 Good evening, and welcome to tonight's event, the second lecture of the INRAN Institute's 2004 lecture series. My name is Mark Chapman, and I am the vice president of development at the INRAN Institute, which is headquartered here in Irvine, California. The INRAN Institute is a non-profit organization, and all of our programs are funded by private donations from corporations, foundations, and the generosity of many individuals throughout the U.S. and around the world. We are now actively seeking funding for more of these talks, so if you appreciate the value of this series and would like to see it continue, please consider becoming a supporter of this series as an individual or as a business. If you're interested, please see me tonight, and I'll be happy to give you more information. Now a few brief announcements before we begin tonight's lecture. First, we have a bookstore located in the back of this room with a selection of INRAN's fiction and nonfiction writings and other books and recordings on foreign policy and terrorism that relate to tonight's talk. We're also pleased to announce that the Institute is again planning to offer an evening course on INRAN's philosophy, Objectivism. The course will be a repeat of the session offered last fall. If you're interested in the course and would like to receive more information, please stop by the table in the back where the bookstore is. There'll be somebody there with a clipboard and you can give us your information and we'll get in touch with you as the course gets closer to scheduling a specific time. Finally, we'd like to announce that the last two lectures of this year's series, both held here at the Hyatt, will be held, both will be held here at the Hyatt. Next month's lecture scheduled for the Columbus Day holiday on Monday, October the 11th is entitled Columbus Day Without Guilt, and will be presented by Thomas Bowden, who is the author of the book The Enemies of Christopher Columbus, which you may have seen recently on C-SPAN's book notes. The following month on Thursday, November the 11th, the final lecture of the season is entitled Global Capitalism, and will be presented by Dr. Andrew Bernstein, author of the forthcoming book The Capitalist Manifesto. Our speaker tonight is Dr. Yaron Brooke, president and executive director of the INRAN Institute. As a nationally recognized expert on current events, including foreign policy issues such as terrorism and the Middle East conflict, Dr. Brooke is regularly interviewed by the print, radio, and television media. He also lectures on terrorism and issues related to the Middle East at college campuses throughout the U.S., including recent talks at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and UCLA. Prior to coming to the United States, Dr. Brooke served in the Israeli Armed Forces, including assignments as a member of the Israeli Army Intelligence. He was also an award-winning university professor at Santa Clara University before joining the INRAN Institute in 2000. Tonight's lecture is entitled The Morality of War. At the end of the lecture, Dr. Brooke will be joined by Dr. Ankar Ghatte, resident fellow at the INRAN Institute, for questions from the audience. If you have a question at that time, please step up to the mic located here in this aisle that I'm pointing to. Also, I want to mention that by early next week, an audio recording of tonight's lecture will be available free of charge on the Institute's website at www.INRAN.org. So if you wanted to go through the lecture again, you're welcome to there, or if there's friends that you'd like to hear about the lecture, point them to our website. And now please join me in welcoming Dr. Yaron Brooke. Thank you. Good evening. Let me just start by warning you that I fear I'm gonna go a little over an hour tonight. I usually try to stick to it, but I think this will keep you awake though. Late last month, American troops engaged in combat in the Iraqi city of Najaf in order to destroy the forces of Muqtad El-Sadr and bring him to justice. He is accused of murder. After long days of bloody combat, a deal was cut, setting Sada and his men free. They even got to keep their weapons. A few days later, Sada's men killed a U.S. soldier in Baghdad. A few months ago, the Marines entered Fallujah with the intent of destroying the insurgent forces located there. Insurgents that had been killing American soldiers for months. After days of combat, they left, leaving the insurgents alive and well, free to strike and kill U.S. soldiers in the future. And that is what they are doing. Now these actions are not the exception in our current wars. Observe how we fight our so-called war on terrorism. From the beginning, political and military leaders in all ranks have emphasized that civilians in enemy countries are to be spared. Our soldiers have been ordered to follow strict rules of engagement that have cost many their lives as so as to avoid any enemy casualties. Numerous operations have been cancelled or halted in order to avoid collateral damage. Monsters, like Osama bin Laden and his deputies, are still alive because we hesitated to bomb them out of their hideouts for fear of hitting so-called innocence. We avoid military action against actively, actively threatening regimes, such as Iran. And when we do take military action, we first seek the approval of hostile countries and the United Nations. In this so-called war, the idea of victory has been discarded entirely. After all, as we have been told repeatedly, this is, quote, a new kind of war, one that will last decades. How will it end? Well, you've probably heard President Bush himself address this issue. In a recent TV interview, Bush said, quote, I don't think we can win it. It means the war. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world. Unquote. Now, of course, he later backpedaled, but he assured us that we can't expect victory in a conventional sense. But what does an unconventional victory mean? How could it be achieved? No one says. But the current plan seems to be that a democratically elected Iraqi government will somehow lead to a political renaissance in the Middle East that will somehow stop terrorism in some distant future. In the meantime, we are told we should go about our business, show resolve, take off our shoes at the airports, and pay attention to the color-coded alerts so that we know how likely it is that we are murdered. Yet, this is not how America has always fought its wars. In 1864, as the civil war was dragging on an endless bloody battle, the actions of one general, William Tecumseh Sherman, helped end it with a North's victory. General Sherman's decisive action was his brutal campaign against Georgia's civilian population. After burning the city of Atlanta, Sherman's army ravaged much of the rest of Georgia, burning estates, taking food and livestock, destroying warehouses, crops, and railway lines. In doing so, not only did he disrupt the supply of provisions to Lee's army in Virginia, but also, and more importantly, he made the war real to the civilian population that was supporting the war from the rear. In so doing, he broke the spirit of the men on the front lines, who were now worried and demoralized by what was happening to their homes and to their families. In so doing, he broke the South's will to fight. In World War II, allied military commanders took similar actions for the same purpose, to shorten the war and reduce their side's casualties. In authorizing the bombing of Hamburg, Berlin, and other German cities, which killed hundreds of thousands, Winston Churchill wrote, quote, the severe, the ruthless bombing of Germany on an ever-increasing scale will not only cripple her war effort, but will create conditions intolerable to the mass of the German population, unquote. A similar tactic was being used in the Pacific, where General LeMay ordered the fire bombing of Tokyo and several other German cities, and where President Truman later ordered the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end the war. All Americans, past and present, owe their lives and freedom to the fact that from the Revolutionary War through World War II, American leaders have been willing, at least for the most part, to do whatever it takes to achieve victory, to get the enemy's unconditional surrender, and thus to secure America's life and liberty. Today, we owe the constant threat of terrorism to the fact that our leaders do not share this willingness. What happened to America's old willingness to wage and win wars? The answer lies in a change in American leaders' beliefs about morality generally, and the morality of war in particular. America's past willingness to go all out in war was made possible by the conviction that it was right to do so. This conviction was made possible by the implicit philosophy of individualism. This philosophy, when confidently held, led to moral certainty in America's goodness, in the evil of its enemies, and in the justice of doing everything necessary to defeat those enemies. But since these views of war were never explicitly defended in moral terms, and indeed were in contradiction to the moral views that Americans held explicitly, they were vulnerable to being undermined. And this is exactly what happened. The morality of war has been overtaken by a fully explicit altruistic theory of war, one that is universally taught in our universities and war colleges. It is accepted not merely by intellectuals, but by our politicians, the leaders of the military, and the media. The theory is called just war theory, and it is the number one factor animating our war today. I believe that to truly understand today's disastrous policies and to know how to fight them, it is essential to understand what this theory holds and how our leaders are following it to the letter. I want to begin my discussion of just war theory by reading your quote from Michael Waltz's book, Just and Unjust Wars. This book was first published in 1977, and it serves as the textbook in ethics classes taught at West Point Military Academy, among other places. Quote, A soldier must take careful aim at his military target and away from non-military targets. He can only shoot if he has a reasonably clear shot. He can only attack if a direct attack is possible. He can risk incidental deaths, but he cannot kill civilians simply because he finds them between himself and his enemies. End quote. Simply not to intend the deaths of civilians is too easy. What we look for is some sign of a positive commitment to save civilian lives. If saving civilian lives means risking soldiers' lives, the risk must be accepted. End quote. Now, this is a pure expression of the put others first morality of altruism, which literally means otherism. By altruism, I do not mean compassion or kindness. Rather, I mean the ethical view that it is your duty. It is the duty of the strong to sacrifice for the sake of the weak, of the haves to surrender their values to the have nots. In a military context, advocates of just war theory demand the sacrifice of one's soldiers and one's war aims for the sake