[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Radar

The U.S. Military isn't here to defend American "interests", oil supplies, or investments abroad, it's here only to defend American soil and people.

Now I'm beginning to see why you have such trouble with foreign policy, Radar. American soil and people can't be separated from American interests, nor disentangled from American investment. Isolationism of the description you imply you prefer here only worked when the fastest speed of communication was a sailing ship and when the Royal Navy so dominated the Atlantic that any other great European power had no hope of meddling in any development in the North American continent -- and after the middle nineteenth century, considerably less hope in South America, too.

Isolationism, I consider, is a nonstarter. It also greatly inhibits the creation of wealth, an idea very popular with Libertarians IIRC.

April Gillespie told Saddam, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait" and "We take no position" which gave a green light for Iraq to invade because it said the U.S. government was not taking sides in the dispute. Then America launched an unprovoked attack against Iraq.

Shortchange Kuwait, an ally of ours, just like that, eh? Day-um. I'd say invading what was likely our best friend in the region would be sufficiently provocative, especially in view of American people and investment effort being inextricably united and in essence one. And of course there is the abuse the Kuwaiti population took -- typical of what happens when a non-democracy turns internationally coercive. More libertarian (democratic) societies discourage this; nondemocracies actively promote abuses, outrages, and mass robberies of one description or another.

Unprovoked, my Libertarian ass, Radar! The Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein violated the principle of self-ownership and the principle of non-aggression.

Have you ever been outside the borders of the United States?!

There is no legitimate justifiable or defensible position to support the war in Iraq from a libertarian or Constitutional perspective.

If you want libertarianism to happen anywhere, in any time before the sun goes into red giant phase and melts our Earth away, you'll drop this idea. To get libertarianism, antilibertarian regimes will have to be removed. It is not in the nature of such regimes to go quietly.

Remember, Paul: you're not the only man in the room. In politics, unlike in math, there is often more than one answer.