Positive Liberty

Here’s a lengthy discussion of why the current war in Iraq has been terribly misguided. Interestingly enough, it’s from the capitalist, individualist, realpolitik, Ayn-Rand-inspired blog The Light of Reason. Here’s a teaser:

if a country is a genuine, serious threat to us — a threat that we consider must be eliminated for our own safety — then that country is our enemy. But by casting the net of threats to our security so broadly, and by endorsing the idea of “regime change,” we have placed ourselves in the middle of an impossible contradiction: we are making war on a country, yet we simultaneously proclaim that the country itself is not our enemy. Only the current regime is our enemy.

Note the consequences of this position. We want to preserve the infrastructure of the country, while at the same time bombing the country into submission. We do not want to harm innocent Iraqi civilians, but it turns out that enemy soldiers are posing as innocent Iraqi civilians — so how are we to know whether anyone is a “real” enemy or not? And at the same time we are fighting a war which it now turns out may be much more costly than we were originally led to believe, we are also spending massive amounts of money (and using numerous personnel) to prepare humanitarian aid. In short, we are trying to kill the enemy and preserve, and even improve, its life at the same time.

It cannot be done. Contradictions do not exist, and if you try to make one manifest in the world, you will fail.

I’ve yet to give my blog’s manifesto on Ayn Rand and Objectivism, though I suspect it’s coming soon (On one foot: I still love Ayn Rand. I think she made some serious mistakes, though, and largely because of these errors, her followers have often made fools both of her and of themselves. Details will follow, I promise.)

I’ve already blogged on the war, but just once. It was so depressing that I don’t plan to do it again.

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