder of 100,000 innocent Iraqi´s." - Stop the Troops! There´s No Glory or Honor in Iraq By Ingmar Lee http://www.counterpunch.org/lee10272005.html

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11213.htm

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Neoreality: Peak Oil And Iraq

What level of American casualties should be spent to keep America from economic and social collapse?

By Bill Henderson

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12/05/05 -- -- A dispassionate observer from the outer space may watch with amazement how an incredibly complex and resourceful society of Homo economicus, armed with the most advanced technology and all of the knowledge amassed through their entire history, that is voluntarily, with determination, even enthusiastically painting itself into a corner and reduces its future options to what in the game of chess is termed zugzwang (compulsed move) -- by deferring the recognition of the Universe's challenge until the crisis that is currently clearly visible on the horizon becomes detectible through economic and monetary mechanisms, signals from which in this particular peculiar civilization apparently take precedence over the other six senses.

Dmitry Podborits

It is perfectly reasonable that American military casualties are the American public's prime concern in Iraq but quite clearly there is much more at stake.

If Saddam's Iraq really did threaten even one more 9/11 scale terrorist attack then present American casualties preventing such an attack - 2,100 dead, 16,000 wounded - would be considered a reasonable use of American soldiers.

But much more to the point, what level of American casualties should be spent to keep America from economic and social collapse? What is the real game going on in Iraq?

Prescient Canadian peak oil and politics commentator Jeff Berg explains the necessity of casualties in Iraq this way

"(I)t will take much more than the death of a few thousand soldiers and the addition of a few hundred billion to the U.S. government debt (200B adds 2.5% to America's debt load) to make them walk away from access to the hundreds of trillions of dollars, at current prices, worth of hydrocarbons that the region will extract over the next 50 years. (likely thousands of trillions at future prices)

Their financial if not moral calculus becomes even more understandable when you consider that even this amount is literally tiny when you compare it to the economic multiplier effect that having oil and gas allows to the industrialized world. The money multiplier is nothing to it. Consider. By some calculations every barrel of oil carries the equivalent of 23,200 man hours of work in the physics sense of the term. Oil and natural gas are like air, water or soil, in that they are easy to take for granted until you lack them.

Oil is the very lifeblood of the now globally franchised American Way. 60% of the world's reserves are located in the Middle East. And oil, cheap conventional oil (and natural gas if not coal), looks increasingly like a peaking then rapidly depleting resource. Even an oil price spike to $100 a barrel could be the end of civilization as we know it if enough bubbles burst. As James Kunstler has pointed out there is no O-I-L in WITHDRAWAL.

"There has, as yet, been no candid debate in the mainstream U.S. media, still less in Congress, on the controversial question of America's war aims. Why did the U.S. make war on Iraq? The official reasons - Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and its links with Al-Qaeda - have now been shown to be lies. What then were the real reasons?

"It would seem that men like Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Bush himself - advocates of using military power to shape the world to America's advantage - were persuaded that Iraq presented a tremendous prize. Its oil reserves were equal to those of Saudi Arabia; its reconstruction was estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars to American firms; while its strategic position made it an ideal place from which to project U.S. military power to the oil-rich Gulf and to a vast region beyond. Seizing Iraq and turning it into a client state was a tempting goal.

Peter Seale

Commentators have been focusing on John Mueller's analysis of the ratio of body bags to domestic polls in previous American wars, but Iraq isn't Vietnam and the US can't withdraw from the mess the 'geopolitical fantasists' have made in the Middle East with their cynical aggression in Iraq. There's no retreat possible and watching a delusional Hillary Clinton and the Dems trying to find a winnable position on Iraq and winnable ways of saying get our boys home soon is pathetic.

We can't go back to decades old market control of oil with American forces ensuring a calm Persian Gulf. There's no going back. Cheney and Co stuck a stick in a hornets nest but the territory is far too important, far too crucial for America's future to leave. And so some are going to get stung and the dead in Iraq will, in all probability, be just the first casualties on the resource war path that no reasonable American would have chosen.

A Pandora's box has been opened. The future of the world is at stake here because this region, Iraq, is the defining challenge of our time ... We need to close this in a way that does not produce huge problems down the road, that ultimately produces isolationism at home and a world with far more security problems than at present.

