Iraq: What’s Left to Say
Jason Kuznicki on Jul 27th 2006
In response to Brayton’s question on libertarians and the Iraq war: I am — at long last — uninterested in the Great Iraq War Question.
My side lost the argument; the other side won. We went to war. All of it happened before this blog even began. By now I mostly just wish the troops and the innocent bystanders the best of luck, and I smile whenever a thug gets taken down. What’s left to say? Only a few things, and they’re below the fold.
In general terms — terms that may be useful for future foreign policy debates — I think Sandefur gets it pretty much right about the Rothbard faction of the libertarian movement:
There are people who believe that… If the people in Iran or Iraq or wherever want to live in a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, then it’s not our problem, and we shouldn’t be meddling. This group can be broadly associated with Murray Rothbard, whose views on foreign policy are neatly summed up by his claim that America is “the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialist government” in the world, and that the Soviet Union “adopted the theory of ‘peaceful coexistence’…[which is] what Libertarians consider to be the only proper and principled foreign policy.” It is against this group, primarily, that I’ve aimed my attacks on the anti-war crowd. This group, I think, is not only profoundly wrong, but are not even properly described as libertarian. They take as their foundational premise the concept of “self-determination,” when libertarianism demands that the foundational premise be the individual’s natural right to liberty. If one begins from the premise of “self-determination”—i.e., that a collective has the “right” to create whatever (even oppressive) political institutions it pleases, without interference from another collective—well, then you end up making such arguments as that the south was right in the Civil War, and so forth. That may be a lot of things, but it is not libertarianism; it is paleoconservatism.
I agree entirely. It puzzles me how quickly the Rothbard wing’s professed love of liberty leads to applause for any thuggish regime that opposes the United States (and, lest anyone accuse me of short historical memory, they’ve been doing this since Vietnam. It was one thing when Ayn Rand argued that we had no rational self-interest in supporting South Vietnam, which has since become conventional wisdom; it was quite another when Murray Rothbard applauded the North, which is as appalling today as it was back then).
The Rothbardians betray their own purported libertarian principles when they suggest that self-determination alone makes a foreign government legitimate: Liberty is not the steady move toward more and more self-determination. Liberty consists of an effective restriction on force, one that allows only peaceful, honest types of self-determination — and that punishes or prevents any others.
Real liberty only happens when the people of a society have the right ideas about how their society — and their government — should operate, and when they put those ideas into practice. Liberty properly understood is when each individual respects the rights of all others, and when the one agent in society more powerful than the others spends all of its energies in making sure that things remain this way.
But the strangest thing to me about the Rothbard line is not how it betrays liberty; I am struck instead by how profoundly similar it is to our current management of Iraq.
That’s right: I submit that Sandefur’s passage does not describe any radical divergence from the administration’s policy. It shows instead the deepest similarity between Lew Rockwell and Dick Cheney, between Justin Raimondo and Donald Rumsfeld. The Rothbardians and the neocons differ only in that the latter favor popular sovereignty without Saddam. The rest is mostly the same.
Both agree that the Iraqis have a free-floating right to self-determination; they agree that this right extends to favoring Islamic religious law over secular law; they even agree that no matter what party wins Iraq’s election, and no matter how bad that party’s policies may be, these are matters for Iraqis to decide. The neocons only add: So long as it is not the Ba’ath Party.
These are strong words, and I will now back them up with some evidence. Let’s look at the Iraqi constitution, a tottering intellectual mess if ever there was one.
It begins with the invocation of a specific religion; much less has been used in our country to argue for the supremacy of Christianity. There follows a good deal of intellectual fluff, and then — an atrocity:
Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation… This Constitution guarantees the full religious rights of all individuals…
But these two clauses are mutually exclusive; the authors may as well have written, We have our cake… And we eat it, too. Elsewhere, a single sentence stands out for its economy; rarely are so many bad ideas crammed into so few words:
No entity or program, under any name, may adopt racism, terrorism, the calling of others infidels…
Outlawing an idea, even an atrocious idea like racism, is unconscionable. Outlawing terrorism is a good idea, provided that some definition is supplied. But it is not supplied. Outlawing “the calling of others infidels” is a direct attack on the freedom of conscience. You are not free unless you are free to call someone an infidel. And you are not free unless you can actually be an infidel.
