Obama: The People's War President?

Last week, I received news that an old friend—the son of a former Libertarian congressional candidate—had become a conscientious objector in his Army unit following an action that killed noncombatants. This was Wayne's first tour of duty, but there is no doubt that he was well-practiced in the fieldcraft and personal discipline required for good soldiering.

He grew up in a close-knit Christian family that homeschooled their children on a fifty acre plot of woods in the wiregrass region of lower Alabama. Wayne grew up reading, hunting, fishing, shooting guns, and playing paintball with his brother and sister. While working with the Libertarian Party of Alabama, I visited their home on several occasions between 2002 and 2004, and I remember Wayne as a respectful young teenager with an expansive vocabulary and his father's knack for computer games.

Around five years after the last time I saw him, Wayne's infantry unit deployed to Iraq. Having been in the Army for a couple of years already, his father reports that he was "gung-ho" about the Army life, even in a combat zone. Wayne's unit assaulted a building thought to contain "insurgents," and air support was called in from an AC-130 gunship and an AH-64 Apache helicopter. After the target was bombarded from the air with 105 mm shells and strafed with 30 mm cannon-fire, the structure was cleared, and only lifeless women and children were found inside.

After returning stateside, Wayne determined that his conscience would not allow him to kill for the United States government again. Despite ridicule and worse from his "battle buddies," Wayne, now facing another Iraq deployment, has begun openly speaking his conscience and declaring that participation in the Iraq War is participation in murder.

Barack Obama was held out by many as the most radical voice for peace among the viable Democratic presidential candidates in 2008. What a disappointment to those who voted accordingly! The peace president has broadly expanded the Afghanistan campaign, begun bombing runs in Yemen, and still maintains tens of thousands of combat troops, albeit at reduced levels, in Iraq (although my friend reports that private military contractor usage has been amped up to compensate). There have been rumblings about stepping up U.S. efforts to "stabilize" Somalia, and Xe (formerly Blackwater) mercenaries are already on the ground there. The Obama administration has also worked to move more troops into the murderous anti-coca campaign in Colombia, where "false positives" (anti-narco-gestapo-speak for "murdered civilians") continue to mount.

Fear of American operations into Colombia's neighbors has made political hay for South American political oppressors, as the socialists in power in Venezuela and Ecuador have effectively used the American regime as a foil in their own democratic socialist melodramas, working to clamp down on dissenting media outlets and otherwise centralizing control of those economies into state hands.

In total, the United States has around 394,000 troops deployed on foreign soil. In comparison, the rest of the world's governments combined have fewer than 150,000 of their military personnel on international deployment.

Like his war-hawk predecessor, the current president is pursuing a policy of perpetual war for perpetual peace. And like the Bush government, Obama's administration has moved to cover-up evidence of torture and other crimes committed by U.S. personnel.

Glenn Greenwald pointed out in a recent Salon column that this should come as no surprise to those who remember that in 2008 Obama's current head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, advocated government operations to actively infiltrate and disrupt groups that openly questioned the truthfulness of the federal government's various organs. Sunstein pitched such actions as means for promoting public faith in the government.

Administration figures have also been up to no good in domestic policy debates, with the undisclosed bankrolling of soi disant "independent" experts like Jonathan Gruber. The MIT professor took federal money to promote the president's healthcare agenda in the media, but forgot to mention this rather substantial conflict of interests when grandstanding for his government employer. Greenwald correctly concluded that such official deception is symptomatic of yet another administration's narcissistic self-assuredness and disdain for honest debate.

If anyone doubts that government propaganda kills, look at the eighteen year-old kids who join the military because they believe they will be "protecting freedom" by serving as emissaries of the leviathan state that once used atomic weapons against civilians and which imprisons a higher percentage of its own citizens than any other modern democracy.

Rather than sending naive, trusting young people like my friend Wayne to risk life and limb committing mayhem in the name of "regional stability" and other nebulous trump cards, Obama should bring American troops home now. But he will not do so. He will simply put new window dressing on the tired old political barbarism of high-time preference foreign policy and spending for spending's sake, and will continue to show the same disregard for the individual lives irreparably harmed as a result. Where's the hope?

(Also published in the January 2010 issue of Dicta, the Suffolk Law Paper.)

From One Libertarian to Another on the War in Iraq

(The following is a letter that I wrote to two Alabama libertarians about my position on the War in Iraq. In previous emails, I had made it clear that I am an anti-war libertarian, and by anti-war I mean "the no-compromise, bring-them-home-now position.")

I too made the mistake of voting for GW Bush in 2000. My litmus test was the gun issue, and, heck, the NRA sent me three stickers with which to promote GW Bush. I can even say that, in my capacity as a dorm Resident Advisor, I was ferrying my residents to the polls so long as they promised to vote Bush. I've been trying to pay my penance for that through activism off and on since 2001.

As far as the exit strategy goes, I understand that removing troops from the theater means that there is a higher likelihood that the soldiers who remain there will become casualties. I am sympathetic to this problem, as I have lived with and trained with military men in the past, and I count a number of American combat troops as my friends. In fact, I have a good friend who is a demolitions specialist with SEAL team six, and two former roommates who are in Iraq with the US Army in combat arms slots.

I do not believe that the US Constitution authorizes the mustering of troops overseas. I believe this sort of action to be a grievous evil perpetrated by the federal government with federal taxpayer money. I know as well as you do that there are many brave men and women who are serving in good faith and who cannot be blamed for the poor decisions of their higher-ups. I am a religious man, and I pray for my friends and their comrades who are in harm's way. Nonetheless, I also pray for the innocent non-combatants who will be fully or partially incinerated by US white phosphorus ordnance (as in Fallujah), those who will have their property destroyed by US artillery and mortars, and those who will lose family members under the deceivingly innocent label of "collateral damage."

