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March 21, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:46
151 Arguments Against War
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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph.
It is 5.10pm on the 21st of March, 2006, and it's time to adjust the volume again.
Yes, there we go.
Probably a little better.
I wish I could tell you what happened.
Those damn gremlins and evil elves at my computer again.
So I hope you're doing well.
I had an interesting IM chat today with a fine gentleman named Natasha.
Which I'm sure he understands, even if nobody else does.
About war.
Conversations about war.
So I thought it would be interesting to put aside my planned topic for this afternoon.
Of course, I do have these topics planned out at least 12 to 14 months in advance, so this is an intense amount of reshuffling in my cognitive arena, but I think I can manage it.
So, Natasha was talking about, not his real name, as I'm sure you can imagine, Natasha was talking about the difficulty of conversing with people about the war.
Now, believe it or not, to our American friends, this was not an American.
So, this is a Canadian gentleman who is having trouble chatting with his public school friends, public school teacher friends, about the war.
The war here being us in Afghanistan.
I know that we didn't go to Iraq, although of course it's quite true that we have some training people out there and we have this, that, and the other, but hey, of course we're not actually out there officially in Iraq.
But what we have done is we've sent some soldiers to Afghanistan, as I'm sure you're aware if you listen to my podcast more recently, wherein I'd read the letter from the woman from Moncton.
Now, the real question about how to argue about war is a complex one, of course.
And I think I can do it in one podcast, as long as there is at least 11 to 11 and a half hours of traffic jams and my notebook battery is nearly infinite.
Yes, I think I can do it in a single podcast.
Well, I'll give it a shot.
I'll go very quickly.
Okay.
So, how to argue about war is tricky.
And this gentleman who IM'd me was saying that there are lots of facts about the war and we're doing this and we're doing that and we're rebuilding and we're helping and so on.
Which of course was also mentioned in the Marines email to me of about a week ago.
So I thought it would be worthwhile using the argument for morality approach to war and just see, you know, just to see if it helps you, to see if it does any good in this kind of situation to get you over the hump of not having specific knowledge.
Because you cannot argue.
You cannot use the argument from effect, from war, because you are always dealing with hypothetical situations.
And so, you know, well, if we hadn't gone into the Second World War, then the Nazis would have developed the bomb, and then they would have taken over, we'd all be Hitler's, you know, chihuahua pets by now, and wouldn't that be terrible, and is that what you want?
A world of Hitlerian, you know, democide?
No, of course not.
So, all of this sort of stuff is based on theoretical, historical possibilities.
You can argue it as far as the day is long and never get anywhere.
So that's definitely not the approach to work with.
The argument from a fact is tough enough if you have to deal with things like statistics about the welfare state and the current financial configurations of Social Security.
God help you if you're going to have to deal with hypothetical theoreticals.
From 50, 60, 70 years ago, not going to do any good whatsoever.
I will toss in a little bit about war and the myths around the Second World War, and particularly around the First World War, because you can't really deal with them in isolation.
As I believe that the French General Foch said at the end of the First World War, after he reviewed the Treaty of Versailles, he said, this is not peace, this is détente for 20 years.
Which, of course, he was entirely correct about.
So, let's talk about how we can talk about war with people who say, yay, I am so keen on the Iraq war, and I am so keen on the war on Afghanistan, I can't even tell you.
It makes my little nipples go ping just to think about it.
So, let's talk about how I... These are my suggestions.
Everybody can take up their own sword as they see fit.
These are my suggestions, ways that I found it helpful to talk about the war with people, and y'all let me know if it works, okay?
So when somebody says that they're for the war, then the first question that I will generally ask them for is, do you think that the war is a moral good thing?
And they say, well, obviously, yes.
Yes, it's a good thing.
And of course, they'll talk about the cost-benefit.
Well, yes, people get killed and blah, blah, blah.
But it's better for the world.
It's better for the people.
We like the oil.
You know, we like Michael Moore ranting, and so we're very happy about the war.
