What? A Solution To War, Genocide, And Mass Murder

After writing over the years something like 500-600 blogs (See archive here), it is time to ask which of all these is most important.

I believe those are the blogs that present and underline that democracy (the democratic peace) is a solution to war, genocide and mass murder (I call democide) by governments. I prove this in my book.

But very few are aware of this solution -- even when two presidents, Clinton and George W. Bush realized it with regard to war and based their foreign policies on it.

For centuries mankind has sought a solution to war. Solutions have been proposed, such as international law, diplomacy, a balance of power, trade, and cultural exchange. Nothing has worked. But empirically and theoretically we know that historically no democracies have made war on each other. When living side by side, they promote cooperation, and peace with each other, and if perchance a crisis occurs, they manage to resolve it without violence. In a world where dictators murder their subjects by the hundreds, thousands, millions, and tens of millions, that democratic leaders murder near zero of their population is absolutely incredible.

The proofs for what I say are in my books Power Kills: Democracy As A Method Of Nonviolence, and Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. And see my websitefor the many books and documents providing further data, theory, and proofs.
An end to war and to democide! It is like the elimination of cancer or heart disease. This solution of the ages should be celebrated around the world. Not only does it fail to make the front pages, but is ignored by the commentariat. Ponder this for a moment. Why is this absolutely incredible and proven solution hidden, ignored, or missed?

47% Will Pay $0 Income Tax in 2009

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With so many serious dangers to our democracy – Obama’s far left socialists, a possible leftist coup, an EMP attack, global islamofascism, it seems a stretch to include our tax system also as a danger. It is. Consider that 47% of “taxpayers,” 71,000,000 people will pay no income tax in 2009. Zero.

Worse. Many of these people are eligible for a “negative income tax.” That is, the federal government will give them one refundable tax break, rebate, or another. On this, see the Tax Policy Center:

Refundable credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the refundable child tax credit (CTC), and the new Making Work Pay (MWP) credit will lead to negative average effective rates for the bottom two quintiles. The bottom quintile, for example, will receive an average income tax subsidy from the federal government equal to 10 percent of their pretax income. Rates will increase from 2.3 to 13.4 percent for the top three quintiles and to 17.9 percent for the top 1 percent of income earners.

These “free riders” have no reason to alter the tax system as long as their circumstance is unchanged. Since Democrats, the tax and spend party, are quite content with this system (even a higher negative tax), these free riders are their natural constituents. Thus, Democrats have a built in advantage at the polls.

With nearly half of the population paying no taxes, even if Republicans control Congress and the White House, the probability of correcting this incredibly unfair system is slim. Fear of a backlash from the 71,000,000 is highly persuasive.

So, what can be done? Nothing, except to vote at the polls for those who promise to reform the tax system, and through blogs, the conservative media, town halls, and demonstrations, ensure their seriousness.

World Nonproliferation Is Politically Asinine

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It is true that in the hands of dictators or terrorists groups, nuclear weapons endanger peace and other nations. A policy of nonproliferation pointedly directed at dictatorships such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria is wise and momentous. However, for Obama, Europe, and the UN, the goal of nonproliferation applies generally to all nations, including democracies. This is the asinine fruit of soft political realism. Historically, realism in foreign policy assumes all nations, including democracies, are driven by the lust for power. Developing and maintaining stable power balances are then the diplomacy of international politics, and peacekeeping.

Democracies, however, rely on their nukes for protection, mainly to deter attacks on them. During the Cold War, the U.S declared that a nuclear counterstrike would meet any nuclear attack on the U.S. or Europe. This kept the peace. Without American nukes, the Soviet Union might well have invaded Europe leading to World War III. Or conflicts elsewhere, as in Korea, Vietnam, or China could have also led to global war

All the nuclear powers, U.S, UK, USSR, France, USSR, China, Iindia, and yes, even Pakistan, mindful of the consequences of a nuclear war, walked on eggs in their conflicts. Their claws were generally retracted in a serious crisis, or even a limited war, such as over Cuba, Berlin, Bosnia, Iraq, or Afghanistan. The sheer horror of nuclear war kept the larger peace.

Next, consider democratic Israel’s 200+ nuclear warheads. These now maintain her security and her life. No major Middle Eastern nation would endanger Israel’s existence and risk nuclear destruction of her major cities, with the possible exception of fanatic Islamofacist Iran.

Assume now that this analysis is faulty. Nonproliferation is still crazy. Democracies do not make war on each other. So, if they have nukes, they do not endanger other democracies. Thus, eliminating nukes only removes their protection from nondemocracies.

The only informed and logical policy then, is to assure nonproliferation among the thug regimes of the world.

The Prescient Peace Prize For Appeasement

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International relations and political science are my professional areas of teaching and research. I draw on this authority to strongly recommend the following article for your reading. Charles Krauthammer's "Decline Is a Choice: The New Liberalism and the end of American ascendancy."Among other things, he says:

.... my thesis is simple: The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption thatsomehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline--or continued ascendancy--is in our hands.

Not that decline is always a choice. Britain's decline after World War II was foretold, as indeed was that of Europe, which had been the dominant global force of the preceding centuries. The civilizational suicide that was the two world wars, and the consequent physical and psychological exhaustion, made continued dominance impossible and decline inevitable.

The corollary to unchosen European collapse was unchosen American ascendancy. We--whom Lincoln once called God's "almost chosen people"--did not save Europe twice in order to emerge from the ashes as the world's co-hegemon. We went in to defend ourselves and save civilization. Our dominance after World War II was not sought. Nor was the even more remarkable dominance after the Soviet collapse. We are the rarest of geopolitical phenomena: the accidental hegemon and, given our history of isolationism and lack of instinctive imperial ambition, the reluctant hegemon--and now, after a near-decade of strenuous post-9/11 exertion, more reluctant than ever.

A docudrama Of The Armenian Genocide

March 30, 1916 Sambayat, Turkey

The sky was azure blue and dotted with fluffy, white clouds. Beneath it, a convoy of young women and children shuffled into the town and down the main road. All bore the look of death. Some stumbled, some were helped along; some, the youngest ones, nearly skeletons, were carried in the bony arms of their mothers. Some wore ragged clothes. Some none. All were filthy. All stared down at their bare feet with cavernous eyes and sunken cheeks.

Those who were naked were helped by a gentle, surprisingly warm breeze blowing up from the desert to the south. Combined with the bright sun, it overcame the normal spring chill and made for a comfortable coatless day. The air was clear, and the breeze wafted along the smell of cooking food from nearby buildings.

It would have been a great day to be alive. Uniformed, bearded guards, carrying their long rifles with bayonets fixed, ambled along beside the convoy. The women could no longer be hurried.

An officer at the head of the convoy lifted his head at the smell of food, then turned and raised his hands for the guards to stop the convoy. He waved to the side of the road. The guards pushed and prodded the women to a grassy area, and two of them were ordered to watch over the women. The rest formed a circle in the shade of a sweet gum tree, opened their packs, and began to eat lunch. No food was given the women, but they were allowed to dip their hands in a nearby puddle and drink from them.

One woman limped off the road and stood stock still for minutes, holding her two shriveled little girls by the hand. Then she slowly fell to her knees and toppled over, dead. Her girls sat down at her side, obviously believing she was only asleep, and again clasped her bony, cooling hands in theirs.

Another woman gave no attention to the water. She held the half-putrefied cadaver of a newborn infant tightly to her chest, cooing softly to it.

Nearby, a naked woman lay on her back, her head turned away from the sun. Her haggard face still retained some of what must have been ravishing beauty. Her body bore the bruises and slime of frequent rape. As the light in her eyes gradually extinguished, they momentarily reflected her agony before turning vacant.

After a half-hour, the officer stood and signaled for the guards to reform the convoy. Reluctantly, some at the point of a bayonet, the women and children struggled to their feet and tottered back to the road. One woman took the hands of the two children whose mother had died, and pulled them struggling away from her. The guards checked those that remained on the ground for signs of life, poking some with their bayonets. Finally, the trudging mass of despair was taken out of town on an intersecting road, heading toward the south and the desert. The guards left the corpses for the townspeople to bury.

Two nargile smokers in the rear of the Ligor Kiraathanesi coffee house along that road, each sitting comfortably next to his traditional pipe, had watched the convoy come and go. They knew exactly what was going on. Not so the young man seated at a tiny table on the patio of the coffee house. Shielded from the sun by a large Syrian juniper, Peter Kahan watched, mouth agape, only moving when the discomfort of the hard wooden chair on which he was sitting demanded it. He had traveled to several towns and was now in Sambayat on his way to the ancient city of Adiyaman. He had just had lunch and, of course, Turkish coffee, and still held the small coffee cup as though it was frozen in his hand.

He was a foreign correspondent for The Times of London, which had sent him to Turkey because he spoke Turkish. He had learned it at home from his parents, who had immigrated to Britain before he was born. As always, The Times did not trust Foreign Ministry handouts. He was to interview members of the Young Turk government regarding Turkey’s two-front war with Italy over Libya, and with Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro. The Times also wanted him to appraise Turkish public opinion, and that was why he was traveling through this region. Peter had heard rumors about what he had just seen. Some Greeks swore to him that it was happening and that he must inform the world through his newspaper, but the government officials he queried about it denied it flatly. Oh, there were some deportations of Armenians from the east, they said. But they were only to relocate those sympathetic to Russia from the eastern border regions in case Russia joined the war against them. They insisted that the deportations were humanely done.

But now he had seen a deportation with his own eyes. He looked again at the two scrawny corpses, and the doner kebab—thick grilled bread stuffed with lamb shavings and cabbage, topped with a spicy sauce—he’d had for lunch weighed heavily in his stomach. It was beginning to revolt; he could taste the spicy sauce again. He quickly put the cup down and doubled over, spewing his lunch on a nearby bush.

Forty-three Miles Away

One after another, the muscular, heavily-built man hacked at their heads and necks with his axe. When they tried to shield themselves, he hacked off their arms first. His comrades, armed with their bayonets and knives, worked into the quaking, screaming crowd of women, children, and old men. He and the other soldiers were under orders to save ammunition.

Then he saw her. She stood silently, hugging her younger brother to her, her head resting on his. She was from his town of Okaris, and very beautiful. She was not one whose name he would forget, and he yelled to her above the tumult, “Quick, Siran. Come to me.”

She did not hear him.

He pushed several women aside, kicked over one who was praying on her knees, and came up alongside Siran. He put one bloody hand on her shoulder, and when she looked at him, he yelled above the terrible noise, “I will protect and save you. Release your brother, and follow me.”

She shook her head.

He grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away from her brother, but she held him tighter. The hacking, stabbing soldiers were getting closer.

“I give you life,” he urged.

Again she shook her head. She turned her head to look into his eyes, and finally shouted, “If you are so kind, I ask only this favor.”

“What? Quick!” he barked.

“I know you will not save my brother. Please. Kill him now. Please, before me. Then while I wait for you to kill me, I will not worry about him. I do not want him to suffer any agony, any torture.”

The muscular soldier vigorously shook his head, and again tried to pull her away. She resisted.

“Please,” she said.

It was too late anyway. He could feel his comrades at his back, and one was approaching from the side with his bayonet pointed toward her. He nodded.

Siran quickly turned her brother to face her, and whispered into his ear, “A temporary goodbye, my brother.” She kissed him. “We will meet in the next world and be in God’s hands. Do not fear. It is a matter of seconds.”

They kissed each other for the last time, and the boy stood apart, facing him without fear. The soldier now had no choice. Orders were orders. He quickly cleaved the boy’s skull open with the axe, and he collapsed at sister’s feet, dead. He turned to the girl. She stood with her hands at her sides. Her chin was uplifted toward him, and her eyes were misty. “Thank you,” she said, barely loud enough to hear. “Please, now, do the same to me. One blow. No torture.”

He nodded, heaved back his axe, then hesitated, looking into her eyes. He saw only acceptance. He brought the axe down on her head.

Link of Note

"Statistics of Turkey's Democide:
Estimates, Calculations, and Sources"
By R.J. Rummel

Quote:

The infamy of executing this century's first full scale ethnic cleansing belongs to Turkey's Young Turk government during World War I. In their highest councils Turkish leaders decided to exterminate every Armenian in the country, whether a front-line soldier or pregnant woman, famous professor or high bishop, important businessman or ardent patriot. All 2,000,000 of them.

Books, articles, statistics

Vietnam and the Afghanistan Debate

Source—Click table to enlarge

Peter Spiegel And Jonathan Weisman have published in The all Street Journal ”Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages.” They say:

The two [books] draw decidedly different lessons from the Vietnam War. The first book describes a White House in 1965 being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead. President Barack Obama recently finished the book, according to administration officials, and Vice President Joe Biden is reading it now.
The second describes a different administration, in 1972, when a U.S. military that has finally figured out how to counter the insurgency is rejected by political leaders who bow to popular opinion and end the fight.
It has been recommended in multiple lists put out by military officers, including a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who passed it out to his subordinates.
The two books -- "Lessons in Disaster," on Mr. Obama's nightstand, and "A Better War" on the shelves of military gurus -- have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama's presidency.

The American involvement in and retreat from the Vietnam War embodies a critical lesson currently for Afghanistan. To see this, however, requires a correct view of the war, which (with the distortions and untruths by the left and their media) is denied the public.
In the 1950s, communist North Vietnam began a guerrilla campaign to take over South Vietnam, a movement subsequently reinforced by the North’s army. By the early 1960s, the South was losing, and consistent with American foreign and defense policy of containing communism, Kennedy escalated our involvement of military advisors, and Johnson further with American combat forces and air power in 1963.

However, by 1964, the South was in bad shape, with defeat likely. So, using an alleged attack on American ships as a rationale, Congress gave President Johnson a blank check to fully engage American forces in defense of the South. He did, and eventually 550,000 troops were involved by 1969. At that time, the North was practically defeated. Its army had lost every battle. The Viet Cong guerrillas the North used and controlled were almost wiped out in their Tet Offensive. In effect, the war was almost over with an American victory and an independent South, but the North fought on, believing that they could win the war in Washington, if not in the South.

They were right. By 1969, the noisy anti-war activists had taken their toll. A barrage of public protests, and a hostile media gradually eroded the initial strong Democratic support for the war, eventually turning them against it. There was widespread belief (fueled by the media) that the South was corrupt, authoritarian, weakly defending itself, leaving it to the American forces to fight, and were losing to the North. In 1974 Congress, controlled by antiwar Democrats, voted to curtail funding for American military activities in Southeast Asia with an eventual total cutoff of all funding. This in effect ended the American war effort in South Vietnam. Denied military aid and air support, the South was defeated by a limited offensive that with increasing success became all out. In 1975, Saigon fell as American helicopters tried to save a handful of South Vietnamese.

The communist victory over the South eventually cost 528,000 lives in executions and deaths in re-education camps, and 250,000 more Boat People fleeing on the ocean. For the totals killed or murdered, see here.

What is the lesson for Afghanistan in this sorry and bloody story. With victory in Afghanistan within our reach. We need only the will and to use the resources we have in great measure. Therefore, listen to our commanders, surge as necessary, and do not let the left snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again.

Tyranny In View--The Not So Stealth Obama Coup

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As I have written before in my Tyranny Closing In—The Stealth Coup, I fear for the future of American democracy because of the power Obama and his cronies have now amassed.

Of course, there are no certainties here. One can judge only by the character of these people, their ideologies, their capabilities, world history, and what is possible and probable. Undeniably, this is not science but informed intuition. And I submit, it is all that we can go on.

Having said that see Joshua Muravchik's ”Devastating: Obama's Abandonment of Democracy and Human Rights”

The new president signaled his intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that democracy was less important than “freedom from want and freedom from fear. If people aren’t secure, if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay.”

Also Kyle-Anne Shiver’s”Barack Obama, the Quintessential Liberal Fascist”

When Saul Alinsky began building his community-organization movement in 1930s Chicago, observers were watching Alinsky with one eye, while with the other eye observing the building of communist and fascist movements in Europe. It wasn't hard then to see in Alinsky's programs at home, elements of the people's revolution from Russia, as well as some of the same "in your face" tactics being employed by Hitler's Brownshirts.

What Alinsky's critics saw was the burgeoning of a national movement, the carefully manipulated construction of people's organizations, which all had two elements in common: (1) a collectivist creed, which denied the existence of personal responsibility; and (2) an amoral dogma, in which all means were justified by an imaginary utopian end.

Also Victor Davis Hanson’s ”Our Road to Oceania”

In George Orwell's allegorical novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the picture of "Big Brother" appears constantly in the adoring media.

Perceived enemies are everywhere - supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The "Ministry of Truth" swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania.

In Orwell's Oceania, there is a compliant media that offers "Newspeak" - recycled government bulletins from the Ministry of Truth. "Doublethink" means you can believe at the same time in two opposite beliefs.

America is not Oceania, but some of this is beginning to sound a little too familiar.

Also Declan McCullagh’s ” Bill would give president emergency control of Internet”

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

Also ” FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS: Locations and Executive Orders” says

There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached. Ask yourself if you really want to be on Ashcroft's list.

Also John Byme’s item, “Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely” item:

President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.

The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold "combatants" without habeas corpus -- a legal term literally meaning "you shall have the body" -- which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect's detention.

More here.

We must understand that in applying much of the legal structure erected to fight terror, such as the Patriot Act, the government defines who is a terrorist. Any individual or group can be labeled “terrorist”. Consider that the Department of Homeland Security’s report, ” Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment“, targets as potential terrorists “most conservatives and libertarians in the country”--Stephen Gordon.

And so on, an on, and on.

It is clear that Obama and his close advisers, his cabinet, his czars, and top Congressional Democrats are convinced that they can eliminate mass poverty in the United States, prevailing inequality, the entrenched evils of capitalism, nuclear proliferation, and violence in the world. The only hindrances are those damn libertarians, conservatives, and Republicans—the vast right wing.

They have two solutions to this perceived and believed massive social injustice and violence. One is the stealth coup I described in the link to my blog above. The other is an outright coup. Now that all the logistics (much of which has been justified by the war on terror, illegal immigration, and the current depression) are in place, one thing remains. A great national emergency, such as the the burning of the Reichstadt in 1933, for the Nazis. For us, it can be a suicide bombing of a major Federal building, the assassination of a high federal official, the loss of thousands of lives in a gas attack, and so on. This crisis can be actual or contrived. Anything that would legitimize a declaration of a national emergency, the assumption of near total power by Obama, the postponement of elections, extensive censorship and control of the major media, and the “temporary” incarceration of opponents.

Beware and be alert.