| | Dennis,
When I said "decide from an armchair", I meant philosophers deciding they don't need to know the facts, they don't need to know actual military strategy, they don't need to know the costs, etc. They think because they have insights into the proper standard of evaluation, that that somehow leads them to having automatic knowledge of the full range of options available. Take Bob Kolker's suggestion that we just nuke them all. Is this something you'd sign up for? Certainly it's a "crush them all" position. Without any specific knowledge, armed with just a single philosophical principle, he feels justified in wiping out entire populations. If you disagree with his position, is it because he isn't applying the principle far enough, or because there are relevant facts he's overlooking?
This tendency of philosophers, to assume that some philosophical insights provides them all the information they need to make complex decisions affecting countless lives, is what I have a problem with. Are the people at ARI really informed enough to decide what specific wars we should fight, and how to fight them? Are they drawing on some unknown expertise? I don't think so. They have decided, philosophically, what the ideal result would be (our enemies are destroyed), and they simply demand that we go do it, regardless of costs or risks. It's just another example of stepping beyond their area of expertise.
I have a serious problem with people, even on this forum, who try to substitute philosophical principles for actual knowledge. Philosophy has two important functions here. One is to set the standards of evaluation. This can be moral or epistemological standards. And the other function is to provide principles of understanding, which gives us a deeper understanding based on far-reaching generalizations. In foreign policy, it gives us a standard of morality, our own lives. It also gives us principles, such as the retaliatory force principle, which helps us see some of the long range results of responding to initiations of force. But these principles aren't a substitute for knowledge. They're a form of knowledge, or possibly a tool for gaining it. None of this says you can skip the hard work. When anyone thinks that philosophy is a substitute for knowledge, or worse, that it's moral to ignore the facts in an attempt to be "principled", it's a perversion of philosophy.
The problem with the armchair is that you make all of your decisions based on scant information and generalizations. No, the foxhole isn't the appropriate alternative. But how about the library? Or anywhere that allows you to learn more about the facts, the background, the alternatives, etc.
Your calculus suggests that the possibility that post-Saddam Iraq might have put us in a better position regarding terrorism was worth the cost of over 3000 dead and 25,000 wounded soldiers, and that rejecting that hypothetical gamble amounts to rationalism. That's not what I said or meant. I have absolutely no problem with you rejecting the hypothetical gamble because you think the likelihood is small, or the risks are too high, or the cost-benefits doesn't work out even in the best case. All of those are empirical question, and I could continue to argue the facts with you about them, but at the end of the day you're free to reject the hypothetical.
Where I have a problem is when a philosopher decides, regardless of the empirical facts, that it's necessarily sacrificial. That there's no possibility that it can't be of interest. And when they try to use philosophical premises to rule it out, as if facts were irrelevant. The question isn't whether you decide it's sacrificial or not. It's by what means do you arrive at that. If you arrive at it through a careful study of the facts, interpreted with moral principles, then it's fine. We could still disagree, but not because you've subverted philosophy. But if you state that philosophically, it must be a sacrifice, and you back it up with absurdly simplistic views of the world, then we have a problem. Going back to Bob Kolker's nuke-them-all approach, there is no need for facts, no need for understanding consequences, no need for measuring benefits or costs. You have the principle that we should destroy our enemies, and nothing else matters.
Police activity and military strategy are not comparable. I agree. But military strategy isn't simpler or more mindless. Dropping a nuke on any apparent threat won't do the trick. Say we drop a nuke on N. Korea, as we deem them a threat. Are we willing to accept them dropping a nuke on S. Korea? Or China or Russia entering the war and nuking us back? Or any number of other possibilities. By all means, we should be minimizing our losses. But that's not some mindless task either. We need to minimize losses not just in the moment, but over time. Not going to war with Iran might save American lives in the short-term, but that's obviously not the proper measure.
The aggressor nation which has either taken military action or threatened to do so is clearly acting in defiance of any such objective restraints on force, so that the presumption of innocence is a nonissue. In a simple world, great. But how about country like Afghanistan today, or Pakistan, or Iraq, where the government might be friendly to us and trying to get rid of the terrorism problem in their borders (to various degrees), but are unable. Nuke them all? Well, how about Great Britain then? How about European countries that have a large muslim demographic? What about countries like Saudi Arabia that are intellectual supporters of terrorism?
