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War is the subject of the hour. This contentious issue generates great heat -- and sometimes light -- as proponents of peace or war figuratively battle across the printed page, through the airways, and in the invisible communities of cyberspace...and sometimes even face-to-face. Opponents accuse each other of being "warmongers" or "anti-American," "imperialistic" or "unpatriotic."
As befitting a topic that literally concerns the life and death of large numbers of people, war should be taken seriously. Sending individuals to kill and, perhaps, to be killed is a solemn undertaking, not to be sanctioned lightly or for the wrong reasons.
The problem in discussing this reheating of the last Gulf War is that all the major players are statists and collectivists. Some -- such as Iraq and the other Arab countries -- are near the terminus of their police state careers and make little pretense at honoring freedom. Others -- such as the fascistic United States and Great Britain -- are "baby" police states that have yet to explode into the kind of full dictatorship and unbridled tyranny of their opponents. While the mixed-economy nations maintain the trappings of democracy and pay lip-service to freedom, they express in embryonic or greater forms the characteristic traits of police states.
Regardless of the degree to which their cultures and institutions express it, all the participants in this cluster-you-know-what find statism congenial. SNAFU is the acronym of the day: Situation Normal, All F*cked Up.
As Ayn Rand frequently pointed out, when freedom does not exist, the State makes it impossible for individuals -- and by extension, the country -- to make and act upon their moral choices. At best, we make muddled decisions that fully satisfy no one. (Examples abound. Consider, for example, the brouhaha over school prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance or parade permits for Nazis or tax-funded art or abortions or....)
The power of principled thinking, of course, permits us to see beyond the range-of-the-moment smoke screens that some debaters throw up to obscure the reality of the situation we face. Indeed, valid principles apply in all relevant situations across all times.
As one example of this trans-historical capacity for logical dissection of knotty concerns, I am going to turn to the thoughts of Ayn Rand when she discussed another divisive war nearly forty years ago. Rand lived through the Russian Revolution, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Even though she did not write extensively on this topic, her words can help us to understand the predicament facing us in the Mideast...and -- maybe, just maybe -- aid us in judging what is and is not the best course to follow.
The parallels are sometimes astounding...and often frightening...
[The quotes below are primarily from one of the following sources: "The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus." The Objectivist Newsletter, June, 1965, [NFRC]; "The Roots of War." The Objectivist, June, 1966, [RoW]; or "The Wreckage of the Consensus." The Objectivist, April, May, 1967 [WoC]. All are available in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. All emphases in the quotes are from the originals.]
Here, Rand points out an issue that illustrates the principle I discussed in "Good Wars": that the State intervenes and interferes where it should not; creates problems worse than the original difficulty; uses that to "push us into another" war; and so on and so on. When Rand wrote this, the "fifty years of suicidal foreign policy" harkened back to the first world war. Sadly, that same style of meddling altruism used to justify all the wars of the past (now) almost ninety years continues unabated.
We should not have arbitrarily set boundaries in the Mideast after WW II; we should not have intervened in Iran during the time of the Shah; we should not have supplied Iraq with weapons as our ally and encouraged it to attack its neighbors; we should not have stepped in to defeat one dictator who was invading another; and we should not now use that past war and nonexistent or irrelevant evidence to justify an escalation of that last war.
To correct our mistakes in entering this quagmire -- this trap -- we should, as Rand suggests, boldly and clearly announce that the U.S. will henceforth focus our energies solely and exclusively on protecting the interests and rights of American citizens. If terrorists want to attack us, we will no longer provide them the slightest scintilla of "justification" for their atrocities by pointing to any unwarranted actions on our part in the Mideast or anywhere else.
Short of that, we should, as Rand says, "fight that war and win it as fast as possible" and hope that we have time before the next war to implement the proper foreign policy.
Sadly, neither history nor current events suggest there is much likelihood that either our nation's citizens or our politicians will come to their senses any time soon.
