Obama the militarist
Barack Obama (I've decided to stop using terms of authority and respect for politicians of any party) is continuing to escalate the war in Afghanistan:
Obama aides see need for more troops in Afghanistan
Officials: US to Add 14,000 Combat Troops in Afghanistan
This is rich. A bunch of suckers (i.e. Democrats and anti-war independents) elected Obama thinking he would somehow stop U.S. military aggression (even though he had a half-hearted, long, drawn-out proposal for extricating us from Iraq and talked openly about invading Pakistan!), and now they are starting to see that he has exactly as much respect for peace and prosperity as Bush did.
Stefan Molyneux, in describing the multiple ways that governments lead to war in Practical Anarchy, finishes with this:
If the above is understood, then the hostility of anarchists towards the State should now be at least a little clearer. In the anarchist view, the State is a fundamental moral evil not only because it uses violence to achieve its ends, but also because it is the only social agency capable of making war economically advantageous to those with the power to declare it and profit from it. In other words, it is only through the governmental power of taxation that war can be subsidized to the point where it becomes profitable to certain sections of society. Destruction can only ever be profitable because the costs and risks of violence are shifted to the taxpayers, while the benefits accrue to the few who directly control or influence the State.
This violent distortion of costs, incentives and rewards cannot be controlled or alleviated, since an artificial imbalance of economic incentives will always self-perpetuate and escalate (at least, until the inevitable bankruptcy of the public purse). Or, to put it another way, as long as the State exists, we shall always live with the terror of war. To oppose war is to oppose the State. They can neither be examined in isolation nor opposed separately, since – much more than metaphorically – the State and war are two sides of the same bloody coin.
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