The Rational Egoist

Ever since talk began about going to war with Iraq, there has been a lot of debate and controversy over many issues such as: (1)whether or not the U.S. has the right to invade Iraq, and (2)whether or not the U.S. should invade Iraq. Now I am going to answer these questions very simply, and put to rest all of the nonsense that has gone on for a very long time now.

(1)"A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining action and self-generated action–which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life…The concept of a ‘right’ pertains only to action–specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. [Bold emphasis added] Ayn Rand

“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force.” Ayn Rand

Every human being has the fundamental right to their own life, regardless of whether a government recognizes it or not, and the proper purpose of a government is to protect that fundamental right. Therefore, a proper government (one which completely recognizes individual rights) has the “right” to dispose of any government which is improper (one which does not completely recognize individual rights). Since however, in our world today, no society completely recognizes individual rights, those governments which recognize individual rights more have the right to dispose of those who recognize individual rights less. Therefore, the U.S. government, being the freest in the world (recognizes individual rights the most), has the “right” to dispose of every single government in the world which is less free (recognizes individual rights less). HOWEVER, this sure as hell does not mean that the U.S. should dispose of every government in the world which is less free, it merely means that it has the right to.

This means, that the U.S. had the right to dispose of the government of Iraq regardless of it being an “imminent threat” or having one single weapon of mass destruction. The U.S. had the right to dispose of the Iraqi dictatorship by the very fact that it was a dictatorship.

(2)As I just alluded to, there is a major distinction between what a government has the right to do in terms of waging war and what it should do in terms of waging war.
“Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent ‘right’ of gang rulers. It is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.”

So, I have established that the U.S. had the right to invade, but should have we invaded? Was it in our self-interest to do so? This is where the existence of a weapons of mass-destruction program, whether or not Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S., whether or not it had ties to terrorism, etc., come in. These things do not have any bearing on whether or not the U.S. had the “right” to invade, but rather they have bearing on whether or not the U.S. should have invaded, meaning, whether or not it was in our self-interest to do so.

I believe that in this area, it was within our self-interest to invade Iraq. By destroying the dictatorship of Iraq, we destroyed the capability for Saddam Hussein to make weapons of mass destruction which could destroy us or our allies, and we destroyed the capability of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas from possibly gaining weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein. As a secondary consequence (which should have never been alluded to as the primary motivation), we liberated countless numbers of Iraqis from a brutal dictator.

Was Iraq an imminent threat to the U.S.? No, not really.
Did Iraq have a massive weapons program? No, and the U.S. never made this as the case for war. The desire to build a massive weapons program, and taking steps to do so, was the cause for alarm, not the existence of a massive program.
Did Iraq have direct ties with terrorist groups? We know for sure that Saddam Hussein supported numerous Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas, by offering rewards of $25,000 to families of suicide bombers. Besides that, the only publicly known evidence of ties with groups such as Al-Qaeda is one Al-Qaeda member receiving medical care in Baghdad and the fact that the U.S. is a common enemy of both Hussein and Bin Laden.

I do not believe that our government made a major case for Iraq being an imminent threat to U.S. security and any real need to dispose of the dictatorship as soon as possible. But I don’t think that mattered at all, in fact, I think it’s a good sign. In today’s world, there are no more evil superpower dictatorships with the capability of destroying the United States. The increasing military power of the United States and the decreasing amount of evil dictatorships and evil groups is a very good thing. Instead of dealing with a massive country like Soviet Russia as our enemy, we are dealing with a bunch of crazies with bombs strapped to their chest. This means that we shouldn’t be looking for “imminent threats” but rather threats of any kind, evil of any kind and eliminating them.

Therefore, the U.S. not only had the right to invade Iraq, but I believe that we should have as well.