We believe it's a good thing.
It's a necessary evil.
The benefits outweigh the costs, blah blah blah.
And of course, you can't argue any of that kind of stuff.
You certainly can't argue it with anybody over here.
You certainly, certainly cannot argue with public school teachers about warfare.
These are the people who will take to the streets and cry if you take one day off their two months a year.
Two months a year off in the summer.
If you ask them to come back one day early, they'll be writing letters to the editor.
That's how easy it is for them to deal with setbacks in a staunch manner.
This is how flexible they are to difficulties within their own lives.
You try taking on the public school unions and see how far you get if you encroach upon their comforts even one iota.
But of course they're perfectly content to talk about sending people overseas to their deaths.
Because, you know, they're just that kind of people.
If other people are suffering, well, you know, we can live with it.
But don't you dare even try to reduce by one day our two months off in the summer.
These kind of armchair warriors, they either make me laugh or they make me angry.
And I've decided not to be angry today.
I've decided to do a bit more laughing.
Because this stuff is just so funny that to me it's just kind of ridiculous.
People sitting there in a teacher's lounge with their six hours a day of work and their two months off in the summer and their professional development days and their unions and their we're-impossible-to-be-fired kind of mentality, public sector unions.
Oh, talking about, yeah, I think it's great that we're sending troops over to Afghanistan.
I just think that's funny.
Of all the people in public sector union employees, other than sort of the rich white Republicans, these are the people who I have the least patience for when they talk about the suffering, the necessary suffering that's involved in making the world a better place.
Yeah, let's privatize.
Are you keen on that?
Do you think that would be better?
No?
But yes, I know teachers work very hard and they've been overworked and blah blah blah.
I understand that.
But, you know, these aren't the people that I'm talking about.
I bet you these are long-tenured teachers.
But this is the sort of reality, of course.
And you can use this argument with people if you feel that it's going to be all right.
It's pretty confrontational.
And I think Bill O'Reilly and Michael Moore had a go at this.
You can look at it on either one of their websites.
They had a A debate, wherein Michael Moore was saying, would you give up your son to save Fallujah?
And Bill O'Reilly was like, well, I would give up my life to save Fallujah.
But of course, he's not going to be asked, right?
He's a slightly tubby old white guy.
He's not going to be asked to go over any more than Prince William's going to get anywhere within 10,000 miles of a stray bullet, right?
I mean, that's really for the lower classes.
Not so much for us.
So you can take that approach, though, and say, well, would you be willing to give up your life, or any of your children over there, or this or that or the other?
Like, how much skin have you got in the game when you're talking about, yes, it's good that we're going out there killing and dying to achieve X, Y, or Z?
You can sort of ask people, and it's not an unreasonable thing to ask people, well, what kind of skin do you have in the game?
And you can ask it in a nice way.
Like, you can say, OK, well, is this kind of theoretical?
Like I said, do you actually know anybody over there?
Were you ever in the military?
Are you planning on joining the military because you think this is a good idea?
No disrespect intended, but I'm just trying to understand if you're talking about this stuff with no skin in the game, Or if you're kind of like, you really believe it so much that you're willing to put your own life or the life of an immediate family member on the line and so on.
That doesn't mean that you're right or wrong either way.
It's just important to give, in a sense, fire a shot across their bowels and say that to some degree it's sort of important to know whether you're just talking in a very abstract way about war or where there's any possibility of you actually getting or your interests actually being harmed by it.
Now, one of the things that I found helpful to talk about when it comes to war, and there's lots of different approaches, these are just some optional ones, which avoid you having to deal with any facts.
I know that doesn't sound very good.
Avoid facts, you see, because they're provable, and we don't really want that.
No, but it avoids you having to run around trying to look up statistics and it involves you, as this gentleman was talking about getting involved with boring statist history teachers who bring up the Nazis and know a lot more factual details about this, that, or the other, although I would be very surprised if they knew any of the accurate conclusions that came out of something like the Second World War, but I bet you they know a lot of nitty-gritty and dull names and dates.
