Considered strictly as a way of sustaining human decency, war gets a failing grade every time, because it invariably magnifies the malignity that it purports to resist.
Anyone who has done even a little reading about the theory and practice of war, whether in political theory, international relations, theology, history, or common journalistic commentary, has encountered a sentence of the form, “war is horrible, but . . ..” In this construction, the phrase that follows the conjunction explains why a certain war was (or now is or someday will be) an action that ought to have been (or ought to be) undertaken notwithstanding its admitted horrors. The frequent, virtually formulaic use of this expression attests that nobody cares to argue, say, that war is a beautiful, humane, uplifting, or altogether splendid course of action and therefore the more often people fight, the better.
Some time ago — in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, for example — one might encounter a writer, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who forthrightly affirmed that war is manly and invigorating for the nation and the soldiers that engage in it: war keeps a nation from “getting soft.” Although this opinion is no longer expressed openly with great frequency, something akin to it may yet survive, as Chris Hedges argues in War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002). Nowadays, however, even those who find meaning for their lives by involvement in war, perhaps only marginal or symbolic involvement, do not often extol war as such.
Instead, they are apt to justify a nation’s engagement in war by calling attention to alternative, even more horrible outcomes that, retrospectively, would have occurred if the nation had not gone to war or, prospectively, will occur if it does not go to war. This seemingly reasonable “balancing” form of argument often sounds stronger than it really is, especially when it is made more or less in passing. People may easily be swayed by a weak argument, however, if they fail to appreciate the defects of the typically expressed “horrible, but” apology for war.
Rather than plow through various sources on my bookshelves to compile examples, I have availed myself of modern technology. A Google search for the exact term “war is horrible but” on September 11, 2006, identified 1,450 instances. Rest assured that this sample is smaller than the entire universe of such usage — some texts have yet to be captured electronically. Among the examples I drew from the World Wide Web are the following fourteen statements. I identify the person who made the statement only when he is well-known.
(1) “War is horrible. But no one wants to see a world in which a regime with no regard whatsoever for international law — for the welfare of its own people — or for the will of the United Nations — has weapons of mass destruction.” [U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage]
This statement was part of a speech Armitage gave on January 21, 2003, shortly before the U.S. government unleashed its armed forces to wreak “shock and awe” on the nearly defenseless people of Iraq. The speech repeated the Bush administration’s standard prewar litany of accusations, including several claims later revealed to be false, and so it cannot be viewed as anything but bellicose propaganda. Yet it does not differ much from what many others were saying at the time.
On its own terms, the statement scarcely serves to justify a war. A regime’s disregard of international law, its own people’s wellbeing, and the will of the United Nations, combined with possession of weapons of mass destruction — these conditions apply to several nations. They no more justify a military attack on Iraq than they justify an attack on Pakistan, France, India, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, Israel or, for that matter, the United States itself.
(2) “War is terrible, war is horrible, but war is also at times necessary and the only means of stopping evil.”
The only means of stopping evil? How can such an exclusivity exist? Has evil conduct never been stopped except by war? For example, has shunning — exclusion from commerce, financial systems, communications, transportation systems, and other means of international cooperation — never served to discipline an evil nation-state? Might it do so if seriously tried? Why must we leap to the conclusion that only war will serve, when other measures have scarcely even been considered, much less been seriously attempted? If war is really as horrible as everyone says, then it would seem that we have a moral obligation to try very hard to achieve the desired suppression of evil-doing by means other than resort to warfare, which is itself always a manifest evil, even when it is the lesser one.
(3) “No news shows [during World War II] were showing German civilians getting fried and saying how sad it was. It was war against butchers and war is horrible, but it’s war, and to defend human decency, sometimes war is necessary.” [Ben Stein]
Stein is a knowledgeable man. He surely knows that the U.S. government imposed draconian censorship of war news during World War II. Perhaps the censors had their reasons for keeping scenes of incinerated German civilians away from the U.S. public. After all, even if Americans in general had extraordinarily cruel and callous attitudes toward German civilians during the war, many Americans had relatives and friends in Germany.
Stein appears to lump all Germans into the class of “butchers” against whom he claims the war was being waged. He certainly must understand, however, that many persons in Germany — children, for example — were not butchers and bore absolutely no responsibility for the actions of government officials who were. Yet these innocents, too, suffered the dire effects of, among other things, the terror bombing the U.S. and British air forces inflicted on many German cities.
To say, as Stein and many others have said, that “war is war” gets us nowhere; in a moral sense, this tautology warrants nothing. Evidently, however, many people consider all moral questions about the conduct of war to have been settled simply by their having labeled or by their having accepted someone else’s labeling of certain actions as a “war.” Having uttered this exculpatory incantation over the state’s organized violence, they believe that all transgressions associated with it are automatically absolved — as they say, “all’s fair in love and war.” It does not help matters that regimes treat some of the most egregious transgressors as heroes.
Finally, Stein’s claim that “to defend human decency, sometimes war is necessary” is, at best, paradoxical, because it says in effect that sometimes human indecency, which war itself surely exemplifies, is necessary to defend human decency. Perhaps he had in mind the backfires that fire fighters sometimes set to help them extinguish fires. This metaphor, however, seems farfetched in connection with war. It is difficult to think of anything that consists of so many different forms of indecency as war does. Not only is its essence the large-scale wreaking of death and destruction, but its side effects and its consequences in the aftermath run a wide range of evils as well. Whatever else war may be, it surely qualifies as the most indecent type of action people can take: it reduces them to the level of the most ferocious beasts and often accomplishes little more than setting the stage for the next, reactive round of savagery. In any event, considered strictly as a way of sustaining human decency, it gets a failing grade every time, because it invariably magnifies the malignity that it purports to resist.
(4) “War is horrible, but slavery is worse.” [Winston Churchill]
Maybe slavery is worse, but maybe it’s not; it depends on the conditions of the war and the conditions of the slavery. Moreover, if one seeks to justify a war on the strength of this statement, he had best be completely certain that but for war, slavery will be the outcome. In many wars, however, slavery was never a possibility, because neither side sought to enslave its enemy. Many wars have been fought for limited objectives, if only because more ambitious objectives appeared unattainable or not worth the cost. No war in U.S. history may be accurately seen as having been waged to prevent the enslavement of the American people. Some people talk that way about World War II or, if it be counted as a war, the Cold War, but such talk has no firm foundation in facts.
(5) “You may think that the Iraq war is horrible, but there may be some times when you can justify [going to war].”
Perhaps war can be justified at “some times,” but that statement itself in no way shows that the Iraq war can be justified, and it seems all too obvious that it cannot be. If it could have been justified, the government that launched it would not have had to resort to a succession of lame excuses for waging it, each such excuse being manifestly inadequate or simply false. The obvious insufficiency of any of the grounds put forward explains why so many of us have been struggling to divine exactly what did impel the Bush administration’s rush to war.
(6) “War is horrible, but sometimes we need to fight.”
Need to fight for what? The objective dictates whether war is a necessary means for its attainment. Certainly, if the objective was to preserve Americans’ freedoms and “way of life,” the U.S. government did not need to fight most of the enemies against whom it waged war historically. Remarkably, the only time the enemy actually posed such a threat, which was during the Cold War, the United States did not go to war against that enemy directly, although it did fight (unnecessarily) the enemy’s less-menacing allies, North Korea, China, and North Vietnam. In the other wars, the United States might well have remained at peace had U.S. leaders been interested in peace rather than committed to warfare.
(7) “Of course war is horrible, but it will always exist, and I’m sick of these pacifist [expletive deleted] ruining any shred of political decency that they can manage.”
