The Worm Turns

Great was Rome.  During her heyday, Rome controlled what was worth controlling of the world and then some.  Her armies marched unimpeded wherever they wanted, slashing and burning and enforcing the will of the emperor on everyone.  So great was Rome that it was felt by many that it could never fall, which, of course, is precisely when it started to fall.

Great was England.  During her heyday, there was not a part of the globe that a British ship or soldier did not have access to.  The sun continuously smiled on Her Majesty's subjects.  So great was England and so vast her power, that it was thought she could never fall.  Of course, she fell.

Great was the United States.  So great was Rome and so great was England, but they merely owned part of the globe.  The United States of America dominated every nook and cranny of the globe.  Her armies and her navies could strike anywhere in the world on literally a minute's notice.  No nation dared attack her and few dared defy her.  Yet she fell.

Here is the situation.  About, what, seven years back, debate was roaring about the Iraq war that was looming.  The analysts at the Bureau, not formally formed at that time, but still acquainted, felt that the Iraq war was going to be at best a misadventure and at worst a complete disaster.  The truth, as usual, ended up somewhere in between.  However, one thing the editor of this blog insisted upon time after time whilst debating the merits of the war online is the fact that a war inevitably drains resources at home.

When Rome was at her zenith, no nation or people dared mess with a legion because Rome retained sufficient resources to lay waste entire civilizations as necessary.  So great was the fear of Rome that her armies did not have to fight very much.  Only the barbarians lacked the fear.

When England was at her zenith, a single British man-of-war was enough to cause the 'natives' to get back in line.  On land, her armies had the reputation of never having broken and run in battle.  Nobody would tangle with the British because everyone was afraid of them.  Except the Germans, of course, related to the 'barbarians' that took down Rome.

These empires had periods of time early on where they were engaged in constant warfare, proving themselves to other nations.  The United States received its laurels in World Wars I and II.  We proved our mettle as a country and showed the Yankee ingenuity that is part of our particular charm.  We also showed we are not against charging into the thick of one of the most powerful defenses against a landing ever mounted.  Ever since that day, a country has to but think of Normandy to understand the risk of tangling with the US military.  Certainly, there is much to ponder in what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but, truly, the scary thing about the US army is the thought of thousands of men slogging ashore at Normandy beach, dying at an unbelievable rate, yet coming on to win the day.

So, all three empires, and, indeed, all empires that have ever existed have risen from the ashes of another, shown themselves to be in some way superior militarily and then collapsed.  It is the collapse that interests us now.

The feeling coming from south of the border (slang for Northern Mexico) is that they do not fear the United States, and, more specifically, Obama.  Texans, maybe, and Texans are fixin' to make a good show of it if they have to, as this war may be fought along the Texas and New Mexico borders.

These Mexicans are just like the Germans and Barbarians from the previous empires.  They are mere opportunists.  When this editor warned of losing the capacity to handle defense all those years ago, this editor had no way of knowing against what threat we would need those armed men.  However, one thing history has always shown us is that when, through hubris, a country weakens its defense, someone will take advantage of it.

So, here we are in Texas (the residence of most of the analysts of the Bureau), staring down gun and drug runners in Mexico, with the might of our state in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We will do it, because that is what a Texan does, and the Lone Star Republic will not fall.  Already her citizens are arming themselves and laying in supplies in preparation, because while the American Republic appears to have lost touch with reality, citizens of the Lone Star Republic have not and can see the very plain threat rising south of the Rio Grande.

However, how many men will we have to sacrifice to the altar of stupidity and pride?  How many women and children will be abducted for ransom, brutally treated and killed?  How many young people have to die as a result of taking low quality illicit drugs?

On the one hand, we don't have the military to police our border against an increasingly hostile and restless population.  On the other hand, that population is funded in a large part by our very own war on drugs.

So, the Bureau has been insisting for a long time now that the United States needs to do the following:

1) Bring all troops home from everywhere.

There is no favoritism this way.  The US has simply concluded it cannot afford to save the world any more.

2) Immediately end the war on drugs.

Prohibition has never been effective.  The amount of drugs coming into this country has not been meaningfully reduced.  Thousands of young people are needlessly incarcerated.  Many a third-world country is a wreck because of the drug lords they cannot rid themselves of.  Were drugs legal, industrial drug production would render those drug lords paupers in an afternoon and reduce crime worldwide, not to mention lower the cost of food as farmers switch back to regular crops.

3) Switch to a free money system but require hard money for government transactions.

This would protect capital and reduce the risk of constant, systemic failures such as fiat money has always provided.  Since the only people who seem to have any ability to predict what will happen are the hard money folks, maybe we ought to listen to them.  The fiat money leaders all profess to have been blindsided by this debacle despite that the hard money folks have been predicting it for nearly a hundred years, in precise detail.  In science, we consider the one who can predict what will happen to be the correct one.  Let's do that for governance as well.

4) Increase spending on the individual soldier but radically reduce the number of soldiers, thus making the American fighting man once again the best the world has to offer.

We need the best and the brightest in uniform, equipped with the best of whatever we can get and prepared to defend this nation, but not enough men to conduct significant foreign wars, to remove that temptation.  This is the military of a republic, composed mostly of citizen soldiers with a core of very competent, highly trained and well-equipped professional fighting men.  The authors of the US constitution knew that a standing army of any sort is an invitation to war, mostly by those who possess the army, so made it clear that no standing army was to be funded for more than two years.  This is one of the reasons we have been in a continuous state of emergency since Vietnam and, indeed, are still at war with North Korea.  Were we to quit at any point, we would have to disband our army within two years and then where would the world improvers be?

The result of these three things will eventually be smaller government, greater freedom, and a world that does not hate us nearly as much.  For, truly, they do not hate us because we have been rich or that we have freedom.  They have always hated us because we bother them.