{"id":2031,"date":"2005-04-26T05:17:40","date_gmt":"2005-04-26T12:17:40","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-04-26T05:17:40","modified_gmt":"2005-04-26T12:17:40","slug":"libertarians-for-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/26\/libertarians-for-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"Libertarians for Genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yaron Brook, director of the <a href=http:\/\/www.aynrand.org\/site\/PageServer>Ayn Rand Institute<\/a>, <a href=http:\/\/www.tuftsdaily.com\/vnews\/display.v\/ART\/2005\/04\/20\/4265e655312aa>speaking at Tufts University<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>&#8220;[President George W.] Bush has not taken the actions necessary to defeat terrorism,&#8221; Brook said in his opening statement. &#8220;Instead, he has unnecessarily sacrificed [American] soldiers&#8217; lives &#8230; because <b>we hesitated to kill so-called innocents<\/b>.&#8221; &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>He made reference to World War II, when Allied leaders authorized the bombings of German and Japanese cities, including the dropping of atomic bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. &#8220;Doing so saved thousands of lives and ultimately ended the war,&#8221; Brook said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All Americans today owe their lives to leaders who do whatever it takes to win the war &#8211; [those past leaders] were <b>willing to kill anyone. Civilians of enemy nations are part of the [enemy] war machine<\/b>,&#8221; he said. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>Brook attacked just-war theory&#8217;s principles that force used in war must be proportionate to the threat. &#8220;In my view this is horrific,&#8221; he said<\/b>. &#8220;That&#8217;s saying we must balance the deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians with the deaths of enemy soldiers and civilians &#8230; and sacrifice the greatest nation in the history of the world to the worst countries today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He also criticized just-war theory&#8217;s idea that combatants should be distinguished from non-combatants. <b>&#8220;Directly targeting civilians is perfectly legitimate,&#8221; Brook said<\/b>. &#8220;If it&#8217;s possible to isolate the truly innocent &#8211; such as children and freedom fighters &#8211; at no military cost, then do so. <b>But insofar as the innocent cannot be isolated &#8230; they should be killed without any moral hesitation<\/b>.&#8221; &#8230;<\/ul>\n<p>Disheartening stuff, but on the upside there&#8217;s this:<\/p>\n<ul>He said Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia are nations that currently pose large threats to the United States, but that Bush will not and is not doing anything because &#8220;<b>a man truly dedicated to self-defense cannot justify going to war with them<\/b>. Iran threatens the United States the most, but we can&#8217;t attack because there has been no genocide and there is no universally-accepted monster in power there.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<p>That has to be the least accurate criticism of George W. Bush I&#8217;ve ever come across. Remember it when Dubya starts agitating for war with Iran this summer.<\/p>\n<p>In the comments section at bottom, this wonderful response from a student:<\/p>\n<ul>What is Objectivism? Some sort of collectivist\/socialist ideology? <\/p>\n<p>I find it monstrous to kill innocent civilians for the crimes of their leaders and their armies. That&#8217;s nothing but collectivism at its most ugly. Morality and justice pertains to individuals, not to collective entities like the state.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder if Mr. Brooks would support me killing a random black guy because one robbed me last week. After all, there is some small chance that any given one could attack me. If I killed every one I saw, I&#8217;d surely be safer. Indeed, doing anything less would be &#8220;altruistic&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>This guy sickens me.<\/ul>\n<p>And another gem:<\/p>\n<ul>Objectivism : Conservatives :: Scientology : Hollywood<\/ul>\n<p>(Hat tip: <a href=http:\/\/anti-state.com\/>Anti-State.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yaron Brook, director of the Ayn Rand Institute, speaking at Tufts University: &#8220;[President George W.] Bush has not taken the actions necessary to defeat terrorism,&#8221; Brook said in his opening statement. &#8220;Instead, he has unnecessarily sacrificed [American] soldiers&#8217; lives &#8230; because we hesitated to kill so-called innocents.&#8221; &#8230; He made reference to World War II, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2031"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}