Many people have observed that wars have recurred for thousands of years and therefore will probably continue to occur from time to time. The unstated insinuation seems to be that in view of war’s long-running recurrence, nothing can be done about it, so we should all grow up and admit that war is as natural, and hence as unobjectionable, as the sun’s rising in the east each morning. It’s “how the world works.”
This outlook contains at least two difficulties. First, many other conditions also have had long-running histories: for example, reliance on astrologers as experts in foretelling the future; affliction with cancers; submission to rulers who claim to dominate their subjects by virtue of divine descent or appointment; and many others. Eventually, people overcame each of these long-established conditions. Science revealed that astrology is nothing more than an elaborate body of superstition; scientists and doctors discovered how to control or cure certain forms of cancer; and citizens learned to laugh at the pretensions of rulers who claim divine descent or appointment (at least, they had learned until George W. Bush successfully revived the doctrine among the benighted rubes who form the Republican base). Because wars spring in large part from people’s stupidity, ignorance, and gullibility, it is conceivable that alleviation of these conditions might have the effect of diminishing warfare, if not of eliminating it altogether.
Second, even if nothing can be done about the periodic outbreak of war, it does not follow that we ought to shut up and accept it without complaint. No serious person expects, say, that evil can be eliminated from the human condition, yet we condemn it and struggle against its expression in human affairs. We strive to divert potential evildoers from their malevolent course of action. Scientists and doctors continue to seek cures for cancers that have afflicted humanity for millennia. Even conditions that cannot be wholly eliminated can sometimes be mitigated, but only if someone tries to mitigate them.
Finally, whatever else one might say about the pacifists, one may surely say that if everyone were a pacifist, no wars would occur. Pacifism may be criticized on various grounds, as it always has been and still is, but to say that pacifists “lack any shred of political decency” seems itself to be indecent. Remember: war is horrible, as everybody now concedes but many immediately put out of mind.
(8) “Every war is horrible, but freedom and justice cannot be allowed to be defeated by tyranny and injustice. As hideous as war is it is not as hideous as the things it can stop and prevent.”
This statement assumes that war amounts to a contest between freedom and justice on one side and tyranny and injustice on the other. One scarcely commits the dreaded sin of moral equivalence, however, by observing that few wars present such a stark contrast, in which only the children of God fight on one side and only the children of Satan fight on the other. One reason why war is so horrible is that it invariably drags into its charnel house many — again, the children are the most undeniable examples — who must be held blameless for any actions or threats that might have incited the war.
Even if we set aside such clear-cut innocents and consider only persons in the upper echelons of the conflicting sides, it is rare to find all angels on one side and all demons on the other. In World War II, for example, the Allied states were led by such angels as Winston Churchill, who relished the horrific terror bombing of German cities; Josef Stalin, one of the greatest mass murderers of all time; Franklin D. Roosevelt, of whose moral uprightness the less said the better; and Harry S Truman, who took pleasure in annihilating hundreds of thousands of defenseless Japanese noncombatants first with incendiary bombs and ultimately with nuclear weapons. Yes, the other side had Adolf Hitler, whose fiendishness I have no desire to deny, but the overall character of the leadership on both sides sufficiently attests that there was enough evil to go around. As for the ordinary soldiers, of course, everyone who knows anything about actual combat appreciates that once engaged, the men on both sides quickly become brutalized and routinely commit atrocities of every imaginable size and shape.
So, it is far from clear that war is always or even typically “not as hideous as the things it can stop and prevent.” On many occasions, refusal to resort to war, even in the face of undeniable evils, may still be the better course. When World War II ended, leaving more than 62 million dead, most of them civilians, and hundreds of millions displaced, homeless, wounded, sick, or impoverished, the survivors might well have doubted whether conditions would have been even more terrible had the war not taken place. (The dead were unavailable for comment.) To make matters worse, owing to the war, the monster Stalin had gained control of an enormous area stretching from Czechoslovakia to Korea; and soon, because of the defeat of the Japanese Empire, the monster Mao Zedong would take complete control of China and impose a murderous reign of terror on the world’s most populous country that cost the lives of perhaps another 60 million persons (as many as 77 million, according to one plausible estimate). It is difficult to believe that the situation in China would have been so awful even if the Japanese had succeeded in incorporating the Chinese into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
(9) “I grant you the war is horrible, but it is a war, after all. You have to compare apples to apples, and when I do that, I see this war is going well.”
This statement about the current war in Iraq exemplifies what some call the not-as-bad-as-Hamburg-Dresden-Tokyo-Hiroshima-Nagasaki defense of brutal warfare. If we make such pinnacles of savagery our standard, then sure enough, everything else pales by comparison. But why should anyone adopt such a grotesque standard? To do so is to concede that anything less horrible than the very worst cases is “not so bad.” In truth, warfare’s effects are sufficiently hideous at every level. What the Israelis have been doing in Lebanon recently bears no comparison with the February 1945 Allied attack on Dresden, of course, but the sight of even one little Lebanese child, dead, her bloody body gruesomely mangled by an explosion, ought to be enough to give pause to any proponent of resort to war. Try putting yourself in the place of that child’s mother.
(10) “[Certain writers] all agreed that war is horrible but said the Bible gives government the authority to wage war to save innocent lives.”
Biblical scholars have been disputing what Christians may and may not do with regard to war for almost two thousand years. The dispute continues today, so the matter is certainly not resolved among devout Christians. Even if Christians may go to war to save innocent lives, however, a big question remains: is the government going to war for this purpose or for one of the countless other purposes that lead governments to make war? Saving the innocent makes an appealing excuse, but often, if not always, it is only a pretext. “Just war” writers from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to Grotius to the latest contributors have agonized over the ready availability of such pretexts and warned against the wickedness of advancing them when the real motives are less justifiable or even plainly immoral.
For centuries, European combatants on all sides invoked God’s blessing for their wars against one another. As recently as World War II, the Germans had Gott Mit Uns, a declaration that adorned the belt buckles of Wehrmacht soldiers in both world wars. Strange to say, in 1917 and 1918, Christian ministers of the gospel in pulpits across the United States were assuring the congregations that their nation-state was engaged in a “war for righteousness” (the title of Richard M. Gamble’s splendid book about this repellent episode). So invoking Biblical authority really doesn’t get us very far: the enemy may be invoking the same authority.
Nowadays, of course, one side invokes the Jewish and Christian God, whereas the other calls upon the blessing of Allah. Whether this bifurcated manner of gaining divine sanction for the commission of mass murder and mayhem represents progress or not, I leave to the learned theologians.
(11) “War is horrible but thank God we have men and women who are willing and able to protect our people and our freedom.”
These men and women may be willing and able to supply such protection, but do they? Our leaders constantly proclaim that their wars are aimed at protecting us and our freedoms — “we go forward,” declares George W. Bush, “to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world” — but one has to wonder, considering that in the entire history of warfare in the United States, each war (with the possible exception of the War for Independence) has left the general run of the American people with fewer freedoms after the war than they enjoyed before the war. Every time the rulers set out to protect the village, they decide that the best way to do so is to destroy it in the process. Call me a cynic, but I can’t help wondering whether protection of the people and their freedoms was really the state’s objective, and after forty-five years of thinking about the matter, I’ve come up with some pretty attractive alternative hypotheses. One of them, as Marine General Smedley Butler famously expressed it, is that war is a racket, but I have others, too.
(12) “War is horrible but some economic good came out of World War II. It brought the United States out of one of the greatest slumps in history, the Great Depression.”
This venerable broken-window fallacy refuses to die, no matter how many times a stake is driven through its heart. Most Americans believe it. Worse, because less excusable, nearly all historians and even a large majority of economists do so as well. I’ve been whacking this nonsense for several decades, but so far as I can tell, I’ve scarcely made a dent in it. Should anyone care to see a complete counterargument, I recommend the first five chapters of my book Depression, War, and Cold War (2006).
