No one has still addressed my question of why we still have a military presence in Saudi Arabia.

jk, I got to meet Lal earlier this year and hear him speak about his book. He was nice enough to autograph my two copies, but I found him a little aloof in person. Still, those 90 minutes were as much a history of capitalism as you could get in any course on free market/Austrian/libertarian thought. Now, please don't take offense here, but it's a far cry from the implications of what you said about economic benefits stemming from the military -- a leap I personally cannot make.

As you know, I'm a Bastiat disciple and support peaceful trade over war, when possible. So what bothers me is that you mentioned the British navy having "enabled intercontinental trade," but more so that the American military has sparked today's communications technology. That's too much worship of government's power for my taste, because it presupposes people would not have been as entrepreneurial were it not for government's stimuli. Again, don't take offense, but it sounds...Krugmanesque. The very principle behind Hayekian free markets is that government *never* has sufficient knowledge to propel advancements with the same efficiency or magnitude as private individuals acting on their own.

Thus I will support the idea that the British navy encouraged people to trade, but only to the extent that people can take greater entrepreneurial risks when government acts in its legitimate role, that of protecting them from force. It is, though, not a cry for the necessity of government, but for the necessity of entrepreneurs having some sort of confidence that they can ultimately enjoy the fruits of their labor. If bandits demand 10% to leave you alone, there is no difference between that and spending 10% of your income to hire police and a military to protect you. (I wrote about Chiquita's situation on my blog, which you can find with the search feature at the top.) Does it embolden bandits when you readily pay them off? Sure, just like it emboldens politicians when you re-elect them after they hike taxes.

Regarding American communications technology, remember that, at the very most, government spending facilitates only a perfect shift in markets. In reality, as the Austrian school of economics teaches, government's information is incomplete compared to the whole of society, so government's intervention introduces errors and thereby makes market processes less efficient than were the markets left to work on their own. In an alternate universe, transistor and microchip technology may have well emerged sooner and advanced faster were there no government demand: if our military hadn't given so much money to vacuum tube producers, someone might have leaped ahead, instead of merely creating better vacuum tubes. Today, with government skewing energy markets by subsidizing everything under the sun, there's far more incentive to produce corn-derived ethanol than an energy source that's truly viable. We can directly see how government production dampens production, but we cannot see its worse effect: it aborts the fetus of creative thought that leads to entrepreneurship.

On to the Muslim thing. jg, do not confuse Ron Paul's Constitutional isolationism with a Pat Buchanan ostrich isolationism. Paul has *never* said we shouldn't do anything internationally. His "isolationism" is based on the belief that we can trade peacefully with everyone, but we shouldn't entangle ourselves in alliances, nor should we meddle in other countries' affairs that don't concern us -- what George Washington advised us in his farewell address -- and in no way has he ever implied that we cannot defend Americans and American interests abroad. Just ask yourself this: are the interests really that of American individuals, or that of the American government meddling in someone's affairs?

I do personally feel Paul was a little short-sighted in ignoring Islam's total history of 1400 years. However, more than the last 50 years is beyond the scope his argument, which is simply that we cannot deny blowback. It was completely dishonest for Giuliani to put words in Paul's mouth, and Paul should have pinned him right then and there for it. I agree with Paul on principle, although I disagree with him specifically about the Iraq war. I still believe the war was justified, and that someday (as the Iraqi general wrote in his book) we'll prove that Saddam shipped a lot of his weapons and equipment to Syria. Not that the "international community" will listen... But most everyone forgets our most important reason: Saddam directly ordered the kidnapping of American citizens in 1990, and he had to pay for it. You get nothing but trouble if you let someone get away with seizing your citizens, hence Jefferson sending out our navy and Marines. Had we taken a stronger stance with Iran in 1979, it probably wouldn't have been so emboldened as to support international terrorism the way it has.

Personally, I feel we're losing in Iraq because we lack the will to achieve a true victory. We're fighting for a stalemate, the terrorists and insurgents know that, and they know they can eventually wear us down. We're so concerned about "collateral damage" and not destroying infrastructure that we're not killing enough of the enemy. The enemy places no such "gentleman warfare" restrictions on itself. We're not playing "last man standing" as we should be, but the enemy is. If we retreat or we all die, they win either way. We don't have to kill them all, but we have to destroy their will to fight on. It will be impossible, though, while we talk about a *permanent* military presence in Iraq and make other public admissions just as bad as mullah's biggest lies. The situation will keep feeding on itself, creating new recruits who want to blow up infidel American soldiers and maybe someday fly planes into more our buildings. It will stop when we crack down on the mullahs and their propaganda, instead of negotiating with al-Sadr types for the sake of "including everybody." There's nothing wrong with making a martyr out of someone, if you let his followers make martyrs out of themselves too. Crush them, and let the

Just for once, I'd like a brutal war where we'd fight with every neural synapse of resolve. Oh, it'll be bloody, and many of our parents will weep at the coffins coming home, but an actual war where we fight to WIN will be so horrible that people will think twice about sending our military anywhere. We're just so used to a sanitized war where we kill only bad guys and leave buildings intact, which is doomed to fail to crush the enemy. War should be so awful that voters and politicians will think of it as a definite last resort, and people will do everything possible to avoid it. Remember that Paul has said if we're so hell-bent (my term) on invading Iraq, then let's do it right and declare formal war. It will also leave no room for Kerry, Clinton and other hypocrites to wiggle.

Question for you, jg: you don't think that the Muslims who want to *conquer* the West are not also, to a lesser extent but still an extent, driven by the desire to acquire material things and people? Religion, yes, but wouldn't it be nice if they had the entire West as slave populations with tremendous natural resources? The ones carrying "Islam will dominate the world" signs, and their first forebearers in the seventh century AD, certainly preferred to convert (at the point of a sword, yes, but still convert) before resorting killing.

Now, Mohammed El Jihadist wanted to subjugate the whole world, but the West still enjoyed much trade for *centuries* with the peaceful segments of Muslim peoples. Do not forget that Muslims were among the greatest traders and explorers of their time. I have long since pointed out that the trade of goods and services inevitably leads to the trade of ideas, which is the greatest threat to traditional Muslim theocracy. But while a mullah or sheik can get a little reaction to Western "infidel" traders and their introduction of "immorality" into Allah's society, nothing riles up a crowd like pointing to guys wearing American flags on their uniforms' shoulders, carrying automatic guns. Will a Muslim view Americans marching around his city as trying to keep the peace, as helping the other religious faction, or as desecrating holy places? If you're an uneducated teenager, you can believe anything. Not to say the accusations are *right*, but not to say we're perfect either, and we need to accept that either way, our actions typically have unintended consequences.

Once again, why do we have a military presence in Saudi Arabia? Why did we have Marines as "peacekeepers" in Beirut in 1983, in the middle of a *civil war* that didn't involve us? Reagan has been villified by conservatives for "retreating" from Beirut, because Muslims are emboldened by retreat and Reagan only made us look weak, yadda yadda. Yet Reagan ultimately did the right thing by pulling us out of where we don't belong. We do not need a military presence in each of dozens of countries around the world.