TAS and Bidinotto's "Anatomy of Cooperation"

The difference is not at all subtle.  The first statement from TAS says explicitly: “the military campaign should make every reasonable effort to avoid civilian casualties…”  The second quote (from Brook & Epstein) says they should only be avoided if this can be done “without military cost.”

Rather than waste my breath repeating myself, here are some additional quotes from “Just War Theory vs. American Self-Defense” by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein:

Just War Theory regards all noncombatants as “innocents” with “rights” to be respected. We must, according to Elshtain, “make every effort to avoid killing noncombatants . . . women, children, the aged and infirm, all unarmed persons going about daily lives, and prisoners of war. . . .”
 
The requirements of “proportionality” and “discrimination” are deadly to the nation that takes them seriously. A nation fully committed to defending itself must value the lives of its citizens more than the lives of its enemy’s citizens; it must be morally confident in its goodness, in its right to exist, and of the rightness of killing whomever in enemy nations it must to preserve the lives and liberty of its citizens. Self-defense may well require killing more of the enemy’s citizens than the enemy has killed of ours. It is commonly necessary in war to break the spirit of a foreign people whose nation has initiated aggression in which they are complicit. This often requires killing civilians, and in some cases even targeting them, as America did in World War II. These actions were regarded as just by leaders who viewed civilians of enemy nations as part of the national war machine and rarely truly innocent—and who viewed any deaths of actual innocents, including children, as wholly the moral responsibility of the nation that initiated war.

Just War Theory forbids such tactics. …Many Just War theorists hold—as by their standard they are obliged to hold—that the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was immoral. America, they claim, should have valued Japanese civilians over the hundreds of thousands of GIs who would have died invading Japan.

In the “War on Terrorism,” the U.S. is following the pronouncements of Just War Theory in regard to civilians with incredible dedication, and has received much acclaim among Just War theorists for doing so. In Elshtain’s evaluation of the war in Afghanistan, she writes:

The United States must do everything to minimize civilian deaths—and it is doing so. . . . The United States must investigate every incident in which civilians are killed—and it is doing so. The United States must make some sort of recompense for unintended civilian casualties, and it may be making plans to do so—an unusual, even unheard of, act in wartime.

 
What she does not mention—but what must never be forgotten—is the price that has been paid for such supposedly “just” conduct. That price is the hundreds of heroic American men and women who have been killed so that Afghans and Iraqis may live and their mosques may stand (to say nothing of whatever unknown price the rest of us will pay when the undefeated enemy next attacks America).

Doing whatever is necessary in war means doing whatever is necessary. Once the facts are rationally evaluated, if it is found that using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran’s nuclear facilities or flattening Fallujah to end the Iraqi insurgency will save American lives, then these actions are morally mandatory, and to refrain from taking them is morally evil.

I noted several articles on Robert’s blog in which he appears to give explicit support to Bush’s altruistic approach to conducting this war. The one positive thing I had not seen before was Robert’s criticism of Bush’s foolish and tragic efforts at ‘democracy-building’ in that Middle Eastern garbage dump. The fact that both Robert and Edward seem to regard Bush’s policy as consistent with America’s moral right to use the full force of her military might in this global conflict only underscores my position.

After catching up on some much-needed sleep—I regret that I do not have the time to devote to this that others seem to have—I want to offer a summation of my thoughts on the issues addressed in this thread.  As I see it, an Objectivist organization can reasonably welcome diverse viewpoints, and should do so, but it should not imply a sanction of all those various viewpoints as if they were equally valid.  Welcoming dissident viewpoints amounts to tolerance of opposing viewpoints and shows confidence in one’s ability to defend one’s own position.  Sanctioning such views as having equal merit in the eyes of the organization, however, constitutes a form of subjectivism.  TAS has done this by its silence in areas where voicing a consistent Objectivist viewpoint would potentially alienate many of its members. 

For an Objectivist organization to refrain from advocating positions that are clearly and demonstrably consistent with Objectivist principles is directly contradictory to Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology.  It implies epistemological agnosticism, which is antithetical to a philosophy of objective realism. If avoiding any suggestion of orthodoxy is the goal, an Objectivist organization such as TAS could publish commentaries contrary to key positions it has adopted, and explicitly label them as such.

A policy of generalized neutrality—when extended to fundamentals and well-established derivative principles—amounts to an endorsement of skepticism. Within a philosophy where the logic and proof of key viewpoints is demonstrable, the areas designated as being open to serious doubt are necessarily delimited.  When neutrality is extended to critical areas of ethics and politics—including the life and death consequences of governmental policies (as opposed to more technical issues of philosophy), it becomes a violation of the Objectivist ethics—an ethics which, by its very nature, demands application to every important aspect of daily living.  (Technical issues would include such issues as the nature of the first choice in morality, the metaphysical status of so-called ‘empty space,’ et. al.)

I am not prepared to fully articulate where the lines on open debate should be drawn, but I can say they would clearly encompass the absolutism of reality, the unqualified validity of human knowledge, the ethical principle of rational self-interest and the extension of these principles into the sphere of politics: limited government, individual rights and national self-defense.  It is this last issue that largely inspired my analysis of this entire issue. I was (and continue to be) utterly bewildered by TAS’ reticence with respect to voicing America’s moral right to take whatever actions are needed to defeat an enemy dead-set on our destruction.  America’s future is imperiled by a deadly altruistic cultural assault on this nation’s right to take whatever military actions are needed to assure its survival. 

For an Objectivist organization to refrain from mounting a public campaign to clarify the moral principles underlying a rational approach to foreign policy—in much the same manner that ARI has done—suggests a major failing with respect to philosophical fundamentals.

As noted above, TAS has not only failed to come to the defense of America’s right of self-defense; it has adopted positions directly contrary to a rational moral stance on national defense.  In its public pronouncements and commentaries, it has given tacit endorsement to the Bush administration’s compassionate war strategy—including the explicit principles of Just War theory--in spite of its transparently altruistic base. 

For TAS to consistently represent the Objectivist philosophy, their position on this matter—and the underlying organizational premises of neutrality and implicit subjectivism—must be clearly and unqualifiedly reversed.   If TAS does not begin speaking out with a clear voice in the name of America’s absolute right of self-defense, they are helping to undermine the one philosophical influence—Objectivism—that could potentially save America’s future. 

Dennis