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Jacob G. Hornberger

The United States Lost the Cold War

Thursday November 20, 2014

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As the world celebrates the 25th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall, Americans remain more convinced than ever that the United States won the Cold War.

The Cold War brought us a national-security state, which consists of an enormous military establishment, a vast military-industrial complex, an empire of foreign and domestic military bases, ever-growing military budgets, and the ever-increasing militarization of American society.

In his Farewell Address in 1960, President Eisenhower pointed out that type of governmental system was alien to the American way of life. By that he meant that the national-security state was no part of America’s governmental system when the Constitution called the federal government into existence and for the next 160 years. It was called into existence for the sole purpose of waging the Cold War against America’s World War II partner and ally, the Soviet Union.

Several days ago, the New York Times made a startling admission. Quoting a former high U.S. official, the Times pointed out that the communist regime in North Korea is also a national-security state.
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A Lesson in Intervention in Iraq

Wednesday November 12, 2014

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The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out that one government intervention inevitably produces a crisis, which then causes government officials to enact a new intervention to address the crisis. The new intervention, however, produces a new crisis, which then necessitates a new intervention. With each new intervention, the government’s power continues to grow.

While Mises was referring to economic intervention, the principle applies in other areas. Good examples are the drug war, immigration controls, healthcare, and education, all areas that are characterized by a perpetual series of crises and interventions.

The principle also applies to foreign policy. Iraq provides a good example. Let’s examine the history of U.S. interventionism in Iraq.
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The Cuban Embargo is an Attack on Both Cubans And Americans

Monday October 20, 2014

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Sen. Robert Menendez

In its October 11 Sunday edition, the New York Times published an editorial calling for the lifting of the 45-year-old Cold War-era economic embargo against Cuba. The Times pointed out:

Over the decades, it became clear to many American policy makers that the embargo was an utter failure. But any proposal to end the embargo angered Cuban-American voters, a constituency that has had an outsize role in national elections.

Among those who got upset this time by the proposal to lift the embargo was Robert Menendez, the senior senator from New Jersey and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who wrote a letter of objection to the editor.

Mendendez says that President Obama shouldn’t “waste finite diplomatic resources on a country that abuses human rights and diametrically opposes our democratic ideals, at a time when the Islamic State is waging brutal war and Russia continues to undermine all international norms through its continuing invasion of Ukraine.”


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Where Did Iraq Get Its Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Wednesday October 15, 2014

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In April 2003, when U.S. officials were still celebrating their invasion and occupation of Iraq as a fantastic success, I wrote an article entitled, “Where Did Iraq Get Its Weapons of Mass Destruction?” Actually though, it wasn’t actually an article but rather a list of articles, with links to the listed articles.

One purpose of compiling that list of articles was to show why President Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA were so certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when their military forces invaded the country: Because they had the receipts for them.

That’s correct: That list of articles I compiled was to make the shocking suggestion that the United States and other Western powers had furnished chemical weapons and other WMDs to Saddam Hussein, the brutal dictator who U.S. officials were comparing to Hitler in their run-up to their military invasion of the country.

Think back to the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There was no talk whatsoever about invading Iraq out of a sense of love for the Iraqi people and the wish to “liberate” them from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
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The Murder of James Foley

Wednesday August 27, 2014

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In response to the Islamic State’s execution of American journalist James Foley, President Obama referred to Foley’s killers as a “cancer.” That, of course, implies that anti-American terrorism is like a disease, one that strikes at nations willy nilly, without rhyme or reason.

Obama’s cancer metaphor for ISIS brings to mind what President Bush said about al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks — that the terrorists were motivated by hatred for America’s freedom and values.

Under either formulation — cancer or hatred for America’s freedom and values — the war on terrorism is going to last a very long time, which naturally means an ongoing presence and ever-increasing budgets for the Cold War-era national-security establishment, i.e., the military and the CIA.

But the truth is that anti-American terrorism is not like cancer and it’s not motivated by hatred for America’s freedom and values. It is instead a direct result of the U.S. government’s interventionist foreign policy. Interventionism generates the rage within foreigners that motivates them to respond with acts of anti-American terrorism.
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Why Reform the CIA?

Monday August 11, 2014

CIA Worldwide

Just as I predicted in my article “Why Not Simply Abolish the CIA?” critics of the CIA’s illegally hacking into the computers of U.S. senators who were investigating CIA torture are calling for reform, rather than abolition, of the CIA. Stuck in the mindset of the national-security state, they simply cannot raise their vision to a higher level—to one that restores a constitutionally limited government republic to our land.

Here’s one example: an op-ed today entitled “The CIA vs. the Senate: The Constitution Demands Action” by constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman in the Los Angeles Times, in which the author states: “CIA spying on the Senate is the constitutional equivalent of the Watergate break-in. In both cases, the executive branch attacked the very foundations of checks and balances.”