This fact helps to explain why so many citizens -- even some libertarians and Objectivists -- accuse those opposed to our government and its policies of being "unpatriotic" or showing "disrespect" or "dishonoring" our soldiers, past and present. They falsely equate one with the other and are unable to fathom the fact that opponents of this particular war can still realize that soldiers ordered into combat are not at fault for an unjustified policy decision and should not be punished for doing their jobs. Supporting soldiers is not the same as supporting the war to which the State sends them or the State itself...nor is opposing the latter necessarily imply opposition to the soldiers who are sent to fight.
As Rand said, when soldiers are fighting, we need to help them win (within the confines of morality as applicable in a war) as quickly as possible. But this does not preclude principled opposition to those who got us into this unconstitutional mess in the first place.
Because the United States was attacked by the Japanese in World War II and by the al Qaeda on 9-11-01, Americans had and have a right to retaliate and defeat those who attacked them.
But...
As Robert Stinnett discussed in Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, as Thomas Fleming pointed out in The New Dealers' War, and John Flynn revealed in The Roosevelt Myth, FDR manipulated and lied to get us into World War II. His self-created crisis -- akin to a man who unleashes on the public a dog he made vicious -- justified an armed response to the attack...but mitigated any broader moral worth of a war that never should have occurred in the first place.
Likewise, we have the right to attack the al Qaeda, i.e., the actual terrorists involved (not the absurdly abstract "terrorism" that labels this war) but not every entity vaguely "linked" to them...especially while making allies of others who do harbor al Qaeda, e.g., Pakistan. Plus, stationing our troops in the Holy Land during the first Gulf War -- a senseless war with tragic "blowback" -- provided a sick rationale for these criminals to commit their heinous acts against innocent Americans. Indeed, in an irony of its own, the al Qaeda assault provided the administration an excuse for an attack it had long entertained before 9-11: to take out Saddam Hussein. (See, for example, "Bush at War," by James Bovard, http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0305d.asp)
The attack on Pearl Harbor (and a war with Iraq) is analogous to crimes committed in the Drug War. Yes, police have the right and obligation to arrest, for example, a drug dealer who murders another drug dealer or offs a customer who refuses to pay up. It would be wrong not to do so. It is a positive good to have this violent felon off the street and behind bars.
By starting the analysis with the murder itself (similar to focusing first on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or Saddam Hussein's violation of U.N. demands), an evaluation of this event would applaud what the authorities did.
However, in the case of the Drug War, for instance, such a scenario as described above would be unlikely ever to happen in the first place if there were no War on Drugs. The State unconstitutionally and immorally makes recreational drugs illegal; makes it impossible for dealers or customers to settle disputes in a peaceful, legal manner; then uses the crime that the State helped to create to justify the Drug War and its expansion. Worse yet, the real victims whose neighborhoods are destroyed are often hoodwinked into becoming the most ardent supporters of the very Drug War that is the root cause of their own destruction!
After all, we don't see beer distributors shooting each other on the street to maintain their market share.
While I can be glad murderers are locked up, I condemn the State for making such crimes more likely in the first place. Likewise, I am glad the U.S. defended itself when attacked at Pearl Harbor (and after 9-11), but I thoroughly condemn the U.S. government for what it did in WW I and in the interim between WW I and WW II that helped create the problem that then victimized innocent Americans and necessitated a war that then led to the Cold War on up to today's mess in the Mideast and with North Korea. Unless and until a nation actually attacks us or is an imminent, clear and present danger, our country has no business going to war against it.
Additionally, talk about providing "self-determination" for the Iraqi people as justification for war is as bogus as it was in Rand's example of Vietnam. Then there is Rand's use of that ominous phrase "the globe is our homeland" that eerily echoes the grand, Wilsonian scenarios of our leaders to bring "democracy" to the benighted peoples of the world: first Iraq, then Iran, then North Korea, then....?
The president believes that he is accountable or answerable to no one in regard to this war. As he once said, people are supposed to justify themselves to him, not the reverse. If the president did not believe he had carte blanche before 9-11 to act regardless of facts, evidence, or the Constitution, he certainly does now. No declaration of war required, no concern for massive citizen opposition to his adventures, no worries that he might be doing something wrong. All power resides in him.
