Whilst Samizdata.net is not trying to start a flame war with LewRockwell.com, it would be fair to say that once we stray out of the area of economics, we disagree with them fairly consistantly on issues of war and peace. Alan Forrester adds his views on the subject.
One of my favourite ways of thinking about libertarianism is that we ought to have libertarian institutions because people are ignorant. I’m not misanthropic, it’s just that outside a very narrow range of expertise people tend to know nothing and this ignorance means that we should strive to have a world in which people can offer advice to each other without making it compulsory. Interestingly enough there is a brilliant illustration of this within the libertarian community itself at Lew Rockwell.com, those Lew Rockwell fellows know everything there is to know about free market economics and I take my hat off to them in that respect. But when it comes to moral and political philosophy and in particular the morality and politics of war they don’t have a clue.
Take, for example, this bizarre piece: Bloodthirsty ‘Libertarians’ by Walter Block
“The libertarian non-aggression axiom is the essence of libertarianism. Take away this axiom, and libertarianism might as well be libraryism, or vegetarianism. Thus, if a person is to be a libertarian, he must, he absolutely must, in my opinion, be able to distinguish aggression from defense.”
How exactly one is supposed to derive all political wisdom from a single catchphrase rather than look at real problems and try to figure out how one could deal with them in away that is conducive to problem-solving I’m not sure. However, even on the basis of the non-aggression rule, the comments below are complete tosh.
“You don’t have to wait until I actually punch you in the nose to take violent action against me. You don’t even have to wait until my fist is within a yard of you, moving in your direction. However, if you haul off and punch me in the nose in a preemptive strike, on the ground that I might punch you in the future, then you are an aggressor.”
So let me get this straight. You’re standing atop a pile of dismembered corpses, laughing like a madman and brandishing a chainsaw covered in blood. You haven’t noticed me yet, but I’m a few hundred metres away with a telescopic rifle. Am I allowed to blow your head clean off your
shoulders or not?
“Suppose you were a Martian, looking down upon the earth, trying to figure out which earth nations were aggressors, and which were not (i.e., were defenders). You have particularly good eyesight. So much so, that you can see actual uniforms, flags, etc. You notice that one country, call it Ruritania, has soldiers on the territory of scores of other nations, and sailors in every ocean known to man, and some completely unknown (just kidding about this last point).”
Ruritania is a thinly veiled but rather inaccurate reference to America, as we shall see below, but I don’t suppose it makes any difference to Block that most of these countries invited American troops in and are very glad they’re there. On the odd occasions it has been otherwise, like with Japan and Germany after World War 2, it was because the governments of the country concerned were evidently as mad as a barrel full of snakes and needed to be given a political enema.
“You discern that another country, Moldavia, has its armed forces in but just a few countries other than itself. And that’s it. No other country has foreign military bases. What do you conclude? If you are a rational Martian, you deduce that Ruritania to a great degree, and Moldavia to a lesser one, are aggressor nations.”
Surely that depends on the reason for the bases. Block has started with the conclusion he wanted to reach and tried to come up with facts to
support it while trying to pretend that he’s doing it the other way around.
“Suppose that your Martian eyesight also allows you to read earthling history books. There you learn that Ruritania fought worldwide wars twice in the last century, and has physically invaded, oh, give or take, about 100 countries during that time.”
What if these 100 countries were bad countries and the reason they were invaded was to bring an end to tyranny? Doesn’t this rather change the
interpretation?
“Further, that Ruritania was the only nation in the entire history of the world to have used an atom bomb on people; worse, that they used this satanic device on civilians, not even soldiers; that they did so to get an unconditional surrender (Ruritania refused to promise to allow the emperor of the defeated nation to remain on his throne) from a country they pushed and hounded into war in the first place.”
Seeing as this is a thinly veiled reference to Japan and World War 2, one might ask what exactly the US did to force Japan to declare war. The Japanese invaded China in 1931 while it was in the middle of a civil war and a famine and rejected all offers of mediation by the League of Nations and continued their war on China. On December 13, 1937 the Japanese entered the Chinese town of Nanking, home to 600,000 – 700,000 people of whom 150,000 were soldiers. 90,000 soldiers were killed and 200,000 civilians were murdered. The Japanese lulled soldiers into surrendering with promises of fair treatment and then bayoneted them or cut their heads off with swords. They also committed at least 20,000 rapes. It was one of the biggest single massacres of the 20th century.
