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Ah, who cares if those stinkin' ragheads get any liberty anyway, right?

http://www.deanesmay.com/2008/06/07/libertarians-against-iraqi-liberty/

Well, if the point is that libertarians should be in favor of us staying in Iraq because we're bringing liberty to the Iraqis, I have to say it's a pretty weak argument.  To use an analogy, it's like saying that liberals should be in favor of us staying there because we're giving all sorts of money to poor people, and aren't liberals in favor of that?

lol.  so imperialism is libertarian because the new leaders we are throwing money at now have more liberty.  to spend it in paris during their frequent vacations.

Um, no, I don't think that was the point. Although now that you mention it, I think I remember hearing people talk that way back during Bill Clinton's Kosovo adventure. Some people--*cObamaugh*--might still talk that way about Darfur too.

The point, I believe, is that people such as Steve Chapman who believe a majority of Iraqis don't want us there are mistaken. Steve Chapman thinks a poll will reveal that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis want us to leave. His critics are all in favor of taking the poll because they believe it will prove the opposite. If they are right, politicians of any stripe can still make a case for leaving Iraq, but they won't be allowed to start from Chapman's premise that we aren't wanted there anyway and we're just honoring their right to decide things for themselves by leaving.

Obviously, that does hobble the case for leaving, since it makes every argument for withdrawal begin with "Yes, a majority of Iraqis don't want us to leave, but we should abandon Iraq anyway because [case that some national interest is more important made here]." On the other hand, this is the same argument as the ones for why we aren't going to Darfur or Zimbabwe: "Yes, they probably want us to come rescue them from their hellhole, but we're not going to because it's not in our nation's interest at this time."

That means if he still contends for withdrawal, Steve will have to find a more tactful way to say "To hell with the Iraqis!"

If it's all about a poll, I think it's little more than politicians looking to score a few debating points.  The issue, in my opinion, isn't about what people want, but what can realistically be achieved.  Can a stable, lasting government be created?  If so, how?  If the only answer they've got is for the US to occupy the place for eternity, then it doesn't make any difference if we leave now or ten years from now - it will go back to the way it was five minutes after we're gone.

Personally, I'd be more interested in a poll of the members of our armed services.  Do you guys want to keep going over there?  Do you feel like you're accomplishing anything?  They're the ones doing all the work and putting their lives on the line, being away from their families, etc.  If they're in favor of continuing, I say we support them.  If they say it's a lost cause, then let's quit wasting their time and their lives.  But that's just me.

That's also a very good point, Jack.  I have heard a lot of opinions from military guys, both in person and on the news, especially talk radio.  It seems to be overall in favor of remaining and finishing the job, but that being said, those thar are soured on Iraq are REALLY soured. They're a  minority, but a very vocal one.

I'm not particularly concerned with what iraqis want and not all that concerned with what our military wants either.  they're my tax dollars and I say end the thing

Lester, there are times you sound remarkably self-centered.  There is more to life than your personal economics!  If they weren't spending our tax dollars trying to make Iraq a better, more friendly place, they would just be spending them on another $2 billion dollar pork barrel project in Senator Robert Byrd's backyard!

You think they will ever give any of our money BACK???

(http://5g8.net/smileys/yeah-right.gif)

Yes, well, he's still entitled to his Ayn Randian view, isn't he? I suspect a lot of our elected officials think the same way. It's too bad they aren't honest enough to come right out and say that as he does. Of course, if they did, they wouldn't be our elected officials very long, but I don't see that as a bad thing.

The part about the tax dollars is only partly true, though. Our soldiers are all voters and taxpayers, so those are their dollars and opinions that have to be taken into account too. Good luck persuading them they should abandon Iraq just to help fatten your bank account...

there wouldn't be terrorism at the barbeque,  it wouldn't create a massive liablity in the form of future veterans benefits,  incite further terrorism against us and make us less safe all things this war is doing.


it's not up to them.  you seem to have no concept of what a republic is and what our constitution is about.

If I steal a thousand dollars from you and give it to a homeless person does that make what i did right?

there is nothing morally superior about wasting money and lives in Iraq to save face

Oh, I've perused the Constitution pretty frequently and have a pretty solid idea what constitutes a solid Republic.  Those soldiers all get to vote, too - and I imagine a great many of their votes will cancel out yours.

A republic is a representative form of government, where the elected representatives of the people make decisions of national policy, including the decision to go to war.  They did so.  Presently there is not enough political pressure on the representatives to cause them to change their stance.

