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Monday
October 1, 2007

Altruism Corrupts Foreign Policy by Joseph Rowlands

There's plenty of criticism of the US foreign policy. It doesn't seem to have any coherent principles guiding it. We need a foreign policy based on rational principles. One characteristic of a rational foreign policy would be the need to have clear goals and the need to stick with them. The choices would be guided ... (Read more...)
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Post 0

Monday, October 1, 2007 - 8:57am

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Great essay, Joe! Beyond a doubt, the false and evil moral ideal of altruism -- or the "Judeo-Christian ethic" or religio-socialist ethic -- heavily corrupts, distorts, and wildly misdirects today's Western foreign policy. As this essay notes, about almost any given enemy, at any given time:

We aren't there to crush a threat to our nation. We're there to make the world safe for democracy. We aren't there to secure the trading rights of our citizens. We're there to bring freedom to the oppressed.

Altruism and self-sacrifice as a moral ideal has a horrific impact on Western foreign policy! And yet...

Many times America and the other Western states openly act in their self-interest or "national self-interest." And they state this publicly and clearly. So altruism and the relio-socialist ethic aren't wholly dominant, and thus aren't wholly the problem.

In many respects, current US foreign policy is pretty clear and pretty coherent: We want to spread freedom in order to diminish enemies and increase trading partners. This leads to peace and prosperity for us.

Unfortunately our great ideal and goal here isn't individual liberty but democracy. Or at best it's a kind of limited mob rule or semi-democracy with respect for minority rights. But America is very confused and semi-incoherent about just what "democracy" and "minority rights" actually mean and involve!

There's no clear, clean, pure definition of freedom available. Or at least none US politicians care to use in public. If there were a good definition out there, or one the politicos would publicly use, it would show just how anti-libertarian and anti-freedom America really is in its domestic policy. And this would cause problems with implementing foreign policy.

Just one of many bad, sad, mad results of altruistic Western foreign policy is there's virtually no longer any desire out there to go forth and kill the enemy and take his land.

Post 1

Monday, October 1, 2007 - 9:51am

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I never use 'altruism' any more - instead it is 'otherism'.... there is a reason for this, namely that it sets up the two alternatives - selfism or otherism - and it allows one to point out that the essence of otherism is slavery, the essence of existing for the sake of others above oneself, for only a slave puts others above oneself, whether unwillingly or worse... it also allows one to point out that the so-called view of selfishness, the selfism as claimed by otherists, is actually the flip side of otherism, that the one using the other, that the one gaining at the expense of the other - is an otherist, not a selfist, for that one is the receiving end of the otherism doctrine, the one gaining from the selfless, the one who benefits from the self-sacrificing of those holding to the doctrine of otherism - and who, of course, would be the most fervent in pushing an appealing to otherism [to others, of course]....

That way, the true selfist is the one who acts to mutually benefit - by way of trading, value voluntarily exchanged for other value, to mutual gain..... the true selfist is one who see the world as a sum plus, not - as otherist do - as a zero sum......

Post 2

Monday, October 1, 2007 - 2:15pm

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There is a big problem with the notion--beloved of neoconservatives--that the USA is the world's "sole remaining superpower." This idea reassures those who believe that war is simply another policy option to be cooly implemented for the purpose of achieving non-defensive "national goals", what post modern conservatives call "U.S. vital interests". The idea reassures these people, because they feel personally safe, far removed from the blood letting, death and suffering that war rains down upon helpless people. A high ranking Bush war policy maker was quoted about a year or so back as stating (paraphrasing) "As the world's superpower, we make our own reality."

This is deluded thinking.