After criticizing some of the reform proposals being circulated, Ackerman does the predicable: He himself calls for reform.

Or consider this one: “Obama and the CIA” by Melvin A. Goodman, which is posted at Counterpunch. Detailing some of the CIA’s transgressions, Goodman wants to “restore the rule of law at the CIA.” How does he propose that that be done? Through reform, primarily by getting better people into public office.
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The National-Security State's Murder of Two Americans

Thursday July 3, 2014

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A Chilean court ruled this week that the U.S. national-security state conspired to murder American citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi in Chile in 1973. The brutal act occurred during the violent military coup in which the Chilean military, with the full support of the U.S. government, ousted the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, and replaced him with an unelected brutal military dictatorship headed by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.

For years, the CIA and the U.S. military falsely denied any complicity in the murders of Horman and Teruggi. After many years of false denials, however, the U.S. State Department released a memorandum confirming that a secret U.S. official investigation had revealed that U.S. intelligence had played a role in the murders of both men.

The Chilean court has now confirmed what the State Department said in that crucial memo.

Why did U.S. national-security state officials murder Horman and Teruggi? Because Horman and Teruggi were leftists — progressives — socialists — whatever label you want to put on people who subscribe to the economic philosophy of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and other people who believe in the welfare-state way of life. In the minds of U.S. national-security state officials, that made them “subversives” or “communists” — i.e., enemies of the state.
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Ground Hog Day in the Drug War

Friday June 13, 2014

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A news article this week entitled “South Laredo Trafficking Group Indicted” caught my attention. That’s because Laredo is my hometown. I spent 26 years there, including 8 years practicing law, most of which was in partnership with my father.

That newspaper article is about the drug war. It reports that an indictment was returned against 24 Laredoans for violations of federal drug laws. The indictment charges the defendants with distribution of cocaine, crack, and marijuana in the Laredo area.

As I read the article, I got the distinct impression that I was living “Ground Hog Day,” because this type of article was standard fare in Laredo when I was in high school in the late 1960s and then also when I returned to Laredo to practice law in 1975.

In fact, my very first trial, right out of law school, was a federal drug case in U.S. District Court in Laredo. Since the defendant could not afford a lawyer, the federal judge appointed me to represent him. My client was claiming he was innocent and went to trial. The jury acquitted him.

When I was in high school, my father served as U.S. magistrate. The line of people brought before him on federal drug charges (including Timothy Leary) always seemed to me to be endless. Part of the reason for this, my father told me, was relayed to him by the federal judge, who suspected that federal agents at the international bridge were planting drugs on long-haired hippies returning from Mexico. It was my first exposure to the corrupting nature of the drug war.
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Kudos to Ecuador’s President Correa

Thursday May 22, 2014

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Good for Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa for kicking USAID out of his country. If only every nation in the world would do that. While part of USAID’s activities ostensibly relate to helping “the poor,” that’s just a cover to disguise the real mission of the agency: to act in tandem with the CIA to engage in political activity designed to effect regime change in foreign countries.

To Correa’s credit, USAID is not the only U.S. agency he’s evicted from Ecuador. He’s also kicked the DEA out of the country. Moreover, he forced the Pentagon to close down one of its imperialist bases in Ecuador and depart the country.

Why would the CIA and USAID want to oust Correa from office? Because he’s a socialist, one who has established close ties to Cuba and Venezuela.

Do you recall when the CIA and the Pentagon were claiming that if Latin American countries went communist or socialist, the United States would be in danger of falling to the communists? That’s what the Cold War was all about — engendering deep fear of communists and communism within the American people in order to justify ever-growing budgets for the military, military-industrial complex, and CIA — i.e., the old Cold War national-security state apparatus.
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US Government's Regime Change Obsession Rears Its Ugly Head Again

Saturday April 5, 2014

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The US government’s 116-year-old obsession with controlling Cuba has suddenly manifested itself again. Yesterday, the Associated Press, based on secret records that it obtained, reported that USAID, the federal agency that distributes billions of dollars in US-taxpayer funded foreign aid and which has long served as a front organization for the CIA, has been engaged in a super-secret, covert operation to effect regime change in Cuba.

The USAID scheme involved illegally securing the cell phone numbers of tens of thousands of Cubans, most of whom were presumed to be young people. Then, using a series of several private front companies, which is a classic CIA modus, they established a twitter-type service that enabled U.S. officials to feed messages to the recipients. The plan called for feeding messages that would incite young people to rise up with mass spontaneous protests against the Cuban communist regime.

Now, one might ask: What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with the U.S. government’s helping the Cuban people achieve their freedom?

Well, for one, the freedom of the Cuban people is the furthest thing from the minds of US officials. Their objective has always been — and continues to be — control over Cuba. They couldn’t give a whit over whether the Cuban people are free or not, any more than they gave a whit over whether the Chilean, Guatemalan, and Iranian people were free after the CIA instigated regime change in those countries.
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