A weird human proclivity
That would be anniversaries. It seems to be close to a cultural universal that people mark calendar dates that coincide with significant events that happened on the same date in some past year. When the number of years happens to be a multiple of ten, we make an even bigger deal out of it. If you think about it, this doesn ' t make any sense. The importance of the event is its relevance, if any, to whatever is going on at this moment, not the calendar date on which it happened. (That goes for my birthday, BTW.)So anyway, today we ' re obliged to talk about the Sept. 11 2001 attack. It is quite relevant to stuff that ' s go...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 11, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
20 Years of Cato Research on the War on Terror
Justin Logan20 years ago, Cato scholars began researching the global war on terror. Amid the chaos and uncertainty of the time, Cato analysts frequently dissented from the Beltway consensus. TheWall Street Journal ’shawkish editorial page editor Paul Gigot vividly dismissed Cato ’s foreign policy scholars,declaring that “I don’t look to the Cato Institute or any of their writers for instruction on foreign policy. Is libertarianism a school of thought, or is it four or five people in a phone booth? ” At times that is what it felt like, but theJournal ’s op ‐ed page would have been better off ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 11, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Justin Logan Source Type: blogs
Twenty Years of the Global War on Terror
Justin LoganI have anarticle in the new issue of theIndependent Review covering American strategy from 9/11 to the present. As somebody who never aspired to be a historian ( “It’s just telling stories!”), it led me to a greater respect for their craft. Telling stories in a way that adequately summarizes any given period is hard!The essay concludes,Domestically, abundant resources and permissive mass opinion left the American foreign ‐policy elite free to roam. Traditional guns‐versus‐butter trade‐offs were almost irrelevant as the United States significantly expanded both domestic w...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 31, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Justin Logan Source Type: blogs
Mass Movement
I ' m not talking about social protest, but the long-running crisis on the planet of displaced people. While war and civil conflict are one cause, many populated areas of earth are becoming uninhabitable because of climate change -- and that in turn is an underlying cause of much of the conflict. The horrific Syrian civil war had its origin in climate change, as agricultural regions dried up and masses of people moved to cities. The war in Yemen as well is driven by water shortage. But the problem is far more widespread.This Kos diary by Pakololo is a good resource and gets you past any paywalls. So what is going to h...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 23, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Afghanistan
This is not entirely on topic for Stayin ' Alive, but I wrote the Today in Iraq and Afghanistan blog for nigh on 15 years so I feel compelled to comment. A link isn ' t really necessary because it ' s all over the news that with the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the Afghan security forces are collapsing and the Taliban are conquering territory, including major cities, much faster than almost anyone expected.But here ' s a link for the heck of it. Given the abject failure of the Afghan National Army and other government forces, predictions are that the internationally recognized government may not hold on to Kabul for mo...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 13, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Shape of Public Opinion on War and Terrorism
John GlaserDo leaders, elites, and mass media shape public opinion on issues of war and terrorism from the top down? Or, in a more bottom ‐up fashion, does the public cling to certain ideas and fears to which national figures and a competitive news media then pander? Cato ’s Senior Fellow John Mueller has a new White Paper out today entitledPublic Opinion on War and Terror: Manipulated or Manipulating? in which he makes a persuasive, and controversial, case that, contrary to common assumptions and much commentary, public opinion is not very effectively manipulated from the top down and indeed it ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 10, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: John Glaser Source Type: blogs
Applying Machiavellian Discourses to the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
After 20 years of war without victory in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it is time to derive key lessons from both conflicts to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Niccol ò Machiavelli, whose insights on statecraft have endured for five centuries, is a valuable guide in analyzing those lessons. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - August 9, 2021 Category: Health Management Authors: Scott Savitz Source Type: blogs
Biden Says He ’s Ending Forever Wars. He Isn’t.