I'm no expert, but the idea of "super power", in the sense the word meant when the United States and the USSR relied on MAD to keep the other at bay, appears to be largely obsolete today. True, measured by the standard of the ability to wage conventional military conflict, the US remains at the top of the totem pole of nation-states. But as we've all seen, the war waged by angry vengeful terrorists is unconventional. Guerrila forces have the ability to inflict huge damage on great military powers, at very low costs to the insurgents. For example, they have acquired the means, through shoulder mounted rocketry, of shooting down 500 million dollar US military aircraft, or tanks, personell carriers, helicopters, and so forth. Just as they defeated the USSR in Afghanistan, they'll defeat the United States in Iraq.

Obviously, this makes warfare as state-craft a highly questionable undertaking, even if one believed that non-defensive warfare could somehow bring benefits to the invader.

However, there is another more dangerous sense in which the idea of the USA as "superpower" is misleading. The costs of waging germ warfare have dropped a lot, according to what I've read about this. Terrorists could drop airborne anthrax, or other deadly toxins, on a large American city, wiping out one half of its population in a few days. The cost to set up an anthrax laboratory, or so I have read, is about $100,000 in new equipment; or about $25,000 with used equipment. This murderous undertaking could be accomplished by a phd in bio-chemistry, assisted by a couple of grad-school level assistants. Using a small aircraft to scatter the germs, the terrorists could then return the airplane, and depart the country on a commerical jet, safe from the plague they'd unleased.

If this scenario is realistic, then US war making is hardly an exercise in national defense, because it has placed the citizens of our country in great peril. If this worked on one city, it would be used again. There is no defense, of which I am aware, that our government could erect against such a calamity.

This is one reason why Objectivists ought to cease with this non-sense about the benefits of waging new wars, unless in pursuit of strictly, narrowly defined defense.

Post 3

Monday, October 1, 2007 - 4:31pm

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Mark,

The tactics in Iraq can be debated by those more well versed in military strategy than I. However, the very nature of asymmetric warfare means that the US must go on offense against the terrorists. More than 30 years of US appeasement have not worked.What form that takes is a legitimate matter of debate, but we must go on offense.

Interestingly, our foreign services are bound by much tighter rules of engagement than nations such as France who are seen as geopolitical appeasers. The French simply kill and bury terrorists without fanfare. I guess the terrorists love being on CNN.

Jim

Post 4

Monday, October 1, 2007 - 8:13pm

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The Unending Promise Campaign

France does have the advantage of a seven-year election cycle. I think our unending campaign, with the need to one-up the other party and to be seen as "doing good" all the time is a structural problem that, if dealt with, might alleviate some of the loud spouting of altruist platitudes. After all, altruism is about intentions, and it is much easier to fit intentions into soundbites than it is to fit principles and results.

Let's call the Congress into regular session only once every five years, let the States seat Senators however they like, and elect the President for one long term - say ten years. Would anyone have voted for GWB for a ten year term? With a decade for a legacy, we might actually elect presidents who achieve things like Moon Walks and the Panama Canal, and not a prescription drug care plan for seniors.

Ted Keer

Post 5

Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 5:20am

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Joe,

The 2 issues you bring up are whether we're acting well for our own happiness (rational self-interest) and how we're justifying our actions.

When I say "we" I mean our current Administration. You specifically highlight the idea that the American public might've been (and is being) lied to. The reason for this is simple. We both know that altruism -- or otherism, as the good Rev' has said -- is not practicable. We both know that there's a current prevalence of otherism in this country among our social fabric. So it seems that the only way to get something good done, in this country, is to commit it in the name of altruism. This is a dangerous position to take (as you confirmed). Remember Rand's famous dictum: "Every major horror ..."

I concede the point that altruism/otherism has become the trademark justification of the day -- thanks to our current Administration. Evidence of this abounds ...

=======================

President Bush's speech at the United Nations on Tuesday betrayed a
deep misunderstanding of the nature of rights and the proper role of
the U.S. government [Foreign, "U.N. Role Reversal for Bush, Sarkozy,"
September 26,2007].
 
