Here’s a controversial idea that you guys can feel free to bat around…

I’ve been thinking about Iraq, and how I feel about whether the Iraqis have freedom and democracy and safety and security and prosperity and all those good things that we are endeavoring to deliver to them, and whether the way in which we are attempting this is worth it to our troops, or our nation as it relates to our own safety, security, freedom, prosperity, and so on.

In general, I’m the kind of guy who will choose liberty over life or property nine times out of ten. But that applies to ME, not to everyone on earth. Part of my prioritization of liberty is that I respect the freedom of others to choose their own priorities. It should be brutally honest to everyone after our Iraq adventure that freedom and democracy cannot be imposed on those who are not desirous of it.

The question was asked if it was a good thing that Basra is “stable” if that stability is because Muqtada al Sadr’s militias have taken over security for the city. I say, “Absolutely, it is a good thing.”

For the people of Iraq, I really could not care less if they have freedom and democracy. Seriously, I don’t care at all. I didn’t care when Saddam was in power, and I won’t care whatever dictator ends up in power five years from now. What I DO care about is that they are not being terrorized by gangs of thugs, either police, the army, or independent militias, who come to their homes and threaten, torture or kill them for whatever reason. Nobody deserves that.

The overwhelmingly vast majority of people wish only to live in peace and safety, to be able to work and feed their families, to be able to walk the streets and send their kids off to school without fear that they will be killed on any given day. If the people of Basra are living in peace, I could not care less who is providing that peace for them, or whether they have any say in choosing their leaders. That is none of my business, and none of my concern. I feel a moral obligation to the human rights of all people, but to the civil rights only of my fellow Americans.

Speaking of which, I have a great concern about how this war has affected the liberties, democracy, treasury, strength, safety, reputation, and general welfare of the United States. The protection of those things means a hell of a lot more to me than any of those things for people in Iraq or anywhere else when it really comes down to it. I feel no guilt about prioritizing my country and my fellow citizens over those in other places, just as I feel no guilt in prioritizing my family over other citizens in my own country. This is perfectly natural.

I have no objection to helping others around the world to fight oppression and tyranny. But it must be on a spectrum of importance. Take the above priorities:

Safety and Security (human rights a/k/a “Life”)
Freedom and Democracy (civil rights a/k/a “Liberty”)
Treasury and Prosperity (economic interests a/k/a “Property”)


I would be willing to sacrifice American property, and even to a small degree life to help secure the human rights of people in other parts of the world. I would be willing to sacrifice American property to help secure the civil rights of people in foreign lands, but not our life or liberty. It is up to people in their own lands to know the sacrifice of life for liberty, and without that sacrifice, with that liberty merely given to them on the sacrificed lives of others, they will never be able to appreciate and treasure the liberty they receive.

Since I consider it the foundation of everything that is fundamentally American, I would not ever be willing to sacrifice our liberty to help others, even those in the most desperate situation of threat to their lives, because if we lose that which is fundamental to us as Americans, we lose our moral authority to act, and perhaps even our very freedom to act in the future.

I am willing to sacrifice both property and life to insure the liberty of Americans, and the property of America to protect the safety of Americans, but never sacrifice the liberty of Americans to protect the safety or property of Americans, and not the safety of Americans to protect the property of Americans. Obviously, the Bush administration is aware that a great many Americans, those of the highest principles of all political stripes, feel that way as well. So they have cravenly and unabashedly exploited those high principles to convince many that this war in Iraq is about protecting the liberty and/or safety of America, while it is in fact to promote the civil rights of Iraqis (at best) and to protect the power and property rights of a few, some Americans, some not. Those goals are not worth fighting and dying for.



As was so clearly articulated in this piece I posted in the troop withdrawal thread, those who favor ending the war in Iraq must stop falling into the trap that those who are framing the debate on the right continue to set. The question cannot be set as whether Iraq will be “made tranquil” by the withdrawal of American troops. It will most likely not be. Of course, it will most likely not be made tranquil by the continued presence of American troops, or by an increase in the number of American troops either.

The issue must be about the property, lives, and ultimately, the liberty of Americans. Why should we allow the President to continue to destroy the United States military by keeping our troops, equipment, and money in this bottomless pit of a theater, when we can withdraw, regroup, and prepare for when an actual threat comes to attack America again? If the President is right, and that threat will come to our doorstep again, then how will we be better equipped to face that threat with our troops stretched and beaten in a foreign land than we will be with our troops fresh, trained, rested, equipped, and on guard at home protecting what really matters. Our people, our property, and our liberty.

