Martin Radwin

Rick Giles is now a free man. He's back in New Zealand, courtesy of a free plane ride he never asked for from US immigration. I'm not sure if we should thank these benevolent bureaucrats for protecting us from a potential terrorist from New Zealand. These days, you can never be too careful. http://www.solopassion.com/node/3602 Martin

Wolf, Michael has given no reason to believe that he is a thug, as in a violent criminal. I'd be willing to bet that Michael is a very decent guy who has never engaged in an act of initiatory violence in his entire life. It is his views regarding the morality of US government violence against innocent people outside the US that I (and presumably you) regard as thuggish. The reason I've spent so much time responding to Michael is not that I believe that I have the slightest chance of influencing his views even one iota. Rather, it is that Michael's views regarding the proper role of the US government in the conduct of foreign policy pretty much reflect the mainstream views of the organized objectivist movement, both ARI and TAS, although TAS expresses these basic views in a "kinder and gentler" fashion. I think it's sad that the objectivist movement, which had the potential to be a beacon of light for the dissemination of the ideas of liberty, has been largely taken over by people such as Yaron Brook, who advocates a policy of mass murder against the innocent residents of nations deemed enemies of the United States. Martin

Yes, for some strange reason I am more concerned about people who wish to kill me posessing nukes than people who do not wish to kill me. I would be the target of those created in Iran. Never mind the nature and types of governments you are comparing here (or not comparing, as is the case) Stating that you are not concerned about the US using nuclear weapons against another country is no different than a resident of another country stating that he is not concerned about his government using nuclear weapons against the US. All it demonstrates it that, like the hypothetical resident of another country, Let me repeat for you "never mind the nature and types of governments you are comparing here (or not comparing, as is the case)" I do not care if Canada, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Poland, South Korea, etc get Nuclear weapons, because there is little to no chance that they will ever use them on another free constitutional democracy. I DO care if Iran, Iraq, Afghansatan, Syria, Libya, Egypt, North Korea, Burma, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Berundi, etc, (i.e. the horrific shitty murderous dictatorships or soon to be) get them, because they are FAR MORE likely to use them. You take a statement, that I don't care if the US gets nuclear weapons because it wont use them on me, and isolate it from it's context. Just like a typical liberatarian, they nature and type of the government in quesiton is irrelevant, because *all governments* are equally invalid, whether it is a constitutional liberal democracy with a mostly market based economy, or a horrific socialist dictatorial totalitarian nightmare state. As if a theif and a defender of his property have equal claims to shoot each other. As if a cop having a gun is the same thing as a serial murderer. You completely ignore the nature of the use of the weapon and the nature of the country using it. If you did not know full well what I was saying before, any rational person ought to now, so cease these absurd comparisons (as if just because something is called a 'nation' it is in every way morally valid with any other 'nation), argue that they are invalid, or drop this topic, because it's a waste of time now. If you think North Korea having nuclear weapons is the same thing as The United States having them, your are an ignorant fool. I never said that you "don't care if the US gets nuclear weapons because it wont use them on me". What I said was that you don't care if the US uses nuclear weapons on Iran, because you won't be the target of them. This is pretty self-evidently true. If you lived in Iran, would you still advocate US use of nuclear weapons, knowing that there was a very good chance that you would be killed, maimed, or sickened by the resulting radiation fallout? There are no shortage of armchair American warriors who thoughtlessly advocate bombing the shit out of foreigners who live thousands of miles away, knowing that they will be a safe distance from the carnage. To them, the carnage is nothing more than a two minute spot on the eleven o'clock news. They can go about their normal lives, watching "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" while American bombs and bullets are destroying another country. Just as most Americans don't know, don't want to know, and don't care what has happened in Iraq since the US invasion. As to your straw man characterizations of my supposed beliefs, I've never argued, nor do I believe, that all governments are equally invalid, or that there is no difference between the government of a constitutional republic and the government of a totalitarian dictatorship. What I have argued is that, just because the government of the US is better than the government of Iran, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, doesn't mean that the US government thereby has the right to launch aggressive wars against other nations, bombing, invading, and occupying them and killing their citizens. The fact that the US government is better than the governments of totalitarian states does not exempt it from morality or the standards of civilized behavior. Your position, by contrast, appears to be that, because of the superiority of the US government, it can do whatever the hell it wants to do. It can go to war with any country it doesn't like, kill as many foreigners as it wishes, and then blame the resulting death on the attacked country's government. You have given the US government a moral blank check to do whatever the hell it wants and accept no blame for any of it. Your use of the analogy of a thief and a defender of property, as well as your analogy of a cop and a serial murderer, is itself rather revealing. You appear to see the world entirely in black and white, with the Islamic countries wearing black hats and the US wearing a white hat. Well, things aren't quite that simple. The US government's white hat is a rather dark shade of gray. The US government is certainly no defender of property. Not the property of Iraqis, which has been massively destroyed by the US invasion. Not the property of the Iranians, who were killed by the hundreds of thousands in the Iran - Iraq war, a war in which the US government supported Iraq. Nor the property of the US military, who have been killed, maimed, psychologically scarred, and financially ruined by the thousands to fight a war based on a series of carefully orchestrated lies. Nor the property of Americans, who will have to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in involuntarily extracted taxes, future debt payments, and inflated money to pay for this clusterfuck of a war. Your analogy to cops as the good guys is revealing in another way, considering how police are becoming increasingly violent and abusive as the US slowly lurches toward a police state. Radley Balko has spent years meticulously documenting the kinds of horrors often perpetrated by the police these days. I can make the same argument, with more validity, against you, because you don't give a shit about the 10's of millions of people who yearn for freedom yet continue to live in a murderous dictatorial hell hole because you don't think it's ever morally right for a free militarily more powerful nation to make a reasonable effort to end the rule of a tyranical despotic government, condemining millions to a life of slavery now, and hundreds of millions of future generations. You can make the argument, but the argument has no validity. Unlike you, I have no illusions about the nature of governments in general, even governments such as ours which are much better than the governments of totalitarian states. Governments, including our own, don't give a shit about defending anyone's freedom, especially not the freedom of the innocent citizens of countries whose governments are hostile to our government. Why should one expect that the US government is concerned about the freedom of foreigners, while it is busy here at home trashing the freedom of Americans, passing such abominations as the Military Commissions Act, which established torture as official US policy and essentially abolished the right of habeas corpus, while it claims the right for the executive branch to label anyone, including American citizens as "enemy combatants", have them arrested and potentially locked up forever without evidence or trial? While the US government claims the right to spy on all Americans. to intercept their communications without even the formality of a court order. The US government has long since trashed most of what is left of the US Constitution. Yet you expect this government to free the enslaved people of the world? The US government is concerned only with maintaining and expanding the US empire and military sphere of influence. It is busily building multiple permanent military bases in Iraq, to be used as forward staging areas for future military attacks on Iran or other potential "enemies". Freedom for Iraqis, Iranians, or anyone else is not on its agenda. Nice strawmen you're creating and then knocking down. I have never morally equated the US as a country with totalitarian dictatorships, not have I morally equated the US government with the governments of totalitarian dictatorships. What I've consistently argued is that, whatever the moral status of the US government relative to other governments, when the US government launches wars of aggression and kills innocent people, it is acting as a criminal government that should be held morally responsible for its crimes. The fact that it is morally superior to the government of Saudi Arabia doesn't absolve it of its crimes. I've heard more than enough of this "moral equivalence" argument, and the argument is so much bullshit. It's exactly analogous to arguing that, if an upstanding member of the community goes out and commits a grisly murder, he should not be held responsible for the murder he committed, because there is no moral equivalence between him and a brutal serial killer who commits the same crime. How would such an argument stand up in a court of law? Once again, you are claiming that the US government is seeking to free the "hostages" held by the Iraqi government, and that its presumed intention in attacking Iran would be to free the Iranian "hostages" as well. This, as I have conclusively argued here and in my previous posts, is complete nonsense. The US government has launched multiple military attacks on many countries throughout the world since the end of WW2, and only a tiny number of these have led to any increase in freedom for any of the nations attacked. Not only does the government lack the incentive to actually liberate foreigners, it completely lacks either the knowledge or the competence to achieve such an objective, even if it wanted to. Yet you accuse me of "depraved indifference" for acknowledging the reality that our government cannot and will not turn the world into a libertarian paradise. You pretend to have concern for the enslaved Iraqis and Iranians, while advocating a policy of bombing them, destroying their infrastructure, and massively killing them. You pretend that the US government is seeking to liberate Iraqis, while it is in fact brutalizing them, torturing them, killing them, imprisoning them, imposing the equivalent of martial law on them, and setting up the conditions for the complete balkanization of Iraq via massive ethnic cleansing between sunnis and shia. After