According to Mr. Bush, everyone "has the right to a standard of living
adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family,
including food and clothing and housing and medical care." Also,
according to Mr. Bush, the American government has a duty to provide
for those needs, whether in America or anywhere else on the planet.
 
But Mr. Bush's vision of an American paternalistic state with duties
towards the world's needy is in direct opposition to the vision and
ideals of America's founders.

=======================

What you haven't done is to show that current "war efforts" are in our rational self-interest.

This is the core issue at hand (regardless of the current and evil rhetoric from our leader).

Ed

Post 6

Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 11:27am

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You know what is scarier? The impact that it has on the other end of the foreign policy practices. Entire populations in Africa continue to be under siege of dictators that gain funds through our "relief" we give them, claiming it's all for humanitarian effort (which doesn't wind up that way). I believe I read one Nigerian scholar stating without compromise that the West must leave the African nations alone. No relief aid, no food, no medicine, just let the African people learn to survive and shake off the tyrants. I happen to agree with him.

-- Brede

Post 7

Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 12:46pm

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The idea that our foreign policy is compromised by the false ideal of altruism is plausible, except that as framed in Joe's article neglects an important issue. Altruism, of course, works two ways: sacrificing oneself to others, while sacrificing others to oneself. If wars of the twentieth century fought by the United States can be shown to be aggressive (in the sense of adventuring for goals other than narrowly defined defense), and if such aggressive military adventuring can be shown to be ethically illegitimate, then people who were crushed by our military adventures have been wronged. They have been sacrificed to the ends of politicians.

Do such aggressive wars violate individual rights? Did our government sacrifice others to its goals (for the sake of "the greater good") in waging wars in the Middle East, or in Europe during the first and second World Wars? I think so. I think that whenever a government ventures into aggression, it acts contrary to the self-interest of its client-citizens by eroding the principle of individual liberty on which social well-being depends.

James Heaps-Nelson apparently believes that terrorists from the Middle East have no legitimate grievances against the US military; and that the defense of American citizens depends on the ability of our armed forces to crush them. (I'm partly inferring his position; if wrong, I'm sorry.) Many Objectivists and neo-conservatives seem to believe that the hatred of terrorists (and many other people who live in the Middle East) for the United States (or perhaps for its government) is utterly irrational. So more bombing, destruction, starvation, and other forms of killing is both permissible and recommended. How else can one deal with irrational hate-filled people who want violent vengence against the USA? How else can one deal with irrational violent people who would murder innocent Americans?

The best way to deal with them is to get out of the Middle East, and offer sancturary to Israelis who may at some future time be forced to flee Israel. Stop inciting them to violent retribution against innocent Americans. The longer we maintain our military presence, the more lives we crush through our military actions, the more they'll hate us. Even if one thinks that their hatred (as opposed to their terrorism) is irrational, the idea that our military can sucessfully defend Americans against suitcase nukes or germ warfare is illusory. I fear some such calamity eventually. Recent reports cited smuggling of people by coyotes across the Mexican border into the USA, for a price of $20,000 per head (as I recall.) The people paying these sums are, of course, not Mexicans or Peruvians seeking illegal status in the United States. They could get a green card, or buy citizenship in other countries that offer modern amentities. Most likely, these illegal migrants are Middle Easterners with bad intentions.

Here is a link to a recent article in which the US Army discusses its inability to prevent germ warfare assaults against American citizens http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/MayJun07/Hammes.pdf

Post 8

Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 9:13pm

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I want to go on record to say that I don't totally agree with Mark. From your typed words, Mark, you're an isolationist/insulationist. Isolated and insulated, sounds like a Utopia. Alternatively, I think that some folks have a moral obligation to fight terrorism -- with better, more extinguishing terrorism (fighting fire with fire). When I say obligation, I mean the very personal obligation of rational self-interest. Let me provide an analogy ...