of the enemy. And in practice, how does this work? How is it applied? Well, if you read that passage from Walter, it is exactly the rules of engagement that U.S. soldiers are fighting under in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war we are fighting today is being directed more from the halls of academia than from the White House. The theory guiding our war, just war theory, is the only explicit moral theory of war that enjoys any popularity today. It is the consistent application of altruism to the question of warfare. Now, you might legitimately ask, how does an, how can an altruist advocate war at all? After all, doesn't altruism advocate turning the other cheek and thus pacifism? Now, this is the question posed by the first advocate of just war theory, St. Augustine. Now, Augustine's answer was this, one can justify going to war not to protect oneself, but to protect one's neighbor. As the scholar Gene Elstein, author of the Just War on Terror, explains, quote, for early Christians like Augustine, killing to defend oneself alone was not enjoined. It is better to suffer harm than to inflict it. But the obligation of charity obliges one to move in another direction, to save the lives of others. It may be necessary to imperil and even take the lives of their tormentors, unquote. That's according to the original Just War theory. If only you are attacked, you are obliged to turn the other cheek. Only if someone attacks your neighbor, are you permitted to retaliate. According to just to this theory, there are four requirements for going to war. One, a war must be entered for, quote, just cause. It must have, quote, good intentions. And it must be, quote, a last resort. And finally, it must be declared by a, quote, legitimate authority. Now, let's consider each one of these. And I'll talk about the issue of legitimate authority a little later, so don't worry, I'll get to that. What is a just cause for war? Well, if other's well-being is the standard, then one just cause for war is the protection of another people from aggression or oppression or genocide. Indeed, according to Michael Walter, quote, the chief dilemma of international politics is whether people in danger should be rescued by military forces from the outside, unquote. Thus, just war theory endorses the sacrifice of American soldiers and American wealth for peacekeeping and humanitarian missions anywhere and everywhere around the globe. Many just war advocates, such as many of the Neoconservatives, hold the U.S. intervention in places like Liberia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, and I guess now Sudan, is morally mandatory. What about fighting a war in self-defense? A goal that President Bush claims to fully endorse? Yes, just war theory says you can go to war in self-defense, but only for altruistic reasons. Now, how can self-defense be altruistic? It is altruistic if the individuals in a nation who are leading and fighting the war, the political leaders, but especially the soldiers, are not out for themselves, but for their countrymen. Their fellow citizens, after all, are others, and thus a legitimate beneficiary of their sacrifices, just like the suffering peoples in other countries. Thus, soldiers, according to just war theory, do not fight for themselves for their own values. They are sacrificial animals. Their job is to give up their lives so that their countrymen, foreign victims of oppression, or as we shall see, even their country's enemies, are protected. Now, given the altruistic basis of the so-called right to self-defense, it should come as no surprise that just war theory places all kinds of altruistic restrictions on when and how you can fight in so-called self-defense. Consider the requirement that a war must be a, quote, last resort. What does this mean? Well, it means that one cannot go to war immediately, as soon as one is attacked or threatened. Instead, every other conceivable avenue, short of using military force, must be tried. Appeasement, UN sanctions, an opportunity to hand over the terrorists, obtaining sincere promises, never to sponsor terrorism again, and anything else that the pacifists or the State Department can come up with. Of course, war as the last resort has been the U.S.'s policy against the threat of Islamic terrorism for decades, and this is what made 9-11 possible. But the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9-11 did not dissuade Bush from following this requirement of just war theory. Even after 9-11, he gave the Taliban a chance to hand over the terrorists and avoid retribution. And before invading Iraq to al-Saddam, a mission he claimed was an urgent necessity of national security. Bush spent over a year giving Saddam additional last chances to mend his ways. Or for that matter, consider how we treat the insurgents today in Iraq. How many last chances are we going to give Saddam or the insurgents in Fallujah? Now just war theory's requirement that war be waged with good intentions also plays a determining role in the nature of any war in self-defense. Since under this theory, good and altruistic are synonymous, any leader who goes to war in self-defense must seek to avoid the impression that he is selfishly concerned with only his country's welfare. Thus, he is invariably led to supplement or subvert any self-defense goals with well-intentioned altruistic ones. President Bush's case for war in Afghanistan and Iraq were a perfect illustration of this. The impetus for both, especially Afghanistan, was clearly September 11th. But he did not