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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Robert Higgs on War and Liberty
The Bush administration's policy toward Iraq is wrong on both moral and practical grounds. A "preemptive" war against Iraq entails a variety of morally indefensible actions, but even Americans who do not admit or cannot see its immorality will ultimately find its consequences intensely unpleasant . . . A US conquest of Iraq will not make us safer. It will probably increase the risk of terrorism for Americans both at home and abroad.
Some folks talk about how the United States created successful democratic regimes as a result of its triumph in World War II. But, any analogy between postwar Germany or Japan and present-day Iraq is a very loose and worthless analogy . . . If the United States takes over Iraq, it certainly will inflame Muslim zealots all over the world, who will point to our conquest as proof certain of our evil intentions toward Muslims. Nearby regimes in the region may be overthrown by factions angered by their governments' unwillingness to stand up to the Western crusaders. What good will it do to control Iraq if, for example, Saudi Arabia falls under the control of Islamic fanatics?

The world is rife with brutal regimes and nasty dictators. When the President attempted to terrify US citizens with Iraq horror stories in his State of the Union speech, it sounded very similar to the tortures used in Turkey or Pakistan or Egypt. The very same odious regimes that he's joining hands with -- not to mention that he's showering these OTHER dictators with tens of billions of dollars extracted from American taxpayers . . . The United States cannot rid the world of all its brutal dictators, and even if it somehow managed to do so, new ones would pop up soon afterward. We ought to decline the fool's errand of perpetually enforcing our political standards on the entire world . . . The world might be a better place without Saddam in power, but a post-Saddam regime will likely be awful too. Maybe worse. Iraq is not a democratic success waiting to happen -- that's sheer nonsense. With its violent ethnic, religious, and political conflicts, Iraq may be incapable of cohering as anything other than a dictatorship.

In countless ways, the warfare state has proved inimical to the preservation of liberty, just as patriots such as James Madison warned us long ago that it would. War brings higher taxes, greater government debt, increased government intrusion in markets, more pervasive government surveillance, manipulation, and control of the public . . . Going to war is the perfect recipe for expanding the size, scope, and power of the federal government. You have to wonder why so many conservatives, who claim to cherish liberty, enthusiastically embrace the government's schemes for plunging the nation into war . . . Despite many current myths about so-called war prosperity, war is always an economic disaster. The resources used for war purposes cannot be used for alternative purposes; there's no free lunch, and the Keynesian arguments that imply one are just bad economics . . . That claim represents a prime example of what economists call the broken-window fallacy. You can break windows and increase demand for materials (glass, frames, etc.) and create jobs (window repairmen), but the costs and losses from the damage far outweigh the benefits.

posted by Hal 8:50 AM