I think the Prime Directive applies here. The part about forbidding any effort to improve or change in any way the natural course of a society, even if that change is well-intentioned.

nice post.

i agree with you for the most part. my only argument on the other thread was that it's silly to call the situation in Basra "secure" because it's not. it's just relatively more secure than Baghdad, which ain't exactly saying a lot.

i would just say that if/when we leave, we'd damn well better be prepared to conduct tactical strikes at the nasty types that are going to congregate and train people to strike at the West. it's likely going to be orders of magnitude worse than Afghanistan in the 90s was in that regard, and i'd hope we've learned a lesson as to the perils of ignoring a growing threat as we did in that case.

here's a question. people say a certain amount of loss of life is expected and inevitable in order to have freedom. would you be willing to give up your life for it?

Who are these people and in what context are they saying that loss of life is inevitable to have freedom? I don't agree with this statement.

That is the key issue. IMO, the only time that loss of life is inevitable to have freedom is when YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT is denying you freedoms.

Freedom IS free, contrary to the wisdom of country music singers. Safety, security, and protection of property is what ends up resulting in lost lives.

Once a people have freedom, it can only be taken away by their own government, or a foreign government defeating their own government and imposing a new government. Try as they might, terrorists and other such groups cannot take away our freedom without our government simply handing it over.

Hopefully this ties into PD's post; to me one of the greatest conundrums of logic that the Iraq project (and I think that is the best way to characterize it at this point) creates is that we have created a situation that if we stay true to what our stated(?) goal is in Iraq, namely to bring a democratic society to the Iraqi people, then at some point we have to remove ourselves from the situation and then prepare ourselves for the very real possibility that the people of Iraq will then democratically agree to tell us to go fuck ourselves. And then at that point all we will have accomplished is sinking innumerable resources, lives and manpower into creating a situation not much different, and possibly worse, vis a vis our own diplomatic stake in the region than it was before we attempted our nation building exercise.

I also think PD alludes to an excellent point (at least my connect the dots logic brought me to the point) that the democracy and, for lack of a better term, esprit de corps of the United States has a great stake in maintaining the foundation of our inherent idealism; an idealism that we as a nation have the right to lay claim to some semblence of moral highground simply by the fact of our existence as a nation that claims as its central tenent every citizen's birth right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. When those ideals are manipulated, massaged and used in a calculating way to sway public opinion, in other words treated no differently than any other kind of base propaganda, then a blow has been struck to the very foundations of the stability of our nation.

would you give up your life for your country, or any cause for that matter?

http://forums.theskyiscrape.com/vie ... hp?t=54482

Interesting! seems i side with the majority on this one

holy shit dude, you should send that post for some big magazine or newspaper! for real!

That was the most conservative thing you've ever said.

There's some good stuff I'd like to respond to, but I will first exercise my freedom to watch my one "night of tv" per week.

I'll be totally honest; I would do everything in my power to avoid a situation where I had to give up my life for country or cause. If I believed deeply enough in something, then I might be prompted to take up arms to defend it, but it would have to be a dire situation that would get me to that point. I guess I'm a pacifist. That's one reason that I have said on this board and to other people time and time again that I am incredibly supportive of our military, regardless of my own personal beliefs about whatever mission they might be undertaking, because they do an incredibly important job that I don't think I would be able to do unless extreme circumstances warranted it.

"Freedom" isn't some abstract, Platonic ideal. It's totally cultural. People in this country worked centuries to have the freedom that we have today. There's no denying that Iraqis are more free than they were under Saddam Hussein, but to blame a comparative lack of freedom (as to the West's) on one tyrant who only ruled for two decades is not a very intelligent conclusion. Seems that had already been reached. Oops.

I have no idea how you can post that hunk of shit Rolling Stone article in the death tax thread and then write something as brilliant as this, but I guess that's why I'm libertarian and not liberal.

Good luck ever knowing anyone who gets damaged by your "death tax" there, homey.

Hmm? If I die there isn't going to be much left to be taxed

He's saying it pretty much only affects the richest few percent of dead people in America. As if it's possible for a tax to affect a dead person.

Let's not derail this. We've got threads on the estate tax.

Besides, it doesn't affect the dead person, it affects his heirs. Oh, wait! It's not REALLY affecting those heirs either, otherwise they might have to admit that it's income, and then they couldn't claim that it's the dead guy being taxed twice! What was I thinking?