United States Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad

Peak oil is the looming reality and the Bush Admin couldn't resist the temptation to seize Iraq and American soldiers aren't leaving. Zugzwang. And all of us aware of the bigger picture, of our serious situation - all of us blue-staters, North American 'friends' and former members of what was once The West, all of us globally that have no power but will be perhaps terminally effected - just watch and wonder if waking up is possible.

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"...Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas, reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to..." - Kenneth Derr, Halliburton Director and retired CEO of Chevron, November 5, 1998 http://www.halliburtonwatch.org

http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance62.html

(Supporting Links at Source URL)

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Today Iraq, Tomorrow the World

by Laurence M. Vance

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"We don’t seek empires. We’re not imperialistic." ~ Donald Rumsfeld (2003)

"If we want Iraq to avoid becoming a Somalia on steroids, we’d better get used to U.S. troops being deployed there for years, possibly decades, to come. If that raises hackles about American imperialism, so be it. We’re going to be called an empire whatever we do. We might as well be a successful empire." ~ Max Boot (2003)

"We’re an empire now." ~ a senior adviser to President Bush (2004)

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The number in Germany is 69,395. The number in Japan is 35,307. The number in Korea is 32,744. The number in Italy is 12,258. The number in the United Kingdom is 11,093.

I am not speaking of the number of car accidents last year in Germany, Japan, Korea, Italy, or the United Kingdom. And neither am I speaking of the number of poisonings, suicides, or armed robberies in any of these countries.

No, I am speaking of something far more lethal: the continued presence of U.S. troops.

According to the latest edition of the "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country," published by the Defense Department’s Directorate for Information Operations and Reports (DIOR), the U.S. has troops in 142 countries. This is up from the figure of 136 countries that the government was reporting the last time I addressed the subject of the number of countries under the shadow of the U.S. Global Empire. Additions to the list are Armenia, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Iran, Malawi, Moldova, Slovak Republic, and Sudan. Subtractions are Eritrea and North Korea. Only 49 countries to go and the United States will have hegemony over the whole world. But it is worse than it appears. Counting the U.S. troops in territories, the officially reported number of countries or territories that the United States has troops in is now 158. It is not without cause that the twentieth century’s greatest proponent of liberty, and the greatest opponent of the state, Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), said that "empirically, taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialist government has been the United States."

This foreign troop presence is, of course, directly opposite the foreign policy of the Founding Fathers:

* George Washington: "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible."

* Thomas Jefferson: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none."

* John Quincy Adams: "America . . . goes not abroad seeking monsters to destroy."

In his Farewell Address, George Washington also warned against "permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." Could he have ever imagined the commitment of the United States to be the world’s policeman?

Since the Spanish-American War of 1898, the foreign policy of the United States has been one of interventionism, which is always followed by its stepchildren belligerency, bellicosity, and jingoism. When televangelist Pat Robertson recently said that the United States government should "take out" the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, he had a history of CIA assassinations and assassination schemes to go by. This certainly doesn’t excuse his remarks, but it is important to note that U.S. intervention abroad has not always been masked under the noble purposes of humanitarian relief or making the world safe for democracy.

Because we live in an imperfect world of nation-states that is not likely to change anytime in the near future, the question of U.S. foreign policy cannot be ignored. Many libertarians make the mistake of expending all of their energies in an attempt to downsize the state by freeing the market and society from government interference while forgetting that "war," in the immortal words of Randolph Bourne (1886–1918), "is the health of the state." Libertarians who disparage the welfare state while turning a blind eye to the warfare state are terribly inconsistent.

So, as Rothbard again said, since "libertarians desire to limit, to whittle down, the area of government power in all directions and as much as possible," the goal in foreign affairs should be the same as that in domestic affairs: "To keep government from interfering in the affairs of other governments or other countries." We should "shackle government from acting abroad just as we try to shackle government at home."