But another way that you can begin to approach this topic is you can say, well then, do you think we should have a draft?
And if they say yes, then they say, well, if you feel that there should be a draft, in other words, that people should be forced to go, would you be willing to go, blah blah blah.
There's always people who are not subject to the draft, who seem to be sort of keen on it, right?
Or who can get their kids into college or buy their way out of it in a Clinton-esque manner.
So you can say, would you be in favor of the draft?
Now here up in Canada that's not so good, and of course in the States it's not so good either.
So people generally will say, no, I'm not so keen on the draft.
I think that's not the right way to do it.
They sort of say, why?
Well, forcing people is not right, it should be voluntary, and so on.
And then it's like, ha!
Fantastic!
Now we have something we can really agree on.
Voluntary.
Participation.
In the war, insert name of war here, participation in the war should be voluntary.
See, now we're starting to talk in a language that libertarians get goosebumps over.
Ooh, actually, that just made my nipples go ping.
Oh no, wait, sorry, it's just cold in here.
But that kind of language we can start to actually agree with people.
Yummy!
It's voluntary.
Voluntary participation in the war.
Fantastic.
Now, even if they are for the draft, you can ask them, okay, well, so you're for the draft, I got it.
Do you think that if you are a Quaker or a pacifist or someone like that, that you should be able to be a conscientious objector?
In other words, if it is against your religious principles, You don't have to use moral principles here.
I generally prefer starting with religious principles because sadly people have a little bit more respect for that.
somebody who has religious principles against the shedding of blood, against war, will you allow them to kind of sit it out, right?
And most people will say yes, because if they say no, then you say, okay, so then what you're going to do is grab these self-professed holy people and you're going to force them to fight.
And if they don't fight, you're going to shoot them, right?
So dragging religious people out to be shot doesn't really sound like the kinds of freedoms that you would consider worth fighting for.
And so a lot of people aren't going to be really comfortable saying, oh absolutely, let's get the nuns, and let's get the priests, and let's get the religious people, all the Quakers and the Amish, and let's just drag them out and shoot them if they don't participate in the war.
You've got to be kind of like on the fascistic side of things if you want that kind of stuff to be occurring.
So most people will say, well no, I don't think that we should force people who are conscientious objectors to support the war.
And so now you're starting to get somewhere.
Are you starting to build a case that's going to look pretty nice on your mantelpiece of libertarian victories in your war chest?
Your free-domain radio medals?
And so you've got two things sort of established.
One is that participation in the war should be voluntary.
Yummy.
No draft.
We're all very happy about that.
Number two.
That if you have a moral problem with war, you should be allowed to sit it out.
Excellent.
Excellent.
I'm still working on my Mr. Burns.
I think I have about 50 years to go, but I'm going to get there.
I'm telling you.
And so now you've got sort of two principles, right?
Morally, you should be able to withdraw from the war, and participation in the war should be voluntary for everyone.
Fantastic.
Now we're starting to get somewhere.
So now you can say, okay, well then we agree.
And the person's going to go, howah?
Or something like that.
And you're going to say, well, or you could say, do whatever you want, this is sort of my suggestion, right?
You're going to say something like, okay, so you said that, morally, people who are against the war should be allowed to withdraw.
Fantastic.
I wish to withdraw.
Secondly, participation in the war is voluntary, or should be voluntary, according to your own admission.
Now, just so you know, if they've gone the other way on this, like, get out of the room, because they're psychotic.
Like, if they want to shoot down priests and religious people for not participating, and they want a draft, then just don't bother, because they're just insane, right?
They're just completely evil, so I would just not bother with them at all, other than to say, dude, you're totally, like, evil, okay?
So, if they say, voluntary, voluntary, fantastic, you say, great, then I want to not pay taxes for the war.
And then they're going to go, again?
And you're going to say, well, this is, you know, I mean, what would it mean to say that you don't have to support a war, but we're going to hire mercenaries on your behalf to support the war?
