Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Tony Blair To Face Iraq Inquiry TomorrowFormer British PM Tony Blair is set to face a House of Commons inquiry tomorrow concerning the legality of the war in Iraq. The Chilcot committee has already heard from the likes of Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general at the time, who famously "changed his mind" on the war's legality in a manner that would make St. Paul (of Damascene conversion fame) proud, this week. But Blair goes up tomorrow, so he's sure to steal the show.Needless to say, this raises questions for us on this side of the pond. Why is there no similar interest in Congress by way of examining senior members of the Bush administration on the war's legality? True, we have a different legal system here, and, in the UK, the Labour party, which contains an active anti-war rump, has been in power for years, whereas the Republicans ruled with a mighty pro-war majority (in both parties) for years, but, where the UN charter is concerned, the war was clearly illegal under any system. It also disconcerting that the press coverage of this event (yes, the committee is toothless) has been so inadequate, even in the UK: The Financial Times has not had a story about the proceedings all week. Anyway, here are links to some articles on the committee. First, on Blair's appearance tomorrow, from The Guardian; second, "The Case against Blair" from the New Statesman; and third, George Monbiot is offering a reward to capture the fugitive! Labels: Chilcot Committee, george bush, George Monbiot, iraq war, Peter Goldsmith, Tony Blair Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Afghanistan QuagmireThough this Reuters article is hardly one of the best I've read on the topic (for that, I'd refer to The Independent's Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk, and The Nation's Christian Parenti, among others), Afghanistan is a subject I think we've neglected on this blog. And with casualties higher in Afghanistan than Iraq for the first time, and the administration increasing the troop presence significantly (not to mention the propect of significantly higher outlays to fight the war in the years ahead--years which will quite possibly see the US deficit hit close to $10 trillion over the next decade), even this short article may remind us of the big financial impact this "little war" may have on all of us for a long time. Needless to say, I, like many of the readers of this blog, don't necessarily feel that the war can, or should be "won." And the article does make some interesting claims, like this one: "foreign assistance coming into Afghanistan was one of the richest sources of funding for the Taliban."04:15 August 27th, 2009 Obama’s Afghan war - a race against time By: Bernd Debusmann Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own) By making the war in Afghanistan his own, declaring it a war of necessity and sending more troops, President Barack Obama has entered a race against time. The outcome is far from certain. To win it, the new strategy being put into place has to show convincing results before public disenchantment with the war saps Obama’s credibility and throws question marks over his judgment. Already, according to public opinion polls in August, a majority of Americans say the war is not worth fighting. Almost two thirds think the United States will eventually withdraw without winning. There are similar feelings in Britain, which fields the second-largest contingent of combat troops in Afghanistan after the United States. A poll published in London this week showed that 69 percent of those questioned thought British troops should not be fighting in Afghanistan. In the United States, almost inevitably in a country that never forgot the trauma of the only war it ever lost, 36 years ago, pundits are conjuring up the ghost of Vietnam. A lengthy analysis in the New York Times wondered whether Obama was fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson, the president who kept escalating the Vietnam war. The war in Afghanistan is drawing into its ninth year and chances are it will still be going when Obama is gearing up for his campaign for re-election in 2012. According to a study by the RAND institute, a think tank working for the military, counter-insurgency campaigns won by the government have averaged 14 years. Read the rest of the article Labels: Afghanistan war, Barack Obama, iraq war Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Michael Perelman's Iraq Peace PlanRecently posted to lbo-talk:I'm not much of a fan of Milton Friedman, but he once offered a very interesting suggestion to rid society of crime. "The first and most obvious [way to reduce the amount of crime] is to reduce the range of activities that are designated as illegal. Surely, one reason for the growth in crime is that the number of activities that are classified as such, has multiplied in recent decades." Friedman, Milton. 