Under the circumstances, a moderate response would have been for the US to get armed to the teeth, invade China and Japan and tear the Japanese army a new arsehole. Instead the US gave China a $25 million loan, abrogated a trade treaty that made the US the main supplier of Japanese weapons and imposed an oil embargo on Japan. The Japanese then bombed American ships at Pearl Harbour – they forced the US into the war, not the other way around.
The Allies had decided, seeing as letting Germany slink away at the end of World War 1 rather than actually invading and replacing their government with a sane one had been such a terrible mistake, that they would accept nothing other than unconditional surrender from the Axis powers so that they would have a free hand to replace their governments. The alternative to the nukes was to invade Japan and fight their way through the entire country if necessary until they obtained an unconditional surrender, not an enviable decision.
“Who would you think was the rogue nation? Who would you think was a danger to the entire world? Who would you think was an aggressor?”
Ba’athist Iraq. Funnily enough Saddam has waged wars of aggression against Iraq’s neighbours, killed civilians out of sheer malice and spite, and been involved with terrorist organisations, most notably Al Qaeda, and let’s not forget giving money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The sooner Iraq is invaded and Saddam Hussein toppled the better for all concerned.
I can’t resist quoting one last howler from Walter Brock, or as he is known to those who have managed to crack his secret identity, Non Sequitur Man.
“It just so happens that young males commit proportionately far more crimes of violence than any other cohort of the population. Under the preemptive strike philosophy, we would be justified in putting them all in jail, say, when they turn 15, and letting them out when they reach 25. Thus, if the preemptive striker were logically coherent, not only could he not be a libertarian in foreign policy, he could not favor this philosophy even in this area.”
I don’t favour locking up all 15-25 year old males, just the ones who actually have committed certain crimes, like mass murder, whether those crimes happened to personally affect me or not. Similarly, despite the French government being a spineless bunch of appeasers, I have no particular desire to see France invaded, but when it comes to Iraq, I’ve been itching for the US and UK to get its finger out and invade for months.
America doesn’t need a direct attack on its shores to invade Iraq or any other mass murdering dictatorship that happens to capture its attention. I
unambiguously and wholeheartedly endorse any such invasions that the US decides to undertake, and so should everyone else who loves liberty.
Alan Forrester
Bravo! Well done!
Now that’s a fisking.
There you learn that Ruritania fought worldwide wars twice in the last century
<blink> This may mark the first time I’ve ever seen America’s fighting in WWII held as a moral failing. Usually the line is that America was “late to the war” and “failed to live up to its responsibilities”, isn’t it?
Not anymore, Jeanne. Paleo-libertarians are still pissed off about U.S. involvement. Justin Raimondo even thinks that “the wrong side won the war in the Pacific.” Which is saying a lot for the Chinese and Koreans, who really suffered from the Japanese occupation. Raimondo also says that Americans are barbarians because we used the atom bomb against Japanese cities. No word on whether the Japanese are anything less than civilized for incidents like, oh, say…the RAPE OF NANJING?
Here is a much shorter explanation, from The Libertarian Enterprise:
“A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.”
– L. Neil Smith
Of course, this applies to the American definition of “libertarian.” The author (and many others here) are not libertarians, in the American sense–but as I’ve noted before, it’s not surprising that a political term means something else to people from another country.
Here’s an American who does not fit the ‘American’ definition of libertarian, then.
I agree with Alan, and echo the ‘bravo’
lars
Note the key word INITIATE in the L. Neil Smith above.
There may be practical reasons to not remove a government that does what Iraq’s does to it’s people but it is NOT against Libertarian Principles. The Iraqi government initiated force on it’s people, not to mention it’s neighbors. I do not believe that the Smith quote means that we cannot help those people. That is the same as saying that the police cannot help a person who is the victim of a crime in progres if the police officer is not under threat.
