Defense of Liberty

annalex, I appreciated reading your article. I agree with what you have stated.

If you have the time, I'd appreciate your comments on a few questions from this new libertarian-minded freeper.

I readily admit my facile intellect when it comes to libertarian thought and even deep political thought- I am weary and overwhelmed by the complexities of this serious game called politics. I say all of this to save most you the trouble from blasting me as an ignoramous right off. I'll do it first.

My thinking began to change when the Bush administration first bombed Iraq. I, like most others on FR, thought the action justified and reacted with the typical nonchalant attitude--even a little glad he had the 'nerve'.
Then, libertarinas began to speak out against this with such clarity and logical thinking I began to realize how I had become like the 'sheep' in this nation.

Our nation has been bombing Iraq for quite some time. First of all, I don't understand how you can dismiss Iraq's involvement in this atrocity. You said, "..it didn't, in all likelihood, come from Iraq." Bombing a country for 11 years should get some consideration for this attack--shouldn't it? Or, if not directly, is it possible for these terroist to hate our nation so much so that they view any of our actions against any other nation as an attack against themselves? Or, rather their ideology?

This in no way justifies their actions. I'm looking for some kind of explaination. With terroism, however,their warped justifications--are purely evil.

You stated about looking at past foreign policy, "...now belongs in the past". But, annalex, don't we need to look and determine mistakes so that they do not repeat? For example, Connie Hair wrote a piece, along with someone else whose name escapes me, that exposes Clinton/Gore/DNC in bed with the airlines; security measures were hindered that, if implemented, may well have thwarted these terriorists. I think these things need to be examined and with a bright shining light pointed right at the negligence. Not that there is one particular negilgent act that we can point our finger.

Aside from my few questions,you have articulated what I could not in my own thoughts concerning the terriorists and war and our goals. Thanks so much! I look forward to reading more from you. If there is ever anything I can do to be of help, please know that I will be only happy to help. ~Boxsford

Simply because the system of justice at that time considered Spartacus a slave doesn't mean that the system of justice was actually behaving in an objectively just manner

I missed your post earlier, sorry.

So, you agree that there is objective justice, separate from the justice system implemented by the state. I believe that that objective justice reflects natural rights; I can readily assume your system of thought that natural rights follow objective justice. The reason I prefer "natural" or "unalienable rights" to "objective justice" is tradition. For example, the Declaration of Independence speaks of "rights" and not "justice"; in common parlance "justice" is associated with the subjective implementation of justice by the state.

Also, "justice" has a secondary connotation of punishment, which requires a state. For those two reasons, I find "natural rights" a more convenient and precise term.

It is true that liberty is secondary because liberty connotes not only the right or the just, but also the possible. Spartacus has rights; slavery is unjust; he deserves liberty; but he didn't have liberty.

I haven't seen "The Jack Bull". I'll look for it on tape, -- we rarely watch TV movies.

considering any information about me to be my "effects,"

Your freedom regarding any information you have is to communicate it or not to communicate it; if you choose to communicate, you can attach conditions, for example, on further dissemination of that information. That is your "effects". So, if the state (or a private entity) demanded that you disclosed to it your personal info and gave you no other option, that would be unrightful, generally speaking. See Pursuit of Liberty: Intellectual Property Rights In a Free Society.

Within that framework, it appears that if the state asks you to disclose personal information as a condition of citizenship, and if it gives you the precise perimeter in which it will use that information, then it is legitimate for the state to do so. Also, if the state collects information about you without you disclosing it (e.g. by filming you in a public place), then it is legitimate also, although the potential for abuse is enormous. This is a complex topic, worth a separate thread.

I was sorely dissappointed when G.W. Bush administration continued Clinton's policies on Iraq. I believe that at this point all connection to the Gulf War is gone and the policy was due for reassessment, -- both the no-fly zone regime and the sanctions. I would be more supportive of the nuclear facility inspections, and that was essentially dropped by Clinton.

I understand that for the Iraqis our policy will seem aggressive since they will dismiss their own aggression against Kuwait. I don't have my own intelligence agency and have to rely on what is reported, and it is reported that Iraq was not proximately involved in the 9/11 attack. The reason I was making that point is simply to underscore that if Iraq executed the attack, that would have been a nation-on-nation war with Iraq, -- a continuing cycle of violence. I believe that this war is newer and wider, although Iraq has its own reason to join the radical Islam in it.