Presidents lie to get us into wars. (See, for example, Robert Higgs, "To Make War, Presidents Lie," http://www.independent.org/tii/news/021001Higgs.html and "Secrecy, Freedom and Empire," http://www.independent.org/tii/forums/021023ipfTrans.html#03). Lincoln and McKinley and Wilson and FDR and Johnson and Nixon all lied to the American public to lure us into unjustified wars. Bush I lied about Iraqi "atrocities." Clinton lied about atrocities in Kosovo. Even when atrocities did occur, they were often exaggerated for propaganda purposes.
But, of course, we can believe the State this time...
No one I know of on either side of this debate holds any delusions regarding the worth of Saddam Hussein or his government and its policies. As a dictator and a murderer, he deserves to die. That does not automatically imply that the American public should literally or figuratively bleed to accomplish that goal. The war-ophiles of today continue that sad legacy of smearing advocates of a proper foreign policy of strict self-defense as "isolationists" and mischaracterizing them as "unpatriotic" and "un-American."
Yes, a free nation has the right -- but not the obligation -- to overthrow a dictatorship, but not everything that one has the "right" to do is the "right" thing to do. In the three or four decades since Rand wrote these words, our government has established egregious violations of our rights and freedom that would have made King George III blush. Rand spoke of America as a "potential dictatorship." That potential swells with each passing year.
The PATRIOT Act, anyone?
How can the U.S. establish a free country when "recognition of individual rights" in our own nation is molecularly thin? With Bush's embrace of "preemptive wars" (a close parallel to the "preventive law" that buries freedom here), we move by giant steps away from "potentiality" to "actuality."
Yet anyone who insists that Iraq does not yet represent a clear and present danger to Americans or that the U.S. should concentrate first on fixing freedom here is branded an "isolationist" as were those sixty years ago who objected to grandiose notions of American world domination.
Those who swallow the received-wisdom handed down by the self-serving politicians and their hangers-on ignore the reality of what war entails. While the State may grow "healthier" with each successive conflict and war it promulgates, the society and the citizens who comprise it -- and who pay for those wars in multiple ways -- suffer in an downward spiral relieved only by brief pauses and retreats of growing State control.
How can a statist nation such as ours hope to escape either the "institutionalized violence" against its own citizens or overt violence against its fellow statist nations unless and until we reject in all its forms and variants the "brute force" that is used to dictate to us and the citizens of other countries how we shall or shall not behave? Those "who die on the battlefields...or perish among the ruins" are not primarily responsible for their untimely deaths: the statist politicians and their supporters are.
Statism is killing us as a people, as a culture. Yet the wars that feed statism swell in popularity and frequency.
Laissez Faire! Leave us alone!
While the statist intellectuals beat the drum for war, the talk of "sacrifice" mounts...and, as Rand said, where sacrifices are being given, we can be sure that there will be those ready and eager to collect them. Every day in the news, we hear our leaders extol the virtues of sacrifice and use that same immoral concept to prop up their weak arguments for an undeclared war against a two-bit dictator. If they have no compunctions against demanding sacrifices of Americans, you can be confident they have even fewer scruples when it comes to seeking sacrifices from our "enemies."
You can be assured, as well, that those chomping at the bit to launch bombers and tanks and soldiers into the desert will not be the ones making any "sacrifices." It is not their money being exploded to destroy another nation. It is not their blood seeping into the thirsty sands. It is not their freedom that is being curtailed in the name of a false security.
None of that, of course, will still their tongues as they prattle on about the "public good" or the "good of society" of the "good of the nation." Who will determine what this collectivist "good" is? The statists themselves as they conduct a war against other statists they seek to conquer and annihilate.
How often must we suffer a "cure" that is worse than the "disease" afflicting us? Again and again, the State promises nirvana and delivers hell. Then they use that resultant inferno to promise a new version of heaven even while driving us deeper into the nether regions of Hades.
Under the "law of unintended consequences" see "statism."
Yes, we defeated the Japanese in WW II who attacked us...after FDR backed them into a corner. The costs of that "victory" far outweighed any "benefits" we obtained. WW I led to WW II led to the "Cold War" led to the Korean War led to Vietnam... In order to properly judge the worth of any action, one should consider not just the obvious facts, but all the consequences. We should look...
