Mark Robert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
BH> Foreign intervention is a tool, and tools can be use competently or not,
for good or for evil -- just like weapons. It's as mistaken to condemn all
use of foreign intervention as it is to condemn all use of weapons. <BH
MR> Only if you apply a double standard to said intervention. The ethics of
"intervention" on an individual/libertarian level is questionable at best
and then only allowable in the verbal arena. AFAIK no libertarian accepts
the use of pre-emptive force, on an individual basis, for "reasons" as
sophisticated as international ones you appear to defend. Maybe you would
enjoy further elaborating on the justification for your seeming
double-standard, especially in regard to your "self-determination"
justification. <BH
I don't understand what double-standard you've identified, or what you mean
by "the verbal arena". My comments about "self-determination" in that
message were not a justification at all, but rather empirical observations
about a hypothesized trend. Every libertarian accepts the use of
pre-emptive force when a threat is clear enough. I've claimed that the
threat in question here was the conjunction of
*
Saddam's admitted nuclear ambitions,
*
Saddam's hatred for America (regardless of whether some think
Saddam's hatred justified), and
*
Saddam's support for terrorists that have targeted American
civilians;
The rest of the justification I've cited is
* Saddam's record of aggression, in which he
* killed over a million people,
* invaded one sovereign neighbor,
* annexed another by force,
* fired ballistic missiles at two more,
* defied UN nuclear disarmament mandates that Iraq was bound to obey
as a 1945 UN Charter signatory,
* used chemical WMDs in a war of aggression, and
* used chemical WMDs in genocidal attacks on its own citizens; and
* the existence proofs we had in Kurdistan and Afghanistan that the
U.S. military could depose tyranny in the Islamic world and replace it with
reasonably stable self-determination.
For full details of my Iraq thinking, see my blog index at
http://humanknowledge.net/KnowingHumans/. I don't read the Libertarian Y!
group too closely due to its high traffic, so cc'ing me or my marketliberal
Y! group is the best way to ensure I see any response you might post.
Brian Holtz
Libertarian candidate for Congress, CA14 (Silicon Valley)
http://marketliberal.org <http://marketliberal.org/>
blog: http://knowinghumans.net <http://knowinghumans.net/>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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