NATO and Giuliani

"Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die." - Charley Reese

NATO "established a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party." - Wikipedia

NATO formed in 1949 in reaction to the Soviet Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. When the Cold War ended, NATO did what any other entrenched bureaucracy would do when it's original purpose had ended: it attempted to expand.

And what exactly has this mutual protection bought us since the Cold War ended? Well, every time we are attacked or seek to go to war as NATO, France, one of the only NATO members with a functioning military, refuses to support us. What happens when two NATO members threaten to go to war with each other as Turkey and Greece nearly did on a few occasions? Nothing. Or rather we act as a mediator, which has nothing to do with our role in NATO and does not depend one iota on our role in NATO. We also likely sent money to both sides as supposed foreign aid to keep them quiet.

So now Giuliani wants to expand NATO to Japan, India, and apparently the rest of the known world. Which will mean what? Nothing except more expenses. Pakistan, our long-time quasi-ally, has been involved in three major wars with India since their independence after WWII. Would we defend a NATO India against a non-NATO Pakistan, then? A better question, of course, is why we would spend U.S. money and risk U.S. lives over who controls Kashmir? Would we attack China if India engaged in another war over Sikkim? Has Giuliani ever even heard of these wars?

I'll write more on this later, but for now it seems that our only reason to keep expanding NATO is basically to give the appearance and perhaps the reality of diplomatically isolating Russia and China from the rest of the world. Constitutionally this is the wrong decision. Morally it is the wrong decision. In practical terms it will ruin our economy and just give us new enemies that we do not need to fight wars over lands where no American lives. Do we really need to gear our foreign policy to making sure their is an American soldier buried in every square mile of soil on Earth just to show we can do it?

GOP keeps promoting clueless as qualified

Fred Thompson's stunning error

Romney may flip-flop, but at least he has enough understanding of both sides of the issue to intelligently talk about his position - whatever it happens to be at the time. We already know Thompson has no work ethic. Now he shows he has no understanding of his own party's platform or what his own position on abortion actually means. I could care less about the abortion issue, but this guy has millions of social conservatives thinking he is an incarnation of Reagan (who was also a flip-flopper). Reagan could at least pretend to be pro-life effectively. Thompson just keeps showing he isn't even township supervisor material.

Think about it this way. If he can't extemporaneously answer a basic question that has dominated American politics for 35 years - a question that he should have known was coming and about which he has probably been coached hundreds of times - what hope to we have for this guy making any intelligent decisions about any other issues that he may face? Especially ones that are a little more complicated than the abortion issue.

Is a vote for Rudy a vote for war?

Rudy once again demonstrating that he has no idea about anything regarding foreign policy. "Show you support the military" his advisers tell him. "I know, I'll call for the expansion of NATO to India!" Brilliant. He also wants to include Japan, with whom we already have a treaty, even though Japan's constitution prevents it from having military forces operating outside of its own defense. That is kind of the antithesis of what NATO is about. Again, absolutely brilliant.

Phony Giuliani

GIULIANI HANGS UP ON PHONIES

My mind is pretty much set against Giuliani as being anything other than an opportunist politician. I believe that he handled the 9/11 crisis well from a political perspective (as opposed to say Nagin and the governor of New Orleans in their political handling of Katrina). But as far as what he did in actual work on the ground as mayor, historians will have to sort that out since I've heard both positive and negative. A friend also reminded me that he was basically despised prior to 9/11 although I think Dinkins and Koch were not all that popular at times either. New Yorkers, after all, love to complain even more than the average American.

Here is my favorite quote from the brief article:

"If I had chased all of these frivolous issues, I never would have turned around the deficit in New York City. I never would have reduced crime . . . welfare . . . and I wouldn't have been able to handle Sept. 11," he said.

Besides his usually schtick of riding the corpses of the victims of 9/11, he is doing something that every politician who was fortunate enough to serve in the 90s has done - taken credit for something they had nothing to do with. I stand by my theory that every politician in the US got a free ride in the 90s because of the economy doing so well. Is it just coincidence that the national, state, and local governments all ran surpluses in the 90s? Did we suddenly elect perfect and brilliant leaders who knew how to make things happen? No. They all got lucky because for whatever reason (to be explored later) the US economy boomed in the 90s. Philadelphia eliminated its deficit, Pennsylvania eliminated its deficit, New York City eliminated its deficit, the national government eliminated its deficit, every local school district ran a surplus in the region except a handful. County government didn't need to raise taxes in the 90s.

Now Rendell is in the governor's mansion and we are running a huge deficit. Where is his magic? The batch of politicians from the 90s have all moved up the ladder but the magic seems to be gone. Why? Because they all got lucky. None of them will ever admit this publicly because the public will believe them when they say that they turned around the governments they lead. The truth is that spending, as always, kept increasing, but that tax revenue increased faster than they could spend it. Now that the economy has gone back to its normal pace, we are back to deficits.

As for Giuliani reducing crime and welfare, these are just as much results of an improving economy as turning around deficits and he knows it. But we will eat up anything we hear if it is said with a smile. Giuliani is not by far the only one guilty of this lie, but he is certainly one of the most prominent liars right now.

I'm now convinced that basic practical economics should be a part of every high school curriculum just so students can learn a little bit more about the way the real world works. By that I mean an explanation of government spending, revenue, the consequences of FIAT money, the role of Federal Reserve, and the use of the Dollar as a currency peg for other currencies. That is just as if not more important that basic civics lessons about how government is supposed to work. Especially in the day and age when most "legislation" is actually passed in the form of an executive order. Who cares about the details of the legislative process? The more important thing is what factors influence how the government makes its decisions and passes laws.