tBlog - The Politics of Fear - why the war in Iraq was necessary

Majority of libertarians seems to oppose the war in Iraq and view its consequences as loss of liberty. Some libertarians rightly point out that Osama bin-Laden has become the fanatic after American military got into Saudi Arabia.

But perhaps the religion that in response to putting "military base" on its "holy land" goes terrorist deserves to be extinguished? Imagine the furor that would definitely take place had some Christians started to blow up business buildings and trains over the NATO military base near one of its holy places and its personnel that has been whoring and drinking. Well, a moral man cannot tolerate such behaviour, can he? The response is justified, right?

Why do we tolerate abuses of various freedoms that Islam visibly perpetrates? The abuses that would not be tolerated in the case of any other religion or ideology? Why do we go along with all that? Fortunately, most of religions in the world do not possess so intrusive and statist mindset as Islam. Islam does possess the most theocratic mindset of all: its fundamental goal is to create religious state. The principle of separation of state and church is the very opposite of Islam.

But even if one accepted the view that hostility of Islam towards America is based on its actions - even though there are few actual legitimate grievances Islam could have in this regard - there remains the problem of terror that Islam wraths in countries that are not in any way like America at all, like India or Phillipines. Do Phillipinos found military bases in Saudi Arabia? If not, why they are the target of Islamic terrorism, too?

The belief behind the Islam is unmistakeable: submit to our beliefs, because we hold the True Truth.

Contrary to what occidentalists claim, this way of thinking has never been at the core of European imperialism or American aggressiveness. European and American ways, or more widely, the Western way has always been intellectually anarchic in evaluation of an issue: it has been founded on skepticism, the struggle of opinions, the open debate, defense and prosecution in court, attack of position and defense of position, thesis and anti-thesis, the postulate and the critique, willingness, if for a moment, to take another point of view, voting where consensus is lacking, tri-partite division of power and 'checks and balances'. Historically, except some pragmatism of a few rulers, the Islam way, and increasingly and worringly Western European way, is dumb centralized intellectual tyranny: everyone is just supposed to follow the social consensus based on the intellectual lowest common denominator, the dumbest ideology of all - the dangerous fiction of "common good".

Lots of people will support argument that moderates in Islam do not want to see those excesses and they do not necessarily support living under theocratic regime. That is true; however, moderate people most of the time do not push the policies forward towards implementation. This has always been the domain of people with strong beliefs of all kinds. Existence of many islamist theocracies now and Soviet Union in the past demonstrate that the chances of extremists getting to implement their policies are not slim. For most of the time and always in important time, when matters are actually being decided, majority doesn't care or doesn't know or at best it can't get agreed what to actually do with the damned problem. It only wants something banned afterwards in vain hope that it would have solved the problem. What is it that it wants banned? Hell, something. If we didn't eat wrong meat or haven't established military base somewhere as a result of political negotiations, surely some terrorists would not feel justified in their response to our aggressiveness.

David Pryce-Jones has published excellent analysis in National Review ("An Arab Moment of Truth"). I agree with most of his points, but disagree on one point from those raised by him in following quote:

"For the past century and more, the Muslim world has been free and independent, with every opportunity to organize as it wishes. And this is the heart of the issue: The Muslim world is a political and social disaster for all to see. With the arguable exception of Turkey, it consists of series of despotisms, each with an absolute ruler whose ultimate justification is is his strength and will. A family or clique gathers around the ruler under the protection of state apparatues of secret police and military repression. To the powerful, the spoils, to the weak, submission. No rights, no freedom of expression, no loyal opposition, no rule of law, no redress except through violence, conspiracy, a coup and ultimate civil war."