Imagine you're on a desert island with one other person -- that big Scottish guy that Mike Myers played in "Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me" (1999). Now, the tub-o-lard comes after you telling you to get into his belly and, whenever he gets close to you -- you trot away easily (because he's so big and slow). The actual proper thing to do is to pre-meditate his murder (he won't go down easy). You're morally obligated to kill him. Now, the only moral obligation we have is to ourselves (i.e., to our own pursuit of happiness), but it can be objectively shown that killing someone can be what that requires (as I just showed).

There are some people on this planet who shouldn't be here -- and there are some others who ought to expedite that. All of this is aimed at happiness maximization, i.e., at human good (as crude and ugly as it looks; upon a first glance). The trouble is that whole governments have chosen themselves as the ones to be those necessary exterminators, and no one has demonstrated that government is officially licensed to self-appoint as such. No one, myself excluded, has rationally compared & contrasted our Big Gov't reaction to terrorism, against my own unique and radical solution.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/02, 9:16pm)

Post 9

Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 8:11am

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Ed, given your previous arguments on desert islands, shouldn't you at least try to form a government with the Mike Myers character before killing him? And if you do opt for killing him, is it murder, an act of war, or just your expression of choice in a state of nature?

(BTW, very funny, and sanctioned.)

Ted

Post 10

Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 12:56pm

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Hi Ed.

You think I am an isolationist, insulationist, and utopian. But I am none of the above; I just want our government to end its policy of conducting foreign wars, wars of aggression as defined in my earleir post.

An isolationist wants to avoid contact with the world outside his province, in this example the USA. But I propose freedom for US business people to make voluntary deals with people abroad, essentially free enterprise across international borders. Such international outreach brings mutual prosperity and friendship based on shared values.Where's the isolation?

Where's the insulation? I like Thai food as much as the next guy. I think French women and Swiss banks are great!

As for utopia, I'm all for it, provided its voluntary. But of course, a utopian is someone whose thinking is said to be utterly impractical. What's impractical about recognizing that people get hugely pissed off when a foreign military machine invades their country, and over a period of years kills about 1 million through the force of sanctions and arms? What's impractical about restricting the power of the state--in this case the US government--to murder innocent foreign people en masse, in the name of a "War on Terrorism"?

Look. If terrorists come here and hurt Americans, we should kill them or lock them up. If our government's intelligence service learns that a cell of terrorists is camped out in the mountains of Afghanistan, or in some section of Saddam City, then we ought to try to keep an eye on them, in case they decide to hurt Americans in the jurisdiction where our government enforces rights. If our intelligence can prove that terrorists who have hurt Americans have retreated to some sanctuary in the Middle East, then it should get them, while striving to keep civilian deaths minimal. Doing so might involve offering big rewards for their capture, dead or alive.

Your statement that "some people on this planet shouldn't be here" and "there are some others" who ought to do away with the bad guys ignores a big issue. That issue is: should the US government set out to rid the world of bad guys? At whose expense? The point I have tried to make clear in all my posts about this subject is that our government ought to do what it is properly paid to do, namely defend the rights of its citizen clients within its jurisdiction. Defending their rights is an entirely different matter than enforcing "cosmic justice".

No one has commented on the fact that Americans are vulnerable to germ and nuclear attacks by terrorists bent on revenge for prior American government depredations. Our Department of Homeland Security and our Department of "Defense" cannot protect anyone but big political and military leaders. No one has addressed the issue of how blasting "terrorists" to smithereens abroad will protect Americans at home.

Post 11

Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 1:58pm

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what about their attacks based on our sale of say Brittany Spears or Madonna, to the Islamic world? Or if people here decide to paint a picture of Mohammad the devil he is? How would that be affected by a military in any way?

Terrorists cannot successfully operate without a strong base of operations. These bases must be Nations. Once the Russians collapsed, the Red terrorists who were supported by them in Europe also fell apart. The same is true of Islamic Terrorists - without a base of oeprations, they won't be successful. Therefore, eliminating the threat requires the elimination of the regimes that support them, hence requiring a military in some cases.