Really, it would be great if this statement of yours was universally true and it was always quite clear that a response was appropriate. The recent interactions between US ships and Iranian ships is a place where the line is intentionally blurred. So is the nuclear weapon program Iran is pursuing. With a superpower in the world, our enemies recognize that direct and open conflicts are not possible. They intentionally avoid the clarity that your statement suggests. By keeping it ambiguous and muddled, they can argue that they aren't to blame, they aren't violating the treaties, they aren't a threat, etc.
What happens when we take a "crush them all" approach while they have kept it ambiguous and argued vehemently that they aren't a threat and are peaceful? Sure, we can go in and wipe them out, but then it's very easy for the rest of the world, already a little paranoid about a superpower on the block, to question the propriety of the attack. And they might just think that that ambiguity was caused by us as an excuse to wage war. Clinton bombing a Sudanese factory as a distraction comes to mind.
As for rules of engagement, etc., I'm not opposed to the idea that they're an unnecessary handicap. I've written elsewhere that I think altruism so dominates the landscape that even if there was a war that was in our interests, the government would try to justify it through altruism.
Rule of engagement could be desirable under some circumstances. I could imagine sending troops into France to help squash a religious rebellion. Yes, we could argue the merits of it, but the possible positive results could be undermined by indiscriminate use of force. I think rules of engagement is a tactical question, and shouldn't be the focus. The real problem is not that our troops in Iraq of rules of engagement, but that the war is now defended as an act of altruism. The rules of engagement are just a consequence.
But as far as our enemies are concerned, getting thoroughly crushed is all they should expect. Please tell me what value you could possibly want to weigh against life itself. Putting life as the standard of value doesn't make all of the options go away. At an individual level, you pursue your own life, but there are countless values to choose among that promote your life. You might think making some more money promotes your life, but you have to recognize that you can't give up your health in the process. All of these values are important.
So when I suggest there are other values in foreign policy, I'm not suggesting that they are opposed to life. They're simply other means of approaching it. Not offending allies isn't just a slightly desirable result, all else being equal. It's an important contributor to saving lives. Not needlessly instigating new wars is not some alternative standard to life. It is a value aimed at life itself. The value that you've suggested is "crush our enemies". I see that as a very important value that aims at preserving our lives. My point is that there are many of these values. If picking life as the value to pursue in foreign policy meant simple, automatic choices that unerringly moved us in the right direction, that'd be great. But it doesn't. And we recognize all of these values in order to more properly pursue life.
Crushing our enemies doesn't mean preserving American lives. It means minimizing our soldier's lost lives in this particular conflict, without any importance placed on future conflicts or consequences. What happens if another war is started because of our actions? We'll just crush them. It's one long line of minimizing our soldier's lost lives. But if each of those wars causes many civilian casualties, it would have been a poor choice.
I see this as similar to the thread you created about forums corrupting people's ability to think (based on an interview with Peikoff). By focusing on a couple principles, there seems to be a good case for it. But it's easy to overlook competing factors. Crushing them all minimizes military losses for that particular conflict (good), and probably has some deterrence effect on other would-be aggressors (good). Case made? But how about alienating allies, pushing enemies to join forces, fighting wars where our justification is less that 100% certain (coupled with violence as if it was 100% certain), possible trading sanctions against us, weakening our military and economy, and who knows what else. The first part seems like a good case until you start looking at the rest of the factors, some of which may in some cases outweigh the first.
My only point in this thread is to show that foreign policy is not some simplistic formula we can mindlessly apply and achieve wonderful results. If it were, it would be the only place in area in life that worked so well. I don't have anything in principle against a very strong, aggressive foreign policy. I don't mind crushing enemies either. I only mind that this incredibly simplistic view is promoted as the only possible form of rational self-interest in American foreign policy. I think we can argue for rational self-interest without pretending to have all the answers, or pretending the answers are obvious and simple. And I don't think that detracts from the argument. I think the ARI crowd does a serious disservice to an important and profound insight by trying to oversimplify reality to fit their moral ideals.
And that's a shame because I think it was brilliant of them to choose that idea to focus on. It really is a place where Objectivists have a unique position and something very powerful to contribute. It also is a way to promote rational self-interest in a very concrete and attractive way. A foreign policy based on rational self-interest is a great idea. But instead of focusing on where they offer the most value, the philosophy, I think they stepped over the line and now are judged as amateurs who promote mindless violence. Instead of keeping it focused on a method of analysis and a standard of moral judgement, they've put the focus on their own foreign policy proposals.
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