Saturday, September 26, 2009

Support President Obama and Our Troops

Afghanistan isn’t a popular place to be fighting any more. Americans who tend to vote Democratic never liked it in the first place. Americans who tend to vote Republican aren’t all that interested, now that the war is being fought on the watch of a commander in chief named Barack Obama. But, the war is being fought by a volunteer army, which means that most Americans, those with better options, aren’t on the front lines anyway. So it is not a really emotional issue for anyone. The loud screaming is all about issues, and delusions, much closer to home.

There is a history to why we are in Afghanistan now. That history needs to be carefully examined before anyone commits our nation irrevocably to either “staying the course” or getting out now. We should do one or the other. We should not muddle along, with half an eye on staying the course, and half an eye on getting out.

When we first went into Afghanistan, it was in direct response to the planes hijacked and crashed into buildings on September 11, 2001. The organization that planned and directed those operations was openly situated in Afghanistan, with the permission and support of the government then in power.

Smashing the Taliban was a relatively easy operation. It was not exactly like invading a hostile country, where everyone was our enemy. The Taliban had been relatively popular when they took power, because they ended the capricious, violent rule of a series of warlords who freely raped and robbed the population. But, they had worn out their welcome, imposing rules most people didn’t really care for, with their own style of brutality.

Better luck for the USA, on the northern borders of Afghanistan was a substantial army, veterans of thirty years of continuous warfare, who knew the country, and were the sworn enemies of the Taliban. All they needed was for a nice superpower to provide them with a good supply of arms and ammunition, tactical air cover, and some special operations ground forces to clear the way. Our interests coincided for the moment, and the Taliban government was history.

After that, almost everything went wrong. It has long been a mantra of Democratic Party politics that we should have focused on Afghanistan, where the real enemy was, rather than getting distracted in Iraq. That is true as far as it goes. Iraq was a distraction from the battle against al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator from central casting, but he and Osama bin-Laden were sworn enemies. The best bin-Laden had to say of him, when the U.S. did invade Iraq, was “we will support the socialists against the Americans, even though we know they are apostates.” If bin-Laden had set foot in Iraq, Hussein would have drilled him between the eyes without a trial.

More important, if we had stayed focused on Afghanistan, the Taliban might not have survived in sufficient strength to re-establish itself as a power in Pakistan. We might have decimated the entire al-Qaeda leadership. Our president and secretary of defense did drop the ball, in their eagerness to run invade Iraq.

There is another reason Democrats have harped for the past five years on the importance of winning the war in Afghanistan. Democrats have to establish their street cred on national security. They can’t win national elections, or congressional majorities, as the party of peace, love and brotherhood. They have to show that they can fight America’s enemies too, but they are smarter about who to fight and how to go about it.

But now there is a question, is continuing to fight in Afghanistan a smart thing to do?

If we are there to support and sustain the government of Afghanistan, or to bring democracy to the people of Afghanistan, the answer is no, it is not a smart thing to do. The present government of Afghanistan is not worthy of the sacrifices of money, much less of blood, being made in that country by the U.S. military. It is a corrupt alliance of warlords, operating in a centuries old pattern of tribal and clan loyalties. The president’s brother most likely is a major drug dealer, although nobody can confirm that.

On the other hand, if the U.S. pulls out, the Taliban stands a good chance of taking control of the country again, or at least, it remains a power on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The government of Pakistan, already weak, becomes even weaker. The chances of a nuclear-armed al-Qaeda rise sharply. It may be in our own vital interest to fight this war out, even though our allies are nothing to boast of.

If there is good cause to remain, the next question is, can we win? What constitutes “winning” anyway? Can we grind down the Taliban and al-Qaeda until they are a negligible force in the world, with little capacity to do us harm? Can we do that without alienating the entire population of Afghanistan, making our troops out to be a foreign occupying power? (If we can’t, we will in the end strengthen al-Qaeda in the region, rather than destroying it.) Can we distinguish ourselves, in the popular eye, from the corrupt government that took power under our protective wing?

It boils down to, can General McChrystal pull off a successful counter-insurgency operation, winning the hearts and minds of a civilian population, that hates the memory of Taliban rule, and hates the operation of the current government, with which we are formally allied? That is a tough call, and nobody should rush to say they have the final answer.

The generals who commanded American troops in Vietnam knew all about how to win World War II, and nothing about how to fight a guerilla army that had the support of a large portion of the people we were there to “liberate.” Fighting yesterday’s war today is not the road to victory. It would be a mistake for those who understand how wrong we were in Vietnam to launch a peace movement now. Opposing yesterday’s war today is not the road to peace and brotherhood.

What we may have in Afghanistan is a war we must win, against an enemy we must fight, at the side of a government we should not support, resting on a federation of warlords who will flip sides three times a year if they find it in their own interest, in the midst of a civilian population that views our troops more favorably than their own local police, but isn’t sure they can trust us either, since we have to work with the powers that exist in the region… and Pakistan is looking like more of the same every day. So let’s cool the slogans, and give President Obama some room to think about all this.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Inalienable Rights: The Libertarian's Dilemma

The modern libertarian movement has at least two branches: emphasis on personal liberty, and emphasis on the liberty of players in the economic market place. These two philosophies are in practice hostile to each other. Their rhetoric is similar. Citizens and voters, even active advocates, might not recognize the distinction – until some libertarian party has the misfortune to win elections on a large scale. But in any attempt to actually govern, they and we would learn otherwise. Any libertarian party, which attempts to embrace both philosophies, is a house divided against itself.

