Category Archives: Just War

Updated: Iraq 5 Years On: CBC Ignores American Anti-War Right

Ann Coulter, Iraq, Journalism, Just War, Media, Ron Paul

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commemorated the invasion of Iraq with an outstanding Fifth-Estate segment: “THE LIES THAT LED TO WAR: The Political, Diplomatic, and Media Spin that Convinced Americans to Invade Iraq.”

An important point made was that America is no closer to a reckoning that this “adventure” was a great wrong, if not an outright evil. Ann Coulter provided a strident example of this hubris. Tossing her magnificent mane, she mocked Canadians for not getting the goods on how good things were in Iraq. This was how democracies shaped up, Ann “argued.”

A disgrace really. Cruel too.

A question to the fine chroniclers of the war at the CBC: There is a small number of American reporters, pundits, and a few politicians that has always opposed this abominable invasion on the grounds that it violated natural rights, Just War Theory, the American Constitution, the comity of nations—and practically every single stricture familiar to babes on the playground.

(SEE “Just War for Dummies”
& “Unnatural Lawlessness”)

Rep. Ron Paul protested tirelessly; as did this writer (starting in September 2002 in an editorial for Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe And Mail) and her non-Beltway affiliated libertarian colleagues.

(SEE “Why So Many Americans Don’t Support Attacking Iraq,” except that there weren’t so many Americans, despite the titular hope the Globe and Mail expressed.)

Why does the CBC fail to mention our much-marginalized faction? Is it because we are, for the most, of the Old, classically liberal American Right?

Why keep featuring the fiendish Coulter, Malkin, and their Canadian copycat, one Rachel Marsden? [SEE “Lethal Weapons: Neocon Groupies“] Why not help consign them to the dustbin of punditry and look to the principled few (talented too) who stood for the soundest of philosophical principles?

We exist!

I grieved when the death toll in Iraq stood at 289—a lousy landmark I also happened to protest in an op-ed for the Canadian Globe And Mail. (SEE “Bush’s Warfare State”)

I continue to mourn now that it has climbed to 4000—yesterday. My grief at the trashing of Iraqi lives has been a constant in my writing over the last five years—in columns and blog entries alike. (The Archive is here)

Who chose to nominate the average suffering Iraqi as “Person of the Year”? Certainly not Time magazine.

(SEE “My Person of the Year: The Average Iraqi”)

Update (March 25): The Man From Texas and his simply stated, straightforward truth-telling:

“Five years into the invasion and occupation of Iraq, untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead; some two million Iraqis have fled the country as refugees; and the Iraqi Christian community – one of the oldest in the world – has been decimated more completely than even under the Ottoman occupation or the rule of Saddam Hussein.
 
On the US side, nearly four thousand Americans have lost their lives fighting in Iraq and many thousands more are horribly wounded. Our own senior military officers warn that our military is nearly broken by the strain of the Iraq occupation. The Veterans Administration is overwhelmed by the volume of disability claims from Iraq war veterans.
 
A study by Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz concludes that the cost of the war in Iraq could be at least $3 trillion. The economic consequences of our enormous expenditure in Iraq are beginning to make themselves known as we fall into recession and possibly worse…”

Objectivists At War

Just War, Objectivism

Ilana:
It has been years since I last read your articles, an unfortunate blunder on my part! Thank you for your clear unswerving thinking about the nature of just war, the injustice of American military adventures, the bloodcurdling totalitarianism of radical jihadists, and the ugly spectacle of Objectivists embracing the authoritarianism of the neo-conservatives.
For years, I have referred to myself as a “small o” objectivist, because I concur with Rand’s ideas about the logical primacy of reason to ethics; about morality as values proper to living in accordance with one’s nature, both as an individual and as a human being; and about capitalism as the only moral economic system. However, I shudder at the thought of being associated with neo-objectivist enforcers of cosmic “justice” and democracy. So I’ll have to devise some other label: classical individualist or objectivist libertarian or crank Austrian.
It is sad and amusing to read the attacks by “Objectivists” on Rand fans who oppose non-defensive American wars. One in particular holds forth like a Catholic Cardinal, beseeching his followers to avoid the snare of various subtle “philosophical errors” that supposedly delude those who disagree with him.
When one defends the view that non-interventionism is eminently practical for Americans, one of the Cardinal’s Cronies opines that “rationalists” are often forced into defensive mode, whereby they engage in throwing logically disconnected facts and figures at their opponents for the purpose, not of enlightenment, but of obscuration! This is a clear case, according to the Crony, and seconded by the Cardinal, of a “snowjob.”
Whew!
Your writing is a blizzard of clear thinking!
Yours truly,
Mark Humphrey

White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki

America, Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, Just War, Military, War

Just to remind you what a monster one must be to say the following words: “the nuclear option is on the table.”

“On August 6th and 9th, 1945, two atomic bombs vaporized 210,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who survived are called “hibakusha”—people exposed to the bomb—and there are an estimated 200,000 living today. Today, with the threat of —nuclear weapons of mass destruction frighteningly real—the world’s arsenal capable of repeating the destruction at Hiroshima 400,000 times over—Oscar® award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki revisits the bombings and shares the stories of the only people to have survived a nuclear attack.”

The teletwits of cable haven’t commemorated this mass murder. Photos are all important. Watch the “Video Promo.” I’ve attached a few links you can follow. I’m not going to attempt to describe the flesh of a young girl melted away, hanging in strips from her still-alive body.