consider pure self-defense a sufficient justification for war in either case. Thus, he supplemented the alleged self-defense portion of each mission with massive campaigns to relieve Afghan and Iraqi suffering. In the buildup to Iraq, President Bush was especially concerned with just war theory. The reason was that he was trying to justify one aspect of self-defense, which is preemption, an idea that's very controversial among just war theorists. Thus, President Bush made sure to make the emphasis of his campaign not Saddam's threat to the United States, which we heard very little about, but the goal of preserving the integrity of the UN, of freeing the Iraqi people of a tyrant, this is Operation Iraqi Freedom after all, of showering the Iraqis with food, collectively owned oil, and democracy. As an expert to a sympathetic to just war theory wrote in the Klamat review of books, quote, in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, to have listened to President Bush or to his principal civilian and military advisors, was to learn how profoundly just war thinking had influenced the leadership of the world's most powerful nation. One may, of course, disagree with their conclusions, but one has to be impressed by the evident care they took to provide moral justification for their action, unquote. Throughout both missions, for moral reassurance and inspiration, Bush has explicitly appealed to our just cause and good intentions. In a typical speech, he appeals not to our self-defense, but instead emphasizes that, quote, our nation's cause has always been larger than our nation's defense. We fight as we always fight for a just peace, a peace that favors human liberty. Building this just peace is America's opportunity and America's duty, unquote. When he refers to our good intentions in Iraq, he speaks not of our intention to defend ourselves, but the intention of American citizens to pay an American soldier to die so that Iraqis can hold a mob vote. Just war theory has been crucial not only in defining the when and why of the wars Bush has chosen to wage, it has also defined the wars that Bush has chosen not to fight. Bush has taken no military action whatsoever against the worst terrorist regime, Iran, none against Syria, none against Saudi Arabia, and worse than none against the Palestinian terrorists. Indeed, he has rewarded Yassir al-Fatt into father and September 11th with a promised Palestinian state, nor is there any indication that he will do anything in the future to stop the threats that these countries pose. A man, war theory, truly concerned with self-defense, would say that these threats have to be eliminated now, but Bush cannot justify such a response to himself or to others, given the altruistic criteria of just cause, good intentions, and last resort. Thus he is left to appeasing or ignoring these countries, hoping that the threats they pose will somehow disappear. Now take Iran. By the standard of actual self-defense, Iran was and is the most important regime to defeat, but according to just war theory, the case would be almost impossible to make, and Iraq is on that view a much more important target. This is their approach. While Iran enslaves its people in a religious theocracy, it hasn't committed genocide or used prohibited weapons of mass destruction, not yet anyway, or launched a war against one of its neighbors. Iran is not ruled by universally accepted monster and the Iranian people do not seem as miserable as the Iraqis were. We know that Iran poses a greater threat to the U.S. than Iraq. It is after all the spiritual fatherland of the ideology that drives the terrorists. It is the world's leading supporter and producer of terrorists, and it is developing a nuclear arsenal. But these are merely selfish criteria and few just war theorists would argue that we have suffered enough from Iran to be at the point of last resort. How long before we can consider last resort of war against Iran? Well this is how President Bush explained the issue last week to the New York Times. Suggesting that he would be patient, Bush said, quote, we will continue pressing Iran diplomatically. He continued, diplomacy failed for 11 years in Iraq and this new diplomatic effort in Iran started barely a year ago, unquote. In other words, if we try diplomacy with Iraq, last resort, for 11 years, why not grant Iran the same luxury? This in spite of a history that began with the taking of the hostages in our embassy in 1979, continued through numerous attacks on Americans in Beirut, the Kobar Tars in Saudi Arabia, continued with Iran's sponsorship and support of numerous terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and its development of nuclear weapons. And it's continued, continued daily almost, verbal threats against the United States and Israel. One can only understand the administration's decision to invade Iraq but not Iran, if one understands that the administration is not primarily guided by questions of self-defense. The overruling criteria for any action is that it fit into the sacrificial framework of just war theory, to the extent that the requirements of self-defense are contradicted by the requirements of this theory, the requirements of self-defense are thrown out. Now this is consistent with Bush's religiosity. He takes his altruism seriously. Now the final requirement of going to war on the just war theory is that it be declared by a legitimate authority. Now historically this has been a minor restriction, meaning simply that a government, not a private militia or gang should