having supported the shia central government, the US government is now supporting sunni militias which are attacking the shia. After having supported the kurds, the US government is now prepared to attack the kurds in order to placate Turkey. This is the nature of the compassion the US government has showed to Iraqis, as opposed to my "depraved indifference". Having destroyed Iraq in the name of liberating it, you are now advocating that the US government destroy Iran, also in the name of liberating it. And much like the 'peace overtures' of Hitler, Stalin, Mousilini, etc, they are a bunch of crap. It never ceases to amaze me how you anti-american liberatirans take everything every shitty murderous dictatorships, which imprison peaceful dissenters, control all media with violent force, refuse entry to international NGO's which monitor civil liberties and corruption, 'dissappear' people all the time) says at face value, yet believe everything the US, a free nation with a constitution, freedom of speech, and rule of law, says, is a lie. It's frankly disgusting. More strawmen on your part. I don't have to believe that the Iranian government is particularly honest or ethical to believe that it has a strong incentive to not attack the United States, being as the United States has the military capability to easily destroy Iran, and the Iranian government is not crazy enough to wish to be destroyed. Nor do I believe that everything the US government says is a lie. But it has such a long history of telling lies that pretending otherwise or taking anything that it says at face value would constitute a willful refusal to face reality. I all ready said I disagree with the way the US handles Saudi Arabia, so you'll have to up the notch on your mind numbing anti-us libertarian rants. Both Saudia Arabia AND Iran are mortal enemies to us. I do NOT think it's 'PERFECTLY FINE' to attack Iran with Nuclear Weapons, a controlled standard chemical weapon attack ON THEIR NUCLEAR REACTORS are perfectly sufficient. Stop this disengenous hyperbole and respond to WHAT I SAY not what YOU THINK I SAY. You've repeatedly responded to your strawman characterizations of my arguments, rather than what I've actually said. Anyway, you already stated in a previous post that you had no problem with the US attacking Iran with nuclear weapons. It seems you are now changing your position on this. An attack with non-nuclear weapons has no justification either. You undoubtedly don't care one bit about this, but Iran has a perfect right to its nuclear reactors. Iran has the right to operate nuclear reactors and to enrich uranium, under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a treaty to which it is a signatory. Even if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon, it would be of no use as an offensive weapon, since using it would lead to Iran's destruction, and the Iranian government is not so crazy as to seek its own destruction. The only purpose of a nuclear weapon, were it to be developed, would be as a weapon of deterrence, to keep the US from attacking it. Iran cannot have failed to notice that Iraq, lacking nuclear weapons, was brutally attacked by the US, while North Korea, having nuclear weapons, was not attacked. The US government has thereby given a huge incentive to nations to obtain nukes in order to deter an attack by the US. But, according to you, none of this matters. Iran is defying the will of the great god US government, so this great god has the right to bomb Iran into submission. All in the name of liberating it, of course. You fail to realize that 'deterrence' is irrelevant unless backed up by a CREDIBLE USE OF REAL FORCE. I still do not yet understand how libertarian isolationists and liberal moral relativists maintain this massive 'blank out'. A threat of 'serious consequences' to Iraq for not allowing weapons inspectors in is useless if violating it is responded with yet another meaningless threat. It's the pathetic attempt of going through the motions of trying to promulgate a peaceful world (with context, of justice and freedom) without actually doing anything to move toward that end. The fact that nuclear weapons were maintained by both the US and Soviet Union only for deterrence prevented a catastrophic nuclear war between the two great powers. They even prevented direct non-nuclear conflict between the US and Soviet Union. As such, they served a very valuable purpose, even though they were never used. Should the US be insane enough to use nuclear weapons against Iran, violating this tacit agreement, we will all live to regret this decision. This bleating about Iraqi WMDs is a rather sick example of hypocrisy, given that the US was one of the countries that provided Iraq with the WMDs in the first place. The US is one of the leading sellers of military hardware throughout the world, including to such disreputable dictatorships as Saudi Arabia. So, having provided Iraq with some of the WMDs in the first place, the US government then claims the right to invade Iraq in order to destroy the WMDs that it gave them. Long before the US invasion of Iraq, it was well known that the Iraqi WMDs had already been destroyed, but this evidence was suppressed in order to justify an invasion that had already been decided, for reasons having nothing to do with WMDs or liberating the Iraqi people. And here's a hint for you. The US policy of preventive war, claiming the right to attack any country it even suspects may eventually pose a threat to it, is not a policy that is going to promulgate a peaceful world. Nor is that the purpose of this policy. The purpose is to establish US hegemony over areas of the world that it views as being of strategic importance to the US and therefore wishes to control. A peaceful world in not promulgated by a policy of endless war. Yes, all of this is true. Yet you act as though these "high precision" weapons are a panacea. The situation in Iran was in the context of a global war against communism, the situation in Iraq now is in the context in a global war against statism, regression, totalitarianism, terrorism, and brutal oppression. When you are being held hostage by a murderous government and being tortured, you don't particular care whether or not you can park in a handicap parking spot. You have an excuse for everything. No matter what our government does, no matter how many victims of its policies, you find a way to justify it. You have granted to our government a moral blank check. The US has never been held hostage by any of these countries against whom who have justified going to war. One cannot fight terrorism and brutal oppression by engaging in terrorism and brutal oppression. Hello? as I all ready said, THE SOVIET UNION WAS TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE ENTIRE WORLD, and was, obviously, a much greater threat to global peace and human well being than the lack of representative governments were. Do not equate ANYTHING during the cold war with anything AFTER the cold war. You, like most libertarians, think the whole threat of communism was just a big misguided joke. The 170 million people murdered while you huffed and haughed at your hippy rallies prove otherwise. There is no greater anti-thetical idea to libertarianism than communism was. You would have been the first to be killed by them. The power of the Soviet Union was greatly exaggerated. The CIA grossly overestimated the actual technological capability of the Soviet Union, which under communism was basically a third world country with nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union could not even feed its own people. The US was more than capable of defending itself against the Soviet threat without engaging in multiple proxy wars and supporting brutal dictators like the Shah of Iran. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, where is the "peace dividend" that we were supposed to receive? Where are the reductions in the "defense" budget? More money is now spent on the military than ever before, even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the mortal threat against which our previously huge military industrial complex was justified. Amazing, isn't it? Our military industrial complex has found a whole new series of threats that justify greater and greater expenditures of money and lives. That's the way any bureaucracy works, including the defense bureaucracy. No problem is ever solved, or, if one problem is solved, two new problems are suddenly found, so that the bureaucracy is supposedly needed more than ever. By such means, all government bureaucracies expand without end, until they slowly strangle the life out of the society over which they rule. Yet, according to you, all of this is somehow the fault of the Iraqi insurgency. The US government bears no responsibility at all for any of the crimes it has committed or the carnage that has followed. No, not according to me, as I said all ready: A small extrapolation on your part should give you a decent understanding of where I place moral culpability. Do I need to explicitly state it? I understand precisely where you place moral culpability. Your beliefs in this regard are complete bullshit. They are nothing more than a rationalization for the US government to do whatever the hell it wants, no matter how many innocent people die as a result, and to place the blame for these crimes either on the victims or on the governments under which the victims live. Just as a man needs no right to act to protect his neighbor, a nation needs no right to act to protect the rights of the people of another nation. Any assault on property rights and civil liberties anywhere in the world is an assault to all property and rights every where in the world. So, following this ethical principle of yours, since the US government has massively violated the rights of Americans in a million different ways that I don't need to list here, I assume that you would have no problem with foreign governments attacking the US in order the protect the rights of Americans, even if millions of Americans were to die in these attacks. After all, "Any assault on property rights and civil liberties anywhere in the world is an assault to all property and rights every where in the world". So the US government violations of the rights of Americans represents an assault on the property rights and civil liberties of Russians, who therefore should have the right to take whatever actions are necessary to "liberate" the Americans. Right? I have outlined the multiple justifications in a bullet list format, yours is a niave and grossle over simplistic interpretation which does not abide to the reality of the situation. If that was the goal, it would have been much easier to just buy off Saddam and get a steady supply of oil, but this of course would have perpetuated our current 'supporting murderous dictatorships and the breeding of terrorists' economy, which is not in our, nor anyone in the world (except for those murderous dictators) best interest. I still await your definitions of self defense and threat. None of your justifications has any validity. There is only one valid justification for going to war with another nation -- self defense. The meanings of self defense and threat are pretty self evident. You have attempted to stretch the definitions of these terms to the point of utter meaninglessness, such that the US government can attack anyone it wants for pretty much any reason it wants and then justify this as self defense. There is no such thing as 'international law' especially if they come from organizations which give equal say to murderous dictatorships. So there's no such thing as 'international law'? I guess the only law remaining is the will of the US government, which can do whatever it pleases and which rightfully enforces its wishes upon the world with bombs, bullets, and invading soldiers. Martin