I am pretty largely in favour of the LP pledge, but if you read L Neil Smith, and Robert Heinlein, you also find that everyone is (rightfully) armed to the teeth and society is therefore quite polite. The impolite ones are dead. “Think of it as evolution in action” as Jerry Pournelle said in a novel.
However we are not in a safe world. We are not in a world of shared rationallity. There are people who willingly become little more than a vessel to carry out the will of X, where X has had a number of different values in the last century.
I have been forced to back off from my much more extreme position of a decade ago out of simple terror. We’re getting very close to the “singularity” for those who know what I mean, and we only get one shot at that transition. I’d much prefer the non-extinction alternative. Today we are talking about WMD; they are far easier than you think and in a decade they will be even worse…
I won’t even discuss the WWII issues. Like Perry I am a student of those times. The Empire of Japan was out to carve an empire of slaves, concubines and natural resources and as they were superior to all other human beings, inferiors could be exterminated at will. Surrender for a warrior made him an abomination and deserving of torture and death.
Midway and Hawaii were almost certainly on the menu, as almost certainly was Northern Australia for simple strategic reasons if nought else.
Great posting, many thanks. Now how about a posting — if you haven’ done one already — on the differences between British and American libertarianism? I don’t know about anyone else, but I could use some enlightening.
OK, let’s invade every country that has ever invaded another country or oppressed / killed people within its borders. Hmm, that would include (among others) the United States, Israel, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Russia, Chile, Columbia, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Turkey…
Am I the only one who sees a problem with such an expansive definition of whom we should go to war with?
I agree that the “martian” example is poor rhetoric. It’s something Noam Chomsky does frequently (and obnoxiously), and anyone who tries it is tied in my mind to him. That, in and of itself, is a good way to get me to stop reading an essay (unless it’s an essay on linguistics, in which case, Chomsky is fine). The argument is essentially, “say an impartial martian saw the following group of ideologically skewed claims [presents evidence], then obviously he’d agree with me. Hence I’m right.”
The example of the mountain of corpses is specious. The rubrik being set up is that one must rationally think that someone will probably attack you before a pre-emptive strike is justified. I would guess that most libertarians would agree. The author just seems to disagree with how reasonable this belief is with regard to Iraq. So the disagreement is factual, rather than philosophical.
Anyway, I’d give the essay a D- for poor reasoning, hidden value premises and unsupported claims. To some extent, I agree with the author, but the reasoning is poor.
Here’s another American who doesn’t fit into the American Libertarian mold.
Bravo Alan
Here’s another American who doesn’t fit into the American Libertarian mold.
Bravo Alan
The axioms of non aggresion, and no initiation of force, or no intervention abroad – are correct from a libertarian point of view.
The same goes for the axiom “taxation is theft”.
Now what remains is the trifling chore of implementing those axioms in the world we live in, not in some utopian world where the US stayed out of WW2.
The US is imposing high taxes on it’s people, she fought in WW2, and was hit on 9/11. What now ?
There ought to be no false distinction between “American” libertarians and other kinds. Libertarianism does rely on a precept of non-aggression, but it is not an axiom; it is derived from the ideas that the individual owns himself, and that government has no more right over him, or others, than he can rightfully give to it. The problem is that some libertarians (I’m fond of calling them “Doughface Libertarians”) lose sight of the fundamentals, as Mr. Forrester points out. They become fixated on the trappings of politics rather than the ideas behind them, and they end up with absurd results, including the above, or their oft-stated defense of the Confederacy.
Why does this happen? I believe it’s Vietnam fatigue. Many people discovered libertarianism during the Vietnam era, and they and those who have followed have an understandably great resistance to the idea of becoming involved in foreign wars. Unfortunately, they have also swallowed whole the false idea of the Vietnam protesters, that “a people has the right to form any government they want.” They don’t: according to libertarianism, a people has a right only to create a government which respects self-ownership and individual rights. So this “self-determination of peoples” principle sometimes conflicts with the principle of self-ownership, as with the American Civil War, when “a people” seeks to “form a government” based on slavery and inequality. And in such situations, the Doughface Libertarians (libertarians with slavery principles) get lost.