Actually I sometimes think it's libertarians who don't understand the concept of a republic.  They want a very strict reading of the Constitution and of principles of limited government to override the people's will to govern.  Granted those are important considerations but their needs to be balance.  The libertarian vision is not the vision of the founders of the American republic.  For example, they intended for the populace to be able to legislate morality to the community, subject to restrictions on invading certain inalienable natural rights.  

indiana-  than why did Ron Paul got the most donations from active duty military.  after all,  he's the only candidate on either side for immedeiate withdrawl from Iraq.

He didn't:

http://lonestartimes.com/2008/02/05/do-the-troops-support-ron-paul/

The fallacy lies in the "active duty" part of that claim: Ron Paul's supporters conveniently ignored the difference between military employees and actual troops. They also ignored the difference between money and votes.



Also, Obama has been touting "immediate withdrawal" for a long time:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Sep/12/br/br6275409318.html

He's fudging the truth about that just as Ron Paul is, of course. As with the "active duty" fallacy, the slippery definition of words such as "immediate" is where they get their wiggle room.

even according to that badly out of date article he still got more donations than any other repubilcan. they don't list democrats.



and the guy who wrote the article used his own criteria, namely people who put one of the branches of the military as "employer"

and fine,  if i take out "active duty" and just say "military"  he again wins handily.  veterans votes and opinions count the same as anyone elses.


plus:



so again, "active duty" is a bad choice of words but I'm not even sure of it's exact meaning






more to the point,  who cares about ron paul?  did you knwo the US military uses a billion dollars a month of oil?  and they have to buy it from kuwait.  waste

If it takes them a trillion barrels of oil to win this war, I'll donate my gas can!  This is where you and I seem to part ways, Lester. 

You say, the war is too expensive, let's quit.

I say, losing it is even more expensive, so let's WIN!!!!!!!!

And, thankfully, we are winning in Iraq . . . which is why you hear so little news from there right now.  If things continue to calm down, I imagine CNN will start setting off car bombs just so they have some negative news to report.

what if we use a trillion barrels of oil and still don't win?  let me guess,  use a trillion more

The point was that the statistics were misleading, and it still stands. The Ron Paul supporters employed by the military were certainly very vocal with their money. The actual troops who could legally express their support only with their ballots, on the other hand, voted overwhelmingly for the other candidates.


The same criteria were used in the study the Ron Paul followers were hyping. They used a legitimate statistic to support an illegitimate claim by pretending the two were the same thing, a tactic right out of the classic How To Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff.


That's what gets you in trouble: saying this financially vocal minority of military employees is the same thing as the "military" is like saying all the janitors employed at Microsoft are the same thing as "Microsoft" itself. No one disputes that these Ron Paul supporters are military employees, but the actual military--the soldiers--voted overwhelmingly for Ron Paul's opponents.


Um, you?

but they did not contribute to the respective campaigns of those candidates.

and I said who cares about ron paul because the larger issue is about the iraq war not ron pauls campaign.

why are you against liberty in the sudan? or somalia?  or norht korea? or china?  or anywhere we aren't at war?

the ideea that being against war is being against liberty silly.  war is the health of the state and never is a government more powerful and a society less free than during a war as our reecent suspension of habaeus corpus and use of torture illustrate. 

They contributed their votes, and that's what counted. What those cash contributions demonstrated was the difference between minority enthusiasm and majority support.


That's true, but you were the one who raised the subject.


Point taken, but be careful about saying that around Democrats. They might start thinking you're one of them. See below for further rebuttal.


This was not the idea presented in these articles. The idea presented was that a Libertarian was claiming the Iraqis, given the chance to vote, would vote for our troops to leave and that this outcome would somehow improve their liberty. The counter-argument is that the majority of Iraqis know their liberty hinges on our continued presence there and would vote contrary to the way he says they would.

I see that you have a very strong sense of self-interest, so you are willing to sacrifice the Iraqis' liberties in the belief that this will help maintain your own. You believe the benefits will outweigh the losses. This sets you apart from Chapman and certain other Libertarians who maintain their delusions that leaving Iraq will have no negative repercussions at all. Chapman's critics and I believe you're both mistaken about the severity of the consequences and the price of withdrawal would be far greater than you suppose. What happens next will prove which of our contentions is right.

