In an earlier post I outlined several intellectual sleights-of-hand that often attend the arguments advanced by libertarians who wish to justify war, especially in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. The enumeration was by no means exhaustive...so here I am again!

One of the sleights-of-hand is the fallacy of the excluded middle. In arguing against libertarians who have fundamental opposition to war, many hawks suggest -- explicitly or implicitly -- that the choice is between "pacifism" or their approach.

(BTW, anti-war libertarians may or may not be pacifists. For example, I advocate gun ownership rights and personal self-defense; I am anti-war for reasons other than pacifism, including the fact that I do not recognize warfare between states to be a matter of self-defense. Consider just one objection: when individuals exercise self-defense, it is in protection of person or property. When a state exercises so-called self-defense, it is in protection of territorial sovereignty. Unless you believe the state owns the territory it claims and, so, cancels out or renders inferior the ownership claims of the residents, you cannot say the state is protecting its property. And, of course, it has no person.)

Returning to the excluded middle... Even if anti-war arguments could be definitively quashed, it would not mean the arguments of hawks are correct. Those who believe in the propriety of war (or some wars) fall along a continuum. Just war theorists are at one end; they generally apply some version of the guidelines that have evolved since the 16th century Spanish scholastics started pounding them out. At the other end are the hawks; they generally apply a patina of propriety -- e.g. nuns strapped to tanks -- to starting a war and, then, procced as though everything about that war was justified. They may concede a detail here or there, for example, whether or not Gitmo prisoners be tortured, but if a war is said to be "justified" then all bets are off. The reality is quite different.

One of debates within the body of theory that discusses warfare has been between just war v. civilized war. Just war deals largely with motivations and pre-war prerequisites -- e.g. does a direct threat exist, have negotiations been attempted, etc. Civilized war deals largely with how war is to be conducted. (Of course, just war theory addresses this area as well.) Prior to the 20th century, which saw unprecedented global convulsions of warfare, the idea of limited or civilized warfare was popular. Some of the characteristics of civilized warfare were/are:

--you recognize civilians as non-combatants and do not target them. Civilized war advocates might well admit the propriety of destroying a tank with decorative nuns but they would not make the leap to bombing cities, occupying communities, policing civilians, etc. In short, they would not target civilians.
--you recognize the neutrality of other nations. Indeed, neutrality was often viewed favorably and 'the neutrals' were not punished for trading with either side of a conflict as long as the trade did not involve arms and ammunition.
--the preferred position is to stay out of war. Thus, negotiations were stressed and, in sharp contrast to today, politicians were praised for "keeping us out of war."

A key concept behind the shift from civilized war to all-out version was the idea that it was the duty of some nations -- mostly the United States -- to police the world in order to impose certain social conditions, like democracy. (The irony of imposing democracy through munitions seems to miss most people.) This concept means that all local wars have the potential to become global convulsions; the selection of which local war should go global seems to be whichever one serves the self-interest of politicians in power.

The new concept of war includes its role as a vehicle of social reform so that soldiers arrive with death in one hand and a CARE package in the other, all the while insisting they are there to protect women's rights, promote democracy or provide some other social good. BTW, I do claim that libetarian hawks support the view of war as a vehicle of social reform; nevertheless, their rather blind support of war is part of why those who do use that argument prevail.

What is the proper position when human rights are being violated by a foreign government? Murray Rothbard had a saying: "Rights should be universal; enforcement should be local."

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