| Tuesday, February
24, 2004 The
debate over Iraq continues, and it's
probably time to deal with it, but I don't have that time just now.
I can specify a few principles. The argument seems to be that
"they hate us, they are coming after us, we can't stop that, so it is better
to fight in Baghdad and Damascus than in Boston and Detroit."
We will leave out whether Baghdad or Damascus are themselves actual threats
greater than Riyadh or Tehran just for the moment. The argument is that we
have to fight and it is better for us to fight on someone else's territory;
and it is impossible to defend ourselves by means short of aggressive
preventive war. The answer to that is that this is nonsense.
First, it isn't impossible to defend our borders, despite the contrary
evidence from drug traffickers. The problem has never been the ability, but
the will. Example: let us suppose 100 million visitors to the US. If we were
to spend an average of $100 per visitor checking credentials and rejecting
those who have no business here, that would be $10 billion a year: a fair
amount of money, but cheap compared to a war.
There are some 6,000 miles of borders. (I made that up, but
it's not an unreasonable number.) At a capital expense of $1,000 per mile
this is $6 billion. That's not enough, but at $10,000 a mile we have a capital
cost of $60 billion. Raise that. Call it $100 billion to build fences, real
and electronic. That's a capital cost. Now station the Army at critical
border areas, and encourage citizen militia to aid in border control, and go
all out: it still won't cost more than $40 billion a year for physical
border control. Assume we have to pay 6% on the $100 billion for capital
equipment, and we are up to $10 billion for checking credentials and such,
$6 billion interest, and $40 billion for physical border control, for a
total of $56 billion. This is still less than the cost of war, and much of
the money is spent on salaries and other payments to people in the US who
will spend the money in the US. And by not having the Army
overseas and in the faces of our enemies, surely we lessen the provocation?
We lessen the incentive to "come after us," and at the same time we make it
far more difficult to that. Will this make us "safe" in the sense that there
will be no more terror incidents here? Unlikely. But it is certainly
reasonable to assume that these measures will hold the casualty rate to
under 1 citizen a day -- which is what we are paying now. Of
course there is more to security than this. To the $56 billion a year for
border control we need to add money for intelligence: physical, agents, and
of course bribes. Silver bullets have won quite a few wars in history, and
there is no reason to assume they have lost their effectiveness.
Now is this a policy of "isolation?" Hardly. Let me summarize:
Control of the borders. Don't tread on me: we
remain armed. This will certainly cost less than sending the army overseas,
particularly since the Guard and the Reserves can understand they are
unlikely to be deployed overseas except in the case of real declared war.
Seek energy independence. No means I think of cost anything like what
wars cost. Countries have interests, not friends. We
are no different. We avoid entangling alliances. We are
the friends of liberty everywhere, but guardians only of our own. We
will protect our people, we will protect our interests, we will protect the
sea lanes; but we have no Jacobin obligation to make the world safe for
democracy. It is enough for it to be safe for our republic. Other nations
have resources. Let them employ them. Avoid the
territorial disputes of Europe, and the Near East, and Asia, and everywhere
else unless those directly threaten us. We may be dismayed at the way
Serbs treat Albanians, and how the Albanians we have empowered treat Serbs,
but it is not our job to set up proconsuls in Kosovo and Belgrade and make
aristocrats out of UN bureaucrats. If nations want to lord it over others,
let them pay for the privilege, and do so without us. And
we reserve the right to use preventive war, but we make it clear we do
so only when we have good grounds. Afghanistan was such a place. Iraq was,
as it turns out, not, although Saddam Hussein did his best to convince us he
was a real threat and not a paper jackal. Let that be a salutary lesson to
others... This isn't isolationism, any more than tariff for
revenue is isolationism. This is putting American interests first.
====================================== I also owe you some
comments on the continuing mess in Washington. Regulations make it unlikely
that local telephone companies will invest in broadband "last one hundred
feet." This leaves many of us at the tender mercies of monopoly cable
companies. We need a more sensible policy that encourages competition.
And if we are to be internationally competitive, we need total reform of the
school system. Since that won't happen from the top, the best thing we could
do for the schools is cut the districts loose. The money from Washington is
like dope: it comes with hidous strings. The teacher unions
exist to defend the least competent teachers, and they do it well. That
wasn't the original premise of what was supposed to be a "professional
society". But this mess is in some ways worse than the Near
East mess...
Sam Konkin, RIP
For more on the economy and unionism,
see mail.
Tuesday TOP
Current Mail
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