The state’s coercive arm of foreign intervention is the military. U.S. troops don’t "defend our freedoms." As the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Jacob Hornberger has so courageously pointed out, U.S. troops

serve not as a defender of our freedoms but instead simply as a loyal and obedient personal army of the president, ready and prepared to serve him and obey his commands. It is an army that stands ready to obey the president’s orders to deploy to any country in the world for any reason he deems fit and attack, kill, and maim any "terrorist" who dares to resist the U.S. invasion of his own country. It is also an army that stands ready to obey the president’s orders to take into custody any American whom the commander in chief deems a "terrorist" and to punish him accordingly.

To say that U.S. troops "defend our freedoms" is to say that my freedom to write this article right now that is critical of the U.S. government’s foreign policy is a direct result of the recent U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. That may sound ridiculous, but it is no more ridiculous than saying that U.S. troops "defend our freedoms" when what they actually do is bomb, invade, and occupy other countries.

"Well," I can hear the retort, "if it wasn’t for U.S. troops halting the German menace we would all be speaking German right now." I suppose this is the same Germany that couldn’t cross the English Channel and invade Great Britain. And how does that justify keeping 69,395 U.S. troops on German soil over sixty years later?

There is, therefore, one element of foreign policy that I would like to touch on: the role of the U.S. military in foreign affairs. It should be quite obvious from my writings on the U.S. empire ("The U.S. Global Empire," "The Bases of Empire," "Guarding the Empire," and "What’s Wrong with the U.S. Global Empire") that I don’t agree with Max Boot’s statement that "on the whole, U.S. imperialism has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past century." That being said, the subject to be addressed is what should be done with the U.S. military in order to dissolve the U.S. empire and return to the nonintervention policy of the Founders.

Today Iraq, tomorrow the world.

The first thing that needs to be done is to get out of Iraq before the blood of one more American is shed on Iraqi soil. I have elsewhere shown that it is a simple matter to withdraw from Iraq in not only a safe, reasonable, and timely manner, but also in a just manner. That was back on August 8, when the number of wasted American lives was "only" 1,827. Three hundred more American soldiers have died since then. And for what? Three hundred more sets of American parents have suffered the loss of a child. And for what? Six hundred more sets of grandparents have suffered the loss of a grandchild. And for what? Many hundreds more brothers and sisters have lost a brother, or in some cases, a sister. And for what? Untold numbers of friends and acquaintances have lost the same. And for what?

It is the warmongers who are anti-American, not us "anti-war weenies." We never considered the shedding of the blood of even one American to be "worth" whatever it is that U.S. troops are now dying for. As I have elsewhere said: "Bringing democracy to Iraq and ridding the country of Saddam Hussein is not worth the life of one American. What kind of government they have and who is to be their ‘leader’ is the business of the Iraqi people, not the United States."

We should withdraw our forces, not because the war is going badly, not because too many American troops are dying, and not because the war is costing too much. We should withdraw our troops because the war was a monstrous wrong from the very beginning.

Withdraw from Iraq today, and withdraw from the rest of the world tomorrow.

After the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the rest of the world should be put on notice: you’re next. Instead of listening to the BRAC Commission recommendations about which bases to close in the United States, Congress should close all foreign bases first. Instead of reading documents like Defense Planning Guidance or Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Congress should have read Murray Rothbard:

The primary plank of a libertarian foreign policy program for America must be to call upon the United States to abandon its policy of global interventionism: to withdraw immediately and completely, militarily and politically, from Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, from everywhere. The cry among American libertarians should be for the United States to withdraw now, in every way that involves the U.S. government. The United States should dismantle its bases, withdraw its troops, stop its incessant political meddling, and abolish the CIA. It should also end all foreign aid – which is simply a device to coerce the American taxpayer into subsidizing American exports and favored foreign States, all in the name of "helping the starving peoples of the world." In short, the United States government should withdraw totally to within its own boundaries and maintain a policy of strict political "isolation" or neutrality everywhere.

This is certainly a policy that could be implemented. How many countries in the world do the countries of Italy, Argentina, and Iceland have troops and bases in? How about Switzerland, Mongolia, and Lithuania? Are any of these countries in danger of being attacked because they don’t have an empire of troops of bases? There is absolutely no reason why the United States has to have an empire of troops and bases that encircles the world that it presently has.

This policy is one of political isolation. It doesn’t mean that the United States should refuse to participate in the Olympics, refuse to issue visas, refuse to trade, refuse to extradite criminals, refuse to allow travel abroad, or refuse to allow immigration. It is a policy, not of isolationism, but of non-interventionism.