John GlaserPresident Biden is playing hide the ball with America ’s Forever Wars. In his public pronouncements, he depicts his administration as diligently rolling back the numerous post‐9/11 U.S. military misadventures. He delivered a number of speeches declaring an end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan and specifying a timeline for a withdrawal of U.S. troops by September. In April, the administration reached a tacit agreement with the Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al ‐Kadhimi to officially conclude the U.S. combat mission in Iraq. “There will be no U.S. military forces in a combat r...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 26, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: John Glaser Source Type: blogs
Festschrift for Ronald Dumsfeld
You can find it here. In case you ' re too young to know what the crack about " thearea around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat " refers to, that ' s where he said " we know where the weapons of mass destruction are. " In case you ' re too young to know what Weapons of Mass Destruction ™ is all about, that ' s why the U.S. invaded Iraq, because of the Imminent Threat ™ posed by the Weapons of Mass Destruction ™ which in fact did not exist. The entire campaign for war was based on an edifice of lies, generated by Rumsfeld and R.B. Cheney, to justify what they intended to do even b...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 2, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Keep Repealing AUMFs until You Hit the One That Matters
Gene HealyOn Sunday night at around 6:00 PM ET, Joe Biden became president all over again —at least by theperverse Beltway logic that holds bombing the Middle East is as presidential as it gets. At the CINC ’s command, Air Force F-15s and F-16s pounded several facilities in Syria and Iraq used by Iran-backed militias to attack U.S. troops. The Pentagon’s press officeunleashed a relentless adjective-swarm —“necessary, appropriate, deliberate”—justifying the “defensive precision” attacks, exquisitely calibrated to “limit the risk of escalation” while sending “a clear and unambiguous deterrent message....
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 1, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Gene Healy Source Type: blogs
The Iraq war
I found some old files in my basement from the days when I wrote the Today in Iraq blog. They reminded me of how much I used to follow, research and write about the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was a big part of my political and intellectual life for many years. It makes one despair to see how it ' s gone down the memory hole.Here are facts which are now generally understood and acknowledged even by many people who were enthusiastic supporters of the war, including some who were in substantial part responsible for it, such as Colin Powell. I ' d have to spend the afternoon going through that 3 foot stack of papers to document...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 8, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Memorial
I usually do a Memorial Day post, so okay I ' m late this year. I noticed yesterday a common trope, about remember those who " died defending our freedom. " (Here, for example, the Veep.) Err, no. Or for the most part no. The origins of Memorial Day are a bit obscure,but it appears that the earliest precedents were remembrances at the graves of Confederate dead, and indeed the first official observances were in former Confederate states. I ' ll grant you that the Union army dead had fought in the cause of freedom for people who are now at least nominally a part of our national community, so put one credit on the...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 1, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Dangers of Replacing the 2001 AUMF
John GlaserPresident Biden ’s announcement in April, and again in his first State of the Union address, that the U.S. military will be withdrawing from Afghanistan must have seemed to many Americans to be an inflection point. But if pulling out of Afghanistan is thought to mark an end to the post‐9/11 wars, think ag ain.Almost as soon as Biden could give the official orders to withdraw, reporting clarified that the new policy was by no means equivalent to ending the war. “With withdrawal preparations ramping up,” theWall Street Journalreported in March, “U.S. military commanders want bases for troops, drone...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 28, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: John Glaser Source Type: blogs
Recommended reading
If you haven ' t yet read this by Zeynep Tufecki,do so now. That is an order. I remember all too well the early days of the Internet, followed by its wholesale migration to the World Wide Web. There was an intoxicating culture of revolution. The Internet was going to make information -- assumed to be a synonym for truth -- free for all. It would bring down tyrants, and liberate everyone from the soft tyranny of ideology and politicians ' seductive promises and lies. Of course, all of these visionaries couldn ' t perceive their own ideology -- this was all closely bound up with a glib libertarianism a...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 7, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Military Involvement in Domestic Surveillance: Cato FOIA Lawsuit Seeks Answers
Patrick G. EddingtonOver the last year, much of the focus of civil liberties advocates has been on the potential scope of law enforcement –federal, state, and local–monitoring of activists protesting the murder of George Floyd and other people of color by police officers. In late May 2020, then‐Attorney General William Barrauthorized the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to conduct surveillance of protestors (Cato has a FOIA pending with DoJ to determine whether that authority remains in effect). The Department of Homeland Security conductedaerial surveillance over at least 15 U.S. cities for the same pur...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 5, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Patrick G. Eddington Source Type: blogs