As to torture and habeus corpus, I believe you are mistaken about both. Harsh as the interrogation techniques our forces have used on just a few of our enemies have been, our government still treats them far more humanely than any other government has ever treated its enemies. Also, our government has not suspended habeus corpus. If anything, it has extended it dangerously far. If we are cursed with a Democratic sweep of both Congress and the Presidency, I predict you will get to see firsthand how destructive to your liberties this kind of legal positivism is.

no no.  it's wrong in PRINCIPLE to be there.   NOT because it annoys me personally because I have to watch my tax dollars being lost in the desert on television, but because they ARE being lost in (carrying out this policy).  that it is costing us money is simply a fallout from the original bad idea. 

so the money is SYMBOLIC of the wrongheadedness of the venture to me.


that's fine, but my remark was about the donations.  and monetary contributions imply a high level of support for something.  most people don't donate to the people they vote for




you don't know that.  and if we weren't in these wars we wouldn't need to torture anyone.  if we didn't havea presence in the middle east we would have no need for guantanomo.  so get out of the middle east and we have no need to think of this issue.  do you understand?

you bump up against the constitution you made a  wrong turn

If we were in this war for the reasons you think we are, there would be a principle on which to oppose it. We are not, however, and therefore there is none. We are not there for oil, corporate interests, to build an empire, or to show off our power. We are there to kill our enemies.

Our soldiers' mission was to clean out the terrorist vermin and make sure they didn't come back. They've completed the first part and are making a lot of progress on the second part. For taking out Zarqawi and Saddam and tens of thousands of other terrorists, the cost of this war has been an absolute bargain.


This is true. Where people spend their money does tell us a lot about what really matters to them. But your original point was that a large part of the military supports Ron Paul for being anti-war. What you have actually proved is that a tiny percentage of military employees supports him very enthusiastically. The rest support the candidates in favor of winning this war. Many are even supporting this war directly by fighting it.


And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.


I understand that you think ignoring our problems in the Middle East will make them go away. It will not. "Open war is upon you whether you would risk it or not." The terrorists will attack us no matter what we do. Rewarding their attacks with withdrawal and appeasement will only convince them to attack us further.


The Constitution provides the President the power to make war. It does not provide a right to habeus corpus to foreign terrorists, whatever our Supreme Court pretends.

we wouldn't have any enemeies if we weren't throwing our weight around over there in the first place.  zarqawi wouldn't have been blowing up our soldiers in iraq if our soldiers weren't in iraq would he?

terrorism is a phenomenon.  there aren't a finite number of terrorists and the war on terror is over when you kill them all.  our foreign policy of supporting dictators and giving israel money and weapons to dominate the palestinians is why we have terrorism.  change those and we will not be subject to reprisals.  killing terrorists is a fools errand.  people in the middle east have 10 and 12 kids and they are more than happy to send them to martyr themselves to drive out enemies.  they will be more than happy to send their grand kids and great grand kids to do the same thing.  it will never ever end.


they are there for each other, not bush's vision of a democratized pro us middle east.


it's an elective war.  if we hadn't gone to iraq all the people who died would be alive and all the money we spent would be unspent.  you don't HAVE to have wars.  most countries don't spend a fraction of what we do on defense and don't base their lives on war.  we are the weird ones.  most people would rather spend their money in their own homes and communities, not let their politicians play a worldwide chess game with their blood and treasure.


they came over here because we are over there.

This false premise is the central flaw in all of your contentions. We've had these enemies since long before the founding of the USA. What kept them from attacking us here on American soil was the long distances they had to sail over the ocean, which have become relatively trivial with modern innovations. They lacked only the capacity, not the motive.


He'd more likely have been blowing up civilians right here in America, or maybe the ones on tour in other countries as some of his colleagues were doing. That this hasn't happened lately has not been for lack of trying. But arguments about what would have been are difficult to prove and not really worth pursuing.


Actually, there are. We don't have to kill all terrorists to win the war, though. The war is over when we kill enough of them that they become too feeble and too scared of provoking our wrath to attack us anymore.


These are all lies and terrorist propaganda. The terrorist attacks are not reprisals, but a centuries-old jihad against the West. The Islamists know that modern wars are fought with propaganda as well as weapons, so they've concocted this mythology about our nation's having done something to deserve their attacks to sell you. The terrorists hate us for not being an Islamic theocracy, and they don't intend to stop attacking us until we are.


Killing individual terrorists only after they do the deed is the fool's errand. Annihilating terrorist strongholds before they do the deed is the wise course of action. Dead terrorists raise no children, and countries hostile to terrorism will raise no more generations of the vermin.


You don't know that. So far as we can tell from the way they vote, the soldiers seem to support continuing with the Bush Doctrine.


Once again, arguing what would have been is a futile pursuit. What we know is that our enemies attacked us and were planning to attack again. This is not an elective war. The only choice we had was where to fight it, not whether it was to be fought.


Pacifists have been saying this for centuries, but history keeps contradicting them. For so long as humanity is sinful, we will always have wars.