It is also the policy of the Founding Fathers, like Thomas Jefferson:

* No one nation has a right to sit in judgment over another.

* We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country, nor with the general affairs of Europe.

* I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment.

* We have produced proofs, from the most enlightened and approved writers on the subject, that a neutral nation must, in all things relating to the war, observe an exact impartiality towards the parties.

No judgment, no meddling, no political connection, and no partiality. What is wrong with the wisdom of Jefferson?

Today Iraq, tomorrow the world – and then what?

Once American troops are withdrawn from garrisoning the planet, they should be prevented from doing so again. One way to do this would be to adopt the Amendment for Peace, proposed by U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler (1881– 1940):

1. The removal of members of the land armed forces from within the continental limits of the United States and the Panama Canal Zone for any cause whatsoever is hereby prohibited.

2. The vessels of the United States Navy, or of the other branches of the armed service, are hereby prohibited from steaming, for any reason whatsoever except on an errand of mercy, more than five hundred miles from our coast.

3. Aircraft of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps is hereby prohibited from flying, for any reason whatsoever, more than seven hundred and fifty miles beyond the coast of the United States.

This amendment is a great starting point. Obviously, the Panama Canal Zone statement is now irrelevant. And whether the government could be trusted to not use "an errand of mercy" as a covert operation is now very debatable.

Major Butler believed that his amendment "would be absolute guarantee to the women of America that their loved ones never would be sent overseas to be needlessly shot down in European or Asiatic or African wars that are no concern of our people."

He also reasoned that because of "our geographical position, it is all but impossible for any foreign power to muster, transport and land sufficient troops on our shores for a successful invasion." In this Butler was echoing Jefferson, who recognized that geography was one of the great advantages of the United States:

The insulated state in which nature has placed the American continent should so far avail it that no spark of war kindled in the other quarters of the globe should be wafted across the wide oceans which separate us from them.

At such a distance from Europe and with such an ocean between us, we hope to meddle little in its quarrels or combinations. Its peace and its commerce are what we shall court.

But even without the advantage of geography, a policy of non-intervention is sufficient, as Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) has pointed out: "Countries like Switzerland and Sweden who promote neutrality and non-intervention have benefited for the most part by remaining secure and free of war over the centuries."

What, then, would become of our military if a strict non-interventionist policy of peace and neutrality were adopted? For starters, perhaps the Department of Defense could then actually do something to "defend our freedoms" like guard our borders and patrol our coasts. The military could be scaled back considerably (along with what Robert Higgs has estimated to be its $840 billion budget), with militias picking up the slack, as William Lind has recently pointed out here and here.

Some say that Jefferson’s ideals are not practical in a post-9/11 world. To them I offer the wisdom of Representative Paul, who has described a foreign policy for peace in these words:

Our troops would be brought home, systematically but soon.

The mission for our Coast Guard would change if our foreign policy became non-interventionist. They, too, would come home, protect our coast, and stop being the enforcers of bureaucratic laws that either should not exist or should be a state function.

All foreign aid would be discontinued.

A foreign policy of freedom and peace would prompt us to give ample notice before permanently withdrawing from international organizations that have entangled us for over a half a century. US membership in world government was hardly what the founders envisioned when writing the Constitution.

The principle of Marque and Reprisal would be revived and specific problems such as terrorist threats would be dealt with on a contract basis incorporating private resources to more accurately target our enemies and reduce the chances of needless and endless war.

The Logan Act would be repealed, thus allowing maximum freedom of our citizens to volunteer to support their war of choice. This would help diminish the enthusiasm for wars the proponents have used to justify our world policies and diminish the perceived need for a military draft.

If we followed a constitutional policy of non-intervention, we would never have to entertain the aggressive notion of preemptive war based on speculation of what a country might do at some future date. Political pressure by other countries to alter our foreign policy for their benefit would never be a consideration. Commercial interests and our citizens investing overseas could not expect our armies to follow them and protect their profits.

