War and Foreign Policy

For both of our modern wings of politics, Iraq is a lesson in government, and not the one either of them wants to learn. It proves the assertion that the best way to keep the state down is to get everyone a weapon.

But as long as people can be led to believe that running the printing press and issuing fiduciary media can substitute for saving and capital accumulation as a way to achieve prosperity and create wealth — or, yes, prosecute a war — government will continue to get away with this particularly insidious and underhanded form of expropriation.

John Denson, in a book that covers the history of America’s large wars from 1860 through the Cold War, describes the twentieth century was th

Jeff McMahan's subtle article is an outstanding account of the morality of preventive war, and not incidentally a sharp condemnation of the Iraq war.

Expect every government program to fail to achieve its stated aims – domestic and foreign – and you will hit the mark every time.

Presented at the Mises Circle in Manhattan: The Fed and War Finance (16 September 2006, University Club, New York, NY).

Presented at the Mises Circle in Manhattan: The Fed and War Finance (16 September 2006, University Club, New York, NY).

A smarter and more resolute government would not fritter away scores of billions of dollars annually on producing, deploying, and maintaining an array of weapons systems fit only for fighting a USSR that no longer exists.

From the book For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, as narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

This is what makes the claim so absurd that the US invaded in order to bring about freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. The war taught the advantages of all the opposite values. The Iraqis have been fine students of the moral nihilism unleashed by the US government's war on Iraq.