We are the biggest spender, but you are sorely mistaken about the other countries. A majority of the world's countries at any given time are either at war or preparing for war.


Indeed. Our Pax Americana, like the Pax Romana before it, was too much of an aberration to last. The Pax Europa our military has sustained is likewise doomed to end. As Heraclitus warned us long ago, war is the natural state of humanity.


The terrorists attack our homes and communities. Wiser citizens prefer to spend our money and military on destroying our enemies rather than playing a Three Card Monte game of diplomacy with them.


They came over here because we "infidels" are over here. They will attack us no matter where we are because that's what they believe Allah wants them to do.

well hey,  you want to spend your money on war, I want to spend it on my self in my community.  You say I'm unrealistic, I say you are paranoid. 

btw, I know lots of muslims and none of them are interested in our "freedoms", they immensely dislike our foreign policy of supporting dictators and israeli rockets in the middle east. that's it.

you seem to have a deterministic, fatalistic view of the world.  I'd say this is a pagan as opposed to christian or monotheist sort of view.  men can fight wars or not fight them.  they can choose.  we are free.  you don't believe we are free.  we differ in this

As I see it, spending money on wars to kill people who want to kill me is the same as spending it on myself. Capitalist corporations do the same thing all the time when they hire security guards to defend their property against thieves and vandals. Pretending that our enemies' lack of success in attacking us these past five years somehow proves we don't need to secure ourselves against them is naive.


If they really disliked dictators so much, they would be grateful that we've deposed one in Iraq. If they don't want to be free, they have no right to be complaining about dictators anyway. If they don't like our ally Israel having rockets to protect itself against them, then they are our terrorist enemies and I hope those rockets find them soon.


As a Christian, I believe we are free to make the choices we are given to make. When a war comes for us, we can either fight it or die. A war came for us on 9/11. I prefer to fight.

they've had a great deal of success.  4,000 of our best and brightest have been killled in Iraq.  they've drained like a bllion dolalrs from our treasury.  if we hadn't gone to iraq thsoe 4,000 troops wuold be home with their families and thatr mojney would be in our treasury.  and it will cost yet more money and lives. 



israel isn't "our" ally.  it's our governments.  and people who oppose them aren't our enemies.  there's nothing about Israel in our constitution.  we aren't the president of the middle east.  if israels neighbors don't like her they have to deal with that .

we didn't have the UN telling the indians to accept that we were driving them off their land.  we fought them for it for hundreds of years.  if they decided they wanted to try and take it back we'd have to fight them for it again.

i don't think many people would begrudge the indians wanting to keep their land.  we outnumbered and out armed them.  israel is surrounded by about a billion "indians" and they have to fight for their land the same as we did.  it's their fight not ours.


a war didn't come to us, we came to it via our interventionist foreign policy.  again,. they came over here because we are over there.  christians don't pick fights.  no one wants us in the middle east aned we don't need to be there, thus "defending" our absurd foreign policy is picking a fight and totally unchristian.

Since our enemies were originally planning to kill all of our soldiers and their families and their neighbors and everybody else in the general population they could reach in more 9/11-style massacres, killing only those troops and having to do so over in Iraq instead of here doesn't count as success at all. A conservative estimate indicates that upwards of 20,000 of those terrorists lost their lives in those attacks, so if the terrorists have too much more "success" of this kind, they shall be utterly ruined. That's 20,000+ terrorists, not counting terrorists captured, who won't be planting any more bombs, hijacking any planes, slaughtering anybody anywhere, or training anybody else to do so. In view of the results for our enemy, their attacks on our troops must all be considered profound failures.

As for the financial costs of this war, do you have any idea how badly the 9/11 attack disrupted our economy, even aside from the nearly 3,000 breadwinners slain that day? The economic price of having to grin and bear any more attacks like that is far higher than anything we've spent on this war. Our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are securing our finances as well as providing for our common defense.


Israel is our ally. We the people still dictate what our government does, and we the people, excluding a minority of cantankerous isolationists such as yourself, continue to agree with our legislators and administration that Israel is and should remain our ally.


The terrorists who oppose Israel's existence are our enemies. One of the reasons our enemies haven't attacked us as much as they might is that their plans to perpetrate a second Holocaust against Israel take priority over their plans to do the same to us.


There's nothing about isolationism in our Constitution either. That's because the Constitution is restrictive, not prescriptive. What our foreign policy toward any nation is to be is up to our President and Congress to decide.


Indeed, we have not been presiding over the Middle East. Israel has been dealing with its enemies and ours quite efficiently.