Populations of Arabic countries consists mainly of passive majorities and fanatic minorities. Those people are not responsible and mature enough to live up to the standards of developed and free world. They tolerate or support their dictatorships, they don't mind their own human rights violations (at least not enough to take action) - as long as those violations are done in the name of their own family or their own particular version of religion. Those are the standards of hypocrites, not enlightened and fair people. If the notion of collective good has any meaning to it, the notion of collective fault and punishment has to mean something as well: the bombs falling on their heads is the consequence of their own faults as societies, as they fail to restrict and stop their own fanatics and introduce domestically at least a little bit of those good policies with the results they immigrate for into the developed countries. Domestically, Islamic countries are just censorship and religious intolerance while their corrupted economies are poor knock-offs of Soviet model without even its adequate scientific and technological capabilities (which were created and employed almost only for military purposes, but they undeniably existed). The only exports of Islamic world are oil and shabby religious extremism.

Certainly the West does not live fully up to ideals mentioned either. In fact, historically speaking, the development of civilization in the West has been precisely the fighting against the very processes and corruption the Islam does not even want to address, but prefers to excuse by shifting the main part of the guilt abroad. But one has to be a fanatic - i.e. one has to lose the sense of proportion of perceived things - to claim that the West is not much closer to this end of spectrum where those things exist while Islamic countries are not much closer to the opposite end.

The mindset of Arab masses is remarkably similar to that of Soviet elites: frustration and grief at visible material superiority of the West which results in inferiority complex violently denying that their lifestyle is worse and making them jump between extremes of unrealistic self-aggrandizement over few advantages of living in their version of collectivism (Islamic/Soviet) and the depression combined with frustration for most of the time.

Pryce-Jones' analysis does not elaborate on one point: sadly, the weak like to submit. It takes responsibility for their lives off them and that they can blame the ruler at the top for all their woes, where justified and where not, is a hidden bonus.

Evaluating success of Muslim states depends on the definition of success; if success is measured by getting, holding on to and extending rule over populations, Islam is successful. It appears that Islam has managed to achieve the stable form of totalitarian government. That probably happened due to random chance in the sequence of historical events shaping the doctrine, however, it did. Whatever the reasons, this seems to be the case.

That is not to say that it is successful government by what we usually associate with civilizational success. But it does hold in terms of raw power, tyrannical and stable rule over population of a country.

I live in post-commie Republic of Poland: many people here (not all, but many) long for this secure poverty that communism was providing. To be sure, much of this sentiment is about selective forgetting and ignoring what was intolerable once those intolerable things are not in place anymore, but not entirely. Sadly, people are willing to sell whatever liberty they have for the situation when their vegetative mode of life is secure and unburdened with having to make hard decisions. I have observed that this sentiment runs deep in every country I've been in. Being low-life whose main occupation is filling the forms is easier than carrying your small, but important part of the burden of a civilized man (and yes, I make this allusion to Kipling's "white man's burden" awarely).

This is depressing view for a proponent of liberty. Still, experiences I've had indicate that it is as at least partially justified.

On the upside, I have to say that freedom is addictive: people would honestly not tolerate anymore taking away some of their freedoms and especially the products that capitalism brings them. But people are also conformist to the point of being truly sheep-like: once you take away their liberty and give them barely enough to survive, most will keep choosing this situation as they are simply lazy. When talking in terms of sheer power game, then in realm of social policies Islam got this part right, regardless of official ideology or motivation. The life of villagers is poor but they feel very good when they collect money together for education of one boy. Never mind that free society creates more opportunities in life for almost everyone (except some truly disadvantaged who would be subsidized poster boys in communism to create communist fallacy of composition that it works, or at least will work in some indefinite future, wonders for everyone) and above all, liberty and freedom of speech, faith and association are largely missing in Islamic world. What matters to them are those feelings of self-congratulation and false security it brings, that they are not alone in the cold world with their problems. It is mostly illusion, but they don't care.

They're proles: narrow minded people who don't care much about any principles really, unable to perceive anything more than their own feelings, fears and needs. Islam, like communism, creates its prole class. The "class of workers" doesn't exist? Well, we'll create it then. Some fanatics in power subsidize steel mills, some subsidize mosques.