I mean, that wouldn't make any sense, right?
It wouldn't make any sense logically to say, I have the right to oppose the war, but I must still be forced to pay for the war.
And what would it mean to say that I'm not going to get drafted, but my money is going to get drafted to pay for somebody to go in my place?
I mean, that's not particularly logical.
Am I right or am I wrong?
Or am I simply too loud?
Let me just check my volume here.
Nope, I'm going to keep driving.
So, that's kind of an important approach to take, because the real question around war is, if you're so for it, absolutely.
If you want to pay for it, if you want to go and cough up some money for the Canadian military, fantastic!
I think it's completely morally evil, but it's not as morally evil as forcing everyone else to pay for a war that you consider to be good.
So that's a pretty important approach to take, I think.
That can be very helpful.
Now, if they say, no, everybody has to be forced to pay for the war, then they have a contradiction, right?
Because then they have to not Let the priests and the Quakers get away, but they have to shoot them if they're not going to participate.
And they also have to support the draft, right?
You can't say that the draft should be voluntary, or that the participation should be voluntary, and then say that everybody should be forced to participate in it.
I mean, that's sort of a logical contradiction.
So if they then go back and say, yes, absolutely, that's fantastic, let's go shoot the priests who won't participate, and the Quakers, and the pacifists, and the anarchists, and the libertarians, and everyone, everyone we can get our hands on, who's not going to participate in the war, we're going to shoot them, then that's great.
At least they're being logically consistent.
Stone evil, but logically consistent.
So good for them.
At least they have got their swastikas all in a row, right?
As far as that goes.
But of course, nobody's going to go to that, right?
Yes, we should shoot everyone who doesn't want to participate in the war because it's so important to protect our freedoms.
I mean, that would be kind of funny, right?
That would be like you're joking, right?
Like you're not really serious about this and shoot everyone so that they have to go and defend their freedom to be shot if they don't go and defend their freedom.
I mean, that's kind of like a Mobius strip of insane paradoxes that you really can't unravel, except with the aforementioned swastika.
So that's another way of helping them sort of understand what they're talking about.
In my conversations with someone about who thought, oh, the war in Afghanistan is so great, they say, okay, well, I don't agree with you.
And I'm assuming that you're not going to shoot me because of that, right?
You know, I didn't pat him down or anything, but I said, you don't look particularly armed to me.
But I'm going to assume, I'm going to go out on a limb here, I'm going to assume that you're not actually going to shoot me at the dinner table for disagreeing with you, right?
I mean, we're allowed to disagree, we're allowed to have differences of opinions, we have multicultural democracy, blah blah blah.
And he's like, yes, I'm not going to shoot you at the dinner table, giving me that sort of stink-eye look, right?
I'm not going to shoot you at the dinner table, and yes, we're allowed to disagree.
We're allowed to disagree about the war.
I said, fantastic!
If I forcibly prevented you from supporting the war, in other words, if you tried to send money to the war or whatever, or you wanted to march in favor of the war, if I shot you for that, would you consider that to be sort of a not such a good thing, like an imposition on your rights?
And the guy said, yeah, I would kind of consider that to be an imposition on my rights.
I'm like, fantastic, you know, we are just in perfect parallel here as far as this goes, and we are actually in the happy land of perfect agreement.
Because if I'm against the war, but if I choose not to fund it... What would it mean to say I'm against something, but then be forced to have to fund it?
It's completely wrong.
So, if I'm against the war, but I get shot if I don't want to fund it, then what does it mean to say I have a right to be against the war?
Now, if you're not going to shoot me for being against the war, would you advocate that somebody else shoot me?
In other words, you want me to be shot, you just don't want to get your hands dirty yourself.
Well, no, whatever.
I could go back and forth on this a bit, but they'll definitely get that sort of point.
Okay, so basically I should not be shot for opposing the war.
You should be free to support the war.
I should be free to oppose the war.
