Which US presidents oversaw more military deaths? Why is John Bolton "the last neocon"? And our need to keep an eye even on allies.

==  How many “papers” and “leaks” will it take? ==

In Earth I allude to the “Helvetian War” when a coalition of developing nations use the belligerent powers allowed them under formal declaration of war to go after the trillions that had been looted from their peoples by former ruling elites. There’s a whole chapter about this potential technique in Polemical Judo. Now see how Angolans are trying to recover $2Billion from the daughter of their former despot. There are clever and agile ways to do this that no one has yet tried.

"The Luanda Leaks investigation is a landmark moment for Angola (Revealed: how ‘princess’ of Angola built $2bn fortune, 20 January). It should be a landmark moment for the world. The revelations should inform the criminal investigation into Isabel dos Santos that is already under way. This investigation must follow due process (Angola vows to force Dos Santos to return, 21 January)." -- from The Guardian.

Noteworthy... they need to go after even bigger kleptocrats from the POST-colonial era.

== A propensity for war? ==

An interesting collation indicates which party goes to war more readily, spending the lives of our military men and women. My source gives Active Duty Military Deaths due to “Enemy Action“ or “Terrorist Attack” Since 1988.

Ronald Reagan 1981-1988 295            37/yr average*

George H.W. Bush 1989-1992 189       47/yr average**

Bill Clinton 1993-2000 75                        9/yr average***

George W. Bush 2001-2008 3,830     479/yr average****

Barack Obama 2009-2016 ?              390/year during 1st 2 years, then dropping quickly to about 40/yr average.

Donald Trump roughly same as Obama

* Reagan had many little, easy ‘wars” like Grenada… and one humongously stupid loss of 200 Marines due to flubbed security in Lebanon.

** GHW Bush was the worst president of the 20th Century by far, blowing the aftermath to the end of the Cold War and leaving Iraq a shambles for all future generations. But his massive Iraq War was so one-sided that US casualties were low.

*** All but 1 of the losses under Clinton are labeled as “terrorist,” not “enemy action.” Not sure that’s proper since it includes “Blackhawk Down.” But Clinton’s ratio of cost versus effectiveness was unsurpassed, as the Balkans Intervention finally ended 6000 years of European war.

****GW Bush set us on course for our longest quagmire wars, exactly what an enemy would wish for us. Unable to extract, Obama turned things around, but his losses should be partly credited to Bush.

**** My source for yearly data stopped mid-Obama. The Obama Trump year totals can be gleaned from a chart here. Under Obama the rates steeply declined from 300+/yr in 2010 to low double digits by 2014, a rate maintained by Trump. And let's be clear that this is a category that has NOT been made worse by Trump... though military readiness is now a mess. Now who would want that?

== Putting John Bolton in context: the last Neocon standing ==

Yes this is several news cycles back. But all the more reason for a reminder and some perspective!

While I am glad the John Bolton book-leaks are devastating the Foxite paradigm — (respond to every scandal with “don’t look! Don’t let anyone see or hear anything!”) — I do believe we want to keep this man in context. 

Bolton is The last Neocon. Not one of the russophile, Putinist oligarchy-worshippers who infest today’s mad right, or their apocalypse-yearning drones, but a true American imperialist. And you ought to have some context.

Neocons were followers of a mad emigre "philosopher," Leo Strauss, who fled the horrors of WWII Europe only to rail at gullible American students like Wolfowitz, Perle, Nitze, Adelman, and Frum that happy successful America should drop its uniquely benevolent American Pax and be more like those failed European empires. 

His followers finally got their day in the sun... for three years under Bush Jr., till it became clear that the Iraq II war was built entirely on lies, theft and cosmically self-destructive policies. Worse, some of them started complaining about Cheney Clan giga-buck ripoffs, whereupon Rupert Murdoch ordered all the neocons sacked and sent into exile, leaving only John Bolton standing with a Fox platform to push the Olde Faith...

…plus hybrid/mongrel/monsters like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, who shout some imperialist slogans while essentially spearheading Putin-"traditionalist" oligarchism, the bald-faced new religion of the right.

I offered perspective on this some good while back. 

If that sounds complex, just backtrack a bit to the seventies. For the neocons were made much worse by campus leftist radicals, who trashed the offices of university conservatives and giggled at their "victories,” chasing guys like Wolfowitz away from campus-collegial give and take and intellectual accountability. They fled to echo chambers like AEI and Heritage and soon became complete whore-shills for the Kochs, Cheneys etc., concocting all those 2003 war rationalizations on demand. No, the far-left does not have clean hands in all of this.

To be clear, there are others who would define terms differently than I did here, and with perhaps better erudition. See for example Paul Miller’s decryption here. While more thorough and erudite, Miller, I think, misses the point. While many neocons might have started out as civil rights liberals, and were unfairly maligned by campus radicals, they coalesced at Heritage and AEI into court intelligencia prostitutes, wholly owned by and subservient to classic far-right oligarchy. A loyalty that was not returned when that oligarchy crumpled up the neocons and tossed them in the trash, turning instead to embrace today’s unabashedly troglodytic Confederatism, allied with Saudi, Russian, gambling and drug mafias.

Oh, I’ll accept any help, nowardays, including gifts from these dangerous madmen. Frum is now a vociferous anti-Trumper, and other neocons are starting to exact some revenge… as now so is Bolton. Fine.

Just be wary. For these are variations in essential madness. 

One lesson is to seek out any possible seed for a saner American conservatism… I’ve mentioned Utah, where at least their conservatism' doesn't translate into tsunamis of moral turpitude, domestic violence, stds gambling, teen sex/pregnancy and scores of other ways that Red America outscores blue... and reach out with a hand of collegially competitive negotiation. 

The other lesson is not to trust our own farthest fringe campus radicals. who don’t have a great sanity track record, themselves.

== Getting down to fundamentals ==

My general political essay in four parts - about  the insipid/lobotomizing left-right "axis"- how history betrayed competitive creativity, and what libertarianism might look like, if it ever grew up. (Currently popular versions are truly wretched, offering "axes" that are not even remotely independent or light-shedding.) Some folks complain that the old host site has gone dormant. Or out of reach.  I can now offer better versions via my own site. You can start with:

Part 1: Political Totemism and the Danger of Metaphors

Part 2: Political Totemism Part II

Part 3: Political Metaphors Part III

Part 4: Political Metaphors Part IV 

But vastly more important for this current crisis remains POLEMICAL JUDO. If even 5% of the tactics there were used...