We most definitely need to understand as a nation, that busying ourselves with other people conflicts, even when we come to a defence of an innocent party, is not a smart policy, unless there is a clear national interest for us, and, of course, the involvement is not an initiated by us aggression. However, there is no cause and effect between our policies, however misguided, and this war. We are a civilization of humanists and shopkeepers. Muslims flock to our civilizational (not cultural) ways in great numbers: send kids to college and open Dairy Queen restaurants. The civilization of religious ascetics and warriors feels threatened. It is threatened. It will be threatened even if we send every diplomat and every military attache home, as long as we have commerce with the Muslim world.

I will appreciate anyone suggesting topics and articles for this series. Thank you for the kind words.

"Why is a conventional, trench against trench warfare a war and not a crime? Because you don't stop the enemy by picking out its soldiers based on their individual behavior. You don't go "I don't know if that crouching fugure shot any of us yet. I remember the one under the bush though; he shot at us before and killed my buddy. I'll try to get the one under the bush because that's just to kill him". A war is when any soldier on the other side is a good target, regardless of his individual involvement. We can apprehend everyone connected to the attack on 9/11 and will get another attack with different perpetrators on the next day. Semantics of "country" aside, for the above reason, what we have is war."

No, a war is a war because it is conflict between two countries, partly defined by control of territory. Nothing else qualifies. This is an admittedly complex multinational operation against organised crime with strong connections to a number of governments. Making it a "war against terrorism" is just semantics to allow the politicians to fill people's need for a dramatic gesture in response to a (so far) unparalleled atrocity, like when they declare "war on drugs" or whatever the perceived public enemy du jour might be. To take it seriously is merely hysteria. In a war, your enemies are defined substantially by their nationality, in this operation our enemies are defined by their "membership" of an "organisation", however loosely those terms might have to be applied in this case. They don't carry membership cards. We can only acceptably act against them if they reveal their "membership" of the "organisation" by acting against us or supporting such action.

"The FR mainstream is indeed wrong in that regard. It is useful and necessary to look into our past policy when we determine our future policy. It is not terribly useful in deciding about this war though, but certainly not a forbidden topic. I agree that our foreign policy was awful: it pushed Israel toward concessions while coddling Arafat yet it was not able to meet the Palestinians rising expectations; in Bosnia/Kosovo it demonstrated complete disconnect from matters of national security coupled with disregard for civilian casualties; in Iraq it was ineffective, and overall left an impression of a superpower trying to look busy when it really had little to do. However, our policy was also reactive: we reacted to Somalian warlords, to Milosevic, to Osama bin Laden. We did not initiate aggression anywhere (Kosovo did come close). So, our policy created many a misconception, but it didn't earn us this."

There you go again, thinking in "deserve" terms again. NOTHING "earned" the west the WTC atrocity. Nothing can justify the atrocity. But it can be explained, both in terms of the bad motivations of the men who did it, and in terms of the causes of the conditions which shaped those men, and their supporters and backers, and gave them the opportunity to carry out such an act. To talk about whether the west "initiated aggression" or was reactive is to completely miss the point. People whose families have been killed or whose nations have been destroyed don't think about who "initiated aggression" or who was reactive (except in exceptional situations such as Nazi Germany where aggression was clear cut and there was an unconditional surrender where the allies could control the supply of information to the German people). Those people just hate, as you or I would.

If it is necessary to incur that hatred in self-defence, so be it. But for our governments to incur that hatred merely to impose their idea of justice on other people's quarrels, or to distract the voters from politicians' personal failings, or just to allow them to strut higher on the world stage, that is unforgiveable.

"That is of course a concern. The analogy is poor though: Northern Vietnam was backed by the USSR and did not bomb anyone on our soil. "

So what are you saying, that occupying a middle-eastern country and imposing an unwanted government upon it would be easier because nobody would covertly supply support to the rebels, or because the west would be prepared to be much more ruthless in revenge for an atrocity for which almost none of the inhabitants were responsible (but which they would almost all probably support after a few years of repression by a western-backed puppet regime)? The first is naive, the second immoral.

The salient difference between war and international law enforcement is that in the former the persumption is of guilt, and not of innocence. So, those fingered by the intelligence as Al Quaida members, offering armed resistance, or found in a guerilla camp are presumed enemy regardless of their proximate connection to the 9/11 attack. I don't know if we actually disagree on that or not. I do not advocate a war against peaceful civilians, -- so called total war; in fact, this campaign will be a failure unless the government we install enjoys popularity.