I agree. If we have to talk about sex organs, I would much rather talk about female sex organs! Martin

Martin, This is one of the excesses of rhetoric that characterizes this kind of debate and, unfortunately, it clouds the message to those who would be sympathetic. I agree in full with you about the monkeyshines and pure incompetence of the USA government in its Middle Ease policies (remember in the Afghanistan war that hardly anybody on our side even spoke Farsi, although that was the language of Iran?), but it did not overthrow anybody in Iran. It backed Iranians who did the overthrowing (and they had to speak in English to get that backing). There was the element of local politics that would have existed with or without the USA. Michael, The US government, working in conjunction with the British government through the CIA, was intimately involved in the planning and execution of the coup. Without the participation of the CIA, the coup would almost certainly never have happened. The fact that Iranians were also involved in the coup and that, after the coup, Iranians such as the Shah were in charge of the government, does not in any way detract from the fact that it was the American CIA that executed the coup that overthrew the Iranian government of Mosaddeq. The Shah was basically an American puppet. The US supported the Shah through all the many brutal years of his regime, including helping to set up and train SAVAK, the Iranian secret police. Given all of these facts, I don't see that my description constitutes much of an excess of rhetoric. You refer to "the monkeyshines and pure incompetence of the USA government in its Middle East policies", but in this description you are leaving out the most important aspect of the US government behavior; namely, its profound immorality. This is a moral issue, not just an issue of competent execution. If an immoral policy is carried out with supreme competence, this does not detract from the immorality of the policy. This description has been used repeatedly with regard to the US invasion of Iraq. It has been pointed out endlessly that the invasion was incompetently planned and incompetently executed. While this is certainly true, it does not address the much more fundamental issue that the invasion itself was a profoundly immoral act of aggression against a country that did not attack the US and represented no signficant threat to the US. The US policy toward Iran was sickeningly immoral. Supporting a brutal dictator and setting up and training a KGB style secret police force that tortured thousands of Iranians is a shamefully evil policy. Why do I keep discussing the ethical aspects of US foreign policy? Because noone else seems to want to talk about it, certainly not most objectivists. Has ARI ever written a single article even suggesting that US foreign policy which involves the killing of innocent people in foreign countries is immoral? Has TAS? If so, I haven't seen any such analysis from either of the major objectivist organizations. Objectivists invariably end up arguing either that all US actions abroad constitute legitimate self-defense, or that the dictators of countries attacked by the US have sole responsibility for all of the resulting deaths, or some combination of these positions. Ayn Rand herself argued along those lines. When discussing the Vietnam war, the only thing she considered to be immoral about the war was that it constituted altruism, the senseless sacrifice of American lives for no good reason. She never discussed the immorality of bombing Vietnam itself and the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. This attitude, that it is okay for the US government to kill as many foreigners as it wishes in pursuit of its foreign policy objectives, is still the predominant attitude among objectivists to this day. If we were being bombed and killed by a foreign government, I wonder how many of us would conclude that the foreign government bombing and killing us was guilty only of the sin of altruism? It sounds to me as though we're pretty much in agreement about the profoundly destructive nature of US foreign policy, how it gets foreigners who have been victimized by it to hate the US and how to leads to unpredictable blowback. Most Americans have no comprehension of this issue. They either think that the US is hated for its freedom, that the hatred directed against the US is completely inexplicable, or that everyone except a few crazy Muslim terrorists loves the US. Martin