Then there comes what may be the single scariest provision of the entire document:
Equal opportunities are guaranteed for all Iraqis. The state guarantees the taking of the necessary measures to achieve such equal opportunities.
All is promised to everyone, and the state shall deliver it by any means necessary. Oh, and our troops will die to defend it.
Thereafter, the nonsense comes thick and fast: All individuals enjoy the right to privacy — unless it contradicts “public morals.” Court proceedings are public — unless the court decides otherwise. Laws may not be ex post facto — unless they are. Virtually without exception, the citizens’ rights are abridged or are left to the discretion of officials; virtually without exception, the government may abolish the checks on its own power. Had someone set out to create a government of men, rather than of laws, and to give those men whatever provocations they required for an unending war, I am tempted to say that this would be the result.
Indeed, the Iraqi Constitution is so awful that one may simultaneously find within it the basis for every bad system of government ever devised — except, of course, for Ba’athism. There is theocracy, as we have seen; there is market socialism, in the explicit right all Iraqis now have to a job; there is state socialism, in the government ownership of oil and gas fields; there is even tribalism, in the all too easy way that voting blocs may form and dissolve the various federal subdivisions. These divisions are themselves bewildering — and a further invitation to trouble.
I do not mean to say that the Iraqi Constitution has caused all of the problems that have come since its adoption; I do mean that a society that sees fit to be ruled by these principles can only end in chaos. The Constitution demonstrates it in words; the real world shows it in blood. The freedom of conscience is a fantasy in Iraq; women are beaten and murdered for disobeying Islamic dress codes; vendors of alcohol meet the same fate; the oil industry, that property of the Iraqi people, is being destroyed by the Iraqi people; even with the so-called right to a job, unemployment is rampant.
This is what we are fighting for, in word and deed. And why? Because all our efforts have been aimed at popular sovereignty. We asked the Iraqis to set up the kind of society they wanted. They obliged. Here we are.
How could we have avoided these problems? One reason I did not support the Iraq War was because I had no good answers to this question. I do deeply admire people like Tom Palmer, who have traveled to Iraq despite the obvious dangers, and who have worked hard to bring Iraqis the theoretical framework of limited government. Palmer may be seen here with stacks of books being donated to Iraqi universities.
Still, I can’t help but think that it’s too little and too late to matter, and that we might have done better by disseminating the good ideas without the invasion. It seems clearer now than ever that Saddam’s chief opponents were all first-rate thugs, and that our championing of popular sovereignty — anything, just no Saddam — has encouraged them to rise to the top.
Had we fought instead for limited government, for an end to compulsory tribal and religious law, for women’s self-determination, for the separation of church and state, and for the unfettered liberty to say and think as one pleases — then we might have done better. Sure, we’d have been required to write the Iraqi Constitution ourselves. But can you honestly tell me that that document, or the situation in the streets, would be worse than what obtains today?
Filed in The Barracks
13 Responses to “Iraq: What’s Left to Say”
Marvelous words. One could answer with the old canard that this is just a start, that change will come slowly but inexorably in the direction of limited government–but I don’t see evidence for such a position, only simple Whiggish sentiment.
Jason: “The Rothbardians and the neocons differ only in that the latter favor popular sovereignty without Saddam. The rest is mostly the same.”
Plan A was for Chalabi and his militia to take over, and be our SOB in Baghdad (since Saddam had proven insubordinate). Plan B was for a several-year dictatorship, run by the CPA - after a couple of years, US-picked caucuses could select US-approved candidates to run for office, with a US-written constitution. Local input would be tolerated only for PR purposes.
It was only when Sistani reminded Bush that he could stay his hand, and unleash the Shiites, that the Bush administration seized up on elections, the same elections that they then bragged about.