(13) “War is horrible, but whining about it is worse. Either put up or shut up.”
Some people always reject the denunciation of any familiar social institution or conduct unless the denouncer offers a “constructive criticism,” that is, unless he puts forward a promising plan to eliminate the evil he denounces. I admit at once that I have discovered no cure for the human tendency to resort to war when much more intelligent and humane alternatives are available. I’m trying to convince people that on nearly all occasions, they are allowing their rulers to bamboozle them and to turn them into cannon fodder for purposes that serve the rulers’ interests, not the people’s. I’m getting nowhere in this effort, but I’m going to keep trying. I’m also going to continue to denounce stupidity, ignorance, ugliness, bullying, bad breath, and rap music, even though I don’t expect to succeed in those quests, either.
(14) “Of course, war is horrible, but at present, it’s still the only guarantee to maintain peace.”
The statement as it stands is self-contradictory because it affirms that the only way to make sure that we will have peace is to go to war. Perhaps, if we are feeling generous, we may interpret the statement as the time-honored exhortation that to maintain the peace, we should prepare for war, hoping that by dissuading any aggressor from moving against us, our preparation will preserve the peace. Although this policy is not self-contradictory, it is dangerous, because the preparation we make for war may itself move us toward actually going to war. For example, preparation for war may entail increasing the number of military officers and allowing the top brass to exert greater influence in policy making. Those officers may see that without war, their careers will go nowhere, and hence they may tilt their advice to civilian authorities toward risking or actually making war, even when peace might easily be preserved. Likewise, military suppliers may use their political influence to foster international suspicions and fears that otherwise might be allayed. Wars are not good for business in general, but they are good for the munitions contractors. Certain legislators may develop an interest in militarism; perhaps it helps them to attract campaign contributions from arms contractors, veterans’ groups, and members of the national guard and military reserve organizations. Pretty soon we may find ourselves dealing, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower did, with a military-industrial-congressional complex, and we may find that it packs a great deal of political punch and acts in a way that, all things considered, diminishes the chances of keeping the country at peace.
* * *
From the foregoing commentary, a recurrent theme may be extracted: those who argue that “war is horrible, but . . .” nearly always use this rhetorical construction not to frame a genuinely serious and honest balancing of reasons for and against war, but only to acknowledge what cannot be hidden — that war is horrible — and then to pass on immediately to an affirmation that notwithstanding the horrors, whose actual forms and dimensions they neither specify nor examine in detail, a certain war ought to be fought.
The reasons given to justify its being fought, however, generally amount to claims that cannot support a strong case. Often they are not even bona fide reasons, but mere propaganda, especially when they emanate from official sources. Sometimes they rest on historical errors, such as the claim that the armed forces in past wars have somehow kept foreigners from depriving us of our liberties. Often the case for war rests on ill-founded speculation about what will happen if we do not go to war.
People need to recognize, however, that government officials and their running dogs in the media, among others, are not soothsayers. None of us knows the future, but these interested parties lack a disinterested motive for making a careful, well-informed forecast. They have, as the saying goes, an agenda of their own. “The best and the brightest” of our leaders and their kept experts generally amount to little more than what C. Wright Mills called “crackpot realists,” and on occasion, such as the present one, they don’t meet even that standard. Hence, lately, these geniuses, equipped with all that secret information they constantly emphasize their critics don’t possess, have put forward forecasts of a “cake walk” through Iraq, a “slam dunk” on finding lots of weapons of mass destruction there, and liberal-democratic dominoes falling across the Middle East — forecasts that fit more comfortably in a lunatic asylum than in a discussion among rational, well-informed people.
The government generally relies on marshalling patriotic emotion and reflexive loyalty rather than on making a sensible case for going to war. Much of the discussion that does take place is a sham, because the government officials who pretend to listen to other opinions, as U.S. leaders did most recently during 2002 and early 2003, have already decided what they are going to do, no matter what other people may say. The rulers know that once the war starts, nearly everybody will fall into line and “support the troops.”
If someone demands that the skeptic about war offer constructive criticism, here is my proposal: always insist that the burden of proof rest heavily on the warmonger. This protocol, which is now anything but standard operating procedure, is eminently judicious because, as we all recognize, war is horrible. Given its horrors, which in reality are much greater than most people appreciate, it only makes sense that those who propose to enter into those horrors make a very, very strong case for doing so. If they cannot — and I submit that they almost never can — then people will serve their interests best by declining an invitation to war. As a rule, the most rational, humane, and auspicious course of action is indeed to give peace a chance.
rhiggs@independent.org
http://www.independent.org/review.html
Read more articles by Robert Higgs
Dear Mr. Higgs: this is "scholarship"? You have in the main simply set up straw men and then only weakly knocked them down. Let's not spend too much time here. Take your number 4.
"(4) “War is horrible, but slavery is worse.” [Winston Churchill]
Maybe slavery is worse, but maybe it’s not; it depends on the conditions of the war and the conditions of the slavery. Moreover, if one seeks to justify a war on the strength of this statement, he had best be completely certain that but for war, slavery will be the outcome. In many wars, however, slavery was never a possibility, because neither side sought to enslave its enemy. Many wars have been fought for limited objectives, if only because more ambitious objectives appeared unattainable or not worth the cost. No war in U.S. history may be accurately seen as having been waged to prevent the enslavement of the American people. Some people talk that way about World War II or, if it be counted as a war, the Cold War, but such talk has no firm foundation in facts."
Your whole answer is: "such talk has no foundation in facts." That is it? Why don't you provide us with just a few facts. Maybe you are from the Pat Buchanan school that suggests that the Allies should have allowed Hitler to take what he wanted of East Europe and just leave well enough alone. That assumes quite a bit, does it not? You’ve said no one can know the future. Granted. But we must speculate about it based upon what we know. What we knew of Hitler at the time was that appeasement or containment didn’t seem to be a real option. Now, you can risk not going to war and hope Germany would have been content with half of Europe or you can decide that allowing him to go further and gain greater territory, resources and strength would have been too much of a risk. I assume you would also have opted not to respond with war to Pearl Harbor. And, you will work to contain the mullahs of Iran as they gain nuclear capacity. But dismissing war as a viable option is as silly as suggesting it is the first option.
Now, a more scholarly approach would have been to discuss War. War, as Clausewitz understood, was, in a day before science had made war almost impossible, often a better policy than “peace”. It is certainly not hard to argue that war is far better an option than “peace” as slavery or as a non-People. War was, before modern science turned it into the possibility of global destruction, a quite viable and appropriate way to acquire territory to build a nation. If you have another approach that would have allowed the establishment of America or the European nations or Australia, etc let me know.
Thus, the question is not war per se, but how has war changed since modern man has turned to and used modern science to build weapons of total destruction. This is where we get to your point through the back door: war is horrible …. But to keep war from being really horrible, it would seem America should use war now to prevent bad people from acquiring the capability of obtaining the war power to destroy the globe. Indeed, while many nations possess this power in part, maybe war should be used to limit this number and possibly even to reduce it. But alas, you are prepared to simply assert that sanctions work or have never been properly applied to preclude war and that war is always worse than its alternative.
The real discussion you should have taken up is the one you dismiss in your first two paragraphs and to which I have alluded above. War in the founding, building, and preserving a nation for its People is a good. Now you might wish to use other “goods” to achieve the same ends but that would mean that you would have to analyze all of the aspects of War that recommend it. Teddy Roosevelt’s comment is not so easily dismissed. But, we would come back to the modern condition of science and war and global destruction. And, to get at that requires real scholarship.