Yes, for some strange reason I am more concerned about people who wish to kill me posessing nukes than people who do not wish to kill me. I would be the target of those created in Iran. Never mind the nature and types of governments you are comparing here (or not comparing, as is the case) Stating that you are not concerned about the US using nuclear weapons against another country is no different than a resident of another country stating that he is not concerned about his government using nuclear weapons against the US. All it demonstrates it that, like the hypothetical resident of another country, you don't give a damn about the lives of those foreigners who will die or be horribly maimed as a result of such an attack. If you feel that way, fine, but don't try couching your arguments in ethical terms. Your statement that the Iranian government wishes to kill you, and that you would be a target of Iranian weapons, is nothing more than a paranoid fantasy. The government of Iran is not crazy. The US possesses enough weapons to totally destroy Iran a hundred times over. Iran has repeatedly made peace offers toward the US, which the US has spurned. Among other things, Iran offered to help the US destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran, as a shi'ite muslim country, is a bitter enemy of Al Qaeda. Yet the US provides military aid to Saudi Arabia, home of the Wahhabist muslim movement which gave birth to Al Qaeda, while pretending that Iran is our mortal enemy. In Iran, vigils were held in support of the US after the 9/11 attacks. No such vigils were held in Saudi Arabia. Yet you think it's perfectly fine to attack Iran with nuclear weapons. Even in WWII, the US was extremely reluctant to use nuclear weapons, that reluctance has been perpetually pervasive and if anything growing since then. Nukes can be small, or they can be big, big ones have no use except to destroy entire cities, counties, etc. Micro tactical 'nukes' for instance, while nuclear, are nothing like the 60MT bombs Russia made. You can see the relative difference of nuclear blasts clearly here http://www.leihai.com/bomb.jpg note that the nagasaki and hiroshima blasts are barely visible here. Bunker buster nukes would yeild less than 1kt and micro tactical nukes would be 10 tons - 100 tons, properly suited for a controlled urban conflict where one desires only to strike the government targets. As you can see from this chart http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/...10-7/tab2-1.gif the effects of small yeild blasts are minimized significantly. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there has been a tacit agreement among all the nuclear powers not to use nuclear weapons, with the understanding that nuclear weapons are only for the purpose of deterrence. Once this agreement is breached by the actual use of nuclear weapons in battle, all hell might break loose, even if the nuclear weapons are low yield, micro, precision weapons. "High precision" weapons are never as high precision as they are reputed to be. Mistakes occur all the time, especially under battlefield conditions. And even if the weapon hits the target precisely, selection of proper targets is rather problematic, to say the least. If a wrong target is selected, or if the weapon goes astray, the resulting deaths are rationalized as "collateral damage". The US tried to set up its own dictatorship in Iraq after the fall of the Baathist government. Its only interest was in setting up a puppet government that would be friendly to the US, just as the US supported the puppet dictatorship of the Shah in Iran years earlier. If the US government is so dedicated to bringing freedom to the enslaved people of the middle east, why did it support the brutal dictatorship of the Shah for so many years, not to mention the alliances with other middle eastern dictatorships maintained by the US? During the years of the US occupation, the US has imposed at various times the equivalent of martial law over major sections of the country. Thousands of prisoners are still being held in US prison camps, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib, where the American liberators were busy torturing Iraqis and taking videos to document all the fun. American contractors such as Blackwater have been granted immunity from Iraqi law, so that they can kill whomever they want without suffering any punishment. The rules of engagement are such that American soldiers were recently found baiting Iraqis, leaving items in the streets for them to pick up and then shooting them. Yet, according to you, all of this is somehow the fault of the Iraqi insurgency. The US government bears no responsibility at all for any of the crimes it has committed or the carnage that has followed. The US had absolutely no right to attack Iraq in the first place, since this attack was motivated by nothing but a desire to overthrow the Iraqi government and replace it with a more compliant government, rather than any plausible issue of self defense. According to international law, the occupying power has full responsibility for providing security in the occupied nation. At such, it bears all responsibility for everything that happens until the occupation has ended and a sovereign government has been restored. You are comparing what one entity would choose to do with what they thought a different entity might do, irrelevant. I can tell you exactly what I will do, but I can only guess at what you will do. So, according to you, the US government always does exactly what it says it will do, right? The government never lies, right? So if I point out that the government making promises about what it will do should not be taken very seriously, insofar as it lies all the time, this is somehow irrelevant? The idea that you expressed is ludicrous, namely, that the US has somehow brought freedom to Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is under US occupation, and a civil war has broken out, with rival groups of shiite and sunni ethnically cleansing each other. There are millions of refugees, the infrastructure has been destroyed, Iraq has been reduced to third world conditions. A war is likely to break out between the Kurds and Turkey, leading to massive chaos in Iraqi Kurdistan, which has been the only part of Iraq that has achieved any stability. You inferred what was not implied, I said exactly what I said. No murderous dictatorship holds the people of Iraq hostage, they have the potential now to enjoy a high degree of political freedom. No one in Iran, Syria, or Suadi Arabia has even the remote possibility of enjoying a high degree of political freedom. Under Saddam, they could not have even left. Now there is the possiblity of a better nation for them in the future, which there was no reasonable expectation of under Saddam's children. Whether Iraq ends up under the control of a murderous dictatorship remains to be seen. For now, the central government is weak and does not control large sections of the country, which are under the defacto control of shiite, sunni, and kurdish militias. Even in the unlikely event that Iraq does eventually manage to become a relatively free country, this will not compensate the hundreds of thousands of casualties, the millions of refugees, and the people still living in Iraq whose lives have been recked by the war. There is no moral justification for sacrificing the lives of a generation of people, for the hypothetical benefits of future generations. Please elaborate on what your idea of freedom is, and whether all people ought to enjoy it, and how you would go about promulgating it. As a self-identified libertarian, it should be pretty obvious as to what my idea of freedom is. Should all people enjoy it? Certainly. If I could push a magic button and turn the entire world into a libertarian paradise, where everyone enjoyed the blessings of liberty, I would do so in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, no such magic button exists. How would I go about promulgating it? That's the million dollar question. The first priority should be trying to restore liberty to the US, which is itself becoming an increasingly impossible task. The idea that the US government, which is doing everything it possibly can to destroy liberty here in the US, is going to bring the blessings of liberty to the middle east, is beyond absurd. The war to make the world safe for democracy didn't. The war to end all wars didn't. For starters, they are not generally allowed to leave, except perhaps to a neighboring murderous dictatorship. The route of emmigration from Iran is through illegal transportation and then asylum requests in westernized nations, primarily Germany, which recieves 10's of thousands of asylum applications each year. The idea that people can come and go freely in Iran is laughable, you are like a useful idiot of Stalin's talking about how great the Soviet Union was. Except that I never talked about how great things are in Iran. I just said that life in Iran now is much better than in Iraq. For the two million refugees who fled Iraq for Syria and Jordan, they obviously thought that life was better in those countries than in Iraq. I likewise didn't argue that life in Syria and Jordan was wonderful. It is you who are rationalizing all of the crimes committed by the US government, denying that it has any responsibility for any of the people it has killed or whose lives it has destroyed. As such, it is you who are the useful idiot in defense of the American empire, which empire is not interested in liberating anyone, only in extending its dominion over the world. Incorrect, the people of Iran hate their government, and their government hates the US, so they reasonably like us. Conversely, the people of Saudi Arabia hate thier government, and their government is friendly with ours, and so they hate us. I didn't say that the people of Iran love their government. In fact, they hate it so much that, given enough time, they will probably get rid of it on their own and replace it with a more liberal government. My point was that the best way to get the Iranian people to rally behind their government is to launch military attacks against Iran. Look at how the American people rallied behind Bush after the 9/11 attacks. When a country is attacked, people tend to rally behind the leaders. Perhaps because, in the process of taking out your shitty government, the Americans end of killing a whole bunch of innocent civilians, destroying your country's infrastructure, and turning your life into a living hell, just like the Americans did in Iraq, another country where the people were supposed to be thrilled to be liberated from Saddam and to greet their liberators with candy and flowers. Needless to say, it didn't work out that way. Perhaps because many Iranians still remember how the US government overthrew their democratically elected president many years earlier and imposed the brutal dictatorship of the Shah on their country, complete with KGB style secret police and torture chambers. Perhaps because it occurs to them that the US government, having overthrown their shitty government, might just repeat this history. Martin

Says the Public Safety Minister - I'm so glad he's looking out for my safety. I feel really threatened by a peace activist lady from the US. Thanks for bring up this latest abomination coming out of Canada. I just read about this on Wendy McElroy's site, http://zetetics.com/mac/news.php Wendy writes, "Today I am ashamed to be Canadian. The Associated Press reports, A U.S. peace activist who was barred from Canada after past arrests for anti-war activities was denied entry to the country again Thursday, despite having an invitation from several members of parliament...."If you get arrested just for protesting policies, Canada will exclude you," Wright said. Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the anti-war organization CODEPINK who is also barred from entering Canada, states, It is outrageous that the FBI is placing peace activists on an international criminal database--a blatant political intimidation of US citizens opposed to Bush administration policies. But the Canadian Border Service should not be using this FBI database as its Bible and we are prepared to challenge these policies. Her concern is pressing as the American "terror watch list" used to refuse entry has grown to 755,000 names. Wired reports, Since the list is now used in nearly all routine police stops and for domestic airline travel, Americans made up the bulk of those matches. If you estimate conservatively that 2/3rds are American (500,000 names out of a population of 300,000,000), then approximately one in every 600 Americans is on the list. I wish Canada had a leader with the principles and balls of former PM Lester B. Pearson. While in office (1963–1968), Pearson flatly and repeatedly refused American demands for Canada to enter the Vietnam War. On April 2, 1965, he famously spoke at Temple University in Philadelphia and argued for a negotiated settlement to the War -- an act that enraged President Lyndon B. Johnson. Under Pearson's government, American draft dodgers were not only welcomed as immigrants but also received extensive assistance from Canadian anti-war activists. Approximately 125,000 Americans arrived and an estimated 50,000 stayed despite the amnesty offered by President Carter in 1977. Now Canada turns away peace activists who are invited by its own members of Parliament. I am ashamed." This is a perfect example of how the US is not only becoming a police state but is exporting this totalitarianism to formerly relatively libertarian enclaves like Canada. Canada used to be a place where Americans could escape the slavery of conscription during the Vietnam War. Now, Canada bans US peace activists from entering the country. What a distance to travel in less than 40 years. It is now the policy of the US government to deny US citizens passports for all kinds of minor crimes, including victimless crimes than should not be crimes at all. Among other things, US citizens can be denied a passport for being delinquent on their child support payments, even though, amazingly enough, there is nothing in the US constitution giving the US government jurisdiction over family law. Without a passport, it is now impossible to leave the US. So the government can and does literally imprison US citizens within the US. This is just like the old "iron curtain" of the old Soviet Union under communism, where Soviet citizens were imprisoned within their own country. How long will it be before US citizens start having to defect, to seek political asylum in other countries? Unfortunately, there will be very few countries left to defect to. I think we can now safely cross Canada off the list. Martin

