From: trailrunner1983@yahoo.com ("Trail Runner")
To: libs4peace@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [libs4peace] FFF Email Update
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 05:29:58 -0000
FFF EMAIL UPDATE -- November 8, 2002
The Future of Freedom Foundation, Fairfax, Va.
http://www.fff.org
-- Advancing ideas on liberty for you --
CONTENTS
1. FFF Thoughts for the Week
2. FFF Capsule Commentary: "Delayed Blowback in Indonesia" by Jacob G.
Hornberger
3. FFF Op-Ed: "Pawn Takes Knight" by Sheldon Richman
4. Subscribe and Support
##### 1 #####
FFF THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK
"Innovation, invention, change, all depend on the freedom of the
individual
to stand on his own two feet." -- George Winder
"It is manifestly contrary to the interest of the consumers to
prevent
the
most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their
activities
up to the limit to which the public approves of their conduct of
business by
buying their products. Here again, the issue is who should be
supreme,
the
consumers or the government? In the unhampered market the behavior of
consumers, their buying or abstention from buying, ultimately
determines
each individual's income and wealth. Should one vest in the
government
the
power to overule the consumer's choices?" -- Ludwig Von Mises
##### 2 #####
FFF CAPSULE COMMENTARY
Delayed Blowback in Indonesia
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Indonesian reaction to the recent bomb blast in Bali that killed 180
people
is another example of the consequences of U.S. interventionist
policies.
According to an article in the Nov. 7 issue of the New York Times, a
common
perception among educated Indonesians is that the CIA, not Islamic
terrorists, set off the bomb in order to secure support for the U.S.
government's upcoming war on Iraq.
Why would Indonesians arrive at that conclusion? Because they haven't
forgotten the U.S. government's intervention in their country some
four
decades ago. As the Times article points out, the CIA helped
Indonesian
army
generals to effect a regime change in 1965 that resulted in the
ouster
of
the country's founding president Sukarno "after he incurred
Washington's
displeasure for many years."
Even worse, the common perception among Indonesians is that for the
next
three decades, the U.S. government then proceeded to support the
authoritarian efforts of Sukarno's successor, Suharto, to suppress
Islamic
expression.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, simply cannot understand "why conspiracy
theories
about the United States are so prevalent in Indonesia." In their
minds,
the
U.S. government is just an innocent babe in the foreign woods that
never
does anything bad to people and that the Indonesians must simply hate
America for its freedom and values.
But U.S. officials are wrong. It is the U.S. government's decades-long
interventionist policies that are at the root of deep foreign
resentment of
the United States all over the world. And as long as the American
people
permit their government's interventionist foreign policy to go
unabated,
foreign anger, hatred, mistrust, and terrorism against America will
continue.
"Indonesians Say They Suspect C.I.A. in Bali Blast" by Jane Perlez:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/07/international/asia/07BALI.html
Jacob G. Hornberger is president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
##### 3 #####
FFF OP-ED
Pawn Takes Knight
by Sheldon Richman
Yeah, right. Even though Saddam Hussein has now agreed to
unconditional
weapons inspection, the world is going to support a U.S. war against
Iraq
because he hasn't released his political prisoners or returned Kuwaiti
property. Those acts of omission aren't exactly the stuff of a global
threat.
It's turning out that Hussein is a better chess player than President
Bush.
I don't mean that Hussein will avoid war. Make no mistake, Mr. Bush
will
have his little war. He just won't have it with the support of anyone
but
Tony Blair and the Israeli government. That's something of a victory
for
Hussein and blow to Mr. Bush.
Can you imagine going to war over political prisoners and unreturned
property? I'm not making light of those transgressions, but how many
U.S.
allies are guilty of holding political prisoners? Allies including
Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, the central Asian former Soviet
republics,
just to name a few, hardly have clean hands in the human-rights
department.
The Bush administration's line plumbs new depths of cynicism. It
seems
to
think the world, and especially the United States, is peopled with
idiots.
Let's face it. Mr. Bush doesn't give a hoot about anything but "regime
change" in Iraq, because his administration needs a leader there who
adopts
the U.S. oil-and-Israel agenda in the Middle East as his own.
Hussein,
who
was always brutal and manipulative, was a close ally as long as he
did
the
U.S. government's bidding. The moment he went independent he had to
go.
The
U.S. agenda, which existed long before 9/11, cannot be pursued with a
noncooperative president in a country as big and influential as Iraq
in
the
Arab world. (U.S. policymakers have always been far more concerned
about
Arab and Iranian nationalism than any other "threat" in that region,
including the now-defunct Soviet threat.)
After Iraq has a new and pliant regime, the Bush administration can
move on
to the next item on the agenda: Iran, which has also shown interest in
gaining nuclear weapons. Why anyone would think that the major powers
of the
Middle East shouldn't be interested in such weapons is mysterious --
until
one understands the U.S. program. Israel has had many nuclear weapons
for at
least 30 years. It is not a signer of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty
and does not permit international inspection. (Iraq is and does.) For
a
long
time it refused to even acknowledge it has nuclear weapons, even
though
one
of its specialists wrote a book about them some years ago, was
kidnapped by
Israeli agents in London, and was imprisoned for life.
In other words, Israel is the nuclear monopolist in the region, and
its
unconditional patron is the most powerful government on earth, the
only
government to have actually dropped atomic bombs -- on innocent
people.
Israel has occupied Palestinian territory relentlessly since the
1967,
in a
war it launched "preemptively." It bombed a nuclear facility in Iraq
in
1981, a facility the International Energy Agency had said was being
used
only for peaceful purposes. It invaded Lebanon in 1982, killing more
than
17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians.
Is it so puzzling that Iraq and Iran might want a deterrent to Israeli
action? I am no fan those governments, but one cannot infer aggressive
intent from their desire to have powerful weapons. As Israel's
defenders
like to say, it's a tough neighborhood, and as much as we try to
ignore
this
fact, Israel is one of the toughs.
The journalist Eric Margolis reminds us that among the UN resolutions
passed
in 1990 was one calling for a regional approach to nuclear
disarmament.
That
resolution the United States is happy to ignore because it would
require
Israel to dismantle its arsenal. That's why the Bush administration
has
to
trump up charges against Hussein.
I hope I'm wrong, but I fear war is inevitable. Anyone who wishes to
see
what kind of deadly game the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle
Axis
is
playing need only ask himself this: Short of suicide, what could
Saddam
Hussein have offered that the Bush administration would not have
dismissed
as "a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong UN Security
Council
action"?
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation
in
Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare
State,
and editor of Ideas on Liberty magazine.
##### 4 #####
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