Going through the backlog of Common Sense (with Dan Carlin) episodes that I wanted blog on.
115 was titled Waterboarding the Bureaucracy; and other than wanting to second the motion, yeah let’s waterboard ’em, I really don’t have anything else to say. Except that if you want to research the history of drugs in America (including the CIA’s programs, to some extent) I’d recommend the book Storming Heaven. It’s more about exploring why we experiment with drugs in the first place, but it still addresses the problem with powerful people using drugs to alter the perceptions of others. I found it fascinating, myself.
[I’ve been looking for an excuse to plug that book for awhile now]
As for the second half of the program, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; again, my observations are limited. Military dictators tend to oppress their oppositions with violence. Why would you not think she was killed by the sitting dictator?
Should Pakistan have democracy? That would be up to Pakistan. Getting involved in the politics of other countries, suppressing the free expression of political thought (even in this country) increases the chance of a later violent backlash; worse than any violence we might face by not interfering in their politics now. Dan takes longer to say it, but it’s just as true in the short form.
This has been an issue widely discussed in Libertarian forums from Strike the Root to Antiwar.com to Mises.org to Lewrockwell.com and on to more traditional places like CATO. The list is nearly as long as the history of ill advised American intervention abroad. It’s just too bad that government bureaucrats don’t read libertarian publications (outside of the CIA, that is) or they might be more aware of the mess they make every time they decide to dabble in other countries politics.
But then, what the hell do we know? We’ve only been saying that terrorism was going to visit us here in the US if we kept meddling in other peoples politics since about 1971. Wasn’t 30 years warning enough?