One of these fine and glorious days, the libertarian members of the War Party will explain how governments they don’t trust to “run things” at home, with US and UK populations experienced with some freedoms and a modern society, can run things in Iraq without making a total hash of it. Maybe they’ll also explain how Iraqis will become our friends after being ruled in detail by a govt they didn’t elect that is 7000 miles away, while most western libertarians are offended by being ruled in detail by governments a few hundred miles away that they did elect?
Would you give our governments more power over Iraqi civilians that you’d never let them have over you?
Michael Blowhard,
I don’t think that there is any substantive difference between British and American libertarians as I have encountered quite a few British and European libertarians who take the Lew Rockwell line on foreign policy matters.
The real schism cuts right across the libertarian movement; something which I predicted would happen as a result of the WTC atrocities.
I second Scott’s comments above. This site is full of people complaining (with considerable justification) about how the USG/UKG are making life more difficult for people in the US/UK. Many of these same people have great confidence in the USG/UKG’s ability to fight for limited government and strong property rights elsewhere — where the government will be even less accountable to the people it affects.
Clearly the government of Mr. Hussein is much worse than the USG. Mr. Hussein & Co. is clearly a menace to liberty in Iraq, and needs to go. This said, the USG has a questionable track record on fighting tyranny abroad. (It irritates me whenever the USG does things that generate positive PR for communists, fascists, and terrorists.) We need better tools for dealing with dictators than the US military.
How big a bounty (Congressional or private) would it take to get an 8.58 round into Mr. Hussein’s skull? I bet for One Billion Dollars we could get Mr. Hussein and our choice of his lieutenants wasted. His bodyguards are loyal, but are they One Billion Dollars loyal? Wouldn’t that be cheaper (in lives and dollars) than the invasion, and still free the Iraqi people from tyranny?
My personal suspicion is that the USG’s primary goals are less noble than either self-defense, defense of allied free republics, or liberating the oppressed Iraqis. Maybe I’m being paranoid.
Vote in ongoing poll:
The One Ring was evil because of it’s maker: 1
The One Ring was evil because of it’s power: 0
The truth, usefulness, and derivability of the non-agression principle are neither here nor there, as that principle applies between individuals— and therefore (unless you’re willing to commit the most unlibertarian fallacy of composition imaginable) tells us nothing whatever about whether or when such action is permissible between states.
There may be a linguisting misunderstanding about the right to use violence.
What is legitimate violence is not only “self-defense” but any violence which prevents or punishes aggression. Saddam being a mass murderer, he has no rights at all and everyone, including the worst criminals, may depose and kill him.
More annoying is some “libertarians'” practice of distorting the facts, as was initiated by Murray Rothbard in order to deny Soviet aggressiveness, and which, as someone who has studied the former Yugoslavia for the past eight years (da, Natalija, uceo sam i hrvatski — por po mëson edhe shqip), I have had the displeasure to observe more recently.
“Anti-war libertarians” end up rooting for the worst scoundrels available, and denying their crimes. This is as much worth discussing as fine points of theory.
Stephen Schwartz, an authentic Balkan specialist, calls this contempt for the truth “neo-fascist”. I wonder if I will not agree.
François G., I hate to break the bad news to you, but all we’re going to accomplish is to replace one violent thug with another in Iraq. Bush, Blair, et al won’t let Iraq fly apart (national borders are sacred, and they want a counter-weight to Iran), and only a violent thug can keep an artificial creation (created by the same Western powers you trust now) like Iraq together.
Scott: Your assumption seems to be that Bush/Blair are just the flip side of Saddam (and presumably the likes of Milosevic et al)… whilst my dislike and distrust of the UK and US states should be obvious, that does not bring me to the conclusion that ‘all scoundrels are interchangeable’. There is a major qualitative difference between western ‘liberal’ scoundrels on one hand and psychopathic mass murdering tyrant type scoundrels on the other… I may not like our home grown scoundrels but they are vastly preferable to what prevails in Iraq.
Well the hapless Iraqi people did not elect Saddam Hussain either, so how is ‘foisting’ some new ruler who will hopefully be less willing (and less able) to butcher his own people that the current psychopathic ruler going to unite Iraq in loathing against the West? Somehow I don’t think so!