Maybe I didn't make it clear. It is true that those people just hate us. That is what I mean by civilizational conflict: while they may be able to point out concrete reasons of their hatred, the source of it is deeper. I believe that the source is that ours is a civilization of humanists and shopkeepers. Theirs is of ascetics and warriers. The Muslim world has seen wholesale desertion from the warriers to shopkeepers, -- to what we call "moderate muslims". They keep to their culture, but they like our civilization: mercantile, middle class, bourgeois. So the warriers hate that because it threatens them from within.

Occupying a middle-eastern country will be easier because we have the bourgeois class that will (tepidly) welcome us, there is no enemy sponsor on the outside, and since we've been attacked on our own soil, there won't be a pacifist resistance at home.

"Maybe I didn't make it clear. It is true that those people just hate us. That is what I mean by civilizational conflict: while they may be able to point out concrete reasons of their hatred, the source of it is deeper. I believe that the source is that ours is a civilization of humanists and shopkeepers. Theirs is of ascetics and warriers. The Muslim world has seen wholesale desertion from the warriers to shopkeepers, -- to what we call "moderate muslims". They keep to their culture, but they like our civilization: mercantile, middle class, bourgeois. So the warriers hate that because it threatens them from within."

Spare me the simplistic cultural generalisations. We have our share of ascetics and warriors (though fewer recently with our progress towards decadent materialism and hedonism), and "they" have their shopkeepers and humanists. The important thing is who the bulk of the people are willing to listen to and follow, and to what lengths. The latter is partly determined by circumstances, many of which our governments' foreign policies help to create.

Are you seriously claiming that having your family killed or your home destroyed, or the same happening on a large scale to people with whom you identify, is not sufficient to be a "source" of hatred, but a cultural tendency to asceticism and warrior-hood is? More likely the hatred caused the people to listen more to the ascetics and the warriors. In Iraq we bombed their desalination plants and sewage plants. Don't you think being forced to drink sewage and give it to your children to drink might make you more inclined to listen to our hardliners when they preached war against the perpetrators?

Doubtless there would be strife and cultural change in islamic countries whether or not we interfered directly and governmentally, and doubtless many would see the west as the source of many of their problems. But not to the extent of risking everything just to get in a strike at us.

"Occupying a middle-eastern country will be easier because we have the bourgeois class that will (tepidly) welcome us, there is no enemy sponsor on the outside, and since we've been attacked on our own soil, there won't be a pacifist resistance at home. "

Read some history. There was plenty of support (some more than tepid) for the South Vietnamese government at the beginning of that process. It faded as endemic repression and corruption became progressively more obvious in the course of resisting the communists/North Vietnamese. Just as corruption and repression will become endemic in any foreign government you set up in your middle-eastern puppet states. Likewise there was little pacifist resistance to Vietnam at first. As for an enemy sponsor, there are plenty of nations which would love to see the west tied down in another Vietnam, and massive displays of western power will do nothing to reduce the number, and that's without counting the populations of those islamic countries which are not actually occupied but get to watch their co-religionists being repressed.

Just step back and reflect a little. The spectacle of libertarians advocating imperialism is one of the less edifying follow-ups to the WTC atrocity, and I can see no better word to describe a policy of imposing an "acceptable" government on a foreign country..

We have our share of ascetics and warriors (though fewer recently with our progress towards decadent materialism and hedonism), and "they" have their shopkeepers and humanists.

The difference is that we don't have ascetics and warriors that would blow up buildings filled with decadent hedonistic people, and they do.

That is a source of hatred as well, but the hatred has a broader base that suggests to me a deeper root source. For example, our bombing of secular Iraq would not explain the hatred of the Taliban, which has no tangible reason to hate us, or the hatred of the Iranian ayatollahs a couple of decades ago. The common denominator is the inability of the Radical Islam to retain followership unless they invoke martyrdom.

I agree that any war for control of territory has pitfalls similar to those experienced in Vietnam; the overall layout of forces though is quite different.

As a libertarian I advocate the same humanism of the hedonistic shopkeepers all along; when the enemy is foreign, imperialism is a useful defensive tool.

"The difference is that we don't have ascetics and warriors that would blow up buildings filled with decadent hedonistic people, and they do."

Was McVeigh a secret muslim, then? Are the IRA really the Islamic Republican Army? We have plenty of ascetics and warriors who would happily blow up buildings full of people they see as the enemy for their particular cause. They just don't generally have the support of enough people to provide large numbers of fanatical recruits, or the circumstances which provide large pools of embittered, hate-filled people.

