TOO MANY DUMB WARS

Has anyone else noticed that most of the wars our federal government
has waged lately haven't exactly been ending in victory? Or ending at all?

Since 1953, when the Korean War ended in the stalemate we still
enjoy, Washington's war record against real and imagined enemies --
at home and abroad -- has been, to put it positively, rather spotty.

Sure, our government eventually won the Cold War. But it took 45
years, trillions of dollars and lots of dead people. Plus, it only
ended in victory because our capitalist society is so rich and the
Soviet government was so morally rotten, inept and broke.

And yes, our bipartisan federal warmongers did whip Iraq and liberate
Kuwait in 1991 -- a one-sided triumph almost as glorious as when we
vanquished the mighty Grenadians in 1983.

Of course victory in Grenada hardly compensated for our botched
attempt in 1961 to liberate communist Cuba, which only guaranteed the
Cuban people a 47-year prison sentence under warden Fidel.

The big pre-Iraq whopper of our failed wars overseas, of course, was
Vietnam. Its many non-monetary costs included the slaughter of at
least 2 million humans, including 58,000 Americans, and the
sociopolitical fragging of American society.

Speaking of the home front, our federal government still hasn't come
close to winning another war it should never have fought -- the war on poverty.

In 40 years, it's cost us trillions. It's sabotaged black families
and wrecked urban culture. It's left the percentage of Americans
living below the official poverty line essentially unchanged since 1965.

It's also created a permanent army of professional poverty warriors
- -- poverty pimps, some folks call them -- who have a vested economic
interest in making sure both poor people and the government's war on
poverty will last forever.

Ditto for the federal government's never-ending, equally failed but
much more societally harmful war on drugs. Actually a war by the
federal government on its own people, it's also a costly and complete
failure, plus an affront to a supposedly free society.

Unfortunately, the venerable wars on poverty and drugs at home are
succeeding no better than the war in Iraq and the war on terror are abroad.

Everyone knows how well the $3 trillion cakewalk in Iraq has turned
out. Meanwhile, the global war on terror -- another criminal waste of
money that does more harm than good to America -- may be the most
perfect war ever invented by government.

Launched by the horrible terror attacks on 9/11, fueled by government
hysteria, vested security-industry hype and multimedia
scare-mongering, the war on terror will not end as long as a single
political or religious loon anywhere on Earth can get his hands on a
grenade or a box-cutter.

"War is the health of the state," said Randolph Bourne famously
during World War I. Wars -- and other crises like natural disasters,
depressions and drug "epidemics" -- have been exploited by our
federal government to steadily ratchet up its power and scope for 200
years, as Robert Higgs showed in his 1987 book "Crisis and Leviathan."

The Iraq war and the war on terror are just the latest examples that
prove Bourne and Higgs right. Wars aren't nice, don't work very well
and often never end, which is why even the best governments should
make fewer of them.