Yet the Israelis do have the UN condemning them for defending themselves from the many enemies trying to drive them off their land. That's one more good reason I despise the UN.


No, your analogy has it precisely backward: the Israelis are the native population fighting to keep their ancestral lands. The Jordanian squatters and their Muslim allies are the invaders attempting to drive them off their land with the UN's support. Their fight is indirectly ours because the Muslims' genocidal efforts against Israel are part of their larger plan for world domination. Since we're next on their to-do list, Israel serves as our buffer state against Islamic theocratic aggression.


No, this war did come to us via the Muslims' extremely "interventionist" policy of world domination.


Again, they did not come over here because we were over there. They came over here because we "infidels" are over here and their Koran commands them to conquer us. Your Muslim associates are lying to you when they pretend otherwise.


And we didn't pick this one.


Other than for trade and for self-defense, we are not "there" in any of the ways you pretend. What is absurd and un-Christian is your misrepresentation of our foreign policy. You should not be repeating our enemies' lies and smearing the various ruling authorities God has instituted to whom we owe our loyalty as American citizens.

you simply have no concept of the constitution.  If Iran is my favorite country and I'm an american does that mean iran is "our" ally?

the state is not the nation.  there are milions of people in this country who believe abortion is murder, yet our laws say it is not.  does that mean abortion isn't murder?  of course not, what our government states is meaningless to those who believe otherwise.  it's god and country, not the other way around. 



if we hadn't invaded iraq, the 4,000 + troops that died there would be alive the tens of thousands who were injured wouldn't be injured and the hundreds of billions which will become trillions would not be spent.

islamic radicalism or whatever is YOUR nemy , not mine.  my enemy is our government.

No, you have no concept of it. Our Constitution is the basic foundation of our country's political system, not a sacred screed for isolationism or libertarianism or any other ism.

If we were materially or politically supporting Iran in any way, I suppose it would be our ally, but we're not and therefore it isn't. We do have several friendly treaties with and provide some material support to Israel, though, and Israel does do some things for our country as well, so yes, Israel is our ally. I say "our" because a lot of my fellow citizens agree with me. If you hate that and don't want to be part of our country, there's no need for you and me and my allies to be an "us" in this matter. Feel free to renounce your citizenship and emigrate to the Israel-hating country of your choice.


If you think our nation's laws are "meaningless" to those who disagree with them, just try blockading an abortionist sometime and see how "meaningless" they'll be for you in court. Need I remind you that many of our fellow voters are responsible for this sorry state of affairs? They elected the pro-abortion legislators who appointed these judges. I am bitterly angry with them for what they have done and continue to do. Of course, the Supreme Court certainly has usurped a lot of our legislative rights concerning abortion, hasn't it? Now it's usurping our Constitution's restrictions on habeus corpus.

Neither of these decisions persuades me I ought to retaliate by rebelling against the rule of law and becoming an anarchist, though. You're free to vote for anti-Zionists and complain as loudly as you like against our foreign policy concerning Israel, but you still don't have the right to decide for all the rest of us who our country's allies are and aren't.

Our duty to God does indeed come ahead of any patriotic duty, but so far you haven't made any persuasive case that anything we've done in Iraq conflicts with anything God commands.


I read your fictional and therefore unfalsifiable "would have been" scenario the first time, Lester. It's not getting any more persuasive with repetition. You can't prove that any of those troops would still be alive, that any of those tens of thousands wouldn't be injured, and that any those billions wouldn't be spent. They wouldn't have died, been injured, or been spent in this war, but I can come up with any number of these "would have been" scenarios as credible as yours about where they would have died, been injured, and been spent.

I can do better than that, though. I can tell you something that actually has been done. In 1991, George H.W. Bush decided not to continue Operation Desert Storm by invading Iraq. Tell me, how many soldiers' lives and limbs on the USS Cole and in the Khobar Towers did that decision spare? How many civilian deaths and injuries on 9/11 did that decision prevent? How many terrorist alliances with Saddam never formed because Bush decided not to risk invading Iraq? How much money did his decision ultimately save us? How did our foreign relations fare after that?

Bonus questions: how many Kurdish villages did this decision save from Saddam's mustard gas? How many of his citizens did Saddam spare from injury and death in his torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass graves in return for Bush having spared his life? How did Saddam repay the "kinder and gentler" Bush's mercy toward him and his fellow terrorists? How loudly do you and other supposedly anti-war activists now praise Bush's restraint and wisdom for making that decision?


Since "We The People" are the government, you've made yourself a very terrifying enemy indeed. If you'd rather antagonize your neighbors than live at peace with them, don't expect any sympathy if you complain that nobody ever listens to you.