Invasion and Liberation
While I was down in Ottawa, the friend I was staying with and I had a discussion about the validity of invading Iraq. One of the many points I made was that any free country has the right and the option (but not obligation) to invade a non-free country in order to liberate it. I do mean liberate in the liberate sense, not the rape, murder and pillage meaning. Any government which oppresses people and strips them on the ability to excercise their fundamental rights is wrong - it asks people to live as slaves or animals. It has no legitimacy. The ideal situation is for the people to rebel internally, but that is frequently difficult. In many cases, freedom can only come from the outside.
What, then, is meant by a free country? How do we know if we should invade or not? The very minimum needed for a country to be able to manage its own affairs is the ability for free political speech, a non-corrupt election process for the executive and legislative functions of the government, and a legal system which will uphold the first two items. Everything else beyond that can be solved at the voting booth. The problem is that it is frequently impossible to get *just* those three principles. A political discussion, for example, might say something which is contrary to a state religious or cultural principle which could conceivable get them arrested. Of course, if the country views anything remotely politically-oriented as protected speech then the whole issue goes away.
In practice it is far better to provide more freedom than then absolute minimum required so as to prevent backsliding into oppression again. Ideally, there would be a “stable free democracy in-a-box” that could be bought for about $20 and imported into an oppressive country. But, alas, it isn’t, and so there will always be pains in the process.
When China says that it’s population isn’t educated enough to support a democracy, they fail to explain why the oppress free speech. If there goal was to eventually move to a democracy then they could at least hold town-hall meetings……
On the invading/liberating side, the country pursuing such actions should be an established free country with many more freedoms than the minimum. In practice, any free democratic country will suffice. A country which has just converted to a democracy is probably not a good choice - building up a large military n a newly democratic country is a recipe for backsliding into the dark times once again.
You will notice above that I argued that a free country may, but does not have to, liberate an oppressive country. This is because funding such a military action involves taxing the people. To do so, you need to get the consent of the people for such action. OK - everybody in the country could voluntarily contribute to a “liberate country X” fund, but the results are the same. Some countries will be alright with this. Others will have other priorities. I begrudge nobody for saying no. After all, it boils down to personal choice. What I do object to are those who choose not to help liberate a country, and instead try to block the process. Nobody has the right to stand between a person and freedom, whatever the source.
What was the goal of invading Iraq? The liberation of it’s people. Why Iraq and not [pick your favorite third word despotism]? Because it suited US interests the most. By liberation, we can hopeful create the first real Arab democracy in the middle east and change the culture to the point that they no longer view short shorts as a reason to kill people. Will we do this to other countries? Hopefully. But remember that it costs a LOT of money to do so. We might only be able to liberate one country every other decade or so. Nations could pool resources and do this through an organization like the UN - they would finally have a useful mandate. But that’s just me dreaming. I can only hope that other countries, like my home of Canada will have the willingness to get up and hep free the world from it’s chains.