And forcing me to support it is a violation of my freedom of association.
That's an important thing to get across.
Forcing me to support the war financially is a violation.
of my capacity to act as a conscientious objector and to disagree in a fundamental way with the war.
Now, if somebody says, well, you have to support the war because it's a democracy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, you can.
I mean, there's a whole other set of agreements about that or disagreements about that that you can get into, which we've covered in other podcasts.
But it's sort of important to get them to recognize.
Now, if they say, after all of this, yes, by golly, you really should be shot for not supporting the war, then what you can at least say is, okay, so we're not really having a discussion here, right?
I mean, we're not really having a debate.
Like, if you say to a woman, I'd really like to get married to you and take you on a honeymoon to Cuba, Then she's like, oh, flutters her eyes, oh, let me think about that, I don't know.
And if it turns out, it's like, I gotta tell you, this is how it's gonna, sort of, you're gonna take this rig, you're gonna put it on your finger, you're going to get on a plane with me tomorrow morning to go to Cuba, I'll even pack for you!
And if you don't do all of these things, I'm gonna shoot you!
That's not really a proposal, right?
That's not really very romantic, actually.
That's kind of like kidnap and rape.
So, if you're having a debate with someone, and this is common across a wide variety of situations, in fact, any situation where the state is involved, right?
If you're having a debate with someone, and the basis of their argument is, if you don't agree with me, I'm gonna shoot you, then it's not really a debate, right?
It's not really seduction if you have a knife to the woman's throat.
It's not really a debate if you're going to get shot for disagreeing.
And pretending that it is a debate puts a veneer of civility over it that the brutal and violent nature of the interaction does not warrant.
And that's really, of course, what it comes right down to.
You can be nice about it.
Because this is kind of like changing people's minds at a very fundamental level.
It's a very, very important point to get across, and you can do it in a way where you're not throwing plates around and storming out of the room, but basically you have to kind of get people to understand that if you're going to shoot me for disagreeing with you, it's not really a debate.
It's not really a conversation.
It's kind of like a formality, like I'd like you to agree that I'm going to shoot you, but not say it, and pretend to debate.
And from my standpoint, if people do say to me, yeah, you know, Steph, got to tell you, I think you've got a nice argument.
I understand that you've got some, you know, rudimentary logical skills in this area.
But when it comes right down to it, yeah, I mean, you're going to get shot.
And that's the end of the debate.
Fantastic.
You know, what an honest interaction.
Absolutely, positively, lutely wonderful.
Then get the hell out of my house.
Right?
Get the hell out of my house and get the hell out of my life.
I don't choose to participate with people who want me to get shot for disagreeing with them.
How sick can you get?
So, yeah, I mean, never associate with these people again.
And sort of send them on their merry way with a full understanding that they are incredibly violent and evil people.
And not give a veneer of, oh, you know, about the Second World War, there was this and there was that, and the Vietnam War with the domino theory might have prevented this, that, or the other.
To hell with all of that!
They want you shot!
They want you shot!
If you don't agree with them.
And people are gonna get mad, oh, you shouldn't put it that way, or it's like, no, I'm not the one holding the gun here, I'm just the one pointing out that there's a gun in the room, that's all I'm doing, right?
I mean, that's all I'm doing.
You know, it's like if you get kidnapped at a sort of fancy party and some guy, some bald, burly guy in a tux comes up to you, sticks a gun to your ribs and says, come with me, please.
I don't really think you need the please.
I mean, I don't think you do.
So if people are debating with you about the war, all you have to say is, should participation be voluntary or should people be shot for not participating?
If it's voluntary, then I absolutely reserve the right and you are honor-bound to defend my right to not pay taxes to support the war, because it's voluntary!
And if it's not voluntary, let's not pretend we're having a debate!
Because you're going to shoot me for not agreeing!
It's even worse than that.
You're going to get some other goon to shoot me.
You want me shot, you just don't want to do it yourself.
I can't really respect that.