Comment by Phil Tims | September 29, 2006
Wow! How did this article get on this website? Needless to say, I agree with Mr. Higgs.The more one looks at the consequences of the wars the USA has gotten itself into the more one wonders if the effort was worth the cost. War is big government at its worst and its consequence is ever bigger and more intrusive government. Our Founding Fathers warned that war provided the government with the pretext for taking away the liberty of its own people and should be avoided in all but the most vital of circumstances. All this is lost on todays neo-tards who see war as a tool for their foreign policy pipe dreams. War is good to them, a means to a good end.
Comment by David | September 29, 2006
"War is a better option than 'peace'… a quite viable and appropriate way to acquire territory to build a nation". Wow. I'm sorry we ever doubted your expertise on this, Phil. I guess the greatest philosophers in history were completely wrong for thousands of years, during which time they agreed that war was an evil bane to be avoided if at all possible.
This attachment to the nation-state is a moderninst innovation, not "conservative" in the least. If you want to argue that nation-states have (or had) every right to use whatever naked aggression they see fit to ensure their own survival as institutions, you can claim that, but your assertion flies in the face of 2,000 years of Christian tradition, the vast majority of western philosophers, and the whole basis of conservative philosophy. But I guess Thomas Aquinas and St. Augusting weren't conducting "Real Scholarship".
Comment by Ted | September 29, 2006
If the necessity of war has to be explained to Mr. Higgs, then likely he will
never understand it. In his article, it is evident that he has convinced himself
that war can never be justified, that it is an absolute moral evil, and must be
fled, even at the expense of one's own self-respect. I do not argue that "War
is horrible, but…" I argue that war is part and parcel of the human condition, that
it is a metaphor for life, and an absolute necessity for humanity. War is no
more horrible than life itself. For those who enjoy beating their breasts over
young men and women killed by rifle fire and explosives, peacetime offers
horrors no less horrific; for instance, one may become the victim of a serial
killer, a car crash, or a painful and debilitating disease.
What I find inexcusable is the attitude that war is so horrible that it must be
avoided at all costs. Words such as those of Samuel Adams, who said, "If
ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace…Crouch down and
lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and
may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen," show explicitly why
there will always be war; because someone somewhere will want what is
not theirs, and the rightful owners will be obliged to defend it. Those who
would allow their property and dignity to be taken by force deserve neither.
Finally, I argue that war is a good thing because it creates the necessity of
warriors. Warriors are those who have rejected the path of least resistance
and have embraced something larger than themselves. Of course, Mr. Higgs
seems to believe that career military personnel are a vain and greedy lot, who
would think nothing of destroying civilization just for a promotion, so he
or those of his mindset would naturally point to those soldiers and warriors
whose conduct has been wretched and disgraceful. The fact of the matter is,
though, that these people are in the minority, and the vast majority of officers
and men are men of honor and courage, who reflect great credit upon
themselves and their country. It is these people who keep us and our
country alive and safe, and if not for their vigilance and willingness to fight,
people who abhor warfare and the military arts would not be safe to
wallow in their self-congratulatory prejudices.
Comment by Lane Russell | September 29, 2006
It is not war that is horrible per se, for a nation may go to war as an act of genuine self-defense to protect itself from an immediate and undeniable threat. It is premeditated aggression that is horrible, a form of mass murder in fact.
Comment by Max Godwin | September 30, 2006
I will say this. War is horrible but living under the rule of fundamental Islamic radicals may well be the alternative here. If you listen to the Clerics of this so called religion of peace and you cock your head and strain to hear the silence of the moderate Islamic people thoughout the world you might understand that these people want to rule the world and they have found a way of making it happen called Terrorism Look at the vast numbers of Muslims in Europe, especially in France who have basically taken over parts of that country. When they are provoked they riot, burn and murder. When upset by words or pictures they call for the death of America, Israel and anyone else who they disagree with. We are knee deep in this problem and it seems that War is the only viable solution. If you want to give peace a chance with these lunatics I submit that you make yourself available to be the head negotiator. When they send us your head in a bag we will give it a nice funeral…..
Comment by JD Pearce | September 30, 2006
First of all, and I'd like to make it clear that this doesn't have anything to do with your article here, but it's truly disheartening to me that on the 5th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack ever to take place on United States soil, that you had nothing better to do than to sit on Google desperately trying to find "warmonger" quotes so that you could piece together an article about the indefensibility of war. That aside…
"citizens learned to laugh at the pretensions of rulers who claim divine descent or appointment (at least, they had learned until George W. Bush successfully revived the doctrine among the benighted rubes who form the Republican base). Because wars spring in large part from people’s stupidity, ignorance, and gullibility, it is conceivable that alleviation of these conditions might have the effect of diminishing warfare, if not of eliminating it altogether."
Well any credibility that you perceived yourself as having pretty much fell apart right there and exposed your true intentions and objectives in writing this diatribe that you think is "scholorship". I don't recall George W. Bush declaring that he was the God-appointed leader of the American people - to the Republicans or anybody else for that matter. I'd ask you to provide a source for the quote that lead you to that conclusion, but having read your body of work here, I know better than to think that you actually have one. Also, to say that wars spring purely from stupidity and ignorance is, well, pretty stupid and ignorant. Wars have been fought and orchestrated by men far superior in intellect to you or me for shrewd and selective reasons - as you yourself go on to say time and again. I don't think Adolf Hitler was stupid or ignorant, sir. Nor do I think that Osama bin Laden is, or that Alexander the Great was. Quite the contrary, they even know how to manipulate pseudo-intellectual pacifists like you so that while you're waving a signed treaty and proudly proclaiming "Peace in our time!", they can be toppling other countries and laughing about it.
"This venerable broken-window fallacy refuses to die, no matter how many times a stake is driven through its heart. Most Americans believe it. Worse, because less excusable, nearly all historians and even a large majority of economists do so as well. I’ve been whacking this nonsense for several decades, but so far as I can tell, I’ve scarcely made a dent in it. Should anyone care to see a complete counterargument, I recommend the first five chapters of my book Depression, War, and Cold War (2006)."
I don't recall having read any literature that effectively "drove a stake through the heart" of this idea, and judging by your demeanor and attitude, I sincerely doubt that it would take much, if any, research or evidence to convince you otherwise. If you had arguments that were so logically convincing, it escapes me as to why you wouldn't have included them along with your charge, but then you wouldn't want to break precedent, now would you? And as much as I appreciate the subtlety of the shameless plug, I'm not going go spend money on your book (I'm really sorry that I got to read this article for free). But I can imagine that, by your estimation, 15 years of inflationary Keynsian "New Deal" policy, the costs of which are still being counted even today, is what pulled America out of the Great Depression. Socialism usually does, after all. But that's a topic for another discussion.
"What the Israelis have been doing in Lebanon recently bears no comparison with the February 1945 Allied attack on Dresden, of course, but the sight of even one little Lebanese child, dead, her bloody body gruesomely mangled by an explosion, ought to be enough to give pause to any proponent of resort to war. "
What's really sad about the scene you describe is that it wouldn't have happened at all had Lebanese terrorists not begun launching rockets into northern Israel without provocation. What's even more sad is that those same terrorists are too cowardly to fight an actual, declared, uniformed war and instead hide among civilians and launch attacks from private homes so that they can gain sympathy from bleeding heart Americans like yourself when such disturbing images flash across their TV's on CNN. It's sad that your pacifism is selective, in that you find justification for acts of terrorism and violence on the part of people who despise Western society, yet none for retaliatory action against such. And what's the saddest of all is that you fall for it so naively time and time again, all while calling into question the intellect of those who, using history and experience as a guide, see through the deception.
"Given its horrors, which in reality are much greater than most people appreciate, it only makes sense that those who propose to enter into those horrors make a very, very strong case for doing so. If they cannot — and I submit that they almost never can — then people will serve their interests best by declining an invitation to war."