I cannot now, nor will I ever support any regime that sponsors total war. When Bush declared that those who were not with us were against us, he made it very clear that he was embarking on a jaunt that could only lead to total war involving the persons and property of millions of non-combatants. The crime perpetrated against thousands on 9/11/2001 ought to be treated like a crime. I would advocate the use of force to apprehend the individuals that actually committed the crime (including any material support with foreknowledge). For our state to attack a collective entity for the actions of individuals is immoral and unjust.

As for the sticky situation that we find ourselves in, I can only say that we must extricate ourselves from all entangling foreign alliances, including those with Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, and many others.I recognize that this position may not win popular support, but I frankly don't care. It is right and I will continue to declare its necessity from the rooftops even if I am the only one dissenting. I and my future children are being put at risk by the actions of our government overseas, and I will not betray my family's future safety so that Bush can be blamed for fewer coalition casualties. Bush & Friends got our troops into this mess, and I will not accept responsibility for it. It is Bush's fault that our troops are in harm's way, and it is Bush's fault if many die in our troops' extraction/exfiltration.

We should do right at any cost, and say "Damn the torpedoes!"

Homocide, War, Murder, and Their Distinctions

(The Center for Faith in Politics posted a link to this story, and posed three questions related to the subject matter of that story. The first query was whether or not the US government should apologize for past misdeeds. The other questions were "Are killings justified if they might achieve a greater good?" and "Is there a difference between a person killing a person, and a government killing a person, or set of people?" My responses to all three questions are below.)

First, to answer the first question posed: yes, the US government should apologize for atrocities committed by the US government, even if they were committed 40 years ago.

As for the more in depth, philosophical question... I believe that the six commandment is absolute. "Thou shalt not murder." Now, that response actually begs the question a bit, because the real question here is, "Which homocides are murder, and which aren't?" We know, for instance, that we are supposed to defend the poor and fatherless (presumably those least able to defend themselves) as per Psalms 10.

Vengeance, on the other hand, is the Lord's alone (Deut. 32:35, Romans 12:19, Hebrews 12:30, etc.). There is some room for further inquiry here, however, since Psalm 149 does talk about God's people carrying two-edged swords so as to execute God's vengeance upon the heathen (v.6). (Also note Luke 22:36 on defensive preparedness.)

The question remains: is it acceptable for a Christian to kill someone in a non-defensive manner? First, let me clearly define "defense." According to Dictionary.com, to defend is to "make or keep safe from danger, attack, or harm." So, in its purest form, defense may be considered the repulsion of an attacker, i.e., from one who would inflict harm on one's self, or upon the person of another, or, finally, upon one's property.

This last bit, the defense of property, cannot, in my view, warrant homocide without mitigating circumstances, such as a deadly weapon's use in the thief's taking of said property. The famous passage about an "eye for an eye" is, contrary to popular interpretation, clearly a limitation on punishment to those punishments which fit the crime, so I feel pretty comfortable saying that we as Christians are not to shoot people for, say, stealing popsicles, or, heck, even televisions.

With the property question out of the way, the question becomes, "Under what circumstances may I righteously kill someone in defense?" Because no man knows the hearts of other men, save God, then no man can be seen as righteous when he engages in a preemptive attack. We cannot know the intent of others beyond what they tell us, and what we actually see them do. Therefore, a man's arming of himself cannot be cause to kill him, although this prescription may change if the man arms himself after he declares, "I am gonna get my gun and kill you!" In such a case, the offender, even if he meant to joke but was unclear, may be seen as having exposed himself to bodily liability through his actions. So the standard comes down to some sort of "reasonable belief" on the part of the defender that his life or limb may be in danger.

What then of government killings? I think that this is relatively easy to answer. There is no such thing. An individual (or in some exceptional cases, several individuals) always commits the act necessary to effect the killing. The real question is whether or not an individual is permitted to kill an innocent at the whim of the state (i.e., politicians). My answer, as a world-hating, God-fearing Christian must be an emphatic "no." There is no reason to believe that a murder committed "in the line of duty" (read: "on the job") is less reprehensible than a personally-motivated killing.

Most important to me in this discussion is the issue of collateral damage. This concept can only be justified by a consequentialist ethic, such as utilitarianism. The scriptures, remarkably (actually, not so remarkably, given their divine inspiration) anticipate such ethical farces as utilitarianism. Romans 3:8 clearly declares that it is antithetical to God's law that we should say, "Let us do evil, that good may come".

If, then, we are forced to abandon the consequentialist analysis of right and wrong, we are left with a much easier system of judging right from wrong. We no longer must painstakingly attempt to predict the outcome of a particular action in order to determine its moral status. If the action is wrong in and of itself, it is wrong to perform--finis! We are, frankly, left with the obvious system here. We are to abhor those acts which are not in keeping with God's law (the law, as far as this anarchist is concerned). The taking of innocent life, even for a "good cause," is not permissible. The theft of property, even for a "good cause," is not righteous.

In summation, (1)no, the "greater good" cannot justify a killing, (2)and no, there is no qualitative difference between organized killing and unorganized killing. Although, as to this last point, the scriptures do reflect a holy disdain for warlike peoples, stating (through David), "scatter thou the people [that] delight in war" (Psalm 68:30b).