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A
Libertarian War in Afghanistan?
DIGG THIS
I recently
wrote an essay
claiming the Randy
Barnett was wrong in claiming that libertarians could support
our side of the war in Iraq. Most of the response I had to that
op ed piece was positive, although there was a small amount of very
vicious reaction from several pro-war self-styled "libertarians."
However, I also received several very polite letters agreeing with
me on Iraq, while sharply disagreeing with me on Afghanistan.
Here is
what I had to say about that country in this article:
"Any
support of U.S. military action ‘against the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan’ thus cannot be justified on libertarian grounds....
Mr. Barnett’s ire at ‘Afghanistan, which had aided and harbored
the al Qaeda network that organized the 9/11 attack’ is surely
misdirected."
Let me now
quote from two of my critics on this matter, both of whom shall
remain anonymous.
My first
critic says this:
"I
tend to agree with you on most everything you write and that's
pretty much true of this latest. However, there is an area
that I do disagree with – the attack on the Taliban and al Qaeda
following 9/11. While I do agree that the events of 9/11
may well be attributed to our foreign policy I cannot stand for
the "specific" targeting of non-military/non-political.
And let's remember, al Qaeda declared "war" on the US.
"It
would appear by your reasoning on the Afghan issue is that if
faction A pokes and jabs at faction B and B finally declares war
on A that A must stand aside and not defend itself. We can
rightfully hold A responsible for the creation of a state of war
but that does not require A to lie down and die. Our call
for the turning over of those that planned and orchestrated the
events of 9/11 I feel to be well within libertarian principles."
My second critic
wrote as follows:
"I read
with interest your response to Randy and find it very compelling.
I follow you on the whole, but have some questions respecting
the paragraph on Afghanistan.
"You
say, because of our interventions into the region of the near
east, ‘Any support of U.S. military action "against the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan" thus cannot be justified on libertarian
grounds.’ At what point is a government justified in responding
despite blow back?
"As
I recall the events after 9/11, the perpetrators were identified
(or identified themselves), and the ‘host country,’ in addition
to aiding them, refused to turn them over. Wouldn't this qualify
as an act of war? I accept that our involvement in Iraq and
Saudi Arabia by the first Bush galvanized the Al
Qaeda network, but does this mean that Americans should not expect
their government to respond to 9/11? If I am shot by a Cherokee
while walking down a street in Oklahoma, am I not entitled to
restitution and protection through the law… I think your
conclusion regarding Afghanistan might be a bit hasty. If the
Afghan government of the time chose to harbor and assist
a near eastern aggressor within their midst, regardless of what
motivated Bin Laden, aren't the Taliban then complicit in
the aggression? I'd be interested to know more about your thinking
on this however."
My short answer
to these critics is that there is no country that is now justified
in invading any other country because of the World Trade Center
attack of 9/11, but if there were, it would be the Afghans who would
be more justified in committing further terrorist acts in the
US than we would be in killing further innocents in that nation
in this terroristic manner.
In my view
complete justice would require that the US (well, those individuals
responsible) pay reparations for initiating these murderous hostilities.
We killed far more innocent people abroad than the 3,000 guiltless
Americans who perished in New York City on 9/11, a day that will
long live in infamy.
The problem
we face in making sense of these horrible events is bias. We are
all naturally biased in favor of "our" side: Americans
in favor of their fellow citizens, and foreigners on their own side.
In an attempt to obviate this, let us no longer speak of groups
such as the United States, Al-Qaeda, Afghanis, Iranians, Iraqis,
Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, etc. Instead, let us attempt
to look at this matter through less jaundiced eyes, in a more dispassionate
manner.
Accordingly,
let us speak not in terms of the above categories, but instead,
for simplicity’s sake, of A and B. Let us posit that A begins our
little drama by murdering 5 of B’s children. Now, the just thing
would be for B to capture A, and to subject him to the full penalties
provided by law for such an outrage. However, B does something very
different, and totally unjustified. He murders one of A’s children.
Why so few? Let us stipulate that A is much more powerful than B,
and that the murder of only one of A’s innocent children was the
"best" he could do.
Assume,
that even though A is more powerful than B, both are so well entrenched
that justice will not easily be meted out to either of these murderous
scoundrels. So now what? What insights does libertarian theory afford
us in this context? Several conclusions may be drawn, I think.
One, neither
party should be encouraged to invade the territory of the other.