Social reality of an Islamic country is basically the secure poverty. Muslim women make lots of Muslim babies. Those babies living in poverty of Muslim society then embrace the worldview of non-Islamist world being possessed by Satan and bent on destroying Islam, and them, not local thugs, local corruption and local incompetence as the main causes behind their misery. "Cause you see, they're non-believers" - and there seems to be no way of convincing them via rational argument that this is not the case, that we are simply not interested in living Muslim way, thank you very much.

Their inferiority complex makes this conclusion repulsive for them, because then they are left with the unbearable feeling that their lifestyle and mindset is not what people worldwide could want to embrace, seek and emulate, but that in view of vast majority of non-Muslims their world, lifestyle, and religion are frankly, well, shabby.

Muslims are trapped in the social reality they are partially born into, partially they like its good sides and partially they embrace. Religion extends itself in a totalitarian and statist manner into all aspects of life, like in the words of Taliban spokesman being happy because his religion tells people how to walk and what to eat. What other system of government would establish “Minstry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”, like Taliban did? In current shape Islam drives the societies towards the policies that are incompatible with modern civilization.

Though it certainly is repulsive for the free-spirited people, secure stasis is actually preferrable to majority of people. They seek it, even if they do not support it. Life in Islamic countries truly is more secure than in the Western countries: life of a serf is poorer, but there is less crime (at least random crime, not necessarily systemic crime perpetrated by corrupted rulers) and fewer problems that life in freer societies brings. Fewer opportunities and liberty do not matter much to them, because how can you miss what you have never experienced in the first place?

Totalitarian nature of this religion eliminates significant secular opposition by reducing conditions in which this opposition may appear. Religious statism resists modernization and freedom of speech, and lack of those in turn prevents free discourse, open debate and true, unslanted scientific peer review process resulting in poverty of opinions, without their pluralism, which then in turn results in systematically poor policies making people think nothing but religious statism and dumb, centralized theoretically-benign tyranny can work, because no other policy has ever had opportunity to be applied wide enough and last long enough to demonstrate something can work better. This is self-reinforcing backwardness in action. It's bad enough if Muslims keep all this at home, but when they export it, it becomes simply intolerable.

Somebody, somewhere, has to break this vicious circle. If they don't want to embrace liberty or at least democracy and in foreign countries they try to replace those with religious fundamentalism, democracy will come to them on tanks, like it did in Germany and Japan. If some of them have to be shot, tough - had those societies decided to be civilized and restrained their own maniacs instead of supporting them, it would not have to come to that.

War in Iraq has broken this "secure stasis" feeling. It has proved that the march of Islam toward the West and the world can be stopped, that Islamic world can be shattered, not annihilated, but shattered, so rational Muslims at last could get at least a chance to rebuild it in beter ways.

Some people could point out Iraq under Hussein was not theocratic regime and they would be right, but Iraq is regarded by Muslims as their country, their property. I ask the reader to remember the reaction of islamic countries just before war. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have destroyed feeling of security among islamic statists on "their own" land, that they will not be defeated there. In the long run, those wars will probably have the effect of trashing islamic statism: by dividing their populacies into fanatics and majorities eventually learning better than to support them. Islam wants to play divide et conquera in the developed world? Fine, we'll take your jihad back onto your territory.

I've had the privilege to meet prof. Herman H. Hoppe when the war with Saddam's forces in Iraq was under way. He has opposed the war and rightly pointed out to me that while increase in liberty for people in Iraq may take place, there has been terrible cost to civil liberties in United States.

It is definitely true that significant damage to civil liberties in USA has taken place. However, this damage was unavoidable and it has happened regardless of war in Iraq: it has been inevitable political consequence of 9/11, not the war in Iraq. At worst, war in Iraq has somewhat aggravated the damage to civil liberties in developed world, but in my perception even that would be an exagerration. People are sheep: above all, they want to be secure and they are willing to give up their essential liberties for illusion of security. In fact, I suspect that this is precisely what was one of the strategic goals of bin-Laden in 9/11: you say you're not truly evil I say you are? Well, we'll provoke you and then you'll take liberties from your own people and see, you really are the autocratic monster I say you are.