If there was one observation that perhaps best explains the odd attitudes and belligerence of some advocates for war, this statement by Hazlitt might well be the one.
Unfortunately, this process of seeking the widest context is precisely what most people and virtually all of our statist leaders are either incapable of or are unwilling to do. They revel in the short-term, the obvious, the selective focus, the benefits, donning voluntary blinders and willfuly ignoring and evading the long-term, the subtle, the larger situation, the costs and implications of what they are doing. To "deal with the problem as a whole," i.e., to integrate all the available information would destroy their tunnel-vision and their hopes for conquest and domination.
While our government wages war on its own citizens and their rights, our leaders condescendingly tell us that we "have no choice" but to fight a foreign war, as well. After all, what's sauce for the goose...
They would have us forget that vastly larger numbers of people -- approaching 160 million -- were murdered by their own governments last century than were killed by any foreign invaders.
I am incredulous and disheartened when defenders of freedom such as I are branded "anti-American," "leftist," and "irrational" for attacking statists and collectivists and for upholding individual rights, non-interventionism, and the truth. I do not see conquest as "noble" or good for the American soul. I do not believe in sacrifice. I do not believe in "(any) alleged 'good'" that the statists use to justify their war against a weak nation that is no real danger to American citizens or their rights. I reject any collectivism. I reject the "right" of anyone to rule me in any fashion whatsoever.
I believe in self-defense. I believe in liberty. I believe in morality.
If this be treason...
Our leaders yammer on and on about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraqi hands while conveniently ignoring how many millions of people in the past century were killed or left homeless by "conventional" weapons. Unavoidable civilian deaths -- "defenseless victims" -- resulting from elimination of enemy soldiers and installations are bad enough but at least are defensible. The deliberate targeting of civilians -- "defenseless victims" -- however, such as occurred at Dresden or Hiroshima and Nagasaki is abhorrent, especially given the less destructive alternatives rejected by those who ordered the bombings...and the self-fulfilling conditions those leaders created in order to reach their desired outcomes.
Our country is torn by class-warfare as our leaders pit one group against another in their maneuvering for power. The "will of the majority" -- the gang -- is sacrosanct. Appeals to enumerated powers or individual rights are viewed as quaint and obsolete. Our government routinely "violates the rights of its own citizens."
With a sagging economy approaching depression levels -- again, a situation created by the statists ruling our nation -- our president is eager to divert our attention from such "mundane" issues and to push relentlessly for war. The statists may prolong their rule by appealing to "patriotism" and "unity," but even those hoary hot-button words can take them only so far. I shudder at what they will do when even another war will not save them from their own destructive choices...
If we as a people devoted even a tiny fraction of the energy we expend attempting to rule the world and each other to a rediscovery of liberty and individual rights and peaceful, voluntary interactions, we would establish a culture as close to perfect as it is possible for fallible humans to achieve.
If we were to declare a "War on Statism," a "War on Collectivism," a "War on Altruism," I would be the first to volunteer.
Now that would be a "war" worth fighting.
Amen.
"The institution that enables our leaders to indulge in such recklessly irresponsible ventures is the military draft...
"Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man's fundamental right -- the right to life -- and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. Once that principle is accepted, the rest is only a matter of time.
"It the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state's discretion for a cause he may neither approve of nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send him into unspeakable martyrdom -- then, in principle, all rights are negated in that state, and its government is not man's protector any longer. What else is there left to protect?" WoC
"Politically, the draft is clearly unconstitutional. No amount of rationalization...can alter the fact that it represents 'involuntary servitude.'" WoC
While the draft certainly increases the ease of military adventurism, recent history makes it clear that the State in its infinite deviousness can wrap its tendrils around the world even in the absence of an active draft. Still, conscription combined with income taxation are two of the worst culprits in providing the State the ability and the means to project its policies into areas that are none of its concerns.
And let us not forget: calls for renewal and expansion of the draft -- both for military and civilian purposes -- are not uncommon....and that draft registration is still very much with us.
