War game shows how attacking Iran could backfire

I’ve met with some very sharp Afghan policy makers who understand well that the US “war on drugs” has terrible consequences for Afghans, who are victimized by the US DEA and the Afghan government it bullies into suppressing the market, and that it’s buying weapons for the Taliban. I’m hoping to work to prepare a report calling for a special drug regime that would allow Afghan farmers to grow poppies for the legal pharmaceutical market, which would actually increase incomes to farmers (who get a tiny share of the total price of illegal drugs, as most goes to the traffickers who smuggle it out of Afghanistan through Iran, India, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, and then those who ship it to markets in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, not to mention the final dealers), would cut out the profits to the narco-traffickers and terrorist networks, and would undercut the corruption that prohibition brings. It would be a good step toward bring civil peace to a country that has had thirty years of war. They deserve peace, and a change in the policies toward narcotics producers and buyers would be a big step in the right direction.

Add up:

New York Times: “High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War”

The estimated $1 million a year it costs per soldier is higher than the $390,000 congressional researchers estimated in 2006.

A good short general treatment of the costs of “exporting democracy” is found in Chris Coyne’s After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy. People who advocate a “Stay the Course” approach (or even expanding “nation building” exercises) should grapple with Coyne’s arguments and evidence.

It’s in German, but this short film the message of this little film should be clear to all.

BBC: “Guns given to Somali quiz winners”

The winning team, from the city’s Farjano district, reportedly won a rifle, two grenades, a landmine and office supplies worth $1,000 (£613).

What do you do with one landmine?

Nobel Peace Prize winner President Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan and has made no additional moves, beyond what the Bush administration had planned, for any withdrawal from Iraq. He has done nothing to move the world, much less the US, toward peace. It seems he got the “I’m not a Republican” award. This has got to be the greatest cheapening of an international award since, um, Henry Kissinger got it for “peace in the Vietnam.”

Note the CNN comment:

Unlike his predecessors, Obama was selected not for substantive accomplishments, but for his “vision” and inspiring “hope” at the beginning of his presidency.

One crazy person with an explosive enema

BBC: “Explosives ‘inside’ suicide bomber“

Takis Michas is a very brave Greek journalist who is not afraid to point out the idiocies of extremist nationalism and xenophobia and their awful consequences, especially in the Balkans.

He has suffered quite serious death threats for pointing out the craziness of threatening war over the name of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and now he is being sued for pointing out the presence of Greek nationalist paramilitaries in Bosnia during the Srebrenica massacre. Here’s an interview with him on the case on the website of the Congress of North American Bosniacs: “Greek journalist sued for writing about the presence of Greek paramilitaries in Bosnia”

More on the case from the Srebrenica Genocide Blog.

AP: “Washington, Colombia near deal on base access”

The “War on Drugs” is a prime reason for the success of the military groups that are attacking the government and civil society in Colombia; it provides a comparative advantage in fundraising to groups that are well organized at brutality and violence. The best friends FARC in Colombia and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have are in the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Without US drug laws, it would be much harder for them to get money to pay for weapons, soldiers, etc. And now, in an example of Ludwig von Mises’s insight that one intervention begets another, we have military interventions to combat the well financed forces that are financed so well because of the earlier intervention. More interventionism of this sort will raise the rents to the purveyors of violence who, under violent conditions, dominate drug markets, leading to more financing for narco-terrorism. To get rid of narco-terrorism, we need to get rid of the prohibitionist drug laws that make it possible.

I got a little example of what Vijay Dandapani describes: a very short flight from Delhi (maybe half an hour) to Pakistan took me more than 11 hours, via Dubai.

….from the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy

Read their final report: “Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift”

It is long past time to end the destructive, wasteful, and unjust policy of prohibition. It fuels terrorism, empowers and funds the most violent criminals, and ruins the lives of millions of people. Enough!

From the London news conference at the offices of the Legatum Institute to launch the FreedomToTrade.org campaign.

Who “protest” NATO meetings by setting buildings on fire, with evident impunity?

Sign the petition to stop protectionism and economic nationalism and the economic disaster, loss of freedom, and diplomatic and military conflict it brings in its train. Hundreds of economists and others from around the globe have signed. Please add your voice.

I am working with colleagues around the world to combat protectionism and advance freedom of trade. We will announce a major campaign soon. In the meantime, we are soliciting signatures to a petition on trade, located at www.atlasnetwork.org/tradepetition. I hope that you will sign it, especially (but by no means only) if you are an economist, and that you will share it with friends, colleagues, professors, and more.

The most despised of the despised in a thoroughly evil regime. Slaves, treated as objects, overlooked because they were not considered human, who provided military intelligence that led to the overthrow of their masters.

The print story on CNN: “Slave in Jefferson Davis’ home gave Union key secrets“

BBC: “Witnesses to Moscow’s Afghan war“

Slate: “Cozying Up to the New Guy: Libertarians are oddly hopeful about the Obama administration,” by Michael Newman

BBC: “‘Phosphorus wounds’ alarm Gazans

Sabah herself has suffered terrible burns on her arms, legs and torso and is considerable pain.

“There was fire, and so much white smoke,” she says. “The missile melted my children. My daughter-in-law melted in front of my eyes.”

….

After initially denying that white phosphorus shells were fired in Gaza, some Israeli military officials have now acknowledged its use.

The army says it has started an internal investigation, the insistence being until now that no weapons were used illegally.

Israel’s democratic polity will at least debate this. But it is worth thinking about for those who have been eager defenders of the Olmert government’s policies. Was it justified to unleash such a horror on the civilian population? And they should also ask whether creating such fear — and such animosity — will be in the long-run interests of the Israeli people. They need to do some deep thinking and soul searching about the suffering imposed on the innocents in Gaza. And the apologists for Hamas, who deliberately provoked such a horrifying response with their rockets, should also ask whether it was all worth it. They should talk to the mother who saw her children melt before her eyes and justify their rockets to her. Unfortunately for the decent population of Israel and for the decent population of Gaza, now that the response has come and the children have been killed, that mother’s grief may turn into a thirst for revenge. And then Hamas will have won another round of death for the Palestinian people. There is so much grief, and so much shame, to be shared in the region.

It is very hard to watch the clip through to the end. The television journalists are in tears. Would that the political leaders of Palestine and Israel would have to sit down with the bereaved father and try to justify to him what they have done.

Here’s a followup clip, as presented on Al Jazeera, showing the efforts of the Israeli journalist to help, and of the exception made to evacuate the survivors to Israeli hospital: