Afghanistan is America's Suez Crisis

Twenty years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to remove the Taliban regime that was harbouring the architects of the 9/11 attacks, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is back with more territory and with the same murderous intent to subjugate its people.

What was the point of it all? President George W. Bush's stated intention was to destroy Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation that launched the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, which was based in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. But it took until Barack Obama's presidency ten years later before a US special operations team eventually killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda (whom it turned out was actually being harboured by America's supposed ally, Pakistan). But cutting off the head of Al-Qaeda meant that, like a modern day Medusa, it spawned a dozen other evil organisations in Iraq, Syria, Mali and other Islamic countries.

Today, with Kabul, the Afghan capital, and most of the rest of the country again in Taliban hands (they now hold more territory than in 2001), Western nations scrambling to evacuate their diplomats and citizens from a chaotic Kabul airport, and local allies abandoned to the dubious mercy of the country's new rulers, it is indeed hard to know what the point of it all was. It's not even as though we in the West have taught the Islamic extremists in the Taliban any lessons other than about our own perfidy. By all reports, the Taliban is already settling scores, carrying out executions and demanding child "brides" from conquered communities. Far from being chastened, the Taliban is reiterating their commitment to the fundamentalist Islamic goal of a global caliphate.

The Americans might have had some humility in setting out on their Afghanistan adventure if they had a sense of history, for that country has been the graveyard of empires including the British in the 19th Century and the Soviets in the 20th Century. But the Western experience of Afghanistan goes back much further than that - all the way to Alexander the Great, who married an Afghani princess, Roxanne, to help ensure the compliance of the region's rulers once he had conquered it. Perhaps Joe Biden should have followed Alexander's example and sought a second wife from among the daughters of the Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar. In Biden's case, a young second wife might have had the added benefit of staving off his obvious senescence, although I suspect it is too late for that.

Here in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern seems to have taken on board some of that American hubris and is lecturing the Taliban from afar to uphold Western standards of human rights because "the whole world will be watching." I'm sure the Taliban leaders are quaking in their boots. Meanwhile, Ardern has ordered New Zealand soldiers and a Royal New Zealand Airforce C-130 Hercules aircraft to mount a mission to Afghanistan to evacuate New Zealanders from the country. Quite how she intends this will happen when not even the Americans can evacuate their people in an orderly manner, is beyond me, but an appreciation for the reality on the ground has never been Ardern's strong point.

I don't believe the United States should have occupied Afghanistan for twenty years. There was a justification for American troops entering the country following the 9-11 attacks to track down Al-Qaeda, but that should have been a special forces mission, not a wholesale invasion of the entire country. It is not that I think the United States was morally wrong to invade - I believe, as Ayn Rand said, that although it is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations but it has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses. 

The problem here is that it was in no one's interests, least of all that of the United States, to spend twenty years trying to establish a liberal democracy in a place that has no cultural traditions on which to build such institutions. What is worse is that the United States ruled through a system of corrupt, cronyist, favours - as Jacob Siegel quotes on Bari Weiss's excellent Common Sense substack, "the biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States". You can't establish a moral order by immoral means. But having occupied Afghanistan and destroyed its existing institutions, however illiberal they were, America's politicians and military leaders had a minimal obligation to leave the place no worse than they found it, and they can't even claim to have done that. President Joe Biden is responsible for the lives of the Afghans who helped the Americans during their twenty-year experiment in nation-building, many of whom will now be tortured, mutilated and killed for what the Taliban sees as their traitorous and blasphemous conduct.

The fallout of the fall of Afghanistan will last for years. America has shown that once again it lacks the national vigour, moral authority and self-belief to fulfil the objectives of its military interventions. Afghanistan is already being talked about as this generation's Vietnam. I think America's Suez Crisis might be a more accurate comparison, because it was that event that signalled the decline of Britain's imperial might more than any other. I feel sorry for the Afghans who must face the extreme theocratic and misanthropic whims of their new rulers, but I also feel a bit sorry for Americans, who must be bewildered at how the greatest military power in history has once again been made to look ineffectual and irrelevant.

Should a Libertarian Accept Government Lockdown Assistance?

In a recent column in The Spectator entitled I have herd immunity, author Lionel Shriver wrote about herself:

I am a type. I don’t like groups. I maintain few memberships. I question and resist authority, especially enforcement of rules for the rules’ sake. I’m leery of orthodoxy. I hold back from shared cultural enthusiasms.

The same is true of me. I believe in the sovereignty of the individual - that every human being has the rights to life and liberty and to pursue their own fulfilment to the fullest extent that is consistent with everyone else enjoying the same rights. I believe the legitimate role of the state is solely the protection of these limited rights.

The Covid-19 lockdown has provided a dilemma for people like me who don't believe in government welfare assistance. My business is suffering - my revenue this month will be significantly down - and it qualifies for the New Zealand Government's Covid-19 wage subsidy. I have never received a government welfare payment and never envisioned doing so, and therefore I was very reluctant to apply for the Covid-19 business assistance. There are two considerations I took into account in making the decision on whether to accept the Government's handout. 

The first is philosophical, and to address that I looked to Ayn Rand for guidance. Rand was categorically opposed to government welfare assistance on the basis that it was immoral to forcibly take the product of one individual's work and give it to another. She believed that the needs of one person, no matter how pressing, do not create a moral claim on the product of the life of another. Rand's critics claim that she was hypocritical because she accepted US Social Security later in life. Onkar Ghate at the Ayn Rand Institute confirms this but points to the fact that she saw no conflict between opposing state redistribution programmes in principle and accepting what she saw as restitution for the theft of one's wealth in the first place. She likened it to accepting compensation from the proceeds seized from a robber who had stolen from you.

The other consideration I took into account was that the Government ordered this lockdown and (as I have said in earlier posts) if it is necessary that is only because of the Government's earlier inactions. So in effect, I regard the wage subsidy as fair compensation for the negligent damage the Government did to my business.

One other factor that finally convinced me to accept the Government's financial assistance is that my company and its shareholder-employees have large tax bills due at this time, for which the Government isn't offering any grace (other than some vague suggestions they may waive "use of money interest" and penalties). Our cash flow has been significantly impacted by the lockdown order, affecting our ability to meet the tax demands, so in the end we had no qualms about taking the assistance and applying it to the Government's legalised theft.

It does stick in my craw that even the most self-reliant of us have all become dependent on the state. I can't help thinking that this is seen by those in power as a useful by-product of their Covid-19 response. The metaphysical basis of almost all political belief today is social, cultural and economic collectivism. We are all just part of one big, global village, and, as in any village, every person should be concerned with everyone else's business. Self-reliance is seen as selfishness and is not to be tolerated, and if you think you know what is best for your own life, you simply don't know what is good for you.

I am not an anarchist. I believe that governments are necessary to solve human problems such as defeating an invading enemy and stopping highly infectious diseases. But governments have a long history of turning reasonable and necessary collective actions into enduring tyrannies. I fear that accepting the government's largesse may make me complicit in doing exactly that.

Later on today we will learn the New Zealand Government's decision on whether we will be allowed some relief from the universal house arrest we have endured over the last four weeks. Perhaps a positive decision will provide some comfort.

Sooner or later, Atlas shrugs

When the new government manoeuvred its way into power in New Zealand last year I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt. The coalition agreements signed by the parties didn't look too extreme - they were promising to spend a lot more money but they weren't proposing to raise income taxes in this term. Their regional development policies, anti-immigration stance and ambivalence on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement actually looked a lot like Donald Trump's populist platform (although there is little in the latter that I support). The problem is that what was said in the coalition parties' manifestos and agreements was only part of the picture, as is now being revealed.

This government believes it can govern by fiat - the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, demonstrated this when she announced her ban on oil and gas exploration without even taking it to cabinet. Other policies that her government has announced include new petrol taxes, the introduction of a Zero Carbon Act (which, based on the government's own numbers, is estimated to reduce our GDP by between 10% and 22% by 2050), increased welfare payments across the board, and raising the minimum wage to one of the highest in the Western world. The government is also reviewing tax, through its Tax Working Group, and all indications are that it is likely to introduce a capital gains tax.

New Zealand used to be known for its light-handed commercial regulation but even under the previous National Party-led government, businesses faced a raft of new, expensive and intrusive regulations such as a new and far more onerous health and safety act, an emissions trading scheme, and further controls on development in the growth-killing Resource Management Act. While the previous government lowered company taxes early in its term, most Western countries have reduced theirs further with the result that New Zealand is now one of the most highly-taxed countries for business. All of this precipitous policy-making has understandably caused a crisis of business confidence and the new government's response has been to chastise business leaders for their lack of enthusiasm. Their bewilderment at the sudden loss of business confidence shows they are a bunch of dogma-driven, wilfully-ignorant, arrogant fools.

Sooner or later, as Ayn Rand said, Atlas shrugs. Most people are happy to go along with being taxed and regulated, accepting the view that some government intervention in the economy is the cost of a democratic society, but there is a tipping point at which the productive members of society refuse to continue to be the milch cows for the unproductive. This tipping point is recognised in economics by the Laffer Curve - the empirical observation that continuing to increase tax rates ultimately results in lower revenues. Of course socialist governments often solve the problem by bringing out the guns - as we have seen in Venezuela - but history proves that free men and women are far more productive than slaves and that liberal, capitalist societies outperform repressive ones on every measure. Wise governments recognise this and backoff on the socialist policies - as the government of Sweden has done in recent years.

I have written before about how New Zealand's so-called 'rock star economy' wasn't worthy of the name even before the current jitters. It will be interesting to see whether this coalition government backs off on some of its ill-considered, dogmatic policies. If it doesn't, I think New Zealand will continue to slide into economic ignominy.

Who paid for the Starship Enterprise?

My last post discussed how the left wing has won the culture war and that this is not surprising when 'every university lecturer, musician, film star, writer and other public figure is parroting the socialist-environmentalist mantra'. This theme was, at least tangentially, the subject of Jonah Goldberg's recent post about the new Star Trek television series to be made by CBS and that got me thinking about the true nature of the society portrayed on Star Trek.

Star Trek's United Federation of Planets is actually a militaristic feudal order. The Federation is governed by an elite supported by an all-powerful military establishment. Their society seems to be based, at best, on chivalry (after all, what is the Enterprise's crew other than a group of futuristic knights?) but, at worst, on militaristic expansion and colonisation of independent planets. They regard any form of commerce as a much lower order of human activity than military service, just like any Earth-bound feudal society. Money appears to have been abolished, at least in polite society, and witness the contempt held for the Ferengi, who are a trading race much more interested in making a profit than in conquering the universe. Of course, the United Federation of Planets is a somewhat milder form of collectivist society than the Borg, whose culture seems to most closely resemble Maoist Communism.

The question I ponder is, who paid for the Starship Enterprise? Consider the enormous economic resources that has to go into its construction - the engineers and scientists than need to be employed to design it, the rare minerals (e.g. dilithium crystals) that need to be mined to build it and to power its engines, and the undoubtedly huge operating costs of its endless missions. All of these need to be paid for somehow. I've always had this uneasy thought that somewhere, hidden away on dozens of colonised planets, there are millions of slaves working to support the Enterprise. Alternatively, a lot of people must be paying a lot of tax to fund it all. In short, the Enterprise must rely on real enterprise, but enterprise doesn't appear to exist in Star Trek society other than as some contemptible activity engaged in by the Ferengi.

I love to study history and one of the characteristics of history that encourages me as a libertarian is that human society tends towards greater freedom. It is not a straight progression and from time to time we regress into barbarism like the Nazi and Communist eras in the 20th Century, but these reversions tend to be increasingly the exceptions rather than rule. So when I imagine the 23rd Century I think it will be incredibly libertarian.

Individual freedom will be large, government will be small. Capitalism will be universal and each individual will be as powerful a player in the market as the biggest corporation is today. True poverty will be a thing of the past because everyone will be able to trade their ideas, skills and products freely with anyone else anywhere on (or beyond) Earth, and body and brain augmentation technologies will mean that everyone will have skills that are valuable in the marketplace. Cronyism, corruption and fraud will be largely absent from human interactions as such behaviour will be instantaneously exposed by the power of communications technology and social media. Money will be virtual and multiplicitous - meaning that there will be dozens, perhaps thousands of competing currencies and the devices we use to do business will instantly exchange between them, selecting the safest and best for our particular needs.

In short, the future will be Utopian, but not in the sense imagined by most who have written about such futures - it will be as far removed from Brave New World as you could imagine, but rather more like the hidden valley in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

There may be a United Federation of Planets, but its real heroes will be the Ferengi. After all, it is undoubtedly the Ferengi who will pay for the Starship Enterprise.

National Socialists are Socialists

This week a UK "crime commissioner" (I understand that this is a civilian who oversees the police, not someone who commissions crime) named Dr Rachel Frosh was forced to resign for equating Socialists with National Socialists after an outcry from people on the political left.  Her posting on Twitter can be seen here.

The reaction to this is wrong on so many levels.  

Firstly, it is incredibly hypocritical.  How often do you read and hear comments from the political left-wing comparing the beliefs of their political opposites with Nazism?  What is good for the goose is surely OK for the gander.

Secondly, it is not offensive to equate one political philosophy with another.  Frosh did not say any individual was a Nazi; she didn't even equate a political party with Nazism (unlike the original post that hers was in response to, which said the British National Party members were Nazis).

Thirdly, the comparison is correct.  National Socialists were, first and foremost, Socialists.  Hitler was at pains to point out, as the quote in Frosh's posting states, "We are Socialists."  Why else would he have called his party the National Socialist Workers Party?  Nazis believed they represented the workers against the oppression, just like all other Socialists.  Nazis made scapegoats of those they saw as oppressors (the Jews mainly) just like other Socialists (who scapegoat capitalists and the bourgeoisie).

The most important common factor is that both regular Socialists and National Socialists believe the individual must be subjugated to the interests of the collective.  They differ only in their definition of the collective - Nazis believe the important collective is the race and the state, Socialists the proletariat.  Once you accept that the interests of the individual can be sacrificed for that of the collective, however you choose to define it, you legitimize any act against any individual that stands in the way of collective. Socialists and National Socialists agree on the principle, just not the definition of the collective's interests and the means to pursue them.  They both believe that a political elite should define those interests.

This issue raises the question of the popular terms used to define political beliefs in the world today.  "Left wing" and "right wing" are not different ends of a political spectrum.  Nazism and Socialism occupy the same philosophical territory.  The other end of the spectrum is not some other variation of these philosophies, it is the belief that the rights of the individual are paramount and the only moral basis for political action is to protect those rights.  This is the philosophy that has found expression down through the ages via Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and has found its fullest expression in the writings of Ayn Rand.