To do so, given that both are strong enough not to be brought to
the bar of justice, would only mean the senseless killing of still
others, neighbors of A or B, whichever is the victim of subsequent
hostilities. However, if we take a God’s eye point of view, and
entertain the contrary to fact conditional that one but only one
of these nefarious characters can indeed be punished for the murder
of the others’ child(ren), then it is clear that A must be brought
to justice. There are two reasons for this. The minor one: A killed
far more innocent children than did B. Major reason: A was
the first to engage in murder; in the street vernacular,
he "started up." B is no saint. He, too, spilled innocent
blood. But he retaliated, he did not begin. There
is surely a lower rung in hell reserved for those who begin such
dastardly chain reactions than those who "merely" follow
suit. I thus respectfully disagree with Murray Rothbard,
who says:
"If
Smith and a group of his henchmen aggress against Jones and Jones
and his bodyguards pursue the Smith gang to their lair, we may
cheer Jones on in his endeavor; and we, and others in society
interested in repelling aggression, may contribute financially
or personally to Jones's cause. But Jones has no right,
any more than does Smith, to aggress against anyone else in the
course of his "just war": to steal others' property in order to
finance his pursuit, to conscript others into his posse by use
of violence, or to kill others in the course of his struggle to
capture the Smith forces. If Jones should do any of these things,
he becomes a criminal as fully as Smith, and he too becomes
subject to whatever sanctions are meted out against criminality."
As I see
matters, although both his "Smith" and my "A,"
on the one hand, and also his Jones, and my "B" on the
other, are all vicious depraved despoilers of children in my view,
the former pair are more guilty than the latter pair.
Rothbard’s
failure, as I see it, is not sufficiently distinguishing between
he who first engages in an entirely unwarranted action, and
he who only then follows suit. Both are evil. But there is
still a difference between them. Jones is not as fully a
criminal as is Smith. They are both, of course, guilty of first-degree
murder. But, surely, a careful analysis can see at least a "dime’s
worth" of difference between them.
Who is
A and who is B? As would be obvious to any disinterested, impartial,
judicial observer, we, the U.S. must take on the role of A, and
various Muslim nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
can only fairly and properly be cast as the B of our little morality
play. Long before 9/11 took place, our own country was busy
killing innocents abroad in those parts of the world. Thus,
if the U.S. is justified in going into Afghanistan to hunt for Osama
bin Laden, and other perpetrators and aiders and abetters of the
crimes of 9/11 in New York City, then they are even more
righteous in doing precisely the same thing to us.
If anyone
doubts that America started up and the "terrorists"
(note scare quote marks here) were guilty of the slightly lesser
charge of retaliation, consider the following:
"In
1996 then-UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was asked by 60
Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, in reference to years
of U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq, ‘We have heard that
half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children
than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?’
"To
which Ambassador Albright responded, ‘I think that is a very hard
choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.’"
Note, very
carefully, the date of this statement. It was 1996, fully
five years before the (unjustified) retaliation of the World
Trade Center in 2001.
Should the
U.S. defend against any further, retaliatory terrorist (note the
absence of scare quotes here) incursions? Of course. But then, by
that token, the Afghanis are entitled to defend their territory
against our future and indeed future and even present invasions
of them.
Let me now
bring in a third critic, who wrote me while I was putting together
the material that appears above (I showed him part of it in our
correspondence). He says (material in square brackets [] and ellipses
… are mine):
"Let
me first tell you that I am a longtime fan of [yours]. I'm not
a hostile critic. Indeed, I frequently tell my conservative
friends to read [your publications].
"However,
I couldn't disagree with you more about your thoughts [on
this issue]. First, there can be no moral
or theoretical justifications for terrorism (defined roughly
as the intentional targeting of innocent civilians for political
ends) consistent with libertarian principles. Therefore,
your statement ‘Afghans … would be more justified in committing
further terrorist acts in the US than we would be in killing further
innocents in that nation’ is problematic. One cannot be
more justified in doing something wrong than someone else you
assume is doing wrong could be[,] except in some kind of strange
scholastic sense. In other words, simply because you have
suffered a greater harm than another doesn't give you a stronger
claim to do something wrong itself.
"Moreover,
the U.S. has not been intentionally targeting innocent civilians
in Afghanistan and thus your use of the word "further" is also
problematic. Unless that is that you think that no military
activity whatsoever that unintentionally harms innocents is acceptable
– which is problematic on other grounds. I think the doctrine
of double effect handles the problems of killing innocents
during war. Second, the Afghanistan part of the
current war seems entirely proper in libertarian thought... But
let me remind you also that… pacifism is not consistent with
a natural rights perspective since it assumes the right to exclude
(and use force to do so if necessary) – and your position
borders on pacifism."
