War Is Horrible


Thinking about the unthinkable
Robert Higgs wrote a great article about nine months ago. I don't agree with it, but it is a great article all the same. Read all of War Is Horrible, but..., it's worth your time.

Anyone who has done even a little reading about the theory and practice of war, whether in political theory, international relations, theology, history, or common journalistic commentary, has encountered a sentence of the form “war is horrible, but . . . .” In this construction, the phrase that follows the conjunction explains why a certain war was (or now is or someday will be) an action that ought to have been (or ought to be) undertaken notwithstanding its admitted horrors. The frequent, virtually formulaic use of this expression attests that nobody cares to argue, say, that war is a beautiful, humane, uplifting, or altogether splendid course of action and therefore the more often people fight, the better.

Now, I have to say, war is horrible but the alternatives are worse.

Thanks to decades of US foreign policy, the free market reforms that SHOULD have long since occurred in the Middle East never took place. We supported tyrants to help contain the Soviet Union.

Iraq is not the goal, it never was.

Iraq is the battlefield where a war of ideas is taking place. The only justification for invading Iraq is giving time for those ideas to take root. Meanwhile Iran and Syria are fighting in Iraq to turn Iraq into a client state.

The "other side" is not playing by the rules.

Playing nice won't work. And walking away before the job is done will just invite more attacks on American soil. You don't have to look very far in recent history to realize that, even if you ignore everything after September 10, 2001.

So what do you do when all your choices are bad?

Hat tip Wendy McElroy.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - June 25, 2007 at 02:08 PM  Tag


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