At least you've got some thug with a snub nose in your nose.
At least it's something you can respect.
At least he's gonna be willing to get his suit dirty.
But these other guys, they're gonna wander off and let the police handle it.
Oh, how brave can you be?
So that's my sort of take on how to argue the war thing.
And you'll notice I didn't refer to anything in terms of facts.
You'll notice that this is the So the basic argument about the war.
That's one aspect of the argument from morality.
The other one is pretty simple and I'll just do it real quick because I'm sure you're getting the hang of this by now.
So you say, OK, so murder is OK if Paul Martin says it's OK and the guy's over in Afghanistan.
That's murder.
That's good.
And it's not good if I say it to you over in Scarborough or Washington or wherever.
So help me understand this moral difference because here murder is good and here murder is evil and so on.
And what's the difference?
Can I declare war?
Can you declare war?
If not, how is this justified?
Blah, blah, blah.
And that's going to be easier to debate, but people are going to be enormously baffled and irritated by your insistence that morality actually exists and be somewhat consistent across human beings, because everybody's trained to slice and dice and frappe human beings up into these atomic and morally opposite entities.
So when you try and draw any kind of net of consistency around that, people are going to get pretty angry.
But it's a shorter argument, and it's less volatile.
And you can play more confused, and you don't have to point out the gun.
But it's six of one, half a dozen of the other, which one you prefer.
Now, I won't get to the Second World War today.
I'll sort of mention it briefly tomorrow morning.
But the other thing which is sort of bandied about is that Well, you know, the Iraqis who are free now, the Afghans or whoever, they're better off now than they were before.
They're happier now than they were before.
Things are just copacetic now compared to how things were before.
Well, I think that's a very interesting argument.
So, one of the things that we can be sure of is that the people who are dead Did not want to give up their lives for this cause.
I mean, we can be absolutely sure of that.
And how do we know that?
Because they didn't all mount a rebellion and risk getting shot before the US even got there.
They didn't try and rebel against Saddam Hussein and risk getting shot.
So the hundred thousand odd people who've been murdered in Iraq Pretty sure that they're not doing so well, right?
They're not so happy with it all and we know for sure that they would have preferred to live under Saddam Hussein than to be killed and have their relatives, even if we accept that there's freedom there, which of course there's not.
There's curfews and military law and all this kind of nonsense.
But even if we accept that there was freedom there, there's just no way that those hundred thousand people Who've been murdered are happier that way, because they didn't choose to be murdered, and they were sort of innocent bystanders, bombed or scutted or, you know, whatever, shot by Marines because their foot slipped off the brake pad when they were approaching a checkpoint or something like that.
But for sure, they are not happy with this situation.
Because they're dead.
There's no freedom for them, right?
There's no freedom except for the freedom to rot and let worms roll around in their eye sockets.
So, for sure those people aren't better off.
And, you know, they're kind of important in the equation.
Because life and death, you know, kind of important.
I mean, I'll tell you this.
If somebody said to me, you have a 5% chance of being killed, but on the upside there's a 5% chance of ending the state and getting an anarcho-capitalist society, I'd pretty much say no.
And if somebody said to me, you have a 100% chance of being killed, and there's a 5% chance, then I would say no, for sure, because I'd much rather be alive and arguing for it, and I get a lot of pleasure out of my life, independent of the fact that I'm a political slave 50-60% of my day.
So, I mean, I want and every human being wants and has the right to choose how they are going to give up their life and in what pursuit of however.
In pursuit of what goals or whatever you want to call it.
We don't get to decide for the Iraqis who gets to die.
We don't get to decide for the Afghans who gets to die and for what cause.
That is not up to us.
We can take that right and we can kill them and we can label their deaths as worthwhile.
I understand that that can be done verbally, but it's not right.
It's absolutely not right.
You cannot kill someone in cold blood and then say, yeah, I mean, it was worth it.
It was worth it.
Trust me.
It was worth it.
