Mike Denny wrote:
MD) Sorry Brian..my mistake. (MD
No problem -- I'm a little bit outnumbered here, but that makes it easy to
figure out which arguments are aimed at me, since I'm on the pointy end of
anything I didn't write. 
MD) there appears to be the potential for a major conflict of interests,
that there was plenty of money on the table and that the parties did in fact
reap considerable benefit. (MD
What's in evidence at this point is that the available profits in play in
the Halliburton contracts in Iraq are running roughly $100M/yr. The Cato
Institute says <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa390.pdf> the energy industry
was getting more than $6B/yr in outright subsidies as of 1998, and that was
before Bush's $14B energy bill of 2005. I totally buy the idea that the
$14B 2005 energy bill had a primary motivation of giving even more billions
of dollars of outright subsidies to Bush Administration cronies in the
energy industry than they already get. I totally buy the idea that a
primary motivation of Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit was to
subsidize donors in the pharmaceutical industry. But it's just strikes me
as reality-impaired to suggest that the $500B invasion and occupation of
Iraq had a primary motivation of generating a few hundred million in profits
for Halliburton.
MD) And if having Cheney/Bush in the government wasn't the "political
muscle".then I don't know what is ... but I won't claim to know everything
...just that the air stinks. (MD
Again, my advice is to check your premises about where all the relevant
smells are coming from, and to take a look at who has an interest in getting
you to believe what you believe. For example, see the factcheck.org article
Kerry Ad Falsely <http://www.factcheck.org/article261.html> Accuses Cheney
on Halliburton. Did you know that Halliburton was receiving so-called
"no-bid" contracts under President Clinton? Did you know that the Harvard
professor who was Clinton's procurement policy chief defends
<Harvard Kennedy School | Harvard Kennedy School
Halliburton? Did you know that Dan Briody, Halliburton critic and
author of The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money, writes
"Whether Dick Cheney had a hand in doling out contracts to his former
company is unimportant, not to mention unprovable. Everyone in the industry
and the military, with few exceptions, agrees that Halliburton was the right
company for the job in Iraq because of its experience and the speed with
which it was able to operate." If most or all of this is news to you, as my
information about Carlyle apparently was, then shouldn't you want to audit
the ways you get your information about such matters?
MD) It would be easier to understand the premise of the value of foreign
intervention if there were good examples of where this foreign policy has
actually worked (MD
BH) My standard list of places where America has used its military for the
goal of local democratic sovereignty includes: England, Italy, France,
Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Greece, Germany,
Austria, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Kurdistan,
Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. [...] I examined the ideology
and psychology of libertarian anti-war absolutism in my recent article for
California Freedom: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos . (BH
MD) Please show me where in your blog it discusses how our military
activities in these countries have "benefited the goal of local democratic
sovereignty". (MD
BH) I don't debate basic facts of history. Please cite your evidence for any
country in my list that American military intervention didn't aid the cause
of local democratic sovereignty there. (BH
MD) Without some clear idea about what you mean by democracy gaining ground
thanks to our military interventions in that list of nations, we'll just
have to leave that as an ill-defined statement and an unsubstantiated claim.
(MD
BH) I'm content to note that you declined my request, and to leave it to our
audience to recognize whether American military intervention promoted local
democratic sovereignty in places like, say, Vichy France.
(BH
MD) Well actually Brian, let the record show that I expressed an interest in
learning more about your views on the potential benefits of government
intervention in other countries and you named the countries. You suggested
your positions were thoroughly documented on your website from previous
related discussions and sent those reading these posts to the site. (MD
That's simply false. I've painstakingly restored the context of our
discussion above. I NEVER told you in this discussion that my website
"thoroughly documented" any of the examples on my list. Again, I'm not
going to "document" for you how America liberated France from Germany.
Instead, I'm going to say that the basic evidence of history is so
overwhelmingly on my side that I'm willing to defend the weakest example you
care to cherry-pick from my list above (excluding Haiti after you raised the
bar from "goal" to "benefited").
It takes you about 20 seconds to make an inaccurate claim from imperfect
memory about what the "record shows", and it takes me about 20 minutes to go
back and dig up the message excerpts that document your error. The cause of
Truth is not well served by this asymmetry of effort. Please be more
careful when you make claims about what the "record shows" about what I've
said.
MD) if you are looking for sparing partners so you can muscle up for your
big political race..then please find someone else to do it with. (MD
I have no power to make you dispute my assertions here. Forgive me if I've
misread you, but when you ask me for details about how America advanced the
cause of local popular sovereignty in France in 1944, I pretty much
interpret that request as dilatory and perhaps disingenuous. Maybe I'm
missing something here?
MD) If you decide you want explain yourself to someone who took your word
and offered to reconsider a position based on your claims only to have you
push it back in their face. (MD
I just assume that you're familiar with the basic facts of U.S. military
intervention in the nations I listed. I'm happy to stipulate without even
reviewing them that the relevant Wikipedia articles cover the basic facts
about what America did and what the first-order consequences were. However,
I'm not really interested in a big history debate here. I would be content
for us to agree that reasonable Libertarians can disagree on whether there
were factual predicates for believing that America could overthrow Saddam at
acceptable risk-adjusted cost. I think that what I've said and pointed to
here adds up to a prima facie case that a reasonable Libertarian might think
so, and I believe I've rebutted every substantive argument presented here
against that case.