I couldn't agree more. If every person and every nation in the world were to adopt pacifism, how great would that be? In Judaism, peace in the entire earth is one of the conditions of the kingdom of God during the reign of the Messiah. Unfortunately, that's not the case. There are irresponsible people who do commit violence against other nations - "invite" them to war, if you'd like. And to decline the "invitation" does not serve their best interests, unless by that you mean sacrificing national sovereignty and personal liberty for the sake of peace. That's what France did in WWII, and I don't think it led to a peaceful or happy situation for the French people, even by your estimation (though an opinion to the contrary certainly wouldn't surprise me coming from a man who says that George W. Bush is the self-proclaimed theistic leader of the country). Nations would best serve their interests - in most cases - by not extending an "invitation to war" in the first place. For the attacked party to decline the "invitation" is national suicide. I'd rather be barbaric in war and alive than noble in peace and dead. Which works out perfectly, because in the event of a war, you die nobly and your point is made.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | September 30, 2006
Is it just me, or are some of the pro-war commenters here making the exact arguments debunked by Mr. Higgs, while simultaneously claiming that he has set up straw men?
"War is no more horrible than life itself"- really, is that so? I hadn't thought that, because in my daily life, my hometown is not regularly bombed or shelled, my friends and family are not systematically raped and murdered by occupiers, and people don't constantly shoot at me on my way to work. I guess I must be the exception.
"War is horrible but living under the rule of fundamental Islamic radicals may well be the alternative here." Umm, the author of this article just went over this argument above. Read it again.
"'This venerable broken-window fallacy refuses to die, no matter how many times a stake is driven through its heart.' I don’t recall having read any literature that effectively “drove a stake through the heart” of this idea. But I can imagine that, by your estimation, 15 years of inflationary Keynsian “New Deal” policy, the costs of which are still being counted even today, is what pulled America out of the Great Depression."
Actually, I sincerely doubt that Robert Higgs would make such a claim, since Keynsian logic regards war as salubrious to the economy- indeed, it was the prevalence of faulty Keynsian logic that created this fallacy in the first place. And yes, this "broken window fallacy" has been killed time and time again, by every economist with a brain bigger than a pea. Incidentally, conservatives were perfectly aware of this fallacy at the time, and protested the war accordingly. Whether the war was necessary or not, anyone with an IQ in the double digits should be able to tell that WWII came at a cost, not a benefit, to the economy.
Anyway, if you do believe that war is "good for the economy", why don't you advocate perpetual war. Heck, why shouldn't every man, woman, and child go to war with every other man, woman, and child. That should really be good for the economy.
In the end, Robert Higgs is just stating a simple fact that conservatives have known for millennia, but are currently too enamored of war to remember.
Comment by Ted | September 30, 2006
I didn't say that perpetual war, or war in general , was good for the economy, simply that I haven't read any arguments that effectively "drove a stake through the heart" of the idea that WWII played a possibly positive role in America's emergence from the Great Depression. With that triple-digit IQ of yours, and your cunning language comprehension skills you'd think that would have been fairly clear?
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | September 30, 2006
Oh, and given Mr. Higgs' irrational ranting and clear leftward agenda, no, I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that he advocates faulty socialist economic theory, the likes of which is still advocated by Democrats to this very day. Doesn't seem like a far stretch. I didn't realize that he had a cheering squad.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | September 30, 2006
I would agree that limited war as the US and Western world fights it is a waste of US blood and treasure. Total war on the other hand does work for its intended purpose. Mr. Higgs makes the mistake of confusing the war we are fighting now which is limited and done as a function of intelligence operations and compassion that try to single out only the 'bad' guys as opposed to all out total war in which the indigenous populations are literally bombed and gunned to the point where they cannot even raise their hands in supplication to the US. That would be the preferred solution in my book instead of hoping to catch bad guys after they commit an attack which by definition is a losing proposition and strategy.
Don't fight a war unless its all out no holds barred, total warfare against a lesser enemy. That way you if you are the US you will almost always win.
So I'll say it again, limited war serves no purpose other than make some pols. look good and puts the onus on the military because they will get the blame no matter what. The pols. get to tie one hand behind the soldiers and generals backs and still say: " we said to kill the enemy and win in a compassionate way but the military failed."
The worlds' press and wussified historians would raise hell but they would eventually go on to other things and go back to blaming the Israelis for everything bad that happens.
Comment by Dean | September 30, 2006
As far as war failing human decency, its funny how easy it is for decency to be the priority when one is nice, safe and warm because others gave blood to keep a pseudo intellectual like Higgs in freedom and comfort.
Comment by Dean | September 30, 2006
Ted: What is the justification to no 4? Other than the author's naked assertion?
Further, what western philosophers opposed war on principle? Finally, why is war not the best way to found a nation-state. Indeed, given the finite supply of land and the fluid state of Peoplehood — ie, nations, how do you suppose nations from the beginning of time established their physical boundaries if not by war? The ancient Hebrews could have relied upon the King in Heaven to remove the obstacles to Canaan but even they were required, commanded literally, to go to war. Why is that? Why was the founding experience of the Hebrews war to go from a collection of tribes and clans in the desert to a nation with their own land.
Finally, and to return to western philosophy, do you know what Aristotle said of war and the soldier class? Are you aware of its importance to a nation? And, what happens according to Aristotle if these soldiers do not war?
As to Christendom and war, it seems they chose well when confronted with the Islamic threat.
Provide some specifics for your fait accompli if you will.
Comment by Phil Tims | September 30, 2006
This embarrassment of an article is a perfect illustration of the intellectual slight-of-hand that unfortunately is all too typical of the way “scholarship” is conducted by universities and liberal think tanks that routinely start with a conclusion, and work backwards. Let me show you what Bob Higgs does —
(1) Statement: “… before the U.S. government unleashed its armed forces to wreak ‘shock and awe’ on the nearly defenseless people of Iraq.”
*** We fought the Iraqi army, not local street vendors. We targeted government buildings, not office buildings full of innocent civilians.
Statement: “A regime’s disregard of international law, its own people’s wellbeing, and the will of the United Nations etc. [doesn’t justify a military attack].”
*** But violating the terms that ended the first Gulf War does, and from a purely “legal” perspective, this was all that was needed to resume combat.
(2) Statement “War … is the only means of stopping evil.”
*** No one ever claimed was. And in point of fact, all the other options Dr. Higgs pointed out were tried first — unsuccessfully — in part due to UN corruption regarding oil for food.
(3) Statement: “Having uttered this exculpatory incantation over the state’s organized violence, they believe that all transgressions associated with it are automatically absolved”
*** Someone should tell this to the soldiers prosecuted for the Me Lai massacre in Vietnam, or for the rape and murder of Iraqi civilians. This is typical liberal hyperbole that has nothing to do with the key points it is allegedly attacking. As for defending human decency, you might want to ask concentration camp survivors how they felt about the allies going to war against Hitler vs. just sitting that one out since all war is a bad thing.
(4) Statement: “Maybe slavery is worse, but maybe it’s not; it depends on the conditions of the war and the conditions of the slavery.”
*** You now have a perfect example of the moral relativism of the Left. Better to be a slave and alive, than fight against an immoral unjust system that assaults human dignity. This opinion, of course, would be different if the author was the object of the slavery. Then suddenly war would be a very acceptable thing.
(5) Statement: “Perhaps war can be justified at ‘some times,’ but that statement itself in no way shows that the Iraq war can be justified, and it seems all too obvious that it cannot be.”
*** You see what happens when the author is faced with an argument he can’t refute. War can be justified under certain conditions. BUT of course we all KNOW that the IRAQ war CANNOT, so this argument DOESN’T APPLY. Why? Because the author says so.
