War and Foreign Policy

Randy Barnett lectures us that libertarians can and should be all f

They have merchants of death in their districts that get the cash. They benefit from the huge spike in "homeland security" funds, and so have every incentive to keep the level of war hysteria high and growing. They are part of the state apparatus, and war is the health of the state. They too have much to lose from ending the war and much to gain from keeping some form of the war going.

John Quigley's book has a valuable main thesis and, I suggest, an even more valuable claim that underlies this thesis. The purpose of his book, Quigley tells us, is to explore "U.S. military actions abroad over the past half-century.

Adding more government intervention in virtually every aspect of our lives because politicians who oppose war call everything else a war, cannot stand up to careful examination.

Lebanese Muslims saw aggression, not liberty, and fought back with the only effective weapons that they had at the time. The point is not that Americans deserved to be attacked, but that they would not have been attacked but for being placed in the middle of a distant sectarian conflict. No wonder US policymakers prefer not to talk about the causes of terrorism.

The US government is the enemy of the American people and their values. It is not peaceful, it is not friendly, it is not motivated by the Christian faith but rather power and imperial lust.

Society is too complicated, too far reaching, too much a reflection of the free volition of individual actors, for government to be able to accomplish its ends.

American citizens can now be arrested by the federal government, held indefinitely without trial, questioned under standards we would not allow for our own soldiers if captured by other nations or subordinates of those nations, and never have a hearing to find out the evidence being presented against them. This is shameful and stunning, and is all derived from a legislative branch that is unwilling to do what the Constitution allows it to do: declare war.

Even so, for those who believe that the free market would "obviously" fail in these arenas, I urge you to give the matter some more reading and thought. You might be surprised at how dubious your position is after a few hours of research.

I find Iraq news painful to read so I was glad for this summary of the current sit