Risisble Happenings

For the past four months, the US stock markets have been going up, up, and up, even as economic news goes down, down, down. "We are forward looking" they say, and "losses were bad, but they beat expectations!"
Sad, yet joyful truth is, the baby boomers, that generation that destroyed everything it touched, is going into all-out saving mode. They are not returning to the malls, and they are tossing their credit cards.
Its over. The current recovery is nothing more than an illusion created by artificial liquidity, like a junkie shot full of his drug, feeling like he is not addicted. I give the USA 3 more months, tops, before it starts jones'n something fierce.

Discussions on Other Blogs

While visiting Joshua's The Western Confucian, I came accross this most singular comment regarding the policy recommendations of Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute as regards the wisdom of a general withdrawal of US military forces from thir overseas garrisons, and adopting a more defensive, rather than hegenemonic posture. The commenter's objections to Mr. Bandow were:
Mr. Bandow - surprisingly for a fellow at the CATO Institute - seems to be oblivious to the function that the US Military plays as a de facto world police force, in ensuring viable and relatively safe international trade lanes.

While there are still some archaic deployments of US Forces (particularly in Europe), the vast majority are involved in a variety of liaison, peacekeeping, training, and humanitarian operations worldwide.

I consider myself a small L libertarian, but split with the party long ago, over their refusal to recognize the reality that in todays shrinking world, we must have forces positioned to interdict threats before the come to our shores. And given the abject failure that is the United Nations, only America stands willing spend the treasure and lives to maintain the peace for international trade.

Pulling back our military into "Fortess America" is only realistic if we are to retool our society to be completely self reliant for manufacturing and agriculture.

To which I, your obtuse and insensible host oh my bothers and only friends, replied:
Chalmers Johnson demolished this assertion of pretty handily in his Tragedia trilogy, likening the assertion that it is the US military presence that results in the stable trade environment of the Pacific to a man living in an apartment in NYC spreading elephant repellent around the apartment and claiming it works as there are no elephants in his apartment.
The modern USN is a strike force as it is too small to function as a convoy protection force. As such it has only limited ability to protect "sea lanes". The unanswered question of course is always "from whom?". The major powers, having nuclear weapons, are not going to get in a naval battle, the lesser powers are not going to engage in more than local skirmishes as the disparity between them and the major powers is too great, and state navies are too inflexible to deal effectively with piracy, which is a nuisance to shipping, not an existential threat.

"the vast majority are involved in a variety of liaison, peacekeeping, training, and humanitarian operations worldwide"
How nice, but this is not the mission they are equipped or trained for. BTW, where were they when Americans needed them in New York on 9/11 or New Orleans in Katrina? Oh yeah! They were busy defending the rest of the world.
"over their refusal to recognize the reality that in todays shrinking world, we must have forces positioned to interdict threats before the come to our shores. And given the abject failure that is the United Nations, only America stands willing spend the treasure and lives to maintain the peace for international trade."
Do not taunt us with imaginary Hobgoblins, do tell what these threats that if we do not confront them "over there" will come "over here", and disrupt international trade. C'thulu perhaps? A containment strategy for the Great Old Ones is in order! Ia! Iä!
The vague threat is a favorite tool of tyrants and profiteers trying to milk the commons for their liberty, treasure, and lives.

To my pleasure and edification he replied to me:
TimH: "Do not taunt us with imaginary Hobgoblins, do tell what these threats that if we do not confront them "over there" will come "over here", and disrupt international trade. C'thulu perhaps? A containment strategy for the Great Old Ones is in order!"

Never hurts to keep a few protecting enchanted charms around.

Mine is a .50 Caliber Barrett 82A1 rifle, in the hands of a well trained Marine.

But I do agree with you that the US Military is not- and should not - be involved in Humanitarian missions. I would far rather that if we are going to do such things, we create a para military organization, not unlike the Coast Guard, that could deal with such things - both internally and externally.

To which I replied:
Not too bad of an idea at all, but to pay for it you would still have to drastically downsize the military juggernaut.
"Never hurts to keep a few protecting enchanted charms around.
Mine is a .50 Caliber Barrett 82A1 rifle, in the hands of a well trained Marine."

That is one protective charm, but there are other, more powerful ones as well. Namely, a people jealous of their liberty, moderate in appetite, pious in belief, in need of few laws as as their civic virtue suffices to operate common affairs, with a fierce spirit of self-reliance and self-protection, who cannot be cowed or bought by tyrants and overlords, foreign or domestic. Without this, the Marine will eventually come to despise his own countrymen, seeing them as effete and unworthy of his sacrifices (this trend is already underway within the US military), and with it, the Marine is little more than a full-time version of his own countrymen!
War is fought on the physical, tactical, strategic, logistic/economic, and moral/psychological levels, in that order, and a higher level always trumps a lower one. The current disposition of the US military, a 2nd generation military, pretending to be 3rd generation, trying to fight 4th generation opponents, inverts this, and gives our enemies an insurmountable advantage in modern warfare.

Ruminations

It would seem that I am running rather low on inspiration today. I could hold forth on history, or current events, or my problems, or I could just link to somebody else's work.
As it is,
I would like to speak of my earliest political memory. I was 4, and the Watergate scandal was in full swing here in the US. as a child, I found the name most amusing; how could a gate be made of water? I imagined a doorway guarded by a cascading waterfall shut off to allow passage to those able to enter. In no small wise was the childish conception correct. The Emperor Nixon, his sycophants, and the Washington establishment had by that time, so enmeshed their thinking on the concept that the executive is the physical embodiment of the law, and therefore, no act on the part of the executive can be unlawful, as the acts of the executive are the ultimate definition of the law in practice. And despite the pious displays of furor and mock disgust on the part of the Emperor's political enemies, and many of the commons, the American people were by this time so enervated, so bereft of the moral rectitude of their forefathers, that even in their efforts to thwart tyranny, they abetted it, in the formulation of the War Powers Act; Perhaps the most disingenuous piece of legislation formed up until the Patriot Act. This mendacious law, formulated by men either wholly bereft of common sense, or of human decency, purports to constrain the executive by giving him full license and authority to commit the military of the US to any conflict he sees fit, where he sees fit, as he sees fit, and must simply apply to congress for approval and extension of the adventure within 90 days of its instigation. It is well known that one never attacks a king when he is in the field, and so at all times since the law has been used as a cynical tool of the executive branch to distract the media, discipline the congress, and control the people through the prosecution of elective military adventure. The failed 2-party system does nothing to correct this behavior, ans neither party wishes to revoke the powers or privileges of the executive, desirous as they are for the power of that office themselves, they in turn wish to ever expand and aggrandize its perogatives.
"and these false speeches, having seized the acropolis of the young man's soul, will make him prone to extremes of passion, eventually placing him under the tyranny of his most powerful desires"

Substance or Accident?

Today US and Asian stock markets fell and wavered in fear before the meeting of the US Federal Reserve, making clear the anxiety of the markets regarding a US rate hike. The question as it appears to me though is, did the fear and retrenchment accidentally send a message to the Fed, or was the fear and retrenchment the message itself? Standing from the outside, the substance and accident of the phenomenon cannot be readily differentiated.