LewRockwell.com
December 29, 2005
by Dmitry Chernikov

Suppose that you're confronted with a question, "Why is it up to us to remove foreign dictators?" The answer we seriously have to deal with is "Why not?" We can, seemingly, do it. It would be good to make a country free. Why then shouldn't we do it? When asked whether toppling dictators wherever they may be found is now an official U.S. policy, a plausible answer is, "We'll topple whoever we want at our pleasure." According to Bush, "we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom." Now it is certainly true that American influence will be felt throughout the globe one way or another. Surely then, it is preferable that that influence be for the betterment of humanity. Americans by virtue of their economic, cultural, and military might will be spreading something, be it freedom or slavery.

Here I say that my disagreement is not with the ultimate ends, if the ends be for the entire world to be united within a web of social cooperation and for all countries to embrace a full set of economic and personal individual liberties. The quarrel is whether the means chosen are the correct ones. Are economic sanctions against or wars with repressive or illiberal regimes the most expeditious means for bringing liberty to them? The question is, how can the United States best help to spread freedom? How do we ensure that America persists as the shining beacon of freedom in the world?

Now some believe that the current war in Iraq is the most appropriate means toward this goal. Remove Saddam Hussein, the conservative idea was, write a Constitution, pump in a few billion dollars into the economy, and voilą! instant democracy and liberty. "It seems at least as likely," Richard Perle wrote, "that Saddam's replacement by a decent Iraqi regime would open the way to a far more stable and peaceful region. A democratic Iraq would be a powerful refutation of the patronizing view that Arabs are incapable of democracy." Or consider Donald Rumsfeld's recent claims:

• What, according to him, Iraq was before the war: "a brutal dictatorship, where the secret police would murder or mutilate a family member, sometimes in front of their children, and where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis disappeared into mass graves."

• What Iraq is now: 1. a democracy; 2. "A vital and engaged media is emerging, with some 100 newspapers in Iraq now, 72 radio stations, 44 television stations - an incredible number of cell phones, which is entirely new thing in that country." 3. "The stock market is alive and well in Iraq." 4. "some 214,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained and equipped."

• What "victory" means: "To be responsible, it seems to me, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks. As Senator Joe Lieberman recently suggested, a better measure of success might be that a vast majority of Iraqis, tens of millions, are on the side of the democratic government while a comparatively small number are opposed to that government. I would suggest that this gives the Iraqi people an enormous advantage over time."

Well then, it looks like we've performed a well-executed regime change. What else is there to do? Can we get out now?

Now it is certainly possible that after removing one government in a war and installing another, the new state will (eventually) put forward better economic polities than the old state had. Nobody denies the mere possibility of an improvement as a result of a war. But this assumes that war is the only means of bringing about a positive change, and that it usually succeeds. Notice, however, that if Saddam was able to keep power for so long, then it means that he had at least passive support of the populace. In the long run no government is able to remain in charge without popular support. It was the ideology of the Iraqis that was defective. That was what should have been worked on, not the accident of Saddam in power. The people of Iraq did not desire complete liberty, and therefore they did not have it. Still, as I mentioned in a previous article, Iraq was, compared to many in its region, a very free country. According to Yahoo!, for example, Iraq "used to be one of the best places for shopping in the Middle East." And, from the same source,

Prior to a series of recent wars (with Iran, the Gulf War and the latest military action), Iraq was one of the most developed countries in the region, blessed with a rich assortment of archaeological treasures. It has always had a fascinating blend of cultures: 60% of the population are Shiite Muslim Arabs, about 25% are Sunni Muslim Arabs, and the rest are Kurds and other groups. Baghdad was once home to one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, and Christians and Druze communities can still be found there. Unfortunately, today most of this diverse population is impoverished and inaccessible to all but those visiting in an official capacity.

They are impoverished because of the wars, two of which were started by the U.S., and the other one supported by it. Yes, Iraq may at some point become a democracy, if it does not break apart first (which may actually be for the best), but at what cost in human lives and treasure? And will the democratic government be more liberty-oriented than Saddam was? If wars tend to result in bigger and less liberal governments in all the countries that are at war regardless of which side wins, then is not the American cause almost hopeless? Further, if a referendum were held in Iraq as to whether the American forces should leave Iraq immediately, is there any doubt that the vast majority would vote "yes"? Why shouldn't such a referendum take place? Why must it be the Americans who decide when they should leave and not the Iraqi citizens? Yes, there may arise competitive and privately funded media, unless the U.S. or the Iraqi government decide that they dislike being criticized, a likely scenario. Yes, Iraq has a stock market now, but it is tiny. And over 200,000 of "trained security forces" seem like a lot for such a small country. They constitute a large standing army, highly dangerous for liberty. Even Saddam did not have so many troops. Finally, how can there be freedom given the constant violence? Why, we should ask Rumsfeld, is the unrelenting terrorism irrelevant to success?