Scott, you’re making the argument that because drinking a quart of water is harmless while drinking a quart of wine is imparing, it makes no sense to choose to substitute a quart of wine for a quart of 100% pure grain alcohol. Even a Pinochet-style strongman would be mere whiskey compared to Saddam and a victory for liberty and human rights.
T.J., I don’t care what George W. Bush’s motives are. Saddam is a mass murderer who has personally murdered dozens of people, initiated two wars, poison gassed entire towns, and uses murder, rape, and torture as instruments of policy. His removal, on whatever pretext or with whatever motivation, by a more benign power, is a good.
“Anti-war libertarians” end up rooting for the worst scoundrels available, and denying their crimes.”
Francois hit the most important point: denial of reality. Denial of the danger posed by those madmen. Refusal to face the facts.
Let’s also be very clear about another point: nobody is going to war to liberate the Iraqi people. We are going to war (I hope) to remove a big threat to us. If the Iraqis manage to get a more decent ruler (it is hardly possible to have a less decent one!) then fine.
“Libertarianism is not about nonaggression, it is about liberty”?
What is liberty if not the freedom to do your own thing without being aggressed upon?
Liberty is nonaggression; nonaggression is liberty.
Tyranny is aggression; aggression is tyranny.
These are the basics, folks. If you haven’t grasped that basic tenet of libertarianism, then… YOU ARE NOT A LIBERTARIAN!
Period. End of story.
The Rockwell folks, while admittedly often fascinating, can be a bit odd. They feature one fellow on their site who, best as I can tell, can only be described as a Libertarian Monarchist.
But then I’m a Libertarian Nationalist myself, which I’m sure they find just as odd.
The problem with their reasoning as far as I’m concerned is that, while it’s fine to believe in the elimination of the nation-state form as a desirable end, it does no good to act as if they don’t exist in a world where real live nation-states exist and mean us harm. Nation-states are a fact of life. Within this framework, that which on balance advances individual liberty OVER THE LONG TERM is perfectly within the bounds of libertariansm in my not-so-humble opinion.
Jacob,
Let’s also be very clear about another point: nobody is going to war to liberate the Iraqi people. We are going to war (I hope) to remove a big threat to us.
That is certainly not what I’ve read on Samizdata in the past. Many Samizdatans support a war in Iraq for the primary reason of removing tyrants, not to ward off any threat.
I don’t deny Saddam’s crimes, nor do I support him. If he died tomorrow, or was overthrown in a democratic coup, great. However, I think that Britain and the U.S. have no right to attack Iraq because I don’t believe that Iraq is a threat to us. And because of the tremendous cost in human lives on the Iraqi side, the cause would have to have a lot of moral weight behind it. It seems to me that it lacks it.
Well done, Alan, a very provocative and well-put message. I wanted to reply to Block’s miserable excuse for an article myself, but couldn’t find enough substance to make it worthwhile. However, your reply has provoked some insights I find valuable, which I’ll be blogging myself at no-treason.com once I get them sorted out.
I think a lot depends on what you mean by “initiate force”.
To me, Saddam’s been waging a war against the US since the Gulf War ended. I think Iraq should have been taken out after the first WTC bombing, which Saddam had his fingers all over.
No, I’m assuming our own governments are being as honest, and will be as competent, regarding the War on Iraq as they have been concerning the War on Poverty, War on Drugs, and the War on Crime (via gun control). I’m not comparing Bush and Blair to Saddam; I’m comparing our governments’ proposed actions to the previous actions of those very same UK/US governments.
Hopefully?!?!? You want a war and the best you have is “hopefully”?? Totalitarians have always used threats from outside to rally domestic support, and you’re kidding yourself if you expect so much gratitude from the Iraqi people that we will be forgiven for any crimes committed by whatever government we set up. The parents might cut us some slack, their kids will blame us for everything their government does.
I suspect it will be a choice between tequila and whiskey instead of between grain alcohol and wine.
Both global warming and the war on Iraq are being sold with the same claims, namely “we can’t absolutely prove the threat until its too late, so we have to give the government the power to do whatever it wants”. We cannot wait until New York is nuked by Iraq or submerged by rising ocean levels when the polar ice caps melt. We Must Act Now.
