Quoth Schneider:

"Tom? If you're "anti-war", then you are also, by *definition*, "anti-SELF-DEFENSE"."

I guess I'll take the hit for being insufficiently explicit. So, here goes:

I am not a pacifist.

I recognize a right of self-defense.

I apply a fairly lenient standard in defining self-defense (i.e. I consider a known intent to do harm, or an offer to do harm, an initiation of force which may be pre-emptively defended against).

I acknowledge that the right of self-defense may be exercised by more than one person acting in concert, of themselves "as a group" and/or in defense of each other.

I am, however, "anti-war" in several important respects:

I oppose the war on Iraq for several reasons. In no particular order, and without any implication that there aren't others:

1) The war is a strategic blunder.

2) The war is a tactical clusterfuck.

3) The war is contrary to the national security interests of the United States insofar as it has directly harmed the US and directly benefited al Qaeda, Iran and other enemy states and groups.

To the extent that I'm "anti-war" in general, I offer the following reasons (also in no particular order and also with no claim to exhaustiveness):

1) War as historically conducted is generally (and in the specific case of the Iraq war) financed through theft.

2) War as historically conducted generally (and in the specific case of the Iraq war) includes actions which accidentally, negligently or intentionally result in harm to (i.e. they constitute an initiation of force toward) innocent non-combatants against whom no reasonable claim of "self-defense" could be lodged.

3) War as historically conducted (and in the specific case of the Iraq war) generally gives rise to claims on the part of the belligerents that neither the belligerent states/groups, nor the individual combatants, are, or may be held, responsible for the actions described in (2) above.

Even given all those reasons, I acknowledge that war may sometimes be necessary (although, in the case of the Iraq war, it most manifestly was not). The fact that some wars may be necessary, however, does not make war a good or desrirable thing.

War is -- or at least should be -- a last resort of exigency when all reasonable alternatives have failed to secure the desired result (with the obvious addendum that the result toward which the war is aimed must itself be within the bounds of the ethically justifiable).

If I have to cut off my hand to survive because a cobra has bitten it, I have to -- but that doesn't mean that cutting off one's hand is a "good thing." It's a bad thing one may have to do in order to preserve the greater value than the hand.

Finally, as the Objectivists like to say, "context is everything." When I refer to myself as "anti-war," keep in mind that there is a specific war at issue.

Regards,
Tom Knapp