My response to anti-war people · Liberty Politics Discussion

My response to anti-war people

I said that I had more response to anti-war people today, and I thought I would try to write out my thoughts here.

For those who did not see Pahlavi's speech, he said two things that were very profound, and which encapsulate a lot of my disagreement with the anti-war 'bleeding heart' types, both progressive and otherwise. First, he said that liberty is everything and it is worth dying for. He said it much better than I did. Second, he said that in addition to compassion for the victim of oppression, it is necessary to have a righteous hatred of evil. We have lost sight of the concept of a righteous hatred and enmity, lost in a puddle of 'tolerance.'

We have lost sight of both of these things in the West, perhaps because, since WWII, there has been no serious threat to freedom* that we have had to face. And more and more, the gospel of irresponsibility has taken hold, the idea that no one is responsible for doing bad things, that it is society's fault, and so on. It has made it very hard for people in the West to say 'No, this person is evil. I hope they may reform, but in the meantime, they are my enemy, and not just my enemy, but someone we can and should fight.'

Up until fairly recently, all civilizations, even those of the Enlightenment, have acknowledged that some people are such a danger that they must either be completely rendered harmless or they must be fought and killed.

CS Lewis wrote an excellent essay called 'Why I am not a Pacifist.' And I encourage everyone to go read it regardless of your religious beliefs, because his argument is mostly non religious. It is a brilliant summary of why pacifism is a frankly dumb and unethical position. I will try to summarize one of his best points here.

Suppose you see two people drowning. How do you pick between them in terms of prioritizing who to save first? Maybe just take the one that is more likely to be saved?

But what if of the two people, A and B, person B was responsible for getting them lost in the water? Shouldn't you prioritize saving A?

And what if B is actively trying to drown A? Should you use force to protect A? What if that force makes B drown?

At some point, you go from 'I should help A even though that means not helping B,' to 'B deserves anti help.' If you see B trying to drown A, you may have to shoot B to stop it.

Now when it comes to Iran, I see the following objections:

'War makes things worse for the Iranian people. We should try to reform or change the regime without violence.'

My answer to this: Be realistic. What is your actual plan to get the regime to do this, and when they refuse to do it, what do you plan to do then? 'He will not go away or go to sleep at your command,' as Frodo said to Gollum. Evil people don't give up power just because people ask.

2. 'The Iranian people should change the regime. It isn't America's fight.'

I agree they should change the regime. But we should help. I value freedom for everyone. In fact, I kind of live by New Hampshire's motto, 'live free or die.' Realistically, unarmed people cannot change a regime of fanatics. Would these people also have said the Jews should have taken themselves out of the camps in WWII? Maybe they would. Ghandi famously said that Jews should have just all committed suicide in protest. Personally, I've never liked Ghandi much.

Even America did not become free all on our own. The French helped a lot. Without them, it would have been far harder for us. They provided weapons, training, and a naval blockade.

Freedom is worth fighting for, whether it is our freedom or someone else's. The Iranian people have shown that they want freedom. I cannot think of a better fight for America. We should pay forward what the French did for us.

Even without that, there are a bajillion reasons why the regime posed a threat to us and to our allies and needs to be removed or weakened. But Armin has addressed why this is in the interest of America, Israel, and Europe.

3. 'We can't successfully change the regime, it's too embedded, and the survivors will turn into terrorists.'

Ok wait. You are saying that the survivors will be terrorists in a small way, and your solution IS TO LET THEM RUN A FUCKING COUNTRY WITH BALLISTIC MISSILES AND A NUCLEAR PROGRAM? I don't even know if this is a coherent enough argument to respond to.

Furthermore, there are some things it is necessary to try, even though we don't have any guarantee of success. The Americans did not know whether they could really beat King George's armies. America can definitely beat the IRGC, we just have to have the will to do it.

4. 'Ok, sure, but war that causes collateral damage is always wrong.'

Once again, be realistic. Every war carries some chance of collateral damage. Do you know whose fault that is? The fault of the side that is evil, for making the war necessary. In WWII, the Allies (excluding Soviets because they were also evil) caused so much collateral damage. In fact... did you know, the standing orders for house clearing was to shoot first and ask questions later? If you heard a noise in a room, shoot or toss a grenade, no checking on who was in there? It could be a civilian, maybe not, but you prioritize winning. For people who claim that they are fighting fascism, these people know very little about how we actually did it.

There is a related concept in American law, the concept of felony murder. Suppose that you are committing a felony, and in trying to stop you, a police officer shoots someone else because they miss or something. You are held legally responsible for this. In fact, if the police are on their way to stop you and there is a car accident, you are held responsible. The same moral principle applies to Nazis and to the IRGC.

In war, there will always be tragedies. Especially when fighting an enemy that does not follow the laws of war. Actually I have so much more to say about this, Vietnam, GWOT, and our asinine rules of engagement, but that would go way off track. Suffice it to say that in WWII, we had similar issues. The Germans, in Warsaw, tried to use civilian Poles tied to ladders as human shields. The Polish patriots were forced to shoot the Germans behind them despite the collateral damage. Because if they did not, then the Germans would have known that they could win by just using Polish shields. The Japanese were preparing to use their small children as soldiers, which is why we had to resort to extreme measures to stop them.

5. 'But Iran didn't start anything with America!'

Uh, marg bar Amrika? For 47 years? Their very first thing they did after taking over was to take hundreds of Americans hostage? I cannot think of a more deserving regime to get wiped out by Amrika.

And what about shooting all those Iranians in the street? Yes, they were not American citizens. But while I may be 'Make America Great Again,' I believe that injustice and oppression everywhere need to be fought. And honestly, my tribe are not my fellow Americans per se. My tribe is all the people all over the world who yearn for freedom. The other side loves to quote the poem 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.' They don't like the ending, though, 'yearning to breathe free.' Not the tired and poor and huddled masses longing for the boot, but anyone who yearns to breathe free. That is the key thing.

Look, in 1938, if we'd gone in and taken out Hitler, things would have been much better for six million Jews and many millions of non-Jew Europeans (and we could have focused on defeating the Soviets). Would you say 'Oh no, Hitler is just oppressing Jews, he's not doing anything to us?' I mean, that is what many Americans at the time said. In retrospect, we see those people as almost traitors. In time, we will see the people who opposed freeing Iran in the same light.

6. 'I just don't want America to cause suffering to the Iranians.'

I get it. I really do. But the problem is that this is short term suffering to gain long term freedom. It's like when a doctor gives you a shot. The injection may be painful. It may cause you to have some symptoms for hours or days. But the shot prevents something much, much worse. The regime is so evil, inflicts so much suffering, that any suffering America causes in this war is worth it.

We have this idea that all inflicting of suffering is evil. It isn't. Sometimes it is the better option. And that is also what the Iranians on the ground are telling us.

Now if what people mean is that we shouldn't cause suffering to IRGC and Basij, ok, no, sorry, I know the things they have done, I have no sympathy for them. As I had no sympathy for the SS who were killed in WWII. I even saw a former soldier say that 'war is the absence of morality, because we are taught that all life is sacred, but in war, we have to take life.' But that idea, that one should never take life, is not morality. It is one moral value system, but it is not one I agree with. The concept of the righteous war, as Pahlavi said, is one we need to bring back. If ever there were a righteous war, this one to free Iran is one.

*Caveat: Frankly, Europe lacks free speech, Keir is throwing people in jail for memes, I don't know, I think parts of Europe are actually fairly low on freedom.

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