A non-interventionist foreign policy would not condone subsidies to our corporations through programs like the Export/Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

A non-interventionist foreign policy would go a long way toward preventing 9/11 type attacks. The Department of Homeland Security would be unnecessary, and the military, along with less bureaucracy in our intelligence-gathering agencies, could instead provide the security the new department is supposed to provide. A renewed respect for gun ownership and responsibility for defending one's property would provide additional protection against potential terrorists.

Today Iraq, tomorrow the world. The sooner we adopt this policy the better. How many more U.S. soldiers have to needlessly die in Iraq before Americans realize this?

December 5, 2005

Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting and economics at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, FL. He is also the director of the Francis Wayland Institute. His new book is Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State. Visit his website.

Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com

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http://lnk.nu/nytimes.com/6qd.html

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http://lnk.nu/wpherald.com/6r0.php

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http://lnk.nu/mosnews.com/6r1.shtml

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"...the Bush Administration left its senses long ago. But unlike the proverbial lunatics running the asylum, they’re running the world..." - Scott D. O'Reilly, The Imperial Presidency

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11215.htm

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Nuclear Iran? You bet!

By Mike Whitney

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12/05/05 "ICH" -- -- Is there a case to be made for allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons in the interests of peace? Or has all the air been sucked out of the debate by American and Israeli demagogues who dominate the airwaves?

The case for a nuclear Iran doesn’t emerge from fear-mongering or saber-rattling, like the alternate view, but from reason and respect for widely accepted facts; both of which are sadly missing from the analysis appearing in the western media. Any reasonable person can compile the evidence, weigh the facts, and draw the very same conclusions as myself. Regrettably, they will have to swim against a torrent of misinformation broadcast daily by an entire industry devoted exclusively to deception and propaganda.

The problems in the Middle East are clear and indisputable despite 30 years of obfuscation designed to promote the continued occupation of Palestine. Just this week, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on 6 separate items which reinforced resolutions 242 and the 1967 borders of the Palestinian state.

Predictably, Israel and the US voted in the minority obstructing the application of international law and sticking with decades of willful “rejectionist” policies. John Bolton, the US “mad-hatter” who now presides over Israel’s interests in the UN, ludicrously called the balloting “irrelevant” because it fell short of the expansionistic ambitions of Israel and jeopardized the further colonization of the region by the US.

No one expected anything different.

Never the less, the media smokescreen has not obscured the brutal realities of life under occupation nor has it concealed where the blame ultimately lies. The language of state-terror,; carefully crafted in Israeli think-tanks (“the generous offer”, “partner in peace”, “infrastructure of terrorism” and “targeted assassinations”) has done little to disguise 30 years of imperial politics supported by a rotating list of toadies operating from the Oval Office.

Do we agree, so far?

Now, Washington has joined the Middle East tussle, flaunting its public relations campaign; “The War on Terror”, to justify another century of exploitation, resource-theft, and jack-boot subjugation of the native people.

So, how does this relate to Iran?

Clearly, if things had gone smoothly in Iraq, Dick Cheney would be unfurling the Stars and Stripes in Tehran right now. No serious critic of the Bush administration’s Defense Policy Strategy for preemptive warfare would dispute this.

No one.

So, how does one discourage American and Israeli aggression and occupation?

Both Bush and Sharon have made it painfully clear that nothing short of nuclear weapons will stop their regional ambitions. The war on terror is just a smokescreen intended to mask the real goals of disarming the world and seizing its resources.

So, how bad would it be to put nukes in the hands of the Mullahs?

Well, first of all we need to establish whether or not Iran has a history of territorial aggression.

Have the Ayatollahs followed a policy of ignoring the UN for 30 years while they occupy an area that (according to the vast majority of sovereign countries) belongs to the indigenous people?

No.

Do the Mullahs have a record of preemptive war on 6 continents, massive, regionally-destabilizing covert activities, coup d’etats, and an archipelago of concentration camps spread across the globe?

No.

Has Iran done anything that would indicate that it would use a nuclear weapon against a civilian population like the United States did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

No.

The real issue with Iran is that its leaders have shown the temerity to control their own resources, which the corporate globalists and Washington plutocrats claim as their own.

Isn’t that true?

So, if we are serious about peace in the region, and do not want to see Iran degenerate into the dark-winter of American genocide that we see in Iraq; it should be provided with the weaponry to defend itself from foreign aggression.