declare war. In recent decades however, many just war theorists have come to hold that a war is invalid unless authorized and supervised by the United Nations. And even those who do not regard you and approval as strictly necessary value the approval of other nations as evidence of what? As evidence of a lack of selfishness. Observe Bush's frantic desire to make an Iraq mission that was suitable for the UN and then failing that to assemble any and every insignificant nation that he could into a so-called coalition of the willing. Gaining the approval of the group, some group, any group was of paramount importance to him and his administration. Now look at the result. The cost of buying such a coalition is that one's decisions are subject to their veto. If you remember America's mission in Afghanistan and Iraq was stymied by the vetoes of such so-called allies as the Saudis who denied us the use of aircraft landing strips and of other nations which urged us to limit the number of ground troops in Afghanistan allowing Bin Laden to get away. As a result of Bush's coalition building, his pursuit of legitimate authority, we sacrificed our self-interest. Just war theory has guided from start to finish the administration's decisions on when, why, and with whom to go to war. But it has also guided how we wage the war itself. According to the theory, any action in war must satisfy two requirements. They call them proportionality and discrimination. Proportionality is the idea that the damage we do to our enemies must be in proper proportion to the risk they pose to us. It means that if the enemy is primitives living in caves or barbaric countries with no technology or real army, it would be wrong of us to unleash our full military capabilities. We must respond in proportion to the violence that they can inflict of us in proportion to the threat they pose. This is fair play. According to Walter, again, quote, we may fairly condemn the warrior who first arms himself with the superior and forbidden weapon and hits his enemy, unquote. So any use, for example, of nuclear weapons against our current enemy is unthinkable, not even considered. Even large bombs that can cause significant damage are restricted. The criteria of proportionality is the reason that our military is often criticized for using helicopters or sophisticated gunships against poorly armed insurgents in Iraq. And it might be the reason that heavy armor like tanks were not used in Fallujah a couple of months ago by the Marines. Now part of proportionality is that we must view all soldiers as equals. They must all play by the same rules of war. Indeed, according to Walter, quote, in our judgments of the fighting, we abstract from all consideration of the justice of the cause. We do this because the moral status of individual soldiers on both sides is very much the same. They face one another as moral equals. Now this in my view is horrific. At West Point, our officers are taught that no matter the cause of war, they are risking their lives to fight and kill their moral equals. One can only imagine the demoralizing impact such an idea has on them. Now observe that this again is an expression of pure altruism. Conquertize what this means. A soldier must regard protecting the life of his fellow soldier as morally equivalent with saving the life of the enemy. It is a demand that the goods sacrifice for the sake of evil. And it gets worse. The additional requirement of discrimination holds that we must differentiate between combatants and noncombatants. Providing noncombatants with immunity. Just war theory regards all noncombatants as innocent with rights to be respected. We need according to Elstein, quote, to make every effort to avoid killing noncombatants, women, children, the aged and the foreign, all unarmed persons going about daily lives and prisoners of war, unquote. Now if one takes these ideas seriously, as I think the Bush administration does, one may not morally place one's own citizens as a higher priority than the citizens of enemy nations. This is entirely consistent with altruism. The purpose of a soldier's life is to sacrifice to others, meaning any and all others from his friendly neighborhood grocer back home to an Iraqi writer or an Islamic fundamentalist cleric. All are brothers to be kept. Observe the moral egalitarianism and inversion of justice here. Benevolent, individualistic, life loving Americans and death worshiping collectivistic, nihilistic Arabs such as the dancing Palestinians who celebrated September 11th are regarded as equally worthy of protection by the American military, except if the American is a soldier and the Arab is a civilian in which case the Arab's life is of greater value. It is this premise that is responsible for the view held by an overwhelming majority of just war thinkers that the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was E-Mawa. It was E-Mawa. America, they claim, should have valued the lives of the Japanese over the hundreds of thousands of GIs who would have died invading Japan. To quote Eilstein, quote, the demands of proportionality and discrimination are strenuous and cannot be alternatively satisfied or ignored depending on whether they serve one's war's aim, unquote. These intellectuals take ethics, the ethics of altruism, seriously with all of its deadly implications. In the war on terrorism, the U.S. is following this doctrine with regard to civilians with incredible dedication. In her evaluation of the war in Afghanistan, Eilstein wrote, quote, the United States must do