His calculations I hold as probable could be based on a piece of true insight: US Congress and president Bush could not avoid addressing public outcry for security at almost any cost. As David Hume pointed out, in reality the government has little behind it but public opinion, and in case of 9/11, the public opinion unfortunately has de facto authorized sacrificing civil liberties for false sense of security. But the practical and effective tools that government can have at its disposal are actually highly limited and that has dire political consequences. Regardless of who were in charge - president Bush and his merry crew of militarily hawkish and culturally dovish people, or more intellectually standard, knee-jerk socialdemocratic leader - in political terms they would not be able to avoid the clash of mindless bureaucracy (that every government inherently is) concocting useless monstrosities like Patriot Act and Total Information Awareness with the real need of addressing the real threat to national security.

By trying to make the Western countries in general and USA in particular autocratic, statist, deprived of civil liberties and violent, fundamentalists may wish the West to become intrusive and totalitarian like Islamic countries, but without their sense of (impoverished) stability in life, so the rule of Islam could look more attractive and righteous in comparison. If you can't elevate yourself up to somebody's higher standard, try to bring them down and make them worse than you are - a strategy of a bitter loser.

If made, such an argument of "overally speaking the West is worse" would obviously be based on false presumption that policies in question would be the result of calm, premeditated, effective strategy, for social reality is not controllable by rational argument. People respond with fear; government responds with suppression of liberties and idiotic actions like confiscating nail clippers from old ladies and policemen legally getting on board of an aircraf with loaded firearms under their jacket and refusing to arm pilots who after all truly hold control of life and death of everyone aboard anyway. The government is idiocy in action, an idiocy that is inherent to a large organization, but the public opinion doesn't care. Improvement in security has been illusive while the loss of liberty was real (has any terrorist been catched as the result of all those illegitimate searches and unread forms filled by passengers at the airports?), but those who think such matters are decided rationally in any significant degree are mistaken.

As long as fear and intimidation by Muslim terrorists lasts, there is no hope of restoring civil liberties. Without war in Iraq this indefinite, remote fear would last. Thriving for security in people would last. The hope for achieving it would last and thus willingness to submit to intrusion of state.

One of the things in Pandora's box of evils that got out into the world was hope. Hope is an evil thing: instead of thinking what is the truth, what is the situation, what will probably happen and then what should be the appropriate action on our part, it switches our minds into the mode of wishful thinking.

War in Iraq helps to destroy this hope of ever achieving security in this world: when people no longer have this hope, they will not be as willing to trade their liberty for illusion of security, because what's the point of exchanging something that has some nice feeling to it for nothing? It gets people out of a very dangerous thought: that life without strong and fundamental conflicts of values and interests is possible, at least in principle, even if "not yet" in current political reality. The monster was confronted and after all, it didn't turn out to be as horrible as it seemed. Sooner or later people get accustomed to the situation. The situation, whatever it is, leaves them no other choice.

Obviously the question arises what damage to liberty will be persistent as the result of 9/11 and possibly, as the result of war in Iraq. But I doubt lack of war in Iraq would help eliminate the fundamental problem of persistence of fear, because fear is after all irrational in the first place. It doesn't go away: as long as bin Laden, Hussein and Al Qaeda loom far on the horizont, societies will support whatever stupid, completely symbolic and substance-free measures their governments undertake. Just in case.

It is important not to blame governments too much here: after all, they are expected to Do Something, right? And what is it that it can lawfully and reasonably do? Get us all, on board of planes and on the ground, rid of all sharp devices? Short of implementing total police state, governments have no chance of protecting us from terrorists in the degree anywhere near the desired level.

