We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I have finally, at last, got my all-you-can-eat-at-no-extra-cost adsl www connection, and am finally free to go awandering and not be frightened of getting too interested.
The best story I have found so far on my travels has been this from Asparagirl last Thursday, about a ship with a dirty bomb on board, or maybe just some mildly radioactive ceramic tiles, ready to destroy New York on the anniversary of you know what, or maybe just add some tiles to it. Don’t miss the comments. (And I do love comments. Where would Samizdata have been on 9/11/02 without them?)
My take is: it was perhaps a fuss about nothing, but it was still a fuss, and it is depressing to me – as it was to Asparagirl – how completely governments can damp down media reports of such things, simply on account of the sheer volume of news that governments themselves generate and can accordingly threaten, selectively, to withhold.
Asparagirl noted that the big story they did go with that day was a washed-up half-dead whale. Said she scornfully: “Whoop-dee-doo.” Said one of her commenters, elbowing his way past conspiracy buffs, conspiracy phobes and bomb-making experts: “You’ve obviously never been downwind of a dead whale. It’s news, lemme tell you.”
Part I of III
Arguments over war in Iraq and its justification, recently fuelled by emotions running high over the first anniversary of the Sept 11th attacks, have been plaguing the libertarian camp. Samizdata decided to summarise its contributors’ positions on war in general and Iraq in particular and received some interesting responses. There are many strands of arguments for and against war on Iraq and it is impossible to even mention them all in one posting. There are several interesting points I wish to add to or stress in the debate.
One of the objections to Perry’s position on the destruction of tyranny and libertarian opposition to it comes from Julian Morrison (a comment on the above linked article):
There are many ways and means of destroying tyranny, but the only ones that are “libertarianly correct” are those which do not involve harm to innocents. Assassination is far preferable, for example, to war – and hand-to-hand war is preferable to blanket bombing. There exists no right to murder, regardless of how convenient it might be.
Here justification of war is reduced to the effects it may have on the civilian population or innocents. This makes opposition to tyranny impossible. For example, makes it impossible to fight anybody ruthless enough to use human hostages.
Ignoring for a moment the other important conditions of just war, which I will deal with in Part II, I want to look at Nazism and communism as examples of historical tyrannies that were accepted as evil to be justifiably eliminated. Opposing Nazism by force was justified as self-defence and the war against Hitler and Germany has been accepted as a just war. The WWII experience proves appeasement wrong on both grounds – moral (fails in self-defence) as well as strategic or practical (gives the enemy opportunity to accumulate weapons and pose a greater threat).
Although during WWII the distinction between a dictator and the nation he lead was blurred, the Cold War made abundantly clear that there is a difference between a dictator waging a war with the country behind him and a dictator with the civilian population being at his mercy and under the same threat as his opponents.
Perry mentions Czechoslovakia as a case in point and I will merely add to his voice. During 1968 Prague Spring civil resistance the Warsaw pact used military threat on the civilian population and in the early days of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 there was in our minds a real threat that the communist government would use the army on the demonstrators. How could an attack by the West make the situation any worse in a country where the state is ready to use ‘military force’ (not just law enforcement) on its citizens? Whether I die being run over by a T-55, shot by AK-47 or by a stray ‘Western’ bomb does not make much difference to me as an individual in such situation. In fact, young and idealistic as I was in those days, I’d probably prefer the latter, given that being killed during a ‘Western liberation’ would at least serve a purpose I agreed with, whereas being killed by communists wouldn’t.
We know Saddam has used military force and chemical weapons on Kurds and will not hesitate to use such force again… Those who oppose war on Iraq on ‘moral grounds’ will find it hard to wriggle out of agreeing that it was right for the West to fight Nazism and wrong to leave the nations of Eastern Europe under communism. The problem is that Nazism and communism are obviously wrong ex-post and the current debate is about determining the moral and strategic position ex-ante.
To be continued…
Doctrine of Just war and libertarians (Part II)
Strategic considerations for attack on Iraq (Part III)
…whilst keeping a stiff upper lip at all times.