The deaths of any innocents as a result of this is firmly the responsibility of the irresponsible governments who are in charge of these nations.

Post 12

Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 3:27pm

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Kyrel, thanks for the compliment.

Robert, I don't like "otherism" as much because it tends to focus more on whether you're helping those others, and not as much on whether you're sacrificing your own interests for them. I think the essential attribute of altruism is the desire to prove your moral worth by showing you have no interest, or that it's a sacrifice, to perform an action. The cost is what's important, not the benefit to the other person.

Ed, I didn't say the current Administration has lied to us. I said they feel that they need to justify even a war that is in our interests by making it more about helping other people. A lie would be far less disastrous than an actual shift in the motives.

Nor do I think altruism had become the justification of the day "thanks to our current Administration". It has been for a century at least! Come on, Ed! You're not acting rationally when you say stuff like that.

Mark, I don't even know where to start with your beliefs. I am curious about a few things. Do you think the Danish Cartoons were an act of imperialism? Do you think it created more terrorists? Do you think they are justified in wanting to kill people for them? Do you think that US magazines should be allowed to reprint them? Do you think any action should be taken against the Islamic leaders that called for the death of those who printed them?

I'm curious because you seem to act on the assumption that all evil in the world is really just a rational and justified response to US aggression, and retreat and appeasement are the only solutions. But while it may have seemed at some point that your position might make sense, it seems to ignore the Danish Cartoon incident entirely, nor can it account for it. The whole policy of surrender seems to revolve around the idea that terrorists are justified, and that if we leave them alone they'll leave us alone.

Unrelated to the responses, it occurred to me that the term "imperialism" is treated as the political version of "selfishness". The way people defend against charges of imperialism is by showing how their actions were all intended to help other people. It's all about whether your motivations are aimed at helping yourself, or helping other people.

Post 13

Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 12:49am

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Kurt, we can't do anything about muslims--radical or moderate--who hate us because of what they view as the perversity of American and Western culture. Some radical muslims might really get worked up about Madonna, snarling when they think of the Americans they'd love to behead for allowing such decadence to flourish. But I suspect the numbers of Muslim radicals willing to lay down their lives for such foolishness is rather limited, despite colorful rhetoric and breast beating to the contrary.

On the other hand, it isn't difficult to grasp that many Iraqis despise the US military machine after years of seeing their loved ones killed or maimed; watching innocents--kids and families--killed by American bombing and police actions; losing their homes, shops, bridges and infrastructure to US bombing; seeing roughly 1 million Iraqis die because of the strangulation of sanctions enforced through the United Nations with American military might; and suffering the oppression of American troops herding, halting, checking them, ordering them around, occupying their country. Really. What reaction would you reasonably expect under these circumstances?

I repeat. If some muslim radicals get upset about Pam Anderson on Baywatch, or Danish cartoons reprinted on some magazine cover, or anti-muslim jokes aired on American TV, or for any other reason, and sneak into the United States and hurt Americans, then we should get them.

Your argument about sanctuaries doesn't make good sense. First, there are roughly 2 billion muslim people in the world, a rather ample pool of terrorist fodder spread across perhaps one dozen or more countries. What do you propose: bomb them all back into the stone age? Nuke 'em? To date, we've exterminated well over 1 million of these people. At what number of deaths would you draw the line in your program to "get their sancturaries? Two million? Five million? Would such a policy be consistent with individual natural rights? What chain of reasoning establishes that such unrestrained state power is consistent with individual rights?

Second, you haven't addressed the problem of what to do about the likelihood, sooner or later, of terrible blowback. After all, the rationale for all this bombing and killing is the defense of American citizens. "We fight them over there, so we won't have to fight them here." Wow. Talk about New Age double talk. The truth is, our aggresive foreign policy is placing the lives of Americans in mortal danger. I refer not only to those who might die from germs or nuclear blast or fallout; I refer to Americans who would probably starve in the wake of a collapse of our highly centralized money and banking system during a major attack.

