In the private sector, there is always a test of success. The business must make a profit. It can sustain some losses, but the clock is always running on those. At some point, after all cuts have been made and costs are trimmed to a minimum, the business has to close shop. The summer of losses must become the autumn of profits, or else it’s all over.
Not so in government. Failing projects can go on forever. There is no profit and loss test. There is no test at all, in fact. Agencies like the Government Accountability Office (GAO) can blast away at a particularly egregious case of government waste, but hardly anyone pays attention. Congress has no reason to scrap it. No one does. Taxpayers have no means to pull the plug, because the whole thing is run outside their purview.
Now, with an intro like that, you might think I’m about to talk about Medicare or public schools or the post office. It would be easy enough. But let us never forget that foreign policy constitutes another sector of government management, central planning, and bureaucratic-driven missions that are no more or less successful than anything else a government does. FULL ARTICLE
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“Before the American invasion, there were no poppies growing in Afganistan, since the Taliban did not allow them.” – Baten.
So prohibition worked then?
Well, poppies do not grow in USA – so I guess prohibition works there also.
newson:
If some people are considered refugees by the country who hosts them, and criminals by the country from where they fled, then there’s a problem between the two countries. Hopefully they can sort it out by peaceful means, but maybe they can’t. It depends on how deep their disagreement is about the nature of the alleged crimes, how different their views about their relative strengths (if each one of them feels stronger than the other one, that’s a bad thing), and many other factors.
I don’t think there’s an absolute moral answer about which of the two is in the right, without getting into the details of the alleged crimes, previous agreements and so on.
So, peaceful political protesters who are called “criminals” by the Cuban government are one thing; murderous, blood-thirsty terrorists who are planning yet more attacks are another matter.
to martin ob:
…and luis posada carriles?
http://www.brookesnews.com/050606coultanetal_print.html
one nation’s freedom fighter is another nation’s terrorist. i think your suggestion ends up in today’s “might is right”. the us is able to plan incursions in other countries (noriega in panama), but i’d like to see the reaction if the converse were tried.
newson:
I think the idea that terrorists are the same as freedom fighters is much more dangerous than the idea that sometimes intervention is justified. Killing innocents is always wrong. No country has the right to serve as a refuge for murderers. Of course, this includes the USA.
to martin ob:
but you can’t presume to judge someone a murderer without due legal process, and if the country hosting these individuals refuses to cooperate with the aggrieved nation in extradition or the “terrorists” are found not guilty by local courts, then by your logic, invasion is legitimate.
it’s just a matter of cost/benefit analysis, where the more powerful country gets to impose its justice on other nations if it’s expedient to do so.
newson:
I’m not saying it’s always legitimate, just that it’s not always, categorically, illegitimate. In those cases, there’s an international conflict, which hopefully can be sorted out, but maybe it can’t. I agree that no country has a right to impose its legal system on others, but no country has a right to cooperate with aggressors in acts of aggression, even from its own territory.
It’s the same problem you may have in an ancap society when two agencies have different legal systems.
In practice, yes, I guess it can be described as a cost-benefit analysis. In a peaceful society, the “cost” you assign to the fact that someone says you are an aggressor should be very high, but not infinite.
Otherwise, for instance, a person A could steal from person B all the time, as long as A hires a “judge” who will always say “no, you are mistaken. A is innocent, it must have been someone who looks like A” or something to the effect, whenever B accuses A.
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