I would
like to reply to each of these three paragraphs in turn. As to the
first, I have received a lot of hate mail in response to my essay
on Randy Barnett. It is thus a pleasure to receive criticism from
someone who can do so in a civil manner. I regard this first paragraph
as supererogatory in this regard. It is nice, but unnecessary, since
the remainder of the missive is completely courteous. This author
is clearly a gentleman.
As to the
second paragraph, with all respect, I disagree. Consider "intentional
targeting of innocent civilians for political ends." But both
sides, both A and B, were guilty of this outrage. Albright’s
blatant statement admitted no less than this. Further, no country
that drops bombs from 30,000 feet (does anyone remember "shock
and awe?") anywhere near civilian areas can excuse their action
on the basis that it was not targeting innocents. Both sides
acted in a manner befitting terrorists. Moreover, this writer seems
to be taking the "moral equivalence" position of Murray
Rothbard. I insist that my "strange scholastic sense"
is a reasonable one. Not only has B, the Muslim world suffered "greater
harm" in terms of sheer numbers of innocent people slaughtered,
but we, A, as I can never tire of saying, began the conflagration.
I cannot for the life of me see why this obvious fact should be
ignored in any analysis purporting to be libertarian.
Now consider
the third paragraph:
I agree
that pacifism is not at all entailed by libertarianism. I certainly
favor smiting the guilty. That alone deflects the charge
of pacifism.
Nor do I oppose
all wars, even though I full well recognize that there (virtually)
never was a war in which innocents were not killed. Indeed, I am
on record in my response to Randy Barnett as saying "… the
point must be made that it is one thing if, entirely out of the
blue, an enemy attacks the U.S. Then, yes, the libertarian would
have no objection to a strong defense, compatible with just war
theory, and, indeed, retaliation. Our revolutionary war is one case
in point." I now add to this: in my view, the South
was on the just
side of the War Between the States.
The South merely wanted to secede from the North; the latter
was having none of this, and compelled the former to stay
in the union, in violation of the libertarian principle of free
association.
As for killing
innocents in the more general case, I have an article forthcoming
in the premier libertarian scholarly periodical, The
Journal of Libertarian Studies, entitled "The human
body shield," where I offer justifications, on libertarian
grounds, for killing innocent people used in this manner.
Let me end
on a humorous note, which handily illustrates a point I want to
make. Here’s an old joke: "Do you know the difference between
a living room and a bathroom? No? Well, then don’t come to my house."
In like manner
I ask, "Do you know the difference between offense and defense?
Between starting a murderous rampage, and retaliating against one,
by committing another? Well, then, don’t get involved too heavily
in political economy.
 If,
entirely unprovoked, the Mexican or Canadian armies started to sweep
into our country, I certainly would favor the U.S. military rolling
them back, warding them off, killing them, and pursuing them to
the death back to the evil lairs from which they sprang, so that
they could never again launch such an attack. Our armed forces should
not, in my opinion, have to wait for such an eventuality. We could
act in this very aggressive manner as soon as there was a real threat,
and a reasonable chance of this entirely unwarranted invasion taking
place. But, we should not preemptively bomb them, on the ground
that, who knows, these nations might one day want to invade us.
 This
reminds me of another joke. A husband and his wife are out on a
rowboat. The man is fishing, and the woman is reading a book. He
then swims to shore, leaving her alone. Absorbed in her reading,
she doesn’t notice that the boat has drifted into a non-fishing
zone. The sheriff comes along, and is about to arrest her for fishing
in a non-fishing zone (the fishing rods, nets, etc., are still in
the boat). She protests: "But I am not fishing; as you can
clearly see, I am reading a book." He responds, "But you
have all the equipment necessary to fish, so I have to arrest you."
Her rejoinder: "If you arrest me for fishing, I’ll accuse you
of rape." Incredulously he says, "But I have done no such
thing." Her response: "But you have all the equipment."
Precisely. The Canadians and Mexicans have "all the equipment"
necessary to war against us. But they have done no such thing. Ditto
for Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.
July
30, 2007
Dr.
Block [send him mail] is a
professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, and a senior
fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Defending
the Undefendable.
Copyright
© 2007 LewRockwell.com
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