We need to get out of the Middle East and announce to the world that we're finished with foreign military adventuring--for oil, the domino theory, Democracy, Terrorism, or whatever cause sends blood coursing through the veins of war romantics and utopian schemers. We need to free our energy entrepreneurs to produce more energy for the sake of the profits they expect to make and plan to keep--a policy that would bankrupt kleptocratic oil states in short order. We need to concentrate on the battle for our own freedom--a desperate battle that we're losing and that may already be lost.

Post 14

Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 1:46am

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Joe, you apparently live in a fantasy world. The beliefs you fervently want to ascribe to me have zero basis in anything I have written.

My answer to every question you pose, except for the last, is "No".

If foreign religious or political thugs make threats against Salmon Rushdi or Danish publishers, that is insufficient grounds to wage war. As I recall, the threat to Rushdi was from British muslims. Should we commence bombing London? If terrorists try or succeed in carrying out those threats, the appropriate government should take action proportional to the scale of crime committed. If a threat is judged to be an imminent and real danger, policy could be implemented to target the specific thug making the threat. A government might demand a retraction from the thug, warning that a price would be put on his head if he does not retract the threat.

In a world in which the United States functioned as a neutral, allowing Americans freedom to trade with business people in the Middle East, at some point incentives among the political class would change. For throughout history, Islamic strongmen and politicians have engaged in imperialist rhetoric against infidel nations for the purpose of trying to unite antagonistic Islamic tribes and sects and movements. However, trading partners to Islamic strongholds have been exempted from this "blanket condemnation"--city states of Italy over 500 years ago, for example--because authoritarians can calculate their material self interest like anyone else. As we trade with Islamic countries, and as greater numbers of their population benefit from this trade, public opinion shifts away from the politics of murder and suicide to an appreciation of the considerable benefits of trading with the infidel. Religious leaders infatuated with the ethics of suffering begin to lose influence.

Are you a skeptic about the natural harmony of interests that prevail in free markets?

Retreat and appeasement are perjoratives, terms loaded with misconceptions about the nature of a just war. In the meaning intended, to appease to is resist going to war when the resistor thinks that war is ill advised. To retreat is to move away from an advancing enemy. What is the identity of the enemy that you see advancing? All the Islamic population on the planet?

If you're concerned about protecting Americans from violent harm, why do you choose not to address the issue of blowback, of the inability of our government to protect Americans from murderous vengegence using germ or nuclear weapons?

Post 15

Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 5:29am

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Well said, Mark. You have "put me in my place." Few are able to do that (at least not THAT easily). Part of the reason that you were able to "put me in my place" so easily has to do with me making a big (read: brazen) assumption about your intent. Here are those things to which I prefer to respond ...

If our intelligence can prove that terrorists who have hurt Americans have retreated to some sanctuary in the Middle East, then it should get them, while striving to keep civilian deaths minimal. Doing so might involve offering big rewards for their capture, dead or alive.

This is actually exactly what I'm saying -- with the sole exception that it ought to be private individuals who carry out the assassination of non-U.S. citizens in and among other countries throughout the world; not our own goverment (which would inadvertantly increase statism/collectivism).

Your statement that "some people on this planet shouldn't be here" and "there are some others" who ought to do away with the bad guys ignores a big issue. That issue is: should the US government set out to rid the world of bad guys? At whose expense? The point I have tried to make clear in all my posts about this subject is that our government ought to do what it is properly paid to do, namely defend the rights of its citizen clients within its jurisdiction. Defending their rights is an entirely different matter than enforcing "cosmic justice".

You're misreading me. The "cosmic justice" doled out, for the very fact of it being "cosmic," ought to be doled out by private individuals. In no case should government EVER try to implement "cosmic justice." In fact, that is the creed of altruist/collectivists, always and everywhere. It should be a private thing.

