Just Cause, or Just 'Cause? |
The fact that there are some bad people doing some bad things halfway
around the world does not mean that “we” have to do something about it.
There can be no such thing as an open-ended obligation to help everyone
who’s being oppressed, pillaged, raped, enslaved, or murdered by their
unprincipled fellows, because such an obligation would be effectively
infinite. It would eat up all of our resources. And by and large, we
don’t help every person or group of people fight off every aggressor or
group of aggressors. Which is a good thing, because our “help” often
makes things worse.
![](antiwar14b.jpg)
So why do we choose to respond when we do choose to respond? Or rather,
why do our leaders choose to respond when they do? Is it because it’s
the right thing to do? Or do they do it simply because, for whatever
combination of factors, they can? A particularly unflattering enemy,
perhaps, who can easily be demonized, for reasons both justified and
not, and one who cannot really fight back, at least not in any way that
would impose serious, widespread repercussions on the voting populace.
An enemy, furthermore, who is far enough away that all the collateral
damage, all of the innocents killed by our noble bombs dropped from our
heroic jets, can be easily ignored, and who anyway look different and
talk different and worship the wrong deity.
There is injustice, to be sure, and the gut reaction to want to fight
injustice is a good and noble one, but we successfully repress it, or
rather our leaders do, when it comes to places like North Korea and
Russia, which would be very costly adventures indeed. We cautiously
avoid getting into a war with such villains, whom we engaged with zeal
just a couple of generations ago. Mutually Assured Destruction surely
has something to do with it, but I think we can claim a certain moral
progress as well, though perhaps it has not quite kept pace with our
material progress.
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“Instead of feeding their grievances by bombing weddings, maybe
we could, I don’t know, drop crates filled with delicious food, or DVDs
of television programs showing the richness and complexity of Western
life in order to counter their caricatures of our depravity.” |
No more great wars, then, even if they could be justified, because the
cost is just too great. But little wars are fine, once in a while, when
they can be justified, even if they always seem to do more harm than
good. Keeps the troops in fighting form, you know, and keeps the voting
public from focusing on domestic problems.
Keeps us from having to come up with more creative ways of responding to
aggressors, also. Like, for the billions spent on all those guns and
bombs, all those fighting forces and roaring jets and aircraft carriers,
above and beyond what is needed to legitimately dissuade or fend off
foreign aggressors, we could maybe do something to impede the recruiting
efforts of terrorist organizations instead of helping them sign up new
members. Instead of feeding their grievances by bombing weddings, maybe
we could, I don’t know, drop crates filled with delicious food, or DVDs
of television programs showing the richness and complexity of Western
life in order to counter their caricatures of our depravity. Maybe we
could support the translation of classic liberal tracts into all the
languages of the world, as some organizations already do, and smuggle
them across the various walls and checkpoints that keep our fellow human
beings from escaping their prison countries, in order to counter the
propaganda that keeps those walls from crumbling and those checkpoints
from being overrun.
These are just the most obvious ideas off the top of my head, but I’m
sure we can crack this nut and come up with a thousand innovative ways
of responding to homicidal whack jobs that would be better than sending
in the flying aces with their deadly payloads. It’s tempting, and even
justified, to want to fight fire with fire. But the properly understood
cost, in terms of money and lives and opportunities lost and enemies
strengthened, even for the “small” wars we fight nowadays, is higher
than the meagre benefits we imagine they will bring us. A proper
accounting would show the folly of just about every war, and show that
just about every war is really fought just because.
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From the same author |
▪
The Great Fact: A Review of Deirdre McCloskey's
Bourgeois Dignity
(no
324 – Sept. 15, 2014)
▪
The Police State Needed to Enforce Vice Laws
(no
323 – June 15, 2014)
▪
Centrally Planning the Job Market: We Need More Data!
(no
322 – May 15, 2014)
▪
Individual Control of Individual Education
(no
321 – April 15, 2014)
▪
The Politics of Envy and Jealousy
(no
320 – March 15, 2014)
▪
More...
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![Ama-gi](ama-gi.jpg) |
First written appearance of the
word 'liberty,' circa 2300 B.C. |
Le Québécois Libre
Promoting individual liberty, free markets and voluntary
cooperation since 1998.
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