Everything was absolutely worth it and, you know, who's left is better off.
That's not our choice!
That's not our choice at all!
We don't even allow euthanasia here, where people who are dying in agony get a chance to kill themselves, or have the assisted death.
And we are over there in Iraq, saying to people, we're gonna blow the crap out of you, and bomb your children, and destroy your homes.
But, when you die, we're gonna say that it's worthwhile.
If you don't get to decide, even for yourself, when you get to die, and what's worthwhile for you, how on earth can any human being say for another human being, yeah, you're going to die, but we feel that it's worthwhile?
It's not your choice.
Absolutely, completely, and totally not your choice.
I mean, you can't go around raping women and say, well, yeah, but it was good for them.
You know, it's worth it for them.
They're happy about it.
I mean, you can, but it's morally insane and sick and evil to the nth degree.
And that's nothing compared to murder!
Murder is it!
It's the end of everything for the person who dies.
They get nothing at all.
They are thrown in the ground and they rot.
And that's it.
They don't get to speak, make love, dance, sing, eat, drink, be merry, be miserable, any of that.
They're dead and in the ground, and I really can't see how logically or morally one human being can make that choice for another human being, kill that person, and say, yeah, well, it's worth it.
We feel that your death is worth it.
Where does that end?
You tell me.
I know where it ends.
It ends in gulags.
If you want to make an omelette, you've got to break a few eggs.
And as Harry Brown said, the eggs always get broken, but the omelette never gets made.
Now, that's a fairly important thing to understand.
The worst thing about it is that killing people will never bring freedom anyway.
Killing people will never bring freedom anyway.
So, I said before, I have a 5% chance of getting a libertarian society, 5% chance of you dying.
Well, actually, there's no chance.
There's no chance that skybombing the crap out of an entire population is going to bring about their freedom.
It's completely unthinkable, absolutely impossible.
What brings about freedom is rational ideas, passionately argued for, and insistently driven home.
And it also, what brings around freedom, is getting rid of corrupt people in your life so they face some consequences from someone, somewhere, somehow, for their own corruption.
That, my friends, will bring about freedom.
I can't tell you when, and I can't tell you exactly how, but it doesn't really matter.
That will bring around freedom.
Bombing people will not bring about freedom, and so these people have died for nothing.
These people have died for less than nothing.
They have died so that Halliburton can become rich.
They have died so that the military-industrial complex can transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from civilians to fat politico pigs with connections and Swiss bank accounts.
They have been murdered for money.
So please, if you're going to deal with somebody who's talking about the war, at least have them accept some of the basic facts.
That it's not free.
It's not free in Iraq.
It's not free in Afghanistan.
People in Washington... I mean, Washington has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
The Washington politicians can't even keep Washington safe and free and non-violent.
Do you really think they'll be able to do it in Iraq?
Do you really think that if they can't keep English-speaking Americans from shooting each other, At the highest rate in North America, perhaps one of the highest rates in the world, do you really think they'll be able to get non-English speaking Iraqis in a culture and a history they don't understand, in a situation that through their meddlesome foreign policy they themselves brought about, that they will be able to make that place peaceful?
Of course not!
It's completely insane!
So you've got to get out of the cloudy ideas and look at the actual history.
You tell me an American foreign policy or any foreign policy adventure that has resulted in freedom for a particular country that was imposed by the American military.
And don't even think about bringing up Japan and Germany and so on.
These things were done internally, because everybody wanted to be free.
The Japanese didn't want the Emperor any more than anybody else wants their stupid, psychotic leaders.
They just faced a lot of corporeal punishment for speaking out against him.
The moment he got blown away, I mean, his legitimacy got blown away, they were like, Great!
Let's be free!
Oh, fantastic!
We've been waiting for this for 10,000 years!
That's what's going to bring freedom.
That's my suggestions, at least, on how you can talk about the war.
I hope they're helpful, and of course, let me know how your adventures in pacifism go, because I'm always curious to see how this stuff lands for other people.
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