After all, the policy of “Deterrents” worked for the US and Soviet Union for nearly 40 years, preventing the probability of nuclear holocaust.

Perhaps, it will work again.



http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8210

(Supporting Links at Source URL)

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December 6, 2005

Total Transparency

by Gordon Prather

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The November report [.pdf] of Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei to the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency begins by noting that the Board had adopted a resolution in September in which, inter alia, it "urged" the Islamic Republic of Iran to implement "transparency measures" that extend beyond the formal requirements of the Iranian Safeguards Agreement [.pdf] and the Additional Protocol.

Iran's Safeguards Agreement – which gave the IAEA the "right and the obligation" to ensure that safeguards are applied on "all source or special fissionable material" in all peaceful nuclear activities "for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons" – entered into force in 1974.

Under that agreement, IAEA inspections are routinely limited to those locations within a facility through which safeguarded nuclear material is expected to flow.

Then, in 2002, at the 46th IAEA General Conference, Reza Aghazadeh, president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, announced [.pdf] that Iran planned to construct within two decades nuclear power plants with a total capacity of 6,000 MW:

"I take this opportunity to invite all the technologically advanced member states to participate in my country's ambitious plan for the construction of nuclear power plants and the associated technologies such as fuel cycle, safety, and waste management techniques."

In the early 1990s, Russia had agreed, inter alia, to complete the nuclear power plants at Bushehr, whose construction had begun under the shah, and build a gas-centrifuge uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz.

Also in the early 1990s, China had agreed, inter alia, to provide Iran two 300 MW nuclear power plants and a uranium-conversion plant at Isfahan.

But in 1995, as a result of intense U.S. pressure on Russia and China – and on European suppliers of auxiliary equipment – Russia canceled the gas-centrifuge facility contract and China canceled the power plant contract. In 1997, China also canceled the uranium-conversion plant contract.

The Russians continued to honor their contract to complete at least one of the 1,000 MW power plants at Bushehr.

So the Iranians decided to try to develop or acquire (unbeknownst to the U.S.) elements of the nuclear fuel-cycle themselves. It is important to note that under their existing safeguards agreement, they are – and were – under no obligation to inform the IAEA about any of those activities until shortly before they actually involve(d) the chemical or physical transformation of safeguarded nuclear materials.

In August 2002, the Iranians subjected the uranium-enrichment pilot plant they had under construction at Natanz to IAEA safeguards. They had already subjected the uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan.

The IAEA in subsequent inspections has yet to find anything "wrong" at those or other fuel-cycle related safeguarded facilities. However, in 2002 and early 2003, the IAEA did find imports of small amounts of "source or special nuclear materials" and activities involving their physical or chemical transformation that should have been reported, but weren't.

The most serious Iranian "violation" was the failure to report the importation from China in 1991 of 0.13 "effective-kilogram" of U235 to be used for testing of different processes involved in the then-to-be-supplied Chinese uranium-conversion facility. The facility the Iranians built themselves had been subject to safeguards ever since construction began, but the Iranians had never reported the test materials – which they had not yet used – they got from China. It was the Iranian view – as well as that of South Korea, et al. – that only "significant" quantities (one effective-kilogram) had to be reported.

Then in December 2003, Iran signed the IAEA Additional Protocol and announced it would "cooperate with the Agency in accordance with the [Additional] Protocol in advance of its ratification."

Now, after two years of intrusive inspections and reporting on imports of nuclear material and related equipment that would be required by the Additional Protocol (if it were in force) and implementation by Iran of some "transparency measures" that extend beyond the formal requirements of the Iranian Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol, ElBaradei had this to say:

"In order to clarify some of the outstanding issues related to Iran's enrichment program, Iran's full transparency is indispensable and overdue.

"Transparency measures should include the provision of information and documentation related to the procurement of dual-use equipment, and permitting visits to relevant military-owned workshops and R&D locations associated with the Physics Research Center and the Lavisan-Shian site.

"These should also include interviews on the acquisition of certain dual-use materials and equipment, and the taking of environmental samples from the above [non-safeguarded] locations."

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Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

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"The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country." - J. Robert Oppenheimer