It should be clear that war is not an appropriate means of bringing liberty to the oppressed. It empowers the state. It encourages central planning. It involves the military in what should be the domain of the police and the courts. It makes bloodshed and regimentation and brute force the order of the day. "When there is a man," Joseph Stalin was fond of saying," there is a problem. Where there is no man, there is no problem." War institutionalizes this attitude.

As for sanctions, they are both inhumane and contrary to reason. Sanctions prevent people from mutually bettering their conditions through trade. They isolate a country and make it a pariah among nations. If the government of that country is repressive, they make it easy for it to stay in power and to despise economic laws, since now its citizens cannot evade their state by cooperating with foreigners. In short, sanctions attempt to punish the state yet end up punishing the citizens. The obvious example is Cuba: despite decades of sanctions, Castro is still chief. Neither did sanctions help to remove Saddam Hussein. They only contributed to preserving the natural poverty of the human race.

Consider the possibility that the existence of the vast majority of other individuals offers a net benefit to everyone in their struggle for survival and happiness. There prevails, on the free both local and world markets, a harmony of long-term interests among all human beings.

There is little acknowledgement that foreigners, from the Chinese to the Iraqis, are useful to us in terms of economic prosperity and material well-being. Here is a typical quote from, once more, Victor Hanson: "a restive China of a billion people scares far more than radical Islam." The only conclusion is that the conservative fantasies of the Chinese's forcing the Americans to kowtow to them must be very much alive. To them a wealthy China seems to be a menace, a threat. The "flood" of cheap goods into the country is considered to be an economic disaster. And from economic autarchy belligerence necessarily follows. Are we then going to turn into the Nazi Germany with a military possessing a far more deadly and sophisticated arsenal of weapons? Will the only item of the Bill of Rights that has not (yet) been violated, viz., the 3rd Amendment, be consigned to the trash? Will every business be subject to government control (I mean, to a greater extent that they already are)? And how can we possibly live if the U.S. is no longer the greatest superpower? This addiction to the illusion of running the world is an unfortunate pathology. There is no thought given to leading by good example. Americans should be gentle and say to the citizens of other nations: "Do you see how we arrange our affairs? If you want to be happy, do likewise." That approach would be far more effective. (Its other obvious benefit is that it would not give potential terrorists a reason to attack the United States.)

Further, should the U.S. go the fascist route with respect to its economy, constant wars will become almost a sure thing, even if the veneer of democracy is maintained. It is inherent in the logic of a fascist state that pursues economic autarchy to expand the territory it controls. It is only under laissez-faire that the size of the state is irrelevant.

The idea that democracies do not fight one another is not a necessary law of nature but an inductive generalization of a trend and one which historically has not always held. For what if the majority desired a war? At any rate, the crucial point is not that the two countries at war both be democracies but that the country that starts the war be a democracy. And the U.S. has started more wars in the past 50 years than any other nation. And why have democracies not fought with each other? This supposed rule, in fact, violates reason. For suppose that the French (say) want to repeat the Soviet experience and establish socialism (not that their economy is not now highly regimented). Given the logic of the war in Iraq, is there any reason why the U.S. should not attack them and try to save them from themselves? What is so special about their method of selecting their rulers that it alone should prevent a war?

Perhaps the idea is that "to vote for a government in a liberal democracy is to consent." Suppose that the two candidates running for President of the United States have the following platforms. Candidate A says that once elected, he will kill you (for no reason at all). Candidate B says that once elected, he will put you in prison for life. Does voting for Candidate B imply consenting to his policy? (One may object, perhaps, that in a realistic democracy there will always arise Candidate C with a less unhappy take on the issues. Unfortunately, even if A and B as one propose bad policies, C will have little chance, at least in the U.S.) Or consider a more direct example. Three gangsters hold you up at gunpoint. You object that what they are doing is wrong. They talk among themselves and tell you that you and they constitute a "society" with a need for democratic government. One of them runs for "President" on the spot. Two of the gangsters vote for him, and he wins. Now whatever the "President" does is legal, because, why, he is duly elected. He has the "mandate." He immediately proceeds to demand your money or your life. If you give him your wallet, are you thereby consenting to being robbed?

It seems to me that the myth of peaceful democracies is simply a trick that the state uses to justify its aggressive wars. If every country in the world were a democracy, then we would now simply be hearing some other type of propaganda that distinguished some sort of "good" democracies from "bad" democracies, all in order to permit the state to attack the latter.

In short, good economic policies cannot be secured by military force, not the least because the U.S. government knows very little about how to attain prosperity. Liberty cannot be imposed by decree. It can only result from government retrenchment. If the world is to be redeemed from physical evil, there is no substitute for a genuine regime of freedom, both here and in Iraq. The U.S. government has made a mess of things in both countries. It is still not too late to correct the mistakes.