“President Donald Trump’s decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea,” Matthew Lee and Ben Finley write for the Associated Press, “does not just slight a longtime ally but raises broader concerns about the security interests of the United States in Asia and elsewhere.”

Trump’s reason for supposedly, and in unspecified ways, downsizing the annual “Ulchi Freedom Shield” exercise is that South Korea has been insufficiently supportive of his  war against Iran. That doesn’t seem like a very good reason … but there ARE good reasons, and it’s a tiny move in the correct direction of drawing down US military entanglement on the Korean Peninsula.

The history, in brief:

After World War 2, Korea — which had been occupied by the Japanese — was split into two states. In the north, a Soviet/Chinese-backed communist regime under Kim Il Sung held power, while the south  was ruled by a US-backed  fascist regime under Syngman Rhee. Each side wanted to invade, conquer, annex, and absorb the other’s territory, but the US held Rhee back from doing so and Kim beat him to the punch.

The resulting war technically goes on to this very day, although it’s been in a tense state of ceasefire since 1953. More than 35,000 American troops, hundreds of thousands of South Korean, North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet soldiers, and millions of civilians died to reach that stalemate.

North Korea remains “communist” in name and pageantry while actually embodying absolute , quasi-religious monarchy under the Kim dynasty’s third generation.

South Korea is theoretically a “democracy,” but mostly just a big state capitalist enterprise operating under military protection from, and advantageous trade deals with, the US . The US spends $5-6 billion per year to support 80 military bases and 27,000 deployed US troops, and has now been doing that much or more for 80 years.

Interestingly, the AP story quotes Dan Fried, an official in George W. Bush’s administration, to the effect that “there is no American interest I can see” in reducing US military commitments to South Korea.

But in 2004, Bush himself proposed a much bolder plan than small cuts to joint military exercises. He wanted, he announced, to completely withdraw US forces from the Korean peninsula over the course of ten years.

Granted, Bush made that proposal under duress after rushing to New Mexico when his campaign learned that Libertarian Michael Badnarik was polling at 5% in the state, that Democrat John Kerry had scheduled a speech of his own there, and that New Mexico’s electoral votes might hang in the balance. He needed an olive branch to the growing anti-war movement, and quickly dropped the plan once he was re-elected.

But it was a good idea then, and it’s a great idea now.

American taxpayers have been throwing blood and treasure at South Korea for most of a century even as it has become an economic powerhouse that competes with US producers, and that commitment also feeds into US entanglement in every regional argument involving not just the Koreas, but China, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, etc. It’s a raw deal for America.

South Korea possesses abundant means to provide for its own defense , especially since Kim Jong-Un  certainly understands that even success at military conquest of a population twice the size of the one he already rules would eventually bring his own regime down.

I hope that President Trump will continue on, and accelerate ambitiously along, this course. The US armed forces should stand down in South Korea. Whether the South Korean regime stands up in their place, and if so in what ways, isn’t a matter for the US regime to decide. Bring the troops home.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Around the US this November, voters will decide a number of tax questions. In California, it’s “wealth tax” on billionaires. In Florida, it’s an increase in the “homestead exemption,” the amount of home value excluded from property taxes. In your neck of the woods, it might be a sales tax for road maintenance of emergency services.

One thing  I keep noticing about these kinds of questions is abuse of the words “cost” and “lose” by proponents of tax increases and opponents of tax cuts.

Passing a tax cut, or failure to pass a tax increase, they tell us, will “cost” government — at whatever level, from local to federal — money. Government will “lose” that money.

Normally when we speak of “losing” something or “costing” something, it’s in terms of already having that thing. You lose $50 on a bet, or a steak dinner costs you $50.

Using the definition preferred by supporters of ever-increasing government revenue, though, I “lost” thousands of dollars yesterday when I walked past a bank instead of walking in, waving a gun at the tellers, and taking all the cash from their drawers. It “cost” me thousands of dollars. And committing to not robbing every bank I happen to walk past in the future  “costs” me too. I’m “losing” all that money! Oh, the humanity!

