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22 December 2005

Public Service Strikes

The transit strike in New York, which started on 20 December 2005, highlights the evolution of labor relations in the capitalist American system. The leader of the Transit Workers’ Union, Mr. Roger Toussaint, is himself the product of a pre-capitalist economy, Trinidad. The government there was the largest employer there at the time he moved to New York (and may still be). Public policy in that sort of economy makes it a major objective of the public sector to provide employment for people so that they can afford to live in society on a standard comparable to all its other citizens.

In an entrepreneurial system like the U.S., every person must devote his life to competing for a living by means of various options for employment—private sector and public sector, production or service positions, ownership or contractual status. At least theoretically, each employee is an independent agent to whom no one owes a job. Therefore, transport workers are assumed to have chosen to work for the bus and subway line, knowing in advance the terms of that employment, the conditions of the workplace, and the features of its retirement program.

Apparently, Mr. Toussaint never accepted this distinction; the TWU obsequiously followed his lead by striking against the Metropolitan Transit Authority, equating their employment contract terms to the need of other New York worker/entrepreneurs for public transportation to their places of work. Perhaps the possible settlement of the strike announced on 22 December indicates his belated realization that he is no longer in Trinidad.

08 December 2005

Individual vs. Communal Freedom

Beside the word “victory,” President Bush has used over and over again the word “freedom” in stating his goals in Iraq and the War on Terrorism. No one can disagree with him that freedom is a fundamental motivation for the political actions of all humanity. The problem is that this aspiration has very different connotations from one culture to another.

In Western societies, freedom refers to the liberty of each single individual from what he views as arbitrary or unnecessarily burdensome direction by a higher authority. Whether that authority represents an employer, an organization, or a government, it is an important part of our ethos that the individual ultimately determines whether that authority is justified in carrying such power. It is wrong to confuse individual freedom, so defined, with communal freedom that certain “traditional” societies choose because of religious, tribal, or feudal custom.

In the case of Iraq, and probably most of the Middle East, the people’s freedom to follow their own religious and tribal precepts can be obstructed by the actions of a foreign democratic invader as surely as by a domestic brutal dictator. Having liberated the Iraqi people from the one, the U.S. is paying the price, in terms of bloodshed and diverted resources, for not leaving it up to the Iraqis themselves to establish whatever political order suits them as a free society. That may not mean a society where individuals are free to do as they please within the boundaries of civility. But it does mean that the society reaches its ultimate equilibrium free of external interference like U.S. occupation.

07 December 2005

Fighting for Freedom

I just listened to a returned soldier who fought in Iraq. He answered the question Why are we in Iraq? by saying, “We’re fightin’ for freedom. The people of Iraq deserve freedom.”

The terrorists in Iraq are not a threat to the freedom of Iraqis. They were inspired into action because of the American occupation of their country. It is the intention of the Bush Administration to confuse its supporters by defining the U.S. objective in Iraq as defeat of the terrorists. It should be our objective, now that we have been dragged into Iraq, to challenge the Iraqis to establish order and a civil society for themselves.

The best way to do that is, in fact, to set an arbitrary schedule for withdrawal. This would not be an “artificial” deadline, as President Bush called it in his speech on December 7, 2005. Arbitrariness will be a good thing – a cold shower for Iraqis who were not able to overthrow a brutal dictator on their own.

02 December 2005

Troop Levels vs. Insurgency Level

Condoleeza Rice predicted last week on Fox News that the current level of American troops would not have to be maintained “for very much longer” because the Iraqis were getting better at fighting the insurgency. It may be cynical to say so, but it seems likely that the insurgency will weaken of its own accord when the U.S. pulls out.

Of course: in that eventuality the indigenous government will have an easier time of policing civil order in Iraq. That is what might have happened anyway if the U.S. had not engaged in an extended occupation Iraq following the accomplishment of its original mission -- the overthrow of Saddam. He had been keeping the peace in his country by admittedly repressive means before “shock and awe.” Now that he has been removed, the Iraqis will apparently not be given the chance to create their own civil society until two things happen:

1) It can be claimed that military action was successful in establishing orderly rule of law in a state once ruled by an uncooperative dictator.
2) The American people realize that holding our soldiers in Iraq only makes them victims of an irrepressible resistance, and insist on withdrawing them.

Congressman Murtha, a combat veteran, realizes that military force can’t impose democratic rule. That is something that must be developed by each society on its own. If the U.S. tries to achieve that through occupation, we will be in Iraq for a long time, at a truly tragic cost to our soldiers and their collaborators in Iraq.

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