Sorry to hear of your friends plight. I cannot give you legal advice, however, as a mediator I can offer you insight and guidance. Methods that have been used in the past, would be a Writ of Mandamus in the Federal District Court to compel the production of the individual before a Federal Magistrate in order to present the facts of his "detainment". It is a step down from a Writ of Habeaus Corpus, the sacred writ as it is referred to, which would argue that he is being illegally detained. However, the states defense would be that he is being legally detained pursuant to the Patriot Act or another Federal Act. Unfortunately, you have an uphill fight. Out of curiosity, did the NZ embassy tell you that they cannot provide him with counsel to represent him? Also, it would be important for you to get a limited power of attorney from him so that you can push the system. The "social worker" should be able to have the document notarized. Wish I could be more helpful. Rick is not my friend. I've never met him. I just learned about this case while browsing the SOLOP site. Rick is a friend of Melissa, who has bravely taken up his cause. Rick will at some point be released from jail, at which time he will be deported to his home country of New Zealand, even though he was legally working in Canada. But instead of letting Rick return to Canada, where he is legally entitled to be, the US taxpayers will bear the cost of imprisoning him, then paying for his plane ticket back to New Zealand, where Rick doesn't want to go, after which Rick will presumably have to buy another plane ticket to fly back to Canada. But the idiot bureaucrats of the INS are just doing their jobs, just like any other mindless bureaucrats. Another lesson to be learned from this episode -- the police are not your friends! This is not the first story I have heard of someone innocently approaching the police for help and being subsequently arrested by the ever-so-helpful police. As the United States slips relentlessly into a police state, the job of the police is increasingly becoming not "to protect and to serve" the public but to enforce mindless bureaucratic rules and regulations, even to the extent of imprisoning people like Rick who have harmed noone, just over a technical violation of a tourist visa. That a citizen of New Zealand should even require a visa to enter the US is a pathetic indictment of the mindless security measures that are now in force in the US. New Zealand is not Saudi Arabia. Visas were previously required only for citizens from countries not on friendly terms with the US. Martin

I found this on the SOLOP site, posted by Melissa Lepley. The link is: http://www.solopassion.com/node/3510 Here is what happened, as described by Melissa: "Some of you may have noticed the absence of Rick Giles from this forum for the last month or so. He is not on vacation; he has not given up, or left in a huff. He is in jail, and has been since the 26th or 27th of September. He has been in prison, without arrest, without trial, without legal recourse or appeal, for almost a month. And why? What heinous crime, you might ask, warrants being thrown into jail with no rights, no information, and no idea how long he’ll be incarcerated? Well, the combined crimes of not being a US citizen and misreading the date on his tourist visa. Rick was asking directions to the bus station, as pedestrians aren’t allowed to cross the border into Canada, on the 26th of last month. Instead of helping, the policeman took his ID, checked his visa, and found that instead of expiring on the 27th, as Rick believed, it expired on the 20th. He was taken into custody, and has been there ever since. The INS, which is supposed to notify the New Zealand embassy whenever a NZ citizen is arrested, did not. His social worker, whom he requested get the address and phone number of the NZ consulate, got him the contact information for the embassy in New Zealand. If he hadn’t written my phone number on his arm during the few moments he had alone with his stuff, nobody would have any idea where he is. He used his one phone-call to call me, and I have harassed, begged, and bluffed my way to getting his address, inmate number, and all the information I can get, which is woefully little. I have made contact with the NZ consulate in Chicago, and the Embassy in Washington DC. I informed them that one of their citizens had been summarily tossed into prison for the smallest offense imaginable. You’ll be glad to know that they are using their full diplomatic might on his behalf. They are making a file. They faxed him a letter informing him of his rights, which amount to nothing. They are very friendly and courteous, and try to be helpful. However, unless the US starts to torture Rick, there’s nothing they can do. Apparently the US government can hold him as long as they want, for whatever reason (or lack thereof) they choose. This is a plea, dear SOLOists, from me. If anyone has any experience with dealing with the INS, or with the US Justice system… if anyone knows anything or anyone who can help, or even give advice, please contact me. I have done everything I can think of, and he’s still there, no court date, no rights, and no expectation of release. I can write letters to him, and send him books, writing materials, and stamps. However, I don’t even know where to begin to get him free. Thank you." It's hard to think of a better example of how the US is creeping toward totalitarianism than this. Rick is in jail awaiting deporation for the crime of overstaying his tourist visa by one week. This is the kind of thing for which people are now being put in jail. No victim, noone hurt, noone's rights violated, but Rick committed the unpardonable offense of not following the state's increasingly oppressive bureaucratic regulations. And for this, he must be locked up like a dangerous criminal. I don't often have anything good to say about Lindsay Perigo, but Linz has taken up the banner of "Free Rick Giles!". He claims to have contacted some friends of his in high places who may be in a position to help. This is a truly pathetic illustration of the kind of society the US has become since 9/11. Free Rick Giles! Martin

I hope we do better than the Romans. We,. too, shall make a Desolation and call it Peace (Delenda Islama est). The Romans ruled a good hunk of the world from the fall of Carthage till nearly the fourth century c.e. when they began to disintegrate. If they knew about lead poisoning and how to avoid it they might have lasted a thousand years in good shape. If you go by the body count and years in charge, the Romans did alright. Compared to other empires, the Romans actually improved the world. The Pax Romana was one of the best things ever to happen to Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia. A hell of a lot better than Joe Stalin's empire. May I venture a guess. It is only a guess, so I could very well be wrong. I will guess that you think Goodness and Justice will prevail in the world. Tell me if I am wrong, would you? Ba'al Chatzaf I am a libertarian. I believe that the best society is one that maximizes human liberty, where the ideal of every individual having the right to live as he/she pleases as long as he/she does not violate the equal liberty of others is realized as closely as possible. Perhaps some day in the distant future, such a society will emerge. I'm not holding my breath waiting for it. I have always lived in the United States. The US used to be just about the most free society in the entire world. I no longer think that it is. The US has long since degenerated from a relatively limited government republic into a worldwide empire slowly collapsing into a police state. I'd like to believe that this slide is reversible, but I no longer have much confidence that it is. Unfortunately, I sometimes feel that, in the words of the old song "San Francisco", "there's no place left to go". Martin