(6) Statement: “Need to fight for what? The objective dictates whether war is a necessary means for its attainment.”
*** Interesting how this argument was never applied to US actions under Clinton in Bosnia. What exactly was the US national interest in Bosnia, or Haiti? And why was it okay for Clinton to bomb Iraq (the same day he gave his deposition) but not Bush (after going to Congress)?
(7) Statement “Of course war is horrible, but it will always exist, and I’m sick of these pacifist [expletive deleted] ruining any shred of political decency that they can manage.”
*** Actually, we’ll all just sick of the phony outrage about Republican presidents who actually do what Democrat presidents say they want to do. Remember the “regime change” pronouncements of Clinton and the Democrats in 1998? Well, Bush actually did what Clinton said he wanted to do, but just never found the time.
Statement: “whatever else one might say about the pacifists, one may surely say that if everyone were a pacifist, no wars would occur.”
*** Right. Like the pacifist Jews in 1930s Germany, we’d all just end up enslaved by the people who are willing to use force. “Peace” is not the absence of war. That’s the definition of slavery. Nations, like people, must respond to threats or be consumed by them. Even idiot pacifists will fight back against someone who tries to rape and murder their children or spouse. Why is this okay, but it’s not okay fight an aggressive country? And why do we need to wait until someone threatening us shoots us first before reacting to the threat? Read a little history. Hitler acknowledged that if the Brits and French had opposed him early on, he wouldn’t have pursued war. You don’t end a threat by wishing it wasn’t there. You end it by making it clear to the aggressor that the price will be too great to pay if they attack.
(8) Statement: “This statement assumes that war amounts to a contest between freedom and justice on one side and tyranny and injustice on the other.”
*** It isn’t always. But I’ll put the record of my country up against Saddam’s any day if you want to debate who had “freedom and justice” on their side. This is a typical liberal ploy. Argue abstract principles and make general statements instead of using a real world example to address a situation. Or, mix the two together in the same statement. This is why communism always looks so much better to them than capitalism. They compare an existing capitalist country with all its imperfections to a theoretical socialist/communist one. They say you can’t look at China, Russia or Cuba and compare it to the US because those countries haven’t had an opportunity to show what socialism or communism is really capable of. But these same people think nothing about taking the US as it is, and highlight all the flaws of capitalism-in-operation.
(9) Statement: “What the Israelis have been doing in Lebanon recently bears no comparison with the February 1945 Allied attack on Dresden, of course, but the sight of even one little Lebanese child, dead, her bloody body gruesomely mangled by an explosion, ought to be enough to give pause to any proponent of resort to war. Try putting yourself in the place of that child’s mother.”
*** Hey Bob. Ever think of using the example of a Jewish mother whose kid is slaughtered by a terrorist rocket fired indiscriminately into a civilian population center? Or could it be that your “scholarly” analysis has a hidden agenda, rather than being a simple evaluation of the facts as you contend? No one would agree with your conclusions if you said that the Israelis should just allow themselves to be attacked with no response.
(10) Statement: “Whether this bifurcated manner of gaining divine sanction for the commission of mass murder and mayhem represents progress or not, I leave to the learned theologians.”
*** Mighty decent of you. I’m sure God will appreciate it.
(11) Statement: “…in the entire history of warfare in the United States, each war (with the possible exception of the War for Independence) has left the general run of the American people with fewer freedoms after the war than they enjoyed before the war.“
*** Unmitigated BS. Lincoln suspended the Constitution during the Civil War. It was reinstated after with ADDITIONAL guarantees of freedom. In 1945 we executed 8 Nazi saboteurs who reached US soil. In 2006 we give rights to non-uniformed terrorists and enemy combatants, and make them subject to a Geneva convention they didn’t even sign. This sophistry is a prime example of is what happens when you start off with a conclusion that Bush is bad and war is bad, and then fit your facts into that argument.
Statement: “Every time the rulers set out to protect the village, they decide that the best way to do so is to destroy it in the process.”
*** “Every time”, huh. Not 99 out of 100, or 9 out of 10. EVERY time. Do you get the idea that Dr. Higgs is simply making his facts up to bolster his pre-conceived conclusions?
(12) Statement: “War is horrible but some economic good came out of World War II. It brought the United States out of one of the greatest slumps in history, the Great Depression. This venerable broken-window fallacy refuses to die …”
*** This statement has absolutely nothing to do with anything we’re supposedly talking about, but you all should know that even liberal Historians point out that WWII brought full employment and an end to the Depression. The New Deal made inroads in feeding the people, but in and of itself was only marginally successful in restoring the economy. I know a little something about this because it was part of my dissertation. The annual earnings of a bituminous coal miner in 1930 was $989, and had risen to $993 by 1938. In 1923 it was $1697. Given the scholarship displayed by Dr. Higgs so far, you might want to take what he says about this subject with a proverbial grain of salt.
(13) Statement: “I’m trying to convince people that on nearly all occasions, they are allowing their rulers to bamboozle them and to turn them into cannon fodder for purposes that serve the rulers’ interests, not the people’s. I’m getting nowhere in this effort, but I’m going to keep trying.”
*** Or, maybe people aren’t as stupid and bamboozled as you think? Just a thought.
(14) “Of course, war is horrible, but at present, it’s still the only guarantee to maintain peace.”
*** Notice how this guy repeatedly constructs his argument by using absolutes like "every time," “always,” “never,” “the only way” (vs. “a legitimate option under certain defined conditions”).
Be wary of a person who needs to support his arguments this way. I’ll leave it up to you stupid, bamboozled people to decide whether you should put the word “Always” at the beginning of my statement.
I never was a fan of home schooling until I got a liberal arts education taught by people like Dr. Higgs.
Comment by Phil Jackson | September 30, 2006
At first I thought Mr. Higgs was playing a practical joke in submitting this article, just trying to stir up a lot of comments. But then, as the stench of moral superiority started wending its way forth, it became apparent that he thought he was being serious.
Then I started making notes to respond. However, most of those items have been covered by the comments above. For example, "…raising straw dogs."
So I'll just quote two of Mr. Higgs' statements and make a few comments:
"Because wars spring in large part from people's stupitity, ignorance, and gullibility, it is conceivable that alleviation of these conditions might have the effect of diminishing warfare, if not of eliminating it altogether."
"I'm also going to continue to denounce stupidity, ignorance, ugliness, bullying, bad breath, and rap music, even though I don't expect to succeed in those quests either."
Well, if in his editorship and with his moral superiority he expects to fail, how could we mere mortals expect to succeed?
Do I discern some amount of intolerance on the part of Mr. Higgs? Afterall, some of us folks jus' aren't as smart as others, some of us aren't as pretty, and some of us have health conditions which make good breath impossible.
Maybe the answer is for Mr. Higgs (and the rest of us) to move to Ted's hometown (see comment #7) where a shot is never fired and neither rape nor murder ever occurs. That town must be utopia. The kind Mr. Higgs describes, but admits isn't possible.
Mike Brown
Comment by Mike Brown | October 1, 2006
Phil is wrong here. Higgs is right
Point 1
“We fought the Iraqi army, not local street vendors. We targeted government buildings, not office buildings full of innocent civilians.”
No real fight Phil. The army melted into local pop. You did fight vendors and such. Lots of innocents died. At present look here. http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ That’s a huge number of dead and the count just keeps on growing. Real stupid disbanding the army and I guess you needed a few more people that could speak the language. That way you might have had a clue what was happening.. Wait a minute! They were dancing in the streets and offering roses!!
Statment
“But violating the terms that ended the first Gulf War does, and from a purely “legal” perspective, this was all that was needed to resume combat.”
Why not resume combat with North Korea Phil? All your prerequisites are filled.
