Anti-war statism

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Marko replied on Thu, Mar 24 2011 6:44 AM

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I was just reading this article. The article basically says that we have no right to fight Gaddafi because people can't just challenge the state like that.  And we are legitimizing it.  And it goes on to say that imagine if someone challenged Obama *gasp* without legal permission to protest (with permits) or 'legitimate' reasons to protest him.  Imagine if we challenged the constitution!  Imagine if we said that he had to go (even if he didn't leave after 4 or 8 years)!  Can we imagine how stupid we'd be to challenge the state!   We should never allow it here.  So why should we ever allow it anywhere?  If anything, we should bomb protestors.

You are misrepresenting the article. The author said nothing about the right of the populace challenge a regime. (If anything judging from her article she detests the regime she is subjected to and would welcome such a thing.) The author merely drew a parallel to illustrate the double standard at play and to remind the reader of the issue of national sovereignity. Naturally a foreign country bombing the US in support of protesters would be deemed to be an agressor. National sovereignity is of course a myth, but just as in the case of the state's rights myth those opposed to such concepts tend to be far more despicable and power-hungry than those who wish to uphold them.

It is a good, short article and I encourage people to read it.
 

Which is not a bombing like the bombing in Iraq and the foot soldiers in Iraq.

You are a bombing specialist now? What kind of bombing is it?
 

This seems to be another example of bad faith towards the Universal Human Rights they think should be enforced through the UN and other bodies. They want the fantasy of states providing these rights. But not the bloodflow that comes through the reality of enforcing it. Which would mean pretty quick restructuring of the whole world's political ideology.

Who are you talking about? You are raving about a figment of your imagination. There is no way you can pinn something like this on the author when she doesn't even mention the UN or anything you are talking about.

And of course you have the dichotomy of stoicism and 'minding one's own business' vs. the greed of action over there.  I'm not certain what dog we have in that fight that would prove that our greed is being served. 

I for one don't see anything immoral about bombing planes and tanks and military people.  If it is already from what is already stolen. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Why didn't you say so in the first place. You are feeling the lure of the siren call of Liberal Interventionism. That is nice, just don't expect to find much support for it on here.

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John Ess replied on Thu, Mar 24 2011 9:25 AM

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I just mean that it isn't immoral to bomb weapons  and aggressors like military.  This unto itself is not immoral.  When foreign militaries blow up US tanks with their tax dollars, I don't say it is immoral because it is from tax dollars.  The taxation is immoral.  But the mere bombing of these things is not moral or immoral.  Put aside the taxation issue, because I don't think many who are complaining about this new war are against taxation.  So, given that, it is not immoral to them.  It would not be immoral for a private person to blow up a tank or defend themselves or others against aggression.  The only thing here is that states, like those in Libya, have made such private defense impossible due to their monopoly.  We are never going to see this resolved through anarcho-capitalism or some purism.  People will simply die and the state will triumph.  And the purist will remain happy on both sides, but with the cost of human lives.

This is why I mean it is different than Iraq.  Iraq was above and beyond simply annhililating their insane government.  It is an occupation, it involves ground troops, it involves total destruction of the country, almost indiscriminant killing.  It has gone on for far too long, leading to corruption and who knows what future.  Dropping bombs on the libyan military and their supplies is in effect different than that.

I don't mean the article supports the UN.  But I mean in general.  Liberals right now are usually talking up world government and lofty human rights laws.  But at the same time they are against things like this which are how they will be enforced.  All of a sudden they care about the constitution and the correct way to go to war.  Which is absurd.  As if the correct way will justify wars if the wars are evil.  It is bad faith.  They want something, but at the same time don't.

The people protesting Gaddafi don't have anything to do with breaking national sovereignty.  It is their nation.  Not someone else's.  Gaddafi is trying to use national sovereignty, again a fiction, to maintain himself in power.  As if to say "Mind your own business.  This is my nation and my slaves."

The analogy to Obama is a bad one.  Obama hasn't been in power for 40 years.  Obama is not the same as Gaddafi except 'better fashion sense'.  It is easy to assume if Obama was in power longer than 8 years, people would cry for his ouster.  And if he sent the US military, the UN would indeed be the one group who could possibly save us.  The US military would not restore order.  They would try to kill us until we absolutely submit.  And there is no 'smuggling' -- this is a nonsense term used by nationalists and statists.  Appealing to the public's blind obedience to our military is not a principled stand.  It is just an appeal to fear.  "you wouldn't dare stand up against our military.  So neither should they be able to!"  As if the cowardice of the population at large, if they be such, is a standard of morality.

I don't see how it is liberal interventionism any more than calling the police when there is a murder or kidnapping.  It may be that the police will not be at all the same in an anarchist society.  But there is no other possibility in the current situation.  It is no way similar to say 'liberal intervention' of controlling prices there, or their money supply, or controlling health care, or even telling them what government to have.  I am not tempted to anything.