Though the situation is more complex than that, I generally agree with you and certainly dont think we should be so blindly supportive of Saudi Arabia especially while good evidence exists that they are directly funding wahabists schools in the US. Even trying to shuck culpability like you are, that still leaves 1 million domestic murders during the course of his regime, and still leaves the monthly average death toll thousands higher than the current rates (of which the vast majority are caused by terrorist groups seeking to impose yet another murderous tyranny) never mind the notoriously brutal track record of his sons who would have likely followed him. Trying to shuck culpability? It should be obvious to anyone reading my post that I am not in any way arguing that Saddam was not responsible for the acts of brutality that he committed. Rather, I am responding to the hypocrisy of people who scream about the horrible crimes commited by the Hussein regime and use this as justification for the war, invasion, and occupation of Iraq, while simultaneously ignoring the horrible crimes committed by the US government. Insofar as the US government contributed to the slaughter of Iranians by supporting Iraq in its war against Iran, or by enforcing sanctions which killed huge numbers of Iraqis, arguing that the US government has the right to go to war against Iraq based on the Hussein regime's killing of large numbers of Iraqis rings rather hollow. A disgusting a monumental failure of the US. One of a long list of momumental failures and war crimes commited by the US government going all the way back to the Spanish American war and beyond. Should objectivists really be surprised by this? I dont agree with sanctions, I favor war, since sanctions often lead to more suffering and penalize the people instead of whatever shitty dictator is oppressing them, furthermore it makes the people pissed off at the sanctions and not their dictators. Regardless of that though, the kurdish north, which was not under control of Hussien, yet had the same sanctions, did not experience the alleged childhood death rate that Iraq propagandists blamed on the sanctions. There is nothing alleged about the deaths caused by the sanctions, although people can argue about the exact numbers, since these can never be known. The sanctions almost certainly killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. That Hussein contributed to this carnage does not relieve the US government of responsibility. To kill innocent people based on the sins of their dictator is reprehensible. The numbers are right from the Iraqibodycount site. If you think their numbers are absurd, take it up with them. You are completely wrong about this. From the IraqBodyCount site, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/lancet100000/ "Finally, we reject any attempt, by pro-war governments and others, to minimise the seriousness of deaths so far recorded by comparing them to higher figures, be they of deaths under Saddam's regime, or in other much larger-scale wars. Amnesty International, which criticized and drew attention to the brutality of the Saddam Hussein regime long before the governments which launched the 2003 attack on Iraq, estimated that violent deaths attributable to Saddam's government numbered at most in the hundreds during the years immediately leading up to 2003. Those wishing to make the "more lives ultimately saved" argument will need to make their comparisons with the number of civilians likely to have been killed had Saddam Hussein's reign continued into 2003-2004, not in comparison to the number of deaths for which he was responsible in the 1980s and early 1990s, or to casualty figures during WWII." This is exactly the point I made in my previous post, which you ignored. The 5,500 deaths per month figure was bullshit, because it was based on averages of numbers killed years earlier, not the much smaller number than were being killed at the time of the US invasion. This nonsensical figure was used as a rationalization to justify the invasion, under the ridiculous theory that more lives would be saved by the invasion than would be killed should the US not invade. Government leaders who wish to start a war will typically tell any lie in order to justify a decision they have already made. Im sure that would provide a lot of solace to the thousands murdered after the 90's The statement was not intended to provide solace to anyone. It was merely a recognition that the huge number of Iraqis supposedly rescued from the Hussein regime by the US invasion was a lie. I'm sure that your conjecture that Iraq will eventually become a free, democratic society will provide a lot of solace to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and maimed from the war, or from the millions of Iraqis who have become refugees. In perhaps the most attrocious piece of science ever 'published' The journal was explicitly stated as anti-war and published something which would never make it through standard peer reviewed publication. There is plenty of criticisms surrounding this paper, and while those who oppose the war think its a great piece of science, and those who favor it discredit, those in the middle also criticise it, such as Slate.com and even the IraqBodyCount site itself, From the wikipedia entry on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_survey...nvasion_of_Iraq Additionally R.J. Rummel, pretty much the worlds leading expert on democide, author of the most cited history text "Power Kills" and nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, and professor of statistics says of the study: I will defer to his judgement before I defer to yours. The Lancet study used a statistical method known as cluster sampling. Such methodology is not unreasonable when attempting to gather data in the middle of a war zone, where there has been massive destruction of infrastructure. bombing of hospitals and medical facilities, and the near total elimination of civil order. The sample size was rather small, and the margin of error was quite high due to the small sample size and possible sampling errors. Even if the Lancet researchers were anti-war and had an agenda to try to influence public opinion against it, this does not prove that they fabricated data or used invalid methodology. IraqBodyCount is also very anti-war, yet this does not mean that their count is wrong. The IraqBodyCount figure is based strictly on deaths that have been unequivocally confirmed. Thus, it is inevitable that their figure is lower than the actual death toll, since many deaths will not be reported during the chaos of an occupation and civil war. Also, the IraqBodyCount figure does not include combatant deaths, only confirmed deaths of non-combatants. Rummel says it partly well: How nice of Rummel to pragmatically decide how many Iraqis should be maimed and slaughtered and how many driven from their homes in order to turn Iraq into his idea of a democracy, a democracy from which two million Iraqis have fled. Kind of reminiscent of the enlightened Madeline Albright. Lesley Stahl, discussing the effect of U.S. sanctions against Iraq, asked: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? Albright answered, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it." Osama bin Ladin also thought that the price of killing thousands of Americans was worth it. The US government is responsible for all of these deaths and all of the carnage that has happened in Iraq, since this was a criminal war of aggression against a country that in no way threatened it. The occupying power is responsible for everything that happens in a country that it invades for any reason other than absolute self-defense. And self-defense had nothing whatever to do with the US government decision to launch the invasion. You embrace a naively limited interpretation of moral justification for violent action, Rand also stated that it is within the right of a free nation to attack and depose the leaders of a non free one, though they are never morally 'required' to do as such, it is not morally unjust. But beyond that 'self defense' includes defending the lives of your neighbors as well as your own, if you desire to stop a murderous rapist from attacking your neighbor, even if he poses no immediate threat to you, you are morally justified in stopping them. I should think this obvious to anyone who attatches a meaningfull definition to 'self defense' Beyond that, no murderous tyranny has any right to exist, and no right to self defense. Furthermore, it is not in the *long term rational self interest* of any rational life loving human being, especially in the modern era of globally interconnected economies and politics, to ignore and promulgate through depraved indifference the growth of murderous fundamentalism or murderous tyrannical oppression as these nations are the source of all famines, major disease outbreaks and deaths, genocides, democides, and wars the world sees, and ultimately man made existential threats to all of civilization. Rand's proviso turned out to be a loophole big enough to drive a truck through, much like the commerce clause loophole being used by the federal government to justify regulating just about everything as "interstate commerce". When the US went to war against Iraq, it didn't just depose the leaders of a dictatorship. It also bombed major sections of the country into rubble, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of innocent people and destroying the lives of millions. This slaughter of innocents is never mentioned in Rand's moral justification for going to war, which pretends that only the dictatorial regime will suffer. Analogies comparing going to war against a country to attacking an individual aggressor always fail, because the country being attacked consists of millions of innocent individuals who are not responsible for the crimes committed by their government, unlike the individual aggressor who clearly is responsible. But since you think that self-defense includes attacking a country that is not directly threatening you but is instead attacking your neighbors, I assume you would consider it justifiable self-defense if Russia were to launch preemptive nuclear attacks against the United States, which has just murderously attacked its neighbor Iraq and is now threatening to attack its neighbor Iran. If you believe that defending the lives of its innocent neighbors has anything whatever to do with US foreign policy, you are living deep in fantasy. The US government has supported dictatorships around the world and killed untold numbers of innocent people throughout the world in pursuit of its imperial objectives. The US did not invade Iraq to liberate the Iraqis, to bring democracy to Iraq, or any of the other lies told to justify the war. The invasion was done with the objective of establishing a permanent military presence in the middle east, for the ultimate purpose of controlling the oil supply through the Persian Gulf. A large number of permanent military bases are now under construction in Iraq, with the probable intention of using these as forward staging areas for attacks against Iran, in order to cement US hegemony over the entire region. The Bush administration does not intend for the US to ever leave Iraq. The plan is to occupy it permanently. Welcome to the American empire! Martin