Point 2
“. No one ever claimed was. And in point of fact, all the other options Dr. Higgs pointed out were tried first — unsuccessfully — in part due to UN corruption regarding oil for food”
All the options were not tried Phil. Hans Blix? Ring a bell? He said give us more time. We think they have no weapons. But next; Shock and Awe! You ridiculed Mr Blix. Now look where you are.
Point 3
“Someone should tell this to the soldiers prosecuted for the Me Lai massacre in Vietnam, or for the rape and murder of Iraqi civilians. This is typical liberal hyperbole that has nothing to do with the key points it is allegedly attacking. As for defending human decency, you might want to ask concentration camp survivors how they felt about the allies going to war against Hitler vs. just sitting that one out since all war is a bad thing.”
The really stupid Hitler point. Many people that went to war against Hitler went to war because they had to. When the average person found out they realized what had to be done. No lies were needed. No need to distort the truth and pull stunts like Saddam can fire missiles in 45 minutes.
http://www.downingstreetsays.org/archives/000203.html
People will fight Phil just don’t lie to them.
Point 4
“You now have a perfect example of the moral relativism of the Left. Better to be a slave and alive, than fight against an immoral unjust system that assaults human dignity. This opinion, of course, would be different if the author was the object of the slavery. Then suddenly war would be a very acceptable thing.”
Phil The point was no wars were fought for slaves. Get with the program. You’re the one trying to jump through hoops here.
Point 5
“You see what happens when the author is faced with an argument he can’t refute. War can be justified under certain conditions. BUT of course we all KNOW that the IRAQ war CANNOT, so this argument DOESN’T APPLY. Why? Because the author says so. “
Shut up with the fake intellectualism and tell us why this is a just and holy war.
Point 6
“Interesting how this argument was never applied to US actions under Clinton in Bosnia. What exactly was the US national interest in Bosnia, or Haiti? And why was it okay for Clinton to bomb Iraq (the same day he gave his deposition) but not Bush (after going to Congress)?”
Quit the Clinton red herring stuff. This is about war. You post something never mentioned here. Clint is not in office. Your man is.
Point 7
“Actually, we’ll all just sick of the phony outrage about Republican presidents who actually do what Democrat presidents say they want to do. Remember the “regime change” pronouncements of Clinton and the Democrats in 1998? Well, Bush actually did what Clinton said he wanted to do, but just never found the time.”
All this proves is that the USA is consistent in it’s stupidity.
Statement
He was just stating if peace was EVERYONE’S objective there would be no wars. This is a pure truth Phil. The problem occurs when some guy wants to rape your wife, take your farm, steal your money or occupy the oil ministry of another country.
Point 8
“ This is a typical liberal ploy.” Boy is this statement ever getting tired, I hear it everywhere on this site.
About freedom and justice on one side and tyranny and injustice on the other. See here.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/03/1083436542947.html
My point is you have lost moral ground by your own actions. You can easily say Saddam was a nutcase but what about the Army? Sloppy bookkeeping?
Point 9
This isn’t about theLebanese, Jewish or Palestinians. It’s about mother and children. Quit baiting.
Point 10
“Whether this bifurcated manner of gaining divine sanction for the commission of mass murder and mayhem represents progress or not, I leave to the learned theologians.”
“Mighty decent of you. I’m sure God will appreciate it.”
It was your man that said God told him to invade. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1007-03.htm
Too bad he didn’t know a few learned theologians.
Point 11
You might be right here. 2006 New torture definitions, enemy combatants, homeland security wiretapping, mining data. Sounds like Nirvana to me.
Statement: “Every time the rulers set out to protect the village, they decide that the best way to do so is to destroy it in the process.”
*** “Every time”, huh. Not 99 out of 100, or 9 out of 10. EVERY time. Do you get the idea that Dr. Higgs is simply making his facts up to bolster his pre-conceived conclusions? “
I concede. Out of 100 villages one gets spared. Feel better now?
Point 12
You are right again sir! Halliburton is making out like bandits.
Point 13
Phil I know your feeling good about the upcoming election this year but we will see how bamboozled the people really are.
Point 14
The point he is making is either you support war or not. Only a moron “sorta” supports war.
“I never was a fan of home schooling until I got a liberal arts education taught by people like Dr. Higgs.”
In conclusion Phil I never was a fan of home schooling until I ran into people with Phd after their names. Liberal arts must have been doing something for you Phil, you took an awful lot of it…
Comment by Patrick DeBurg | October 1, 2006
I don't feel the need to write a huge essay, but feel the need to shoot down a few basic assumptions that have been asserted as simple fact.
The author has said that "other methods than War have never really been tried". This is blatantly and demonstratably false. Appeasement is the easiest rebuttal to this. Sanctions are repeatedly issued, and just because some body (such as the U.N.) circumvents these sanctions is a testiment to their ineffectual nature. It is NOT a refutal of them being tried. It is the simple fact that they cannot work.
There is a general feel that war can never be justified, which is utter nonsense. One does not need a consensus of foreign nations to defend itself or to disarm a beligerant who is supporting it's enemies. To say othewise is nonsensical. There are several reasons that war can be justified: self defense (current or pre-emptive), support of one's enemies, certain humanitarian conditions, etc.
And finally in the case of "all of Bush's lame excuses about Iraq being wrong", this is simple to shoot down as well. That Saddam was a supporter of terrorists has never been (nor can it be now) a subject of debate amongst intelligent people. It is something that our dear deposed dictator is very proud of and has bragged about many many times. That al Quida showed some brother hood with Iraq in their videos of justification of agression against America, and the Iraqi papers which show at least casual meetings with members of al Quida…That Iraq harbored the original WTC bomber does not prove that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 or even modern al Quida, but it does raise questions, and disprove both allegations that "there was no link to al Quida" and that "the two were incompatable". The door may not have been open, people may not have been passing through, but it certainly was not locked. So to are Bush's allegations about WMDs still not only disproved, but have actually been confirmed. We have found weapons (though of degraded quality), that at the very least confirm that Saddam hadn't destroyed the weapons he was supposed to. And the testimony of Iraqi ex-general Sada (not to mention satelite photos) at least casts some doubt on the idea that Saddam "had no weapons".
And more over, once Saddam defied the sanctions that allowed the ceasefire to take place, we didn't have to prove he had weapons, all we had to do was point to the very fact that he was defying the terms of his peace treaty. Simple as that.
That our author is able to look up some VERY weak pro-war sentiments, doesn't shoot down the validity of war anymore than the weakest pro-peace arguments don't invalidate the case for restraint. War is ONLY horrible because innocents die, and blood is shed. But fights are horrible because people get hurt…that doesn't dissaude us in fighting in self defense. The fact that police action has led to unwarranted deaths and abuses of power don't dissuade us from using police forces to keep us safe.
The fact that our author makes the ridiculous claim that war is never "really" justified is not the problem. The problem comes in the setting up of weak arguments from his opponents to bloat his case and overgeneralizations to try to over-simplify his opposition…not to mention the deliberate distortion of facts over the Iraqi war.
Comment by WolvenBear | October 1, 2006
Patrick
Part of the challenge of an intellectual debate is to focus. Dr. Higgs made a number of statements that I replied to, such as “… the U.S. government unleashed its armed forces to wreak ‘shock and awe’ on the nearly defenseless people of Iraq.” Iraq had the 4th largest standing army in the world, and our attack was directed against them, not the civilian population.
Higgs framed the issue of the “justification for war” (which was the subject of his essay) dishonestly, and I called him on it. Just like I’m calling you on the equally dishonest way you want to ignore Higgs’ original essay, and my response to it, to say that there was “no real fight” because we defeated them easily. What does this have to do with Higgs’ contention that our attack was aimed at the civilian population?