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Merlin replied on Thu, Mar 24 2011 10:02 AM

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Hm, I agree that, taking the taxation part away, you are left with no problem in killing military personal and bombing their facilities and weapons: that’s what they signed up for.

But there are real-world complications

-          Stolen money is used

-          The enemy might have been drafted, hence making their killing more troublesome (like killing a human shield). But even if you fight against a professional force, see below.

-          There is yet no such thing as a fully voluntary military force, where you can resign at any time (at a financial loss, of course). Thus every military action implies slavery.

-          There will be civilian casualties, that’s a given.

-          Private property will be directly aggressed against, that’s a given.

-          People might end up hating you afterwards.

-          You are imposing an order that’s not organic and spontaneous to that society. It’s my firm belief that, with the exception of the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, no other society would develop liberal democracy (not a bad thing, to be sure) if left alone. Imposing an inorganic order (democracy) will add problems atop of those we’re trying to solve.

Now, depending on how these factors interplay, some wars may be more just than others. A truly just war would be nearly impossible in a statist world, but some conflicts stand out. The Franco-British Invasion of Suez, the Falklands, the Kosovo and Bosnia interventions, the Israeli bombing of select targets in Gaza and elsewhere and, yes, the current Libyan intervention stand out as scoring well (which is not enough) on many of those issues.   

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Marko replied on Thu, Mar 24 2011 11:08 AM

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I just mean that it isn't immoral to bomb weapons  and aggressors like military.  This unto itself is not immoral.  When foreign militaries blow up US tanks with their tax dollars, I don't say it is immoral because it is from tax dollars.

Utter nonsense. It is highly immoral for Americans pilots to blow up a Libyan conscript sitting atop a tank in Tripoli doing nothing to no one. It is highly immoral to blow up a Libyan soldier manning an air-defence position trying to protect his people from American bombers. It is highly immoral to poison Libyan landscape with DU munnitions and unexploded bomblets.

Aside from this you are ignoring the fact this bombing has producted civilian deaths and that it is highly hypocritical of Western regimes to go after Gaddafi when they are guilty of far worse.

You are also utterly oblivious to the consequences of intervention for the civil war there and how it changes its dynamics by affecting the warring sides' incentives and of the motivation of the Western powers in embarking on this moralistic crusade.

I don't mean the article supports the UN.  But I mean in general.  Liberals right now are usually talking up world government and lofty human rights laws.  But at the same time they are against things like this which are how they will be enforced.  All of a sudden they care about the constitution and the correct way to go to war.  Which is absurd.  As if the correct way will justify wars if the wars are evil.  It is bad faith.  They want something, but at the same time don't.

What are you talking about? Tha author of the article is not a Liberal. In fact the Liberals are firmly in your camp and always the biggest cheerleaders for this sort of outrage. But hey, happy windmill fighting.

The people protesting Gaddafi don't have anything to do with breaking national sovereignty.  It is their nation.  Not someone else's.  Gaddafi is trying to use national sovereignty, again a fiction, to maintain himself in power.  As if to say "Mind your own business.  This is my nation and my slaves."

Nice try at obscufacting the issue. We are not talking about the right to protest and rebel, don't fight strawmen here. We are talking about American planes dropping bombs on Libya. Obviously that goes against the principle of national soverignity since Libya has not attacked the US.

I don't see how it is liberal interventionism any more than calling the police when there is a murder or kidnapping. It may be that the police will not be at all the same in an anarchist society. But there is no other possibility in the current situation. It is no way similar to say 'liberal intervention' of controlling prices there, or their money supply, or controlling health care, or even telling them what government to have.  I am not tempted to anything.

You don't see many things and you are quite ignorant of the issue. You don't even seem to know what Liberal Interventionism is terms of world affairs, it certainly has nothing to do with price controlls.

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John Ess replied on Thu, Mar 24 2011 1:28 PM

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"a Libyan conscript sitting atop a tank in Tripoli doing nothing to no one. It is highly immoral to blow up a Libyan soldier manning an air-defence position trying to protect his people from American bombers."

Wow, you are very naive.

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Marko replied on Thu, Mar 24 2011 5:07 PM

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Wow, you are very naive.

Said a cheerleader for an imperial war.

highlighting text after having ran out of a semblance of an argumen

You are disingenious, do you believe the intervening powers are limiting their bombing to the Libyan military on the front lines only? Really? You think they will refrain from killing conscripts not immediately involved in attacking the rebels? The same people who gave us the Highway of Death, massacring defeated, fleeing conscipts by the tens of thousands for the spectacle of it? Who is the naive one here? So what is really your argument? You believe that belonging to the Libyan military should be punishable by death and so it is OK to blow away barrackhouses in Tripoli miles away from any rebels? Do you comprehend that aggression is an action, not a category of people? (You should since it is the very USAF pilots you are rooting for that have more innocents on their consciousness than any member of the Libyan army.)