If Iraq is so dangerous, can we hold those government officials who supported him in the 80s responsible, and jail Rumsfeld? Its not either/or, we can toss Rumsfeld in jail, or at least remove him from any position of power, and invade Iraq to remove the threat Rumsfeld, et al created when Iran was the big enemy.
We can’t do that because Rummy and Co couldn’t know the long term results of their actions? If so, can you claim to know the long term results of invading Iraq?
Scott,
” If so, can you claim to know the long term
results of invading Iraq?”
Can you claim to know the long term results of NOT invading Iraq?
The whole debate boils down to this basic question: is Saddam a significant threat or not ?
About the analogy with global warming – the analogy is about procedures or appearances. You have to make a judgement on the contents, on the issue itself: is global warming real or not ? Same with Iraq – are they a threat to us or not?
About the liberation of Iraqi people as a justification for war: come on, let’s face it. Everyone, including Bush and Blair, say, that if Saddam truely gives up his WMD, he can stay and keep butchering his people with impunity. Of course Bush and Blair are not spokesmen for libertarianism, and we are justified in investigating the moral aspect of the war. Still we must remain conscious of how the world out there works.
Can you claim to know the long term results of NOT invading Iraq?
If someone wants the government to perform a specific act (particularly a big, expensive, and violent one), the burden of proof is on them. “Prove to the government’s satisfaction why the government shouldn’t act” is what socialists say.
About the liberation of Iraqi people as a justification for war: come on, let’s face it. Everyone, including Bush and Blair, say, that if Saddam truely gives up his WMD, he can stay and keep butchering his people with impunity.
Which is why Saddam will be replaced with someone who is just as big a thug; his being a thug to his own people doesn’t matter to our governments.
“Which is why Saddam will be replaced with someone who is just as big a thug;”
Why be so pessimistic ? Saddam is REALLY bad; chances are some other regime will not be as bad, maybe they will get some sultan like Kuwait, or Qatar.
“his being a thug to his own people doesn’t matter to our governments.”
That is also an exageration. Our governments aren’t that bad. They do care about liberty and democracy (at least as far as their understading of these terms goes). It is only that these considerations alone would not tip the balance toward assuming the risks of war. It is the threat of WMD that is the crucial ingredigent.
“Vietnam fatigue” and “Doughface Libertarians”?! LoL. And this is coming from the neocon, Lincoln-worshipping, Union apologist, Beltway Libertarian who got creamed by Stephan Kinsella on the state’s rights issue? Oh geeeezzz. You guys couldn’t raise yourself up high enough to shine Walter Block’s stable-cleanin’ shoes. If warmongering, neocon shills like you folks want to parade around as “libertarians”, do so as you please, but your unimpressive sloganeering and failed arguments aren’t taken seriously by anyone beyond your own little cluster of blogging pals.
Am I the only one expecting the “smoking gun” that justifies Gulf War II to be no more legit than the incubator story told by the ambassador’s daughter that fired us up for Gulf War I? I’m not comparing Bush to Saddam; I’m comparing GHW Bush to GW Bush.
If we don’t replace Saddam with something better, the whole “we can do whatever we want to him – he’s a criminal” excuse goes away. If A does violence to B, the rest of us don’t have an absolute right to kill A, because B may have wanted compensation first. What B wants does matter.
We can all assume the Iraqis would just love for someone to come in and give them a government full of peace, love, and understanding, but are in no position to say so. However, if we just replace one tyrant with another, it would be perfectly rational for Iraqis to want to skip the middle part of tyrant/war/tyrant, and live under a thug w/ their sons still alive instead of living under a different thug with their sons drafted and killed fighting off the invasion.
Scott,
You have a recent precedent: have the Taliban been replaced in Afghanistan by another regime which is equally bad ? No, the new regine is infinitely better. Why do you suppose that such a thing is impossible in Iraq ?
The claim that a new regime in Iraq will necessarily be as mad and murderous as the current one doesn’t make sense to me.
The Northern Alliance that is in power in Afghanistan now was so bad that they lost support and the Taliban took over.
Give it time.