If you want to write an essay about why Saddam’s officer corps, professional military, and conscripts should have been kept in uniform, why don’t you? If you want to write an essay about foreign fighters in Iraq terror bombing the civilian population of Bagdad, why don’t you? If you want to write an essay that claims that nowhere in Iraq was the US welcomed as a liberating force, why don’t you? It’s not the subject of this essay, but it would give us an opportunity to see how you put an analysis together instead of simply reciting a series of random thoughts.
But you won’t (or rather, can’t), because you have no position. You simply take the opposite view of whatever is said and argue that point.
North Korea has not violated the Armistice by shooting at allied planes and kicking UN inspectors out of their country. These were the terms of the agreement that ended the Gulf War. If you want to make a case that we should attack North Korea, do so in an essay. I didn’t, because there is no legal parallel between 1952 and 1992. The only way you can reply is to invent things I didn’t say and respond to that, unlike myself and the others who responded to what Higgs actually said, and replied to that.
If you want to simply vent about the Bush Administration, there are plenty of other websites to choose from. What makes this different is that the audience actually reads the essays, and the comments to the essays, and responds to what was said rather than what you wished someone said so you could have something to reply to.
And some separation between paragraphs wouldn’t hurt if and when you every do anything more than rant and vent when making a reply instead of offering a thoughtful comment that is actually on point.
Phil
PS: By the way, saying that you “really do offer thoughtful comments” isn’t proof that you do. They have to be internally consistent, on point, and comprehensible to others to past the first test here.
Comment by Phillip Ellis Jackson | October 1, 2006
"Why not resume combat with North Korea Phil? All your prerequisites are filled."
Absolutely! North Korea is a huge threat. You speak as though combat with a country that has nuclear weapons and is headed by a man who just might be as crazy as you claim George Bush is is the most outlandish thing you've ever heard in your entire life.
"All the options were not tried Phil. Hans Blix? Ring a bell? He said give us more time."
This was after how many years in Iraq? Regardless of whether Sadaam Hussein was a pacifist in the likeness of Ghandi or whether he was the next Joseph Stalin, the UN failed miserably long before our second war with Iraq began in 2003. If the UN had actually been doing its job from the beginning, Iraq's government and military would have been relatively transparent and we would have known that there were no WMD's since the first president Bush's administration. But that probably would have been a slight conflit of interest since the Secretary General of the UN was stealing money from the humanitarian UN Oil-For-Food program. If your answer to world peace is the UN, you need to get out of the sun.
"Quit the Clinton red herring stuff."
Hahahahaha. How's that for irony, huh? Coming from a guy who does nothing but habitually reguritate the exact same presidential "red herring's" regardless of the topic or circumstances.
"This isn’t about the Lebanese, Jewish or Palestinians. It’s about mother and children. Quit baiting."
Quit baiting? We're back to that ironic sense of humour of yours again, aren't we? You can't have a discussion about your favorite brand of dog food without mentioning how the Republicans are a bunch of corrupt liars (which in and of itself is ironic enough considering the political party you heil to) and the war in Iraq is a disaster.
"we will see how bamboozled the people really are."
What can one say, except "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". Getting back to irony again, it's absolutely hilarious that you liberals applaud a president who outrightly lied under oath before Congress and was impeached for it, yet your entire world comes to an end because our current president went to war based on what later turned out to be bad intel. Of course, after the rousing successes in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Albania and Iraq during your favorite administration, I can see how this conlict would be such a dissapointment to you.
P.S.
Sources like the one's you've cited here aren't generally taken very seriously outside of Air America, you might want to try someplace with some shred of neutrality and/or credibility next time instead of a place that tally's the Iraqi civilian death count based on "reports" that come almost exclusively from (historically accurate and un-biased) Arab TV, with the infrequent exception of the entirely forthright and un-biased BBC. That' not mentioning 2 and a half year old articles from Australian news about a contrived scandal for which the "perpetrators" are already behind bars, where they shall never again commit the horrific crime of pointing at a man's genitals and laughing. Better lock up every woman who's ever datead a liberal.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | October 2, 2006
Patrick
Part of the challenge of an intellectual debate is to focus. Dr. Higgs made a number of statements that I replied to, such as “… the U.S. government unleashed its armed forces to wreak ‘shock and awe’ on the nearly defenseless people of Iraq.” Iraq had the 4th largest standing army in the world, and our attack was directed against them, not the civilian population.
Higgs framed the issue of the “justification for war” (which was the subject of his essay) dishonestly, and I called him on it. Just like I’m calling you on the equally dishonest way you want to ignore Higgs’ original essay, and my response to it, to say that there was “no real fight” because we defeated them easily. What does this have to do with Higgs’ contention that our attack was aimed at the civilian population?
If you want to write an essay about why Saddam’s officer corps, professional military, and conscripts should have been kept in uniform, why don’t you? If you want to write an essay about foreign fighters in Iraq terror bombing the civilian population of Bagdad, why don’t you? If you want to write an essay that claims that nowhere in Iraq was the US welcomed as a liberating force, why don’t you? It’s not the subject of this essay, but it would give us an opportunity to see how you put an analysis together instead of simply reciting a series of random thoughts.
But you won’t (or rather, can’t), because you have no position.
North Korea has not violated the Armistice by shooting at allied planes, and kicking UN inspectors out of their country. These were the terms of the agreement that ended the Gulf War. If you want to make a case that we should attack North Korea, do so in an essay. I didn’t, because there is no legal parallel between 1952 and 1992. The only way you (and Higgs) can reply is to invent things I didn’t say and respond to that, unlike myself and the others who responded to what Higgs actually said, and replied to that.
If you want to simply vent about the Bush Administration, there are plenty of other websites to choose from. What makes this different is that the audience actually reads the essays, and the comments to the essays, and responds to what was said rather than what you wished someone said so you could have something to reply to.
And some separation between paragraphs wouldn’t hurt if and when you every do anything more than rant and vent when making a reply instead of offering a thoughtful comment that is actually on point.
Phil
PS: By the way, saying that you “really do offer thoughtful comments” isn’t proof that you do. They have to be internally consistent, on point, and comprehensible to others to past the first test here.
Comment by Phillip Ellis Jackson | October 2, 2006
First, my appologies to Dr. Higgs for addressing him as "Mr."; I had not researched his bio to determine his title.
Second, to quote Mr. De Burg:
"He was just stating if peace was everyone's objective there would be no wars. This is pure truth Phil."
Ahh the memories. It was English 1A. Just before Christmas we were assigned the task of writing an essay regarding Christmas. The titles came back "Christmas Is the Time of Year To Remember Others", "My Favorite Christmas Was…", and so on.
The Prof gave quite a speech after grading the papers. He said that most of the papers would be receiving less than average grades because they had relied on the premise "The Sun Rises In the East and Sets In the West…and I don't care what you say, I'll fight for that to the death".
And here, on the most intellectlual of websites we here the premise that if everyone believed in peace, the world would be peaceful. I've been waiting years to learn that! Maybe the next premise will be "If Everyone Ate Tofu, We'd All Be Eating Tofu".
There's another issue which continues to whine from the Neo-Coms: the death of innocents. I need some help here. When doing the body count, how do they tell the innocents from the radicals? Are they wearing ID tags? Is it the women and children? The ones marching in demonstrations carrying banners and weapons? The ones standing in the center of roadways to slow our troops so they can be attacked? Are people unwilling to stand up for their own freedom innocent?
Mike Brown
Comment by Mike Brown | October 2, 2006
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." George Orwell.
I would submit that NO social or political movement ever succeeded or survived without violence or the threat of violence.
Dr. Higgs, your arguments are assorted foolishness, already thoroughly discredited by human nature and all of human history.
Comment by RSB | October 2, 2006