Interventionism: Courageous and Cowardly

A few days ago, former President Bill Clinton gave a speech to a Canadian Jewish group in my home town of Toronto. Before the audience, he declared that “The Israelis know that if the Iraqi or the Iranian Army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch and fight and die.”

Not surprisingly, this evinced reactions ranging from appaluse, to disbelief, to embarrassment, to cynicism. The statist chorus was given by war veterans, such as Earl Murray, first vice commander of the American Legion Post in Harlem, who declared it a “slap in the face” and resurrected Clinton's draft dodger past as a criticism, “He had his chance to serve his country, and he avoided it.” One New York Democratic Congressman, Anthony Weiner, however, expressed his belief in Clinton's sincerity, and predicted that “when Israel has had its wars there have always been thousands of Americans that have made alliyah to go participate in that war. Maybe Bill Clinton will be one of them.” And an unnamed Republican Congressional aide added, “He just wants to be loved. Is that so wrong?”

As the Congressman pointed out there is a long history of foreigners voluntarily joining other countries’ armed forces. Just a few examples are, for instance, the nearly 3000 Americans who volunteered as Stalinist pawns in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, as well as hundreds of Canadians in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, to fight alongside rapists and murderers in defense of the brutal second Spanish Republic. Thousands of Canadians joined the Union invasion of the South, and Canadians also joined the US invasion of Vietnam. Germans and other Europeans fought in the American secession from Britain. And, of course, a certain young American volunteered to fight for the Taliban.

But not in all the hysteria over Clinton's newfound love affair with personal combat has there been mention that his statement, like his youthful draft dodging refusal to go off and murder innocent Vietnamese civilians, was, at least, a moral and principled position. Here he is, declaring to the world, his intention to voluntarily commit his own property to a cause he deems just and right, even though many conservatives ridiculed this as just another piece of Clinton pandering and deception. If he is sincere, and Clinton may not know himself, even know for sure, his statement raises the key issue of our time, namely the coercive nature of statism, militarism, and foreign intervention, and their denial of the citizen's self-determination over his own life.

If an individual decides he wants to leave his country and join the armed forces of another, and he is accepted, by what right can anyone restrain this person from acting? He has expressed his free will to dispose of his property – his own life – in the way he has decided he wants to. If he wants to fight and die for what might or might not be a foolish cause, and no arguments can change his mind once he has made it, it's his choice and his alone. This type of foreign “interventionism” can at least be morally defended, as it is based on the voluntary principle. And it is this same commitment to voluntary means that defines the libertarian society against the militaristic and totalitarian one.

In contrast to the libertarian credo, are those conservatives who in the wake of 9/11, instead of calling for renewed freedom, called for Americans to surrender their rights and liberties and advocated the totalitarian measures of conscription and economic stimulus through inflation and increased military spending? In the face of terrorism, many conservatives expressed sentiments that denied individual self-determination and conflated the people and the country with the state. 9/11 resurrected calls by the Buckleyites for their all-purpose solution to every social problem: conscription (or what they call “national service”).

The moral character of the up-and-coming generation is deemed by them to be less than those of the past? Conscription is the answer. Race relations are bad? Conscription is the answer. High unemployment? Conscription is the answer. Its not a little bit strange that those who advocate conscription always argue that it's necessary in order to train the younger generations to value freedom and be willing to die to protect it. But conscription, militarism, and the general statism that accompany them deny individual self-determination and individual freedom, while at the same time providing a method for more domestic looting of taxpayers and a means to intervene by force around the world. Instead of as their fellow citizens, the statists see Americans as the fodder and resources for their war machine, and interpreted 9/11 to serve a new burst of domestic looting and foreign meddling by the state.

In contrast to the courageous form of voluntary intervening where the individual volunteers to fight and die for a cause he believes in, there is the cowardly example of the advocacy of war by many commentators who will never see combat themselves, but who are content to see others sent off to die by force. The looming invasion of Iraq, which seems to barrel down the tracks without reason or debate, is yet another example of cowardice at work. Those who never would voluntarily fight their war themselves call for American men and women, with the looted property of the American taxpayer to fund the enterprise, to have no choice in the matter of war and peace. The war party, as Justin Raimondo calls them, believe they can bomb foreigners into freedom, while at the same time restricting American freedoms and property rights. In the spirit of this subordination of the individual to the state was all the talk of the “traitor” John Lindh, who did nothing more than emigrate to another land and wound up fighting in its government's army. But when Bill Clinton expressed a desire to do the exact same thing in Israel, his statement was met with rapturous applause, rather than accusations of treason.

Everyday since 9/11, the neoconservative mantra has been that everything has changed. But have things changed so much that the conservatives we libertarians thought of as our allies would take such statist positions that they make Bill Clinton look like a defender of individual liberties and common sense?

August 9, 2002