What should we do now?

The congressionally-mandated Iraq Study Group finally published it’s long-awaited recommendations last week. The ideas ranged from broader regional diplomatic efforts to more training for Iraqi security forces. Then, a withdrawal of US support if progress isn’t made by the Iraqi government in key areas of reconciliation and governability.

it's clear, Iraq has become a deadly quagmire for the U.S. In total, 2,934 members of the U.S. military have died since the war started in March 2003. Three years and nine months after the U.S.-led Coalition invaded Iraq, American military casualties have now exceeded 25,000.

As the Iraq controversy fills the news, a close friend and publisher asked for my input. “What do you think we should do NOW?”

I view all conflicts through the lens of individual liberty and property rights. To see the war in Iraq through this lens, however, one must understand the principles of human nature on which liberty rests.

Human nature evolves from a winnowing process in which natural selection acting over hundreds of thousands of generations has engineered into our behavior what author Robert Ardrey called a “territorial imperative.” That is, an instinct to acquire, protect, and control property. Like fish, birds, and dogs that aggressively defend their physical territory, as well as their food supply and offspring, each of our brains is hard-wired to feel resentment and anger when our ‘property’ is threatened. As a child cries “that’s my toy!”, we get emotional whenever something we believe is ours is touched or taken without our permission.

Property is central to all conflicts. Murray Rothbard in his trenchant series of essays, “Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature” wrote,

“The social path dictated by the requirements of man's nature, therefore, is the path of "property rights" and the "free market" of gift or exchange of such rights. Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the "jungle" methods of fighting over scarce resources so that A can only acquire them at the expense of B and, instead, to multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange.”

The issue in Iraq, as in all conflicts, is property. The question, “what should the US do now in Iraq?” is answered by asking “whose property is involved.” Is Iraq, its land, its buildings, its people your property? Is it mine? Does it belong to “the American people”? If not, isn't anyone who interferes with any element of it an aggressor?

Well, yes. If you take a gun, fly to some other place, and shoot someone you don’t know, are you an aggressor? Absolutely, by definition.

What should “we” do now about Iraq? Pack up and leave. Get the hell out, ASAP. Stop aggressing.

Hold on, you might say. It’s necessary to liberate some Iraq citizens from the tyranny of others, that is, to spread ‘democracy’. What about the Iraqi people and there internecine fighting?

It’s truly tragic. It is incredibly sad. Tyranny everywhere and down through history has been tragic. So, don’t we have an obligation to help victims of tyranny?

Those who want to help a victim of aggression can do so, of course, and many would volunteer. That's what individuals on both sides of every conflict think they are doing, although, as has been quipped, one person’s “freedom fighter” is someone elses’ terrorist. 

Saying citizens of country A have an obligation to defend the citizens of country B against aggression, is questionable morally, as the citizens of country A’s are themselves forced to become aggressors. But should we sit by and do nothing when a tyrant subjugates his people? I'm reminded of Irish philosopher Edmund Burke’s famous quip, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” He was wrong. The truth is, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do the wrong thing.

Ending U.S. and coalition aggression in Iraq doesn't mean taking no action. But there are better solutions to aggression than to become an aggressor.