Primary Objective: End the Wars

For anyone who has read my bio on OperationLibertas.com, war might be a topic you’ve been waiting to see what I had to say. I think its important to make my stance known, as well as touch on some libertarian philosophy as it pertains to warfare and security.

Lets get this point out there from the start. Libertarians are not pacifists. I think when people hear you say that you’re against war, they think you must be some kind of hippie who just wants everyone to get along. There is a big difference between pacifists who won’t hurt a fly (literally) to knowing when someone needs to get their teeth knocked in. Its simple. Don’t use force against someone, unless they use it against you. It falls in line perfectly with the Non-Aggression principle. If you haven’t read the article yet, check it out here. As it pertains to going to war, the same rules apply. When attacked, defend yourself, but never initiate force.

America was Attacked on 9/11. Therefore, we were completely in our rights to defend ourselves. But Warfare is far more serious than some drunk at the bar throwing a punch or having your house broken into. The decision to go to war should not be taken lightly, even when you are in the right to defend yourself. The goals should be limited, proportionate, and achievable. They should be limited so we don’t give our government power beyond control or beyond our ability to reign back in. They should be proportionate in that they should achieve a level of justice proportionate with the act. If someone breaks into my house, I should have the right to shoot them, even kill them if they are a threat. But I don’t then have the right to go after his family because he put my family in danger. Lastly, they should be achievable. When we allow government to set goals that are not achievable, we give them a blank check on power. You can’t apply proportionate justice if your goal is unachievable.

These are big picture, grand concepts of how to look at warfare and how we should, in a libertarian world, work through these issues. But the same rules apply even for the men and women on the ground. These goals don’t tie their hands. They just have to be smarter. As a Green Beret in both Turkey and Syria, there were often occasions where escalating a situation would have only put us in more harm. When you only have a 12 man team, and you’re further split up and operating as a three to four man element, you better make sure whatever your decision is, its limited, proportionate, and achievable. If its not, you’re going to get yourself killed.

I often hear arguments from people in the military and security sector and people in the media that claim the terrorists want to attack us because they hate our freedom. They clearly have not listened to the reasons that Osama Bin Laden gave for attacking us on 9/11. He never once mentioned our freedoms or our democracy. He didn’t care about those things. He cared about our military occupation of the muslim holy lands of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia. He was angry at the aggression the US and our allies had initiated against muslim countries. Same goes for Omar Mateen, the Pulse Night Club shooter. People have made claims that he attacked that club because it was a gay club. They don’t take the time to learn that the club was the first location that came up in a Google search when Mateen was looking for a location to attack. They must not have heard the 911 calls he made while in the night club where he repeatedly said that he wanted the US to stop bombing Syrians and Iraqis and stop killing muslims.

This is not to clear these people of their crimes. They attacked innocent civilians. But we need to understand their motives. They feel attacked and they believe they are defending themselves or others. Which is exactly why we need limited, proportionate, and achievable objectives when we decide to defend ourselves. Otherwise, we are no better than these men who target innocent civilians. As it stands today, between 150,000 and 460,000 Iraqi and Afghani civilians have been killed. These wars started because Al Qaeda killed 2,977 American civilians. I simply point that out to put some things in perspective. Think about how outraged you were on 9/11, and rightfully so. What do you think happens to the people in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen when they go through years of war from an outside power? Its called blowback and it makes us less safe.

We need to send all of our elected leaders a message: These wars have made us less safe, cost thousands of lives, cost other countries hundreds of thousands of lives, cost us trillions of dollars, and we have received nothing but more enemies from all of this. They need to bring our troops home and only send them in harms way when we have been attacked. Even then, our response will be limited, proportionate, and achievable.