![[photo of Sarah Lawrence]](http://www.sarahlawrence.org/Images/020201-Floridath.jpg)
Sarah Lawrence: distinctly red-faced
Dear Friends,
I regret to announce that my little comment yesterday was not aimed in entirely the right direction. Specifically, the writer whose conspiracy theory I was discussing was not the George Smith I found so delightful at the Youth 4 Liberty Summer Camp, but another George Smith (Just how many George Smiths are there anyway?). The writer I quoted was in fact, George F. Smith, and not in fact, “my” George Smith, who is in fact, George H. Smith.
Deepest apologies George F. Smith and particularly George H. Smith! I am so embarrassed! What a complete idiot!(1)
George H. Smith has been very gracious in his response to my gaffe, and has not even drawn to my attention the fact that I, with my almost-as-common name, should jolly well know better. It is mortifying to find that I have done to George H. Smith what so irks me myself that I occasionally think that no reasonable jury would convict if I were to take some small action – with a Colt M4A1 with M203 grenade launcher.
Well at least this clears up the otherwise quite inexplicable mystery of why my Y4L speech appeared to have made such little impact on the writer of the piece I quoted! Sarah NO, NOT THE COLLEGE Lawrence
(1) I stress that the word “idiot” refers to myself and not to the friend who drew my attention to “our” George Smith’s alleged article. I may not be able ever to face appearing in public without a paper bag over my head or ever again, but I am, as one would expect from an English woman such as I, keeping a stiff upper lip and taking responsibility for my own actions (and those of my friend, whom I’ll never trust again… I’m sure he did it on purpose to make me look silly… not that I hold with paranoid conspiracies or anything).
Yesterday I wrote about how I simply do not believe that the true motivation of some who speak out against intervening militarily in Iraq, or elsewhere, is quite what it claims to be. Now that does not mean I question the honour of all who counsel against war, though in some cases that is indeed what I do.
But when some, like Jacob Hornberger, claim that their opposition to war comes in any way out of concern for the well being of the people who live under ghastly regimes like that of Saddam Hussain or Stalin, then I do start to question whether ‘whiteman speaks with forked tongue’. I do not know if Hornberger honestly believes that (he is after all a politician) but even if he does, I wonder how he would react to the discovery reported today in The Times of London (sorry no link) of yet another mass grave in Russia dating from Stalinist times, containing 30,000 people. That is the equivalent of 10 World Trade Centers worth of innocent victims murdered by the NKVD between 1936 and 1939.
So please, if the exclusive reason Ron Paul and Jacob Hornberger at al want to avoid military conflict with far off tyrants is that they do not want members of the volunteer US military to get killed whilst earning their pay, well fine, I don’t agree but I can respect that. Just spare me the crap about worrying about ‘innocent Iraqis/Russians/Czechs/Slovaks/Koreans/Tibetans etc.’ who are or were living under the rule of mass murdering tyrants because it is complete bullshit.
1. verb. To troll for hits is to post a provocative article purely in order to generate an angry response (usually followed by sending a mass e-mail shot to the target audience) and commensurate increase in hit rate.
2. noun. A person who trolls.
Usage: “Justin Raymondo has just trolled the Warbloggers again.”
‘Troll’ is usually used as an epithet and the term is widely used in this sense in newsgroups and e-lists as well as blogs.
noun. See Reciprocal Link.
(coined by Dawson Jackson)
noun. If you blogroll (qv) link to our blog, we will blogroll to your blog. Also: Linky Love
phrase. An series of exchanges between two or more blogs contesting some factual, political or philosophical issue.
(coined by Natalie Solent)
Usage: “Aintnobaddude.com, Heretical Ideas and Samizdata.net have started another Interblog Gun War”
noun. A blog connoisseur.
noun. When a blog is published with incorrect html which resulting in visible code on the page, rather than a clickable link or special character or formatted text. The unintentionally visible code is ‘crud’.
noun. Over time any large list of links will contain an increasing number of dead links.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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