Under the Florida tax cut proposal, I’m told, my county would “lose” millions of dollars that it doesn’t actually have, just by not taking quite as much of it in the future.

I’ve even seen people shill for the brand new California tax on the basis that if it fails state government healthcare organizations will be “losing” the money they’ve got big plans for. It’s not just money they don’t have, it’s money from a particular source they’ve never received money from before.

As a libertarian, I agree with the slogan “taxation is theft.” It’s usually by extortion: “Nice house/business ya got here. Be a shame if someone stole it and auctioned it off because ya didn’t send us a check.”

But even if one supports taxation for the purpose of funding government operations, it’s beyond dishonest to claim that cutting, or just not raising, taxes is a “cost” or a “loss” to government.

Taxes are always a “cost” and a “loss” — for tax payers, not for tax collectors and tax spenders.

Why, I wonder, do tax proponents lie about that so loudly?

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“The congressional town hall is becoming an endangered species,” Kate Santaliz writes at Axios. As the Congress goes into its late summer recess,  only 11 of its 535  members show such events on their August schedules.

Coming less than three months before all 435 members of the House and 35 members of the Senate are up for election or re-election, the recess seems like a fortuitous, perhaps even urgent, time for the candidates to seek face time with voters. But they don’t wanna. Why?

Part of it, I suspect, has to do with technology.

Social media keeps politicians in seemingly closer touch with their constituents, or at least their biggest supporters and detractors, than “town halls” could back in their heyday.

It’s become cheaper and easier to produce and widely distribute campaign ads of both “short commercial” and “long faux-news coverage” types than ever before.

Some politicians, including “my” “representative,” even do “town halls” by phone. They’re able to carefully curate both the audience (by only robocalling the people they want to reach) and the questions they have to answer (you record your question and staff selects it for inclusion or exclusion).

The purpose of political events these days isn’t so much retail public engagement as it is the production of sound bites for campaign use that’s more controlled and enjoys more reach than a huddle with a few citizens at a high school auditorium.

But the main reason for real, physical, local “town hall aversion” is the possibility of embarrassing confrontations with the angry sector of the public in question. And there’s ALWAYS an angry sector of the public, no matter which party the politician in question affiliates with or what policy positions that politician takes.

We’ve all seen it on TV. In fact, it’s generally the only part of a “town hall” event we ever DO see on TV outside of actual campaign ads.

Not the congresscritter getting applause for a new bridge in the district or a program that provides prosthetics to amputee cats or whatever.

Rather, the congresscritter getting an embarrassing question, on a controversial position or act, from one of THOSE people, followed by boos from the crowd, sometimes followed in turn by unfriendly physical interactions and/or the politician fleeing in terror.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that kind of thing can be worth many thousands of votes … for the poor, bedraggled, harassed politician’s opponent.

The same technology that’s more effective than town halls for positive “outreach” is also more effective for negative “outreach” — getting an opponent’s public discomfiture in front of many eyeballs.

So you can see why “town halls” are quickly becoming, as software people like to say, “deprecated.”

And, honestly, I think it’s a good thing for the public as well.

I grew up in an age when the “town hall” and “candidate forum” were just as carefully orchestrated, but far more effectively than now.

I attended many such events, and was even occasionally one of THOSE people. I once caught a US Senator into an outright lie, and another time flustered a US Representative into giving two wildly inconsistent answers to the same question, with press present.

Alas, Twitter and YouTube didn’t exist back then. Heck, camcorders were high-price-tag items back then. Now they do exist, and one misstep can tank a politician’s whole hoped-for results if someone presses “record” or “go live” at the right … wrong? … moment.

High technology combined with uncontrolled public interaction unmasks politics for what it is — a bunch of crooks lying TO you to get power OVER you. No wonder they’re running away from that.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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