However, politically speaking, that is not an acceptable answer. No way, societies would say. So the governments have to Do Something anyway - God only knows what, but something they have to do. None of the people bothers to think if there actually is something the government can actually reasonably do that would have the desired effects - it's the government's problem. This way dilemmas that without war are unsolvable in current political setup land in the government's lap and the problem is (supposedly) neatly delegated from the point of view of the people.

In spite of symbolic measures, the risk, however negligible in real life, will last, and so will the support for government's grab of power. Either it directs its action inside to show they're Doing Something by depriving us of the leftovers of privacy and self-determination, and get us all rid of all scissors because after all some day we may bring some aboard the plane as well as they'll make us fill forms about our country of origin and name (an information that is redundant with the ticket anyway), forms that nobody has even intended to ever read, but which will make the panicky people feel safer that some action has been taken, or - governments direct their aggression outside to primary source of problem - the totalitarian religion of Islam.

The risks will continue, no matter what. There is no way of extinguishing the fear by non-intervention. The only way to meet this risk is head on: increase it, make it visible and get people accustomed to it, while defeating religious states.

There is an interesting detail in the history of development of internal combustion engine: the public opinion in Germany was so afraid of gasoline in 19th century that they thought a barrel of it on fire would burst so violently that everything would be incinerated within a radius of a mile or so, so this inventor had to test his engine at night on the river so he would not be lynched. Could the fear of the gasoline engine be shown to be irrational if people were not convinced otherwise by everyday experience? Paradoxically, this is what happened to nuclear technology: its real risk, though significant, is nowhere near the socially perceived level. By protecting against some physical risks inherent in this technology and shielding populations from any contact with it governments made the nuclear technology completely unviable politically. This is the power of fear in working.

Part of the root of the problem, unfortunately, has been the one of US de facto subsidizing security of European countries and many other countries. This not only breeds resentment felt by dependent people, but also allows them to evade addressing the responsibility. Somebody has to keep Germany in check and doing that is only wise on the part of US, but US has allowed Europe to indulge in unrealistic pacifism, in thinking that it is peace that is natural order of life and war is unnatural order of life. Those who think so are advised to skim some history books. No, there isn't any fundamental reason why the processes described in them should stop working today. If anything, they are more dangerous than ever, because they have been given the power of modern and ever developing technology. Essentially, Europe is the kindergarten protected by imperfect, but rational, adult America. The children in the kindergarten can indulge in all kinds of nonsense only because they have their living provided for and secured by the adults.

The war in Iraq has also destroyed political case of jihad: Muslims are no longer increasing their influence on the world (it could be rational on the part of the French to be glad to see that, you could think - America does their dirty work and the French seem to be incapable of even understanding that it does). Now they have to fight for the land they regard as historically belonging to them. Regardless of the number of bombs exploding in Iraq, radical Muslims are losing their case: what good is jihad if it can't even defend its own territory? Except a handful of complete nutsos, you can't have motivated fighters if they don't believe there is at least some chance of eventually winning.

Frankly, I don't care about common violence in Iraq: it has been largely about seeking individual retribution against those guilty commiting acts that were part of divide-et-conquera strategy so effectively pursued by Saddam Hussein, of pitting everyone against everyone. "National reconciliation" is the word in Iraq today: realistically speaking this won't happen, but violence of this kind will fade out after some time. The other part of violence, that of clergymen and their followers trying to impose religious courts and religious government on societies - well, they probably will die violent deaths. They deserve that.