No one has commented on the fact that Americans are vulnerable to germ and nuclear attacks by terrorists bent on revenge for prior American government depredations. Our Department of Homeland Security and our Department of "Defense" cannot protect anyone but big political and military leaders. No one has addressed the issue of how blasting "terrorists" to smithereens abroad will protect Americans at home.

These are indirect consequences and, I admit, I've never addressed them. In my short story about the final solution to world terror, I only addressed the directly-negative consequences (of a government "War on Terror") to U.S. citizens.

You're trying to get folks to think about the indirect (read: potential) negative consequences of a WoT; I can't even get them to think about the direct (read: actualized) negative consequences. Good luck with that ...

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/04, 5:30am)

Post 16

Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 1:43pm

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Mark,

Fantasy world, aye? Like one where Muslims are happy go-lucky people who only turn to violence because of the evil United States? Uh huh. I'm sure from the insane asylum, the rest of the world does look a little crazy.

1.) Do you think the Danish Cartoons were an act of imperialism?
"No." Good.

2.) Do you think it created more terrorists?
"No." Hard to understand that answer, since Muslims around the world went on rampages, threatened murder, called for the death of Denmark and the editor who printed them, etc. But it fits with your warped view. In your world, terrorism is a just response to ill-treatment, and only US aggression can create new terrorists.

3.) Do you think they are justified in wanting to kill people for them?
"No." Well, that's good to hear. Turns out that some of their violence isn't justified in your eyes. Although I'll wait to hear the "but...".

4.) Do you think that US magazines should be allowed to reprint them?
"No." Huh? Really? Not very libertarian of you.

5.) Do you think any action should be taken against the Islamic leaders that called for the death of those who printed them?
"Not no." Great. But turns out it's not exactly a yes, either. It's only a yes if they reside in our own country.

So far your attempts at clarification don't look so good. You think the free-market will somehow cure all the problems, while expecting no retaliation for rights violation outside of our country. Not exactly a free market. But then, anarchists have never been too clear on that topic.

You allow for war, but only if the US government itself is threatened. If citizens are threatened, it's just not a clear and present danger. Rub an anarchists and you'll find a statist?

And while the Danish Cartoons should highlight the fact that "blowback" is not the only concern, you prefer to pretend otherwise.

"Retreat and appeasement are perjoratives[sic], terms loaded with misconceptions about the nature of a just war." When some Islamic leaders issue death threats and offer rewards for the death of innocent people, kidnap our citizens, confiscate the property of our citizens, and threaten the extinction of entire countries, appeasement means ignoring their threats, pretending that they're the victims, and offering better terms. Retreat means running back to our borders and crying that we're terrified of their threats and violence, and we'll do anything to avoid "creating more terrorists" or experiencing "blowback".

Your entire suggestion for foreign policy hinges on the idea that we dare not defend our citizens or allies from violence or the threat of violence, or we might piss off those people bent of using violence to get their way. It is a policy of complete surrender. You're so afraid of them, you advocate a policy of caving into their demands. For awhile, you might be able to fool yourself into believing that their demands are justified, or that when they are irrational (like the Danish Cartoons), that it's simply a byproduct of more rational concerns. But the fear of blowback and upsetting the irrational horde must inevitably lead further and further towards surrender.

The proper policy would be to defend the rights of our citizens, without fear of upsetting the irrational horde. No compromising with irrationality. No pretending that they are rational and peaceful deep down. No fear of "blowback" and "creating more terrorists". No trading the security and rights of our citizens for the irrational desires of religious fanatics.

Post 17

Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 5:24pm

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Ed, thanks for your friendly comment, most of which I agree with. The part I disagree with has to do with "putting you (or anyone else) in their place." I'll read your article about this shortly. I sympathize with private action to go after foreign thugs.

Joe, you and I rub each other the wrong way, to put it politely. I apologize for my comment about your "apparently living in a fantasy world". Your criticism of my ideas was initially restrained and conversational. I should have responded in exactly the same tone.