I am concerned about all religious fanatics, from radical nihilists to judeo/christian/islamic. Yet the religious fanatacism of the US is far more toned down than that of islamic fascism, even so, I am more concerned about anti-human secular nihilism in the future than either of those, since those people see all human life as evil. The checks and balances of power in the US and typical liberal constutional democracy do not allow for the arbitrary use of nuclear weapons, so despite your alarmism, no I am not concerned about the US using nuclear weapons, and even if they did, it would be in a controlled, limited, tactical use, not a carpet bombing or deliberate destruction of an infidel population of millions. I can certainly see why you are not concerned about the US using nuclear weapons; you will not be the target of them. You can safely sit behind the safety of your computer screen, while bombs are dropped on people thousands of miles away. Perhaps you would feel differently if you were living in Iran, which the US has repeatedly threatened with massive bombing ("all options are on the table"). Your statement that "even if they did, it would be in a controlled, limited, tactical use" is truly repulsive. Controlled, limited, tactical nuking? How would you like to live in the vicinity of an area that was going to experience controlled, limited, tactical nuking? The same US government that gives such assurances of a controlled, limited, tactical attack also promised that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be a cake walk and that the Iraqis would view our invading soldiers as liberators. It also promised that this war would cost a tiny fraction of what it has already cost, which is now over $300,000,000,000. The US government has lied every step of the way about this war. I never said life was "wonderful" in Iraq, or Afghanstan, or any majority Arab / Islamic nation. Yet I cant help to make a causal connection between the fact that the majority Arab / Islam nations are the only 'wealthy' nations which are horrific shit holes. Since I never said Iraq is 'wonderful' the rest of your rant is irrelevant. Again, I never said anyone was throwing rave parties in the streets celebrating freedom. The 'idea' you are arguing against is never one I expressed, perhaps you should try responding to what I actually said, and not what you think I meant, which is obviously wrong. You said, "The mullahs of Iran and the president hold the people of Iran hostage, as is the same case with every majority Arab or Islamic nation, with the notable exceptions *now* of Iraq and Afghnastan thanks *only* to the western coalation". The clear implication here is that Iraqis and Afghanis are not held hostage by their governments and, presumably, enjoy a high degree of political freedom. The Iraqi government is Shiite Islamic dominated, with Shiite militias and Sunni militias fighting for control of large sections of the country. Thousands of Iraqis are being held in prison camps by coalition forces, who have established check points throughout Iraq. American troops were recently found "baiting" Iraqis, leaving various items out on the street and then shooting Iraqis who dared to pick them up. As for Afghanistan, outside of Kabul, it is controlled by war lords and ex taliban fighters, who are regaining control. This might be your idea of freedom, but it is certainly not mine. Hmm, lets check that claim. From Freedomhouse.org on Iran: Iran's scores: Political Rights: 6 Civil Liberties: 6 On Iraq: Iraq's scores: Political Rights: 6 Civil Liberties: 6 Seems about the same according to them. But feel free to share your divined wisdom with us. Lets look at Amnesty International human rights review Iran: Iraq: Quite frankly they both sound like shitty places, I'm not sure how your figuring though that "Iranians have far more freedom and a much better quality of life" Perhaps you can share your crystal ball with us. While they may have a current quality of life claim, they certainly don't have more "freedom" assuming you give it a meaningfull definition. And of course many of the thousands of deaths in Iraq and subsequent displacement and violence has been directly instigated by Iran. My claim was that neither Iraq nor Afghanastan are now ruled by murderous dictatorships, while every *other* majority Arab / Islam nation *IS*, the situation in Iraq for your average person certainly is terrible today, and worse than it was before the coalition invasion, but *only* Iraq and Afghanastan have any reasonable and forseeable chance of moving forward from a murderous dictatorship to halfway decent nation with freedom and a decent standard of living. It's pretty damned obvious that Iranians, Jordanians, and Syrians all have a much better quality of life than Iraqis. Two million Iraqis have voted with their feet by fleeing Iraq, mostly to Jordan and Syria. How many people have fled Iran? Iran has a young, highly educated population that is actually very pro American. People can actually freely travel to and from Iran. Who in their right mind would travel to Iraq now? The US government has followed a policy against Iran designed to make the Iranian government as repressive as possible. Ahmadinejad is generally held in contempt by most Iranians. There is no better way to make the Iranian people supportive of their government than to have the US government threaten bombing attacks against Iran. Martin

There are plenty of Americans who are Christian religious fanatics waiting for the end times and the second coming of Christ. This millenial Christian influence is particularly strong in the US military itself, which controls thousands of nuclear warheads. George W. Bush is himself a born-again Christian who is reputed to believe that he is on a mission from God. The US government has repeatedly threatened Iran with a massive aerial bombing campaign, including possibly the use of tactical nuclear weapons. But, of course, none of the dangers you have associated with religious fanatics in control of WMDs apply to our religious fanatics, only to their religious fanatics. Since it was "liberated" by the US government, life in Iraq is so wonderful that an estimated 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes and become refugees, about half fleeing to other sections of Iraq as a result of ethnic cleansing and half fleeing Iraq altogether, mostly to Jordan and Syria. That's about one sixth of the entire population of Iraq. The two million Iraqis who have fled Iraq and become refugees in Jordan and Syria obviously disagree with you about how wonderful Iraq is relative to these other nations. But what do they know? They only live there and have experienced first hand the effects of the US bombing, invasion, and occupation. The idea that Iranians are held hostage by their government while Iraqis and Afghanis are enjoying freedom is laughable. Iranians have far more freedom and a much better quality of life than exists in either Iraq or Afghanistan. One of the main sources of funding and fighters for the insurgency is Saudi Arabia, recipient of huge amounts of American military aid. So the US is actually indirectly funding the insurgency. The US is also now directly funding Sunni fighters in Iraq, now that it is feeling threatened by the rise of the Shia brought about by the US invasion of Iraq. About one million of the people killed by Hussein were Iranians killed during the eight year Iran - Iraq war, a war in which the US supported Hussein, providing the Iraqi military with logistical support. So complaining about Hussein's brutality during the war when he was supported by the US rings just a little hollow. The US government also supported Hussein during some of the attrocities that he committed within Iraq. In 1991, the US government encouraged the Kurds and Shiites to launch a rebellion against Hussein, then forgot to support them, leaving them to be slaughtered, in a situation reminiscent of the Bay of Pigs. US imposed sanctions after the first gulf war led to the estimated deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. But when Hussein slaughters Iraqis or Iranians, he is a mass murderer. When the US government does the same thing, it is just carrying out our foreign policy business as usual. Your calculation of 5,500 deaths per months is particularly absurd. Most of the people killed by Hussein were killed during the 80s and early 90s, not in 2003, when the American invasion was launched. The IraqBodyCount uses a methodology guaranteed to grossly undercount the actual number of Iraqi casualties. The only peer reviewed study, done in the Lancet, estimated about 600,000 Iraqi casualties. The just completed ORB poll estimated 1.2 million Iraqi casualties. But even in your figures were absolutely correct (and they're not even close to correct), this would not justify what the US government has done in Iraq. There is no moral justification for an action (other than self defense) which leads to the deaths of thousands of innocent people, even if it saves the lives of thousands of others. Human lives are not interchangeable. Or, to paraphrase Ayn Rand from her essay "Collectivized Ethics", "men's lives are not yours to dispose of". Nor are they the US government's to dispose of. Martin

Kat, I just recently heard that Paul McCartney is worth about 1.6 billion dollars. I've not confirmed this figure, but I'd feel safe in saying that 100 million dollars is pocket change for him. So even if his ex wife is every bit the bitch you think she is, Sir Paul is not going to be suffering any financial distress as a result of whatever settlement he ends up having to pay. By the way, I love the Beatles as much as you do. Greatest rock band ever! Martin

What are your references for these figures, especially the death toll? --Brant Brant, Check out the following web site: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html I am not claiming that these numbers are exact. They are estimates. The exact numbers can never be known, so estimates are all that is possible. The first attempt at an estimate using the best available statistical methods was published in the British medical journal Lancet, which at the time estimated an Iraqi death toll of 600,000, with a fairly large margin of error. Deaths attributable to the war and occupation should include not only those killed directly by bombs or bullets, but also those who died as a result of destruction of infrastructure caused by the war and occupation. Martin

The article states, 'Brook has lectured on "The Morality of War," arguing that trying to spare civilian lives has prevented the U.S. from winning in Iraq. "If, once all the facts are rationally evaluated, it is found that directly bombing civilian populations or torturing POWs will save American lives, then it is moral – morally mandatory – to do so."' So Brook is referring specifically to the Iraq war. What exactly does the Iraq war have to do with the "context of a defensive war waged by America against an Islamic state--i.e., a war of self-defense against an aggressive, expansionist ideological enemy"? How exactly is the US attacking and occupying Iraq an act of self-defense? How exactly was Iraq a threat to the United States, such that attacking it could even remotely constitute self-defense? The United States spends more than half a trillion dollars a year on its military budget, more than the rest of the world put together. The United States has more than 2 million active duty and reserve soldiers, at least 2000 nuclear warheads, and an estimated 800 - 1000 military bases around the world. And you are seriously arguing that Iraq, a nearly third world country with a broken military, ruled by a tinpot dictator, a dictator that the US had previously supported, was a threat to the most powerful nation with the most powerful military in the world? Attacking Iraq was an act of naked aggression against a sovereign nation that never attacked the US, never threatened to attack the US, and had no capacity to attack the US. To label this as an act of self-defense is a travesty. As to the argument that "trying to spare civilian lives has prevented the U.S. from winning in Iraq", the estimated death toll from the Iraq war and subsequent occupation is in the hundreds of thousands, possibly higher than one million. This represents about 4% of the population of Iraq. In addition to the death toll, an estimated four million Iraqis have fled their homes and become refugees, representing about 15% of the population of Iraq. Proportional devastation from an attack on the United States would kill 12 million Americans and create 45 million American refugees. Iraq has been destroyed, turned into a complete third world country. Ethnic cleansing throughout the country has been rampant. The infrastructure has been destroyed. And this is not enough death and destruction to satisfy the blood lust of Brook? If one million dead Iraqis is not enough, how many would be enough? Two million? Five million? Ten million? Does the US government just keep killing them until they finally submit to American rule? Martin