… re your final question about whether you can blow the head off a manically-laughing man waving a blood-soaked chainsaw and standing on top of a pile of corpses with your rifle from a few hundred yards away – er… I would hope the answer to that one is “no”. Surely?
1] Innocent and lunatic people regularly turn up at crime scenes and pick up the weapon. Even laughing manically is not much clue, since this a well-documented reaction to shock. [Spike Milligan was put under medical supervision in the Second World War when, during a conversation with a friend, his friend’s head was suddenly blown off by a sniper, and Spike had a hysterical and apparently unstoppable fit of the giggles.]
2] Interviewing the live chainsaw murderer, if it is really he, might save other lives somewhere else. If the criminal has some people chained up in a cellar, and you shoot him dead, they will likely starve to death before you find them.
Surely these are pretty basic and obvious ideas to be getting confused about?
Now if the laughing man is advancing on a helpless victim, waving his chainsaw, and you have a rifle and you can shoot straight [so can be sure of reducing rather than adding to havoc – for example by accidentally hitting the would-be victim] then yes – maybe then you shoot.
Even then – given we might want to talk to the criminal later and he is only armed with a chainsaw in your example [not a large bomb, for instance] – I hope you will try shooting to incapacitate first.
If you have only one bullet and he looks like chain-sawing the innocent victim very soon – _then_, yes, please shoot to kill.
Is this really so hard to grasp?
One might disagree with the facts in the Iraq case, but it’s hard to believe this statement is coming from a “libertarian”:
“America doesn’t need a direct attack on its shores to invade Iraq or any other mass murdering dictatorship that happens to capture its attention. I unambiguously and wholeheartedly endorse any such invasions that the US decides to undertake, and so should everyone else who loves liberty.”
Which countries will capture your attention tomorrow?
By the way, Mark G. wrote an obvious response to your apparent debunking of the nonagression principle.
“The Allies had decided, seeing as letting Germany slink away at the end of World War 1 rather than actually invading and replacing their government with a sane one had been such a terrible mistake”
The German government was replaced at the end of WWI. The Kaiser was forced to step down and was replaced with the Weimar Republic. That turned out not to have such desirable results; I daresay that the Kaiser, had he remained in power, would have had the motive and the means to keep a certain Austrian corporal from taking his job.
And getting rid of that Austrian corporal also gave half of Europe over to Stalin (as we always have to ally ourselves with next year’s evil to rid ourselves of this year’s evil, which we created in fighting last year’s evil).
Its the same way we threw the Japanese out of China, only to have Mao come along and kill 60 million.
But it will be different this time, we promise.
http://www.atimes.com//atimes/Middle_East/EA18Ak02.html
WASHINGTON – “What I saw from my perch in the Pentagon,” wrote Colin Powell, a major general in 1982, in his memoirs about Washington’s brief but disastrous sojourn in Lebanon 20 years ago, “was America sticking its hand into a thousand-year-old hornet’s nest.”
That memory undoubtedly fuels Powell’s determination to fight off hardliners in the administration of President George W Bush who are equally determined to attack and occupy Iraq, even without United Nations or allied support, if necessary.
As pointed out recently by military analyst William Arkin in the Los Angeles Times, what happened in Lebanon 20 years ago may tell us a lot about the hopes, fears and delusions of US policymakers about what could happen in Iraq. Indeed, many of the people who applauded Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and deplored the Reagan administration’s decision to withdraw US peacekeepers after a series of deadly terrorist attacks are now arguing for an invasion of Iraq, and for many of the same reasons.
As today with Baghdad, they argued then that the road to peace in the Middle East ran through Beirut, and that, working together, Israeli and US military power could permanently alter the political balance of power in the entire Middle East in favor of the West. …
Ken Hagler wrote: “Of course, this applies to the American definition of “libertarian.” The author (and many others here) are not libertarians, in the American sense–but as I’ve noted before, it’s not surprising that a political term means something else to people from another country.”
The TLE sense of libertarianism being identical with the NAP may be local to America for all I know, but it doesn’t define libertarianism in America any more than it defines it anywhere else. It defines a vocal subset of American libertarians who insist on hijacking the word libertarianism.
What they really need is another term to describe themselves.