Tuesday 27 June 2006

Towards a moral policy of self-defence

Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute offers a serious challenge to the ethics of US Defence policy and of 'just war' theory. It's long, but well worth printing out and pondering. Read it here.

LINK: 'Just war theory' vs. American self-defence - Objective Standard

TAGS: War, Ethics, Politics-US, Objectivism

1 comment:

Berend de Boer said...

Some interesting points the article suffers a lot from just glossing over unconvenient facts.

If Iran is the most important enemy of the US, was it that five years ago? Could the US have attacked Iran if Saddam was still in power?

There is currently no support in America for targeting civilians. So politically speaking, you cannot do that unless you have a mandate IMO.

I agree that this is a religious battle, and you wage those with missionaries. Just democracy won't do it I'm afraid. But you can argue that democracy perhaps has the best chance to flower in country where without everyone having a say one side will simply kill the other as in Iraq. Having three radically different groups living together in one country can only be done through democracy. Or a tyranny.

So the article makes some good points, but its' too wrong on many counts to be of much value in this discussion.