Then what are the objectivists and Popperians spending so much time debating about on these threads? This really seems like an argument about semantics. What is the substantive difference between saying that a theory, no matter how often its predictions have been successful, may still be subsequently falsified, and saying that the theory, having many successful predictions, is something we may be contextually certain of, acknowledging that the context may change with further data, ultimately falsifying the theory? Has any reputable philosopher, objectivist or not, argued that induction can absolutely prove any generalization? If not, then pointing out that induction cannot accomplish this seems like attacking a straw man. Who has argued that it can? Martin

In the article, Brook is quoted as saying, "If, once all the facts are rationally evaluated, it is found that directly bombing civilian populations or torturing POWs will save American lives, then it is moral – morally mandatory – to do so." Transposing the victims of this policy, we get, "If, once all the facts are rationally evaluated, it is found that directly bombing American civilian populations or torturing American POWs will save Muslim lives, then it is moral – morally mandatory – to do so." This latter statement is something that could be uttered by Osama bin Laden. It's nice to know that the president of ARI shares the same ethical philosophy regarding the murdering and torturing of innocents as does the world's number one private terrorist. Martin

Brant, Who are the "we"? The issues are rather crucial to scientific epistemology; and the fate of the scientific approach to understanding the world, I very deeply believe, is rather crucial to what becomes of "civilization as we know it." But that's no reason for anyone who isn't interested in the issues to take an interest. I would strenuously object, however, were you to say that because you don't find the subject compelling, I therefore shouldn't and shouldn't talk about it. Not that you would say this. ;-) I'm merely pointing out the pitfall in asking what "we" need. Ellen ___ But just how important is the field of scientific epistemology to the actual practice of science? That is one question I've not seen addressed at all on any of these threads. Ever since the discovery of the modern scientific method, do philosophers really have anything to teach scientists that they don't already know? Suppose we divide scientists into the following three groups: 1) Scientists who have extensively studied the writings of Ayn Rand on objectivist epistemology. 2) Scientists who have extensively studied the writings of Karl Popper on scientific methodology. 3) Scientists who have never read anything by either Rand or Popper. Should we expect that, on average, the scientific methodology employed by scientists in these three groups should be any different? If so, what differences in scientific methodology practiced by scientists in each of these three groups should we expect to see? Martin

I have been crazy since 08:46 AM of September 11, 2001. Prior to that I was not bloodthirsty (well, not too bloodthirsty). Now I want complete and utter destruction of my enemies and God Damn the collateral damage. Ba'al Chatzaf The Iraqi government was not responsible for 9/11. Neither was the Iranian government. Neither was the Chinese government. And even more so, the people of Iraq, Iran, and China were not responsible. So perhaps you should think twice before deciding that they are your enemies and should be exterminated like so many insects. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a result of the US invasion. These Iraqis were not guilty of anything other than living in a country ruled by a dictator that the US government didn't like, a dictator who the US government had previously supported. Since the US invasion, relative to its population, Iraq has experienced the equivalent of about one 9/11 attack every day. Since the 9/11 attack has by your own admission turned you into someone utterly bloodthirsty and seeking the complete and utter destruction of your enemies, which apparently include people who are not actually your enemies at all, how many Iraqis who have lived through the equivalent of one 9/11 attack every day for the last four years may have been turned into bloodthirsty monsters intent on the complete and utter destruction of the American enemies who did this to them? Martin Twice? I don't think Bob's really thought once about this. Nevertheless, he's no monster, it's all intellectualization. Not surprising in a scientific mind, not to me. I've actually seen war and hundreds of dead bodies. I can't take him seriously; if I did it would be him or me on OL. Note that he really presents no arguments. He just keeps repeating himself. Asseverations. There's simply no muscle behind his "genocide." It's completely phoney. --Brant Brant, I agree with you that Bob has made no reasonable arguments for his views in support of genocide, probably because the position is so absurd and inhuman on its face that no reasonable arguments in its support are possible. But it's obvious to me that he's totally serious. I still remember that, when discussing the Iran hostage crisis, Bob indicated that he would have responded to this situation by nuking Tehran, which I at the time pointed out would have killed and maimed millions of innocent people, making Bob one of history's most prolific mass murderers. Bob actually seems to believe that ethical considerations should have no place in foreign policy decisions, so that, for example, if the US considers it necessary to slaughter half the earth's population in order to defend itself against a hypothetical threat to its security, then that's perfectly okay. He also seems to believe that, ethical considerations aside, this is a practical approach to insuring US security; in other words, that we can bomb our way to peace and safety. He has made these views known repeatedly in one post after another. I have very little doubt that, were Bob president of the United States, with the power to enact these genocidal policies, he would almost certainly do so. He has stated as much; I have no reason to disbelieve him. The only reason not to take Bob seriously is that he is just a keyboard warrior, making posts on an internet forum. If he had the power, I have no reason to presume that he would not use it. Martin

I have been crazy since 08:46 AM of September 11, 2001. Prior to that I was not bloodthirsty (well, not too bloodthirsty). Now I want complete and utter destruction of my enemies and God Damn the collateral damage. Ba'al Chatzaf The Iraqi government was not responsible for 9/11. Neither was the Iranian government. Neither was the Chinese government. And even more so, the people of Iraq, Iran, and China were not responsible. So perhaps you should think twice before deciding that they are your enemies and should be exterminated like so many insects. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a result of the US invasion. These Iraqis were not guilty of anything other than living in a country ruled by a dictator that the US government didn't like, a dictator who the US government had previously supported. Since the US invasion, relative to its population, Iraq has experienced the equivalent of about one 9/11 attack every day. Since the 9/11 attack has by your own admission turned you into someone utterly bloodthirsty and seeking the complete and utter destruction of your enemies, which apparently include people who are not actually your enemies at all, how many Iraqis who have lived through the equivalent of one 9/11 attack every day for the last four years may have been turned into bloodthirsty monsters intent on the complete and utter destruction of the American enemies who did this to them? Martin

Very frighting scenario. May reason save us. The correct response to this scenario is genocide. If the Chinese are foolish enough to join in the struggle they can die too. No containment. Total destruction. By the way, there is no neutron bomb. Jimmy Carter halted research to construct a neutron bomb and it has not resumed. Our bombs are live and dirty. They destroy people and property with equal neturality. Ba'al Chatzaf You are living proof that it is possible for a person to be highly intelligent in the fields of math and physics and yet in other respects be a complete lunatic. Martin

For anyone who thinks that Iran is such a horrible nation that attacking it is a good idea, here is a projected scenario for just what the likely consequences of such an attack might be. The article is entitled, "What World War III May Look Like". http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=11666 Martin

Chris, Check out either the SOLOP or ROR boards. A number of posters there have come out in support of Giuliani. Dustan has done a good job of summarizing the logic they typically use to justify this position. Martin

Lew Rockwell is not someone I care to read. I will say, though, that these deaths can only be blamed on Saddam, Iran, et al. Since you are arguing as a moral principle that it is okay to start a war and subsequent occupation that leads to the death of a million people, the creation of several million refugees, and the near total destruction of the country's infrastructure, based on the sins of the country's leader, a leader who, incidentally, the US government supported in a war against Iran which led to the death of about a million Iranians, I'm sure you'd also agree that it is also okay to kill millions of Americans based on the sins of their leader. So, just as "these deaths can only be blamed on Saddam, Iran, et al.", the American deaths on 9/11 can only be blamed on George W. Bush. And if, in the future, an Iraqi or Iranian terrorist group launches an attack on American soil killing thousands or millions of Americans in retaliation for the American attacks against their countries, these deaths can also only be blamed on George W. Bush. Right? Martin A million Iranians? Is that a fact? I'd believe 100,000 or so without a reference. That was a horrible war. Iran sent its youth against defensive positions in mass suicide attacks. --Brant A million Iranian casualties is a pretty good estimate. See the wikipedia entry under Iran - Iraq war for references. Martin