Naomi Klein also had an excellent article in Harper’s (’Iraq: Year Zero’, IIRC), which covered just what the Bush administration was doing in those first months. Think IMF structural reform, if the IMR had an army to enforce their whims.
The intellectual dishonesty of this post leaves me breathless. I have to say that, in all the commentary I’ve read about my work, this one takes the cake: yeah, that’s right, Jason — I’m Rummy’s doppelganger. You sure got that one right ….
I have never written a word that even comes close to confirming what is written here about my views: perhaps that’s why nothing I’ve written is cited here. “Self-determination” for the people of Iraq? I’d settle for self-determination for the American people, although I’m not holding my breath.
If you’re interested in learning the truth about what I believe — and I can see that this is highly unlikely — go read what I’ve actually written. My main concern is defending actually-existing liberty, right here in America, as opposed to “spreading” George Bush’s perverted idea of “liberty” under the aegis of the U.S. government. That is why real libertarians oppose this war, and all the wars to come. It has zero to do with the Iraqis’ alleged right to “popular sovereignty,” and everything to do with the damage done to liberty right here at home by a world-conquering freedom-hating regime in Washington, D.C., which grows stronger by means of perpetual war.
By the way, very nice analysis of the Iraqi “Constitution.” I wrote a similar critique last year:
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6725
Not that a snooty [fill in the blank] like yourself would even bother to read it…..
Very well, I will cite something that you wrote, here:
This, and indeed the rest of the article it comes from, is grounded on the theory that Iraqi self-determination is the key to the whole issue. Your view is exactly like the neocons’ effective position. Why? Because they too have accepted that self-determination is the way to a better Iraq. Yet it is not. Respect for individual rights is the only way.
But the administration has accepted virtually everything that the Iraqis proposed for their constitution, even as bad as these proposals were. And you, too, would accept that constitution — if only we’d leave Iraq.
So while I figured you’d probably disagree with me, I still think I hit the nail on the head. And by the way, that piece you linked to is inaccurate; there isn’t a word about Israeli citizenship in the constitution of Iraq.
I think it is clear from the context that I am discussing the claims of the U.S. government to be the real champions of self-determination and democracy, and not expressing my own views on national sovereignty and its relationship to individual rights. In criticizing the U.S. government for the great gap between the rhetoric and the reality, I am not necessarily endorsing the former.
For example, I also cite “democracy” as a principle the U.S. supposedly stands for, but have on several occasions devoted entire columns to why the principle can’t and won’t work in Iraq or much of anywhere else.
The piece you cite is about the status of forces agreement Washington imposes on its overseas satraps, which puts American soldiers above the local laws — so that when our GIs rape, pillage, and plunder, as some are wont to do, they don’t have to answer to the victims. Surely the right of national self-determination cannot always be separated from “respect for individual rights.”
I take it, however, that since you believe national self-determination is worthless, you would also have no objection — in principle, at least — to the U.S. imposing your ideal libertarian society on the Iraqi people by force of arms (if need be). Or am I misreading what you’re saying?
I also have to wonder how Sandefur, whom you cite, defines paleoconservatism. In citing him approvingly, perhaps you have some idea of what exactly he is talking about. Paleoconservatism is not a rival political doctrine to libertarianism, but an attempt to reconstruct the Old Right of which libertarians were a part. The American Conservative is awhere, I guess, this “paleoconservatism” thrives: yet this magazine is gathers together an amazingly eclectic group of authors, from libertarians such as, say, Jim Bovard, to traditionalists like Paul Gottfried and idiosyncratic writer Bill Kauffmann. While TAC writers (and, in all likelihood, readers) tend to agree on certain issues, they disagree on much: in no way do they represent a political-ideological movement, comparable to libertarianism.
Rothbard’s widely-cited article, “Death of a State,” is often raised by his right-wing critics as an example of his supposedly pro-communist views. This is hilarious, to anyone who a) knew Rothbard, and b) had actually read the article in question. Clearly what the author was trying to do was to isolate and examine the death throes of a particular state: this hardly implies support for the state that supplanted it.