Photographs Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki

A Photo-Essay on the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Update #1: : There is no disputing that the intentional slaughter of 200,000 innocents was mass murder. What else? Mercy killing? Preemptive killing of innocents? It’s the coward’s way out. It’s un-Christian, un-Jewish, unethical; flouts every stricture of Just War and natural justice, you name it. To defend it is indefensible. There is, moreover, no way to say who and how many were “saved” by the bombing. That’s why it’s such a convenient course of action for the evil. It’s open-ended and vague. To do so, is to exclude oneself from humanity.

Update #2: Pearl Harbor is the magic word for the crowd that is always licking its chops for blood. In Pearl Harbor you have the Japanese attacking a military target—a naval base. They killed a few thousands of what to them were enemy combatants, i.e. Americans. That act, according to some monsters, provides the warrant the US needed to slaughter 200,000 mostly civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and destroy those cities. Truman had planned to drop a couple more “Little Boys” and “Fat Men,” as they were dubbed affectionately.

Part of the Just War doctrine, adhered to by a dwindling number of REAL Christians, is the concept of proportionality in war. One of the best dissections of the bankrupt case for this atrocity was made by historian Ralph Raico. While we’re at it, let’s see a consistent application of principles, please. To intentionally target civilians is to engage in the act of terrorism.

Sock it to those Civilians!

Update #3: On the topic of intentionally targeting innocent civilians with the most devastating weapon known to man we heard, unfortunately, mainly from people bereft of a developed theory of justice. Rather, in discussing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the emphasis was mostly on crude collectivism. However charitable I‘d like to be, I can’t even credit some of the individuals who wrote in with advancing a sophisticated utilitarianism. Mostly, it was, “We socked it to ‘em for our boys, yeah baby. We kicked some ass.” (The booties of babies and their mothers…)

There were others (unpublished of course) who—without any familiarity with my writings on Just War, including pre-emptive war, Israel, and Iraq—offered unsubstantiated deductions about my positions. For example: it was asserted by one bombast that I opposed the war in Iraq on the grounds that Saddam was better than the current chaos. No, that’s the position taken in retrospect, after the failure in Iraq, by some of the nation’s reigning philosopher kings.

If you intend to offer an opinion about it, read my perfectly validated case against that war. Once again, my position against that travesty, again—perfectly validated today—rested on principles of natural justice, Just War, and the reality shared by the “reality-based community,” not the pie-in the sky occupied by neoconservatives, who admitted to creating their own reality when it came to the danger from saddam, because they possessed the power to so do.

Don’t waste your time on a classically liberal blog if you haven’t acquainted yourself with the writing you propose to “refute” so stridently. Of course, even the fact that I was right about the war against Iraq has not persuaded warriors suspended in a Third Dimension that my philosophy was validated, not by chance, but by following objective reality and immutable principle. So, can I sell you shares in a Bed and Breakfast in Baghdad?

Update 4 (May 7, 2008): Recently revealed are these new photos of the American government’s war crimes (via LRC.com).

[All comments were lost in a server crash early in 2008]

Updated Again: Webb Wallops W.

Bush, Iraq, Just War, War

Although “classless behavior” and George Bush are interchangeable (groping the German Chancellor was just one of many Bush vulgarities), the descriptive was applied, oddly enough, to his interlocutor, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA). A “pathetic story of classless behavior” is how Webb’s recent retort to George Bush has been described by some. Reports the Washington Post:

“At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia’s newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn’t long before Bush found him.

‘How’s your boy?’ Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

‘I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,’ Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

‘That’s not what I asked you,’ Bush said. ‘How’s your boy?’

‘That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,’ Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.”

Let’s rewind. You’d have to be a dedicated Bush bootlicker to misidentify the ignoble savage in this interaction.

Give Bush the benefit of the doubt and assume that, knowing Webb’s principled opposition to his invasion of Iraq, the president was still sincere in inquiring after Webb’s soldier son. (Bush is known as quite a spiteful and petulant man, so it’s not unreasonable to consider that he may also have been pushing Webb’s buttons.)

Webb then answered in a manner that comported with his convictions, yet still addressed Bush’s query politely (he was careful to call him “Mr. President”). What does the president do in response? He upbraids Webb and speaks down at him.

Append “boy” to end of “That’s not what I asked you,” and you get my drift ‘and Bush’s’ loud and clear.

Update: Here’s a likeminded appraisal of Jim Webb’s worth from Tom DiLorenzo, a man who has had the courage to take on a far more blood thirsty leader than Genghis Bush. My Mother, who doesn’t live on this continent, marveled the other day at how militaristic Americans are. That’s how foreigners experience us. Other American friends I have were aghast to learn that I think that, while Americans are very concerned about the well-being of fetuses, they are callous about the lives of fully formed human beings. Having experienced a couple of cultures during my life, that’s certainly been my abiding impression — there’s a glorification of death for the fatherland in the US. Scary.

Updated Again: It appears I was right. Being the bully he is, Bush was simply pushing Webb’s buttons. So reports ThinkProgress, which obtained its information from Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA):

“Bush was told that Webb’s son had a recent brush with death in Iraq and was warned to be ‘extra sensitive’ when talking to the Sen.-elect. ThinkProgress yesterday spoke with Moran’s office and confirmed the congressman’s statement, first reported by hcc in VA: Not only did Bush know about it, he was specifically briefed on the incident before meeting with Webb, and was cautioned to be extra sensitive in speaking with Webb about his son.”

I’ve always been a good judge of character. I don’t need to look into those beady, dead eyes to see the barren soul. A survey of Bush’s utterances and actions will suffice. Once again, Bush was being Bush.