A coherent libertarian platform, one capable of governing, must undo a tragic error of judicial legislation, dating to the 19th century. Prior to oral argument of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite pronounced that “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.” The court reporter therefore entered into the record of the Court's findings that “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It is time to recognize that a corporation is NOT a person. A corporation is NOT entitled to “constitutional rights.” The individuals who invest in a corporation are entitled to individual rights AS investors, but the corporation itself is not.

In fact, corporations are creatures of government. There is nothing “natural” about a corporation. Just as Americans have always been jealous of the usurpation of power by our governments, we must be equally vigilant against the usurpation of power by corporations, and for exactly the same reasons. To the extent that we, as the sovereigns of our nation, authorize our governments to charter corporations, we should be equally insistent that the government keep its creature on a short leash, under tight regulation and supervision. That corporation is best which governs least. (Corporations should not govern at all.)

There are practical reasons why it makes sense to allow corporations to exist. The original concept is the “limited liability corporation.” That means, if you invest in General Motors stock, and General Motors goes bankrupt, the most you stand to lose is the value of your stock. If General Motors were a partnership, you and all your assets would be on the line for the debts of General Motors. Your savings, your house, your car, could all be seized to pay the company’s debts. That is true of unincorporated small businesses: if Mr. Jones owns a corner grocery store, and the store goes into debt, Mr. Jones is personally liable for the debts of the store. This is why doctors and lawyers asked for laws allowing them to organize their businesses as professional corporations.

Corporations allow for large sums of capital to be put together, to invest in large projects like trans-continental railroads, or manufacturing plants covering several acres. A handful of individual investors, even rich ones, can’t really put all that together. It is not possible to have “small local airlines” offering service all over the world. But the corporation, like the government, is merely our servant. We must never allow either to become our master.

The problem is that a corporation can grow to possess billions of dollars in assets, employ hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of employees, and dominate the economy of whole cities, states, even nations. It can take on a life of its own, independent of what is good for the people or the community. Then, when free citizens of a democratic republic try to reign in this monster, the managers and directors of the corporation claim “but we are a person, with RIGHTS. You can’t trample on our RIGHTS. Nonsense.

When is the last time we added to the constitution of any state, or of the United States, a provision providing for a “congressional representatives’ bill of rights”? How about a “bureaucrats’ bill of rights”? Do OUR public servants have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the conduct of OUR public business? There is no reason that the conduct of corporate business should be any less transparent, or any less subject to restraint, than the conduct of government business. We the people have rights. Government and corporations do not have rights.

Legally, limited liability must be created by law. If there is not specific legislation, authorizing the existence of a limited liability corporation, then there is no limited liability. Every business would be a partnership. In the early decades of the USA, state legislatures passed a separate bill individually authorizing any corporation the state chose to authorize. Later, standard laws provided for a standard process of incorporation.

Corporations exist by government fiat, subject to a government-issued license, with power and authority derived directly from special government favor. Why should we, the people, acting through our elected government, grant this special consideration to any or all corporations? Only if, and only to the extent, that there is some public purpose or benefit to doing so. In fact, there is economic benefit; our economy does produce more efficiently all kinds of things we want, by allowing corporations to exist. Millions of citizens do have individual opportunities to invest, that we would never have through partnerships writ large. But, we have every right to subordinate this creature of government to the public good, and to demand a healthy respect for the rights of individual citizens over the needs and desires of the corporation we suffer to exist.

Human beings are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. To secure these rights, government derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. IF they provide sufficient benefit to the sovereign people, corporations are suffered to exist, subject to government license. Corporations do not enjoy rights. If we get that straight, then a libertarian program begins to make sense. But if there is one area where extensive government regulation makes sense, it is to severely restrict the natural tendency of corporations, like governments, to exceed their legitimate powers. Why should it be government that regulates corporations? Because, corporations are too big for any other power to do so. Just try to have a “citizens’ committee” push a multi-billion dollar corporation around!

A good rule of thumb, for a free enterprise system that values individual liberty, is that the bigger a corporation becomes, the more essential its product is, the more regulated it will be. No bureaucracy needed to regulate Alexander Graham Bell’s lab work to develop the telephone. He was entitled to the benefits of a patent on his work. But once it became essential to have a phone, once a large corporation owned transcontinental networks (which required government regulation to acquire rights of way), AT&T had to be tightly regulated. We don’t need little Suzy to get a business license to set up a lemonade stand in the front yard on hot summer’s day. But we do need peanuts from Georgia, made into peanut butter in Chicago, then sold in Seattle, to be inspected. Likewise, Kerr-McGee oil company must be tightly regulated for the health and safety of all its neighbors, employees, and customers. No corporation should be allowed to exist on any other basis. Rights are for people.