Simply put, I would say that the administration went to war for the self-determination of the Iraqi people; you, on the other hand, would keep us out of the war for the same reason. But I do not think that self-determination gives sufficient reason for either. I have never supported the Iraq war, but there are good and bad reasons on both sides of the debate. To me, “self-determination” is something fundamentally impossible for us to give on the one hand, and fundamentally useless as a guide to foreign policy on the other.
As to your claims about the status of forces agreement, I am far from convinced that this allows American soldiers a blank check. From how it appears where I sit, they are being made to answer not only for their own crimes but also those of their superiors.
As to calling Rothbard pro-communist, I did nothing of the sort. I do know that he considered it good news when South Vietnam fell, whereas I would call it a sorry shame all around.
Jason, I’ve pointed out above why it’s clear that the Bush administration went to war for their own reasons; the self-determination of the Iraqi people ranked somewhere down there with ‘Saddam gassed his own people’ as a motivation.
As for the status of forces agreement, US forces are conducting combat operations; US soldiers are torturing prisoners, clearly under orders, and only being held accountable when it hits the press.
I think you are right, Barry, that the Bush administration had a number of different rationales for war, some of which were stronger than others. But I have to say it seems like the only thing keeping us in Iraq at the moment is the idea of self-determination. We’ve already finished kicking out Saddam; we certainly aren’t making a profit there; and if we mean to stop terrorism, then we’d do best by depriving the terrorists of a target.
Jason, ‘we’ aren’t making a profit there, but I’d bet that the administration’s cronies are. Bush is still benefiting from having an ongoing war (IMHO). He is certainly not going make the American people realize that we’ve lost, which a withdrawal would do; he’ll pass the mess on to the next president. As to meaning to stop terrorism, the administration has always conducted the ‘war on terrorism’ primarily for domestic political gain.
I cannot stand Raimondo, particularly for his unsavoury pre-occupation with Israel, but I always thought he opposed the invasion of Iraq not because he gave a damn about the people in that oppressed country, but because says it is always wrong to initiate force against a regime, however repellent. The only just use of force is in self-defence, and Raimondo and other isolationist libertarians would say that Saddam’s Iraq, vile a place though it was, was not and unlikely to ever become a direct threat to the US.
In short, they don’t give a toss about people in other countries if their regimes are not a clear and present threat. They are, in that sense, purist libertarians who would not lift a finger to help anyone, however badly oppressed, if it violated their non-initiation-of-force axiom.
Of course, I would argue that Saddam’s regime was a threat, and that by his actions over many years showed himself to be malign, threatening, and possibly reckless in the use of force. But that is an argument about detail and history. In principle, I agree with those who argue that a libertarian state should focus any military activities purely on self-defence, and not on toppling regimes even if those regimes are bad. It is the not the job of the United States to altruistically liberate folk around the world, although of course if they are liberated as a happy by-product of the use of self-defence, so much the better.
[...] As I have written in the past, the new Iraqi Constitution is a profoundly anti-American document, one that eviscerates individual rights and glorifies the all-powerful state. And we are now killing and dying to preserve it. Every American death furthers this. I know of no stronger argument for why we should leave Iraq immediately. By staying there, we are not ensuring the Iraqis a good government. We are ensuring them an evil one. [...]
[...] 3. The well-meaning outside country promised that the government will, from this point forward, be in the hands of the people as a whole. No effort was made to limit the powers of government; on the contrary, it was always insisted that the Iraqis may do whatever they like, so long as it’s ratified by a democratic vote. This includes establishing a state religion, nationalizing the oil industry, and mandating economic equality, complete with all necessary measures to achieve it. Conservatives, this is what you are fighting for. When you condemn the patriotism — the Americanism — of the skeptics, you are damning us because we are skeptical of this. And you are proclaiming yourselves more patriotic — because you support this. Power must go to the people, the government will be the people’s instrument, and it will know no limits. [...]