1997. "Economics of Crime." The Journal of Economic Perspectives , Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring): p. 194. [This idea also has a history in Marxist criminology; it's called "labeling." —D&S] Following Friedman's logic the Defense Department found a simple strategy for evacuating the cities. "On a map of Baghdad, the US Army's Forward Operating Base Falcon is clearly within city limits. Except that Iraqi and American military officials have decided it's not. As the June 30 deadline for US soldiers to be out of Iraqi cities approaches, there are no plans to relocate the roughly 3,000 American troops who help maintain security in south Baghdad along what were the fault lines in the sectarian war. "We and the Iraqis decided it wasn't in the city," says a US military official. The base on the southern outskirts of Baghdad's Rasheed district is an example of the fluidity of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) agreed to late last year, which orders all US combat forces out of Iraqi cities, towns, and villages by June 30." Arraf, Jane. 2009. To Meet June Deadline, US and Iraqis Redraw City Borders. Christian Science Monitor (19 May). Here is my suggestion: just redefine Iraq to be the Green Zone. Declare victory now that U.S. government has conquered the country. The rest could be disputed territory, such as Israel defines the West Bank. The United Nations, Iraq's neighbors, or even the Iraqi people could sort out what to do with this disputed territory. Republicans should be delighted to be able to claim that Bush's policy is vindicated. Democrats could crow about how they achieved peace. And the Defense Department could find a less dangerous land to bomb. Labels: Iraq, iraq war, Michael Perelman, Milton Friedman Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Economics of WarWe get deluged with press releases, most of which we ignore (since the senders usually assume that we are a mainstream business or personal finance magazine). Recently we received some press releases from the site Antiwar.com, which humbly describes itself as "the oldest and most important antiwar Website." (It turns out that there is also an Antiwar.org, but it redirects to Antiwar.com.) The press releases were about the 6th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War (March 19th). I thought about re-posting an op-ed by their executive director, Alexia Gilmore, in the San Jose Mercury News, but I thought it might be better to find out whether they had some economic analysis of the war that we could share with our blog readers. What their communications guy sent me was this article by a David R. Henderson of the Hoover Institution. The gist of the article is that what Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek showed about how command economies are doomed to failure can also be applied to centrally planned foreign policy; the article makes the analogy between "acentrally planning an economy and centrally deciding to intervene in another country's affairs."Now, Antiwar.com makes a big deal about being a "big tent" organization; one press release says, "The site includes content from well-known authors around the world and across the political spectrum, from Daniel Ellsberg to Pat Buchanan," while Antiwar Radio features "interesting and noted guests such as Rep. Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky, and many more." And that's fine. I don't even mind reading about von Mises and Hayek on occasion. But the several articles by this Hoover Institution guy on Antiwar.com have impressive graphics granting him the title of "THE WARTIME ECONOMIST," and one gets the impression that he is almost the official economist of Antiwar.com. And there is not much sign of any left economic critiques of militarism on the site.  Anyhow, this inspired me to finally do what I've been intending to do for a while, which is to put together a special web page with the articles we've run in Dollars & Sense on war and militarism in recent years. I even made a nifty "guns and butter" graphic to go with it. We have a couple of new articles on militarism in the works—stay tuned. Labels: costs of war, iraq war, militarism, military spending, war Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Dockworkers of the World Unite!In a potent reminder of what organized labor can do, thousands of dockworkers along all 29 West Coast ports took the day off in a coordinated action to protest the U.S. war in Iraq.“We are supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it’s time to end the war in Iraq,” said union President Bob McEllrath. See the full story here. Labels: dock workers, iraq war, labor, labor organizing, strike Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Opportunity Costs of WarRep. Dave Obey (D-WI), the chair of the Appropriations Committee, has put out a nice list of what economists refer to as opportunity costs of the United States war in Iraq.WAR COSTS: OPPORTUNITIES LOST WASHINGTON - The war in Iraq is costing our country $339 million every day.Every day we spend in Iraq means missed opportunities to invest in important priorities here at home. For $339 million:
For D&S coverage of these issues, see this analysis of the true cost of the war, Arthur MacEwan's discussion of the role of oil at the start of the war, and Monique Morrissey's comparison of military and non-military spending as a share of GDP. How would you spend the estimated $3 trillion that the United States will spend on the war? Fill up your shopping cart at 3trillion.org. Labels: $3 trillion, costs of war, iraq war, opportunity costs Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
