Libertopia vs. positions on U.S. foreign policy (#48495)
by Bill Woolsey on December 10, 2004 at 11:21 AM

Why should a libertarian support the
invasion of Iraq by the current administration,
even if under a hypothetical libertarian
administration, an invasion of Iraq might
be desirable?

I have sometimes wondered if a policy of
defeating Saddam Hussein, declaring victory
and withdrawing wouldn't have been superior
to maintaining the status quo of "containing"
Iraq with an embargo, flyovers, etc.

(Admittedly, making peace with Iraq would have
been even better. The more usual containment--
promising retailiation against future Iraqi
attacks would be better than this futile
effort to keep Iraq from getting weapons of
mass destruction. We could have even used
Iraqi promises of aid against Al Quaida as an
excuse for backing down.)

But what are the chances that Democrat or
Republican administrations would be willing to
engineer a punative expedition against Iraq,
crush the existing regime and then let the
Iraqi's deal with the aftermath?

Similarly, a hypothetical libertarian imperialism
seems more doable that trying to reconstruct the
Iraqi people so that they will generate outcomes
from unrestrained democracy similar to those generated
in the U.S.

Even Schwartz seems to imagine that the U.S. would
maintain Iraqi public schools and use them to
propagandize the Iraqi childen to become libertarians.

It is very unlikely that any Democrat or Republican
administration would either put Iraqi education in
the private sector and allow Iraqi parents to choose
what sort of schools their children attend. But
is equally unlikely that any Democrat or Rebpublican
administration would maintain public schools in Iraq
and require them to promote libertarian ideas.

The most likely outcome would be U.S. pressure to
replicate the disaster that are the U.S. public
schools.

Again, even if we can conceive of some kind of
interventionist libertarian foreign policy that
would reduce foreign threats against Americans
and even help the foreigners, how likely is the
U.S. government to do those things? Why would
we expect U.S. foreign interventions to actually
be sensible when the U.S. government is run by
people who reject libertarian values and ideas?