Airstrip One

Time to go home

Lew Rockwell attempts an economic analysis of the occupation of Iraq. It should be read for three reasons.

Firstly it is yet more ammunition against the free marketeers who believe that Empire is good for either the home country or the benighted colonies.

Secondly it has quite a handy update on the situation in Afghanistan, last year's war. Yes, we are doing worse than the Russkies did.

Lastly it has a great quote from the arch little Englander Richard Cobden:

If you want to give a guarantee for peace, and, as I believe, the surest guarantee for progress and freedom, lay down this principle, and act on it, that no foreign State has a right by force to interfere with the domestic concerns of another State, even to confer a benefit on it, with its own consent.

Of course we do have a right to intervene in the domestic politics of other nations if it affects our narrowly defined national interests, but the idea that we will economically profit or that the colonised will benefit are simply not among them.