Islamic culture is unfriendly to indivdual liberty and the values we want to uphold on this site: reason, individual rights, capitalism. I don't expect you to review my posts about the subject, but I have stated this explicitly more than once before. I have written nothing to the effect that the only reason Islamic crazies murder and terrorize is because they're upset with American military intervention. But I have good reason to conclude that our military presence in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere justifiably antagonizes the violent fringes of Islamic society, recruits more young people to their ugly cause, and puts Americans in their gun sights. I emphasize the terrible injustice of American military adventuring in the Middle East because justice is important, and because our policy has the effect of endangering Americans.

I also emphasize the importance of getting out of the Middle East, because that is one big thing that US policy makers can do--tomorrow!--to improve the situation and begin to reduce risks to Americans. You associate this recommendation with cowardice and retreat, but I'm advocating a position similar to that of several of the American Founding Fathers. George Washington, in his farewell address, urged Americans to "avoid entangling alliances". John Adams famously wrote that "America does not roam the globe in search of Monsters to destroy."

In fact, my position is not one of retreat and appeasement. I want to advance against injustices commited by the state on my tax dollar. I want to stop appeasing murderous American politicians who routinely use innocent people as morally insigificant means--as so much gravel and concrete--in their nefarious utopian schemes.

The crimes you want to avenge, and not only against US citizens, are nearly all committed abroad. (We differ on the history of 911.) No terrorist has seized any American's property in the United States; no terrorist has recently threatened the life of an American living here. The '93 bombing of the Trade Center was a terrorist act, but hardly on a scale sufficient to justify the pugnacious crusade in which you propose to forcibly enlist Americans.

But crimes committed abroad ought to be outside US government jurisdiction, because if our government assigns itself a role as global cop, Americans will be coercively harnessed to the cause of unending "wars of liberation" that free no one, but that expand the reach of government into every aspect of our lives. If the US government makes a policy of using force against foreign bad guys who do not physically advance against the territorial United States, the same standard can reasonably be applied to the "right" of foreign states to "rescue" Americans from our Department of Justice, or EPA, or Department of Agriculture or Education.

I'm not an anarchist. I think government is good and necessary. But I think taxation and centralized coercion are ethically illegitimate.

I think anyone ought to be free to publish whatever they want to publish, concerning any subject under the sun. I

Post 18

Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 6:54pm

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Ted,

Ed, given your previous arguments on desert islands, shouldn't you at least try to form a government with the Mike Myers character before killing him?

No. With just 2 you can only form a pact. You need a minimum of 3 people for an ethical government (a government that not only aims for, but can achieve, human good).

And if you do opt for killing him, is it murder, an act of war, or just your expression of choice in a state of nature?

It's an extraordinary act of justice in an extraordinary situation. Killing in self-defense is definitely not to be conflated with murder. Calling it war disservices the concept of war, blurring the lines of distinction that normally divide it from other retributive acts of justice. And it's most definitely not just my expression of choice, which sounds more like whim-worship. Objective self-defense isn't mere whim-worship.

;-)

Ed

Post 19

Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 7:08pm

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Joe,

Ed, I didn't say the current Administration has lied to us. I said they feel that they need to justify even a war that is in our interests by making it more about helping other people.

???

Okay then, can we agree that there's been "intentional duplicity" or, if not that, then maybe "intentional non-transparency"? And do you see where I'm going with this?

Nor do I think altruism had become the justification of the day "thanks to our current Administration". It has been for a century at least!

I guess the main theme behind my statement had to do with foreign risks and investments (of lives and money) -- the largest of their kind in our last 20 years -- which are being justified by altruism (not the fact that just anything is being thusly justified). Saying "justification of the day" is perhaps too colloquial (too tongue-in-cheek) and distracts, if not detracts, from my main point about the moral inferiority of recent policy & procedural decisions.

Ed