Regarding PR causes given as reasons of war: WMDs have always been idiotic excuse and realistically speaking, they are not such a major risk either. It's a scarecrow; what's the point of using them if political aim cannot be achieved - and they are so potent in destruction that anybody who uses them first will suffer inevitable political damage to his cause and then guaranteed military wrath beyond comprehension in response. Their excessive power (on top of complexity and cost) is paradoxically the reason of them not being used (has anybody wondered why moderately complicated and highly dangerous "dirty bomb" was never used in practice even though terrorists have exploded countless numbers of conventional bombs so far?). If the political goal can be achieved, like swaying the elections in Spain, conventional bomb is easier to use, cheaper and it causes comparatively less PR damage among the moderate supporters. The retribution of government of attacked country is not as strong either. Nuclear and chemical WMDs are good deterrent for use by a government maybe, but they are not such a good tool for a terrorist who wants to achieve any effect more significant than dying for nothing. Fanatics have their goals, too; they do not run around killing completely random people at completely random times. They kill to achieve some effect and using WMD is counter-effective.

What we need those wars for was long-run, strategic goal of defeating development of religious statism.

It also has always puzzled me why libertarians are against wars between states. Essentially, states are tools of intrusion into various areas of life. This is what they are, and populations support existence of states for the same reason socialist/"caring government" mindset is still popular: getting something for nothing at somebody else's expense. I'm afraid people essentially are immoral: as long as they have gain of some kind in sight (not even necessarily purely material gain) to realize from trampling on somebody else's integrity, support for particular solution, income, goals in life, freedom of speech, association, et caetera, they do it with little remorse, if any. Their emotionality develops to rationalize for this, like "thriving for equality", "equity", "important social needs", "regulation", "social justice", etc., but all of this is just thieving in disguise, thinking that sympathy for other people in this world, in which one thing we're never short of is suffering, somehow justifies their fundamentally unethical behaviour and deluding themselves that taking major pros and cons of collectivist policies into account, situation is at least not made worse. This pertains the poor, the rich and the middle class the same in my perception. Sociology trumps morality, they say. I feel I have to add experience, too, to the list of things not even trumped by, but trampled on by sociology.

Had the states been peaceful, we'd never gain politically. Majorities would not even consider the case for rejecting state-induced marasm, stagnation and regulated poverty. Peaceful state is damaging to libertarian cause. Wars and their costs are part of price of liberty. It's good that populations have to pay for wars that they essentially oppose. I can't keep myself from enjoying schadenfreude: you wanted the state to "guarantee" your security and your income and make intrusive laws in your name (screw the idea that people may have some natural rights)? You supported the government to have extensive powers? Well, you got it. Happy now? You complain that government doesn't care about you? This is not what you intended? Well, tough. This is the nature of the world.

I'm glad that as a taxpayer I also have to pay microscopic fraction of costs of this war. Better this than majority imposing its collective will and mindless, totalitarian, collective pursue of whatever pleasant thing somebody wants to have for "free" (read: at the expense of non-supporters) that majority tends to support whenever they feel like it. This is the real source of excesses of power of government. It makes little sense to blame the government alone for it: it merely tries to implement sentiments of majority. In stupid ways, because majority has stupid whims, but it does. Government is largely a proxy; granted, it has its own interests, because like any bureaucracy it works more or less like public choice theory predicts. But like Hume pointed out, it has to have public opinion behind it: that there are unintended consequences of actions supporting public opinions is precisely what the people refuse to understand - and they will hate you if you prove beyond reasonable doubt that to them. And then, the most tragic event of all takes place - they will support even more of government "action", against all reason and in the name of vain hope.

Finally, I don't care if war in Iraq increases the actual risks of terrorist attack or not. Realistically speaking this risk is negligible anyway (e.g. when compared to the chance of being hurt in a car accident). A terrorist act, a premeditated act of violence done against random civilians is an outrageous political violence that has to be totally condemned as means of political action, but fortunately it is not a significant statistical risk for most of people in developed countries. Personally, I accept this risk as price of living in world freer than the one created by Islamist government.

What matters in the long run are political threats to liberty. And those created by foreign islamic statism as well as domestic fears are the most significant threats. Better get through both by war than let them continue undermining the civil liberties in steps small enough for majority of people unwilling to support some effective action against them. If you don't want to give me liberty, give me war.