"That is a source of hatred as well, but the hatred has a broader base that suggests to me a deeper root source. For example, our bombing of secular Iraq would not explain the hatred of the Taliban, which has no tangible reason to hate us, or the hatred of the Iranian ayatollahs a couple of decades ago. The common denominator is the inability of the Radical Islam to retain followership unless they invoke martyrdom."

To you, Iraq is "secular Iraq", because you think of it only in terms of its regime. To inhabitants of middle eastern countries it is a nation of millions of fellow muslims who happen to be under the rule of a particularly nasty tyranny. This is particularly the case for the Taliban, who see Iraqis as fellow Sunnis with a history of fighting the Shiites of Iran, who support the Taliban's enemies in Afghanistan. One of the prime reasons for the "hatred of the Iranian ayatollahs a couple of decades ago" was the fact that they had to fight a bitter revolution against the Shah, who was seen as imposing western secular values on Iran with western backing, and using the most disgusting repression and torture to do so. If your brother had been tortured to death by the Shah's secret police, you would listen when someone preached hatred against the Shah's backers. It might be the case that some of the ayatollahs hated the west anyway, but they only achieved such strong support for their hatred of the west amongst the population of Iran because of western intervention in their affairs.

"I agree that any war for control of territory has pitfalls similar to those experienced in Vietnam; the overall layout of forces though is quite different.

But the underlying factors are the same. Maybe this time we could "buck the trend", but I'd hate to bet my life on it.

"As a libertarian I advocate the same humanism of the hedonistic shopkeepers all along; when the enemy is foreign, imperialism is a useful defensive tool. "

Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

When the enemy is foreign, war is a useful defensive tool. Imperialism is never defensive, by definition, and should never be acceptable for a libertarian of any sort. I ask you to consider most carefully before you continue to advocate it.

"This is the part I hate about embarking on these new ways of looking at politics. I can see the value in your words and the value in annalex's words.....I can never marry these ideas and it's causes me to just want to give up....in Pooh's own words....'oh bother!' "

Don't give up! There is no more important issue to which to apply your mind than this, today. Our entire futures depend upon it.

Annalex is a wise and intelligent poster, whose postings I always appreciate (though I'm quite prepared to argue with him when I disagree). But I truly believe his shock at the WTC atrocity has unhinged his reason on this particular point, as it has for the many libertarians in the west.

I hope, annalex, you will take the above in the spirit it is intended, and not take offence. And I give you due credit for discussing the matter rationally and calmly, without any of the hysterics which have disfigured discussion of these matters on FR since the 11th September.

Both McVeigh and the IRA are isolated cases with concrete grievance, that share the same Western civilization, and even the culture, with their adversaries, without being exponents of that culture. You don't think that Gerry Adams represents anything in particular culturally, do you?

It is true that the Middle East is rather diverse; yet the hatred of the West is present in the same measure everywhere, despite the diversity of the people and the diversity of our stance there. We supported and armed the revolutionary Taliban; we supported the reactionary Shah of Iran and the Saudi or Kuwaiti monarchs; we listened to every excuse ex-terrorist Arafat could pluck from his beard; we plow money into Egypt. I don't think that we are hated universally though. I am certain that the bourgeois middle-easterners, -- the shopkeepers, -- would be happy with us if we installed governments that paid attention to them. But just as the shopkeepers are everywhere, the radicals are everywhere and they are filled with hate because their world is getting smaller.

There is imperialism and imperialism. What I find useful and frequently noble is taking sides when we have a national interest in doing so and do so defensively. Thus taking sides with Israel or with the mujahadeen during the Soviet invasion was the right thing to do. Installing benign governments in the Middle East now would be the right thing to do also.

"Both McVeigh and the IRA are isolated cases with concrete grievance, that share the same Western civilization, and even the culture, with their adversaries, without being exponents of that culture. You don't think that Gerry Adams represents anything in particular culturally, do you?"

Men like him would "represent something culturally" in the west if our role over the last 100 years were reversed with that of the muslim world. It boots nothing to point out how many of the islamic world's travails were self-inflicted (especially the case for the Arabs, imho). Look how irrationally and hysterically the enlightened west has greeted the suggestion that our foreign policies in the west might have contributed to the conditions which gave rise to the WTC atrocity. A man whose people have been killed doesn't want to listen to such talk, whatever the truth of it. He wants to hear from men who can show him a way to get revenge, and there is never any shortage of men willing to do that.

"It is true that the Middle East is rather diverse; yet the hatred of the West is present in the same measure everywhere, despite the diversity of the people and the diversity of our stance there."

Yes the Middle East is diverse, and no, the hatred of the west is not present in the same measure everywhere. It varies hugely from country to country, though it is fair to say it will have a toehold everywhere in the Middle East.

"We supported and armed the revolutionary Taliban; we supported the reactionary Shah of Iran and the Saudi or Kuwaiti monarchs; we listened to every excuse ex-terrorist Arafat could pluck from his beard; we plow money into Egypt. "

And in every case we are seen as having done so for our own cynical interests. And indeed, you seem to have become remarkably convinced of the power of altruism as a motivator of government policy, all of a sudden, if you are claiming our motives were anything else. The perceived "diversity" of targets reflects a consistent lookout for our own interests, and merely ensures that most groups have experienced the benefits of our "humanitarian" touch.

"I don't think that we are hated universally though. I am certain that the bourgeois middle-easterners, -- the shopkeepers, -- would be happy with us if we installed governments that paid attention to them. But just as the shopkeepers are everywhere, the radicals are everywhere and they are filled with hate because their world is getting smaller."

Yes there will undoubtedly be people there who support us, especially at the beginning. Just as there were in Vietnam, and Somalia. And they will do us just as much good, over the long run.

"There is imperialism and imperialism. What I find useful and frequently noble is taking sides when we have a national interest in doing so and do so defensively. Thus taking sides with Israel or with the mujahadeen during the Soviet invasion was the right thing to do. Installing benign governments in the Middle East now would be the right thing to do also."

These issues were complicated during the Cold War by the fact that the west could be seen as acting defensively against a global enemy, and one which was aggressively atheist and the greater immediate threat to Islam. That excuse has not existed for over a decade, now.

Any attempt to install "benign" governments in the Middle East will end in a western city being destroyed by a suitcase nuke or a chemical or biological warfare attack. And no doubt people will be even less keen thereafter to hear the voices of those who "told them so".

Regarding cynical interests, let me repost these theses, from another thread:

It is generally rightful to come to forceful defence of an innocent party against aggression. Although the rescuer initiates violence nominally, it is rightful. That extends to governments when they have a proper popular mandate.
It is generally rightful to protect life or property regardless of jurisdiction. Thus a government acting in defense of its citizen's property on foreign soil is acting rightfully if it has the mandate to spend the resource.
A government with a proper mandate can be proactive in preempting aggression before there is a tangible threat, short of initiating aggression. For example, a government anticipating a future threat from country X may take steps that strengthen country Y because Y is an adversary of X.
A distinction should be made between dealing with a country that can be expected to act in accordance with international law (e.g. that subscribes to non-aggression principles similar to what I outlined), and a rogue country. Preemptive aggression against a rogue country can be justified under some circumstances.

So, this is the framework, and I think that by and large, the West has abided by it. How that is perceived is, again, a function of these wretched civilizational differences.

I don't see any alternative to a war aimed at installation of friendly governments that would foster benign forms of Islam. I think that Vietnam can be taken as a lesson, but not as a model, because of the clear difference in the circumstances.

I think you are right, to the extent that the principles you quote are what people in the west, by and large, truly believe our governments have acted upon, including many in those very governments.

But conflicts between nations, or even more between ethnic or cultural or political groups within nations, are complex matters of history and circumstance, often with long tails of grievance and counter-grievance, many invented and most exaggerated but with no easy way to tell which are which. Not only is it highly unlikely that a western nation will actually be able to meaningfully determine right and wrong in any such case (if, indeed, there is any clear-cut right side and wrong side), but worse than that western nations' foreign policies are inevitably strongly influenced by all sorts of commercial, industrial and political interest groups, none of which care a jot which side is right but which will go to great lengths to persuade the nation to throw in its lot with whichever side suits the interest group's agenda. Add to that the fact that western opinion will inevitably be strongly swayed by whichever group has the more effective propaganda machine.

What you end up with is demonstrated by history, that whether the west intervenes on the "right" side or the "wrong" side in a foreign conflict is essentially a lottery, but the west is always utterly convinced it has intervened on the "right" side.

Simplistic notions of rightness and wrongness have no place in international affairs except in the simplest case of national military aggression against another nation, and the only right policy is rigid non-interference (militarily speaking) except where justified by genuine self-defence. Anything else will invariably, in practice, lead to injustice, murder and hatred. Adherence to this policy will not, of course, create a perfect world. There will be just as much suffering (albeit possibly in different places), but at least my tax money won't be being spent on murdering foreigners in arbitrary "good causes" around the world. And the west can get on with leading by example rather than by imperial dictat.

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