everything to minimize civilian deaths and it is doing so. The United States must investigate every incident in which civilians are killed and it is doing so. The United States must make some sort of recompense for unintended civilian casualties and it may be making plans to do so and unusual and even unheard of act in wartime, unquote. And she adds, quote, it is fair to say that in Afghanistan, the U.S. military is doing its best to respond proportionately. If it were not, the infrastructure of civilian life in that country would not have been devastated, would have been devastated completely and it is not. Instead, schools are opening, women are returning to work, movie theaters are filled to capacity and people can once again listen to music and dance at weddings, unquote. Now what she does not mention is the price that must be paid for such supposedly just conduct. There are hundreds of heroic American boys who have been killed so that Afghans and Iraqis may live and that they mosques may stand to say nothing of whatever unknown price the rest of us will pay when the undefeated enemy attacks America next. Just war theory in the final analysis is anti-self-defense, as is this administration. Bush's repeated professions of concern about self-defense are meaningless and as genuine as a statement after every Palestinian terrorist attack that, quote, Israel has a right to defend itself but should show restraint. Like advocates of just war theory, he believes in self-defense so long as it adheres to sacrificial restrictions and imperatives that make self-defense impossible. Imperatives such as constricting rules of engagement in which U.S. soldiers must expose themselves to absurd risks lest they harm civilians. Imperatives demanding that the U.S. appease warlords and would be dictators like Muqtadisada. The moral imperatives of just war theory are such that they deliberately undercut the valiant efforts of our military. President Bush is able to project moral confidence precisely because the thing he is confident about is not America's right to self-defense, it is America's right to self-sacrifice. Now the president's version of just war theory is far from the only one. There are many different variants of the theory and different advocates who emphasize and interpret the rules differently. Some are borderline pacifists like the Pope who emphasize the last resort rule. Others, under the influence of multiculturalism, believe that most peacekeeping missions are wrong, not because they are sacrificial but because one cannot impose one's definition of a better life on a foreign people. But none of these disagreements are ultimately significant because none challenge the theory's basic altruistic premises. They differ not on whether America's self-interest and self-defense should be sacrificed but on how. For example, the media, along with Bush, are not concerned with truly defending ourselves by destroying the threats to America. They are concerned with being moral given their view of morality. In fact, the greatest criticism you hear is that Bush has failed to live up to the media's version of just war theory. They tally civilian casualties. They fixate unhumiliated POWs. They treat any deficiency in Afghan or Iraqi standard of living as a moral travesty perpetrated by America and its president. Observe that the media, Democrats and intellectuals, do not criticize the administration for their failure to deliver deathblow to bin Laden and his followers in Afghanistan or the failure to smash the insurgency in Iraq or in the fact that they are doing nothing to fight the threat posed by Iran. The standard for success in Afghanistan in Iraq, accepted by almost everyone out there, is whether they have elections, whether women have equal rights, whether we build enough schools. The standard in the war on terrorism is not victory but the well-being of our enemy. And what an abhorrent standard that is. In just war theory and in its implementation in the war on terrorism, we see in another illustration of the meaning implicit in immorality that upholds self-sacrifice to others as the good. It is because America is so noble and successful, so advanced and so prosperous that it is urged to sacrifice, to surrender its values for the sake of lesser or non-values. Altruism requires that those who have achieved values give them up to those who haven't, that the positive be surrendered to the negative. Hence we see intellectuals advocating and politicians dutifully practicing. Sacrifice of the civilized for the barbarian, sacrifice of the victims of aggression to its perpetrators, sacrifice of the noble aspirations of young Americans to the ignoble aspirations of backward Iraqis, sacrifice of the greatest nation in history to the worst nations today. Now in fundamental terms, just war theory is completely unopposed by any other theory of war today. Pacifism, the view that military action is always immoral, is not a theory of war. And it has the same moral foundation as just war theory, altruism, which leads it to endorse the same result, self-destruction. The alleged alternative to just war theory today is offered by self-proclaimed amoralists, those that claim that there is no connection between morality and war. These self-proclaimed realists claim that war should be entered and fought according to strictly practical considerations. For the most part, these are pragmatists who do not believe in moral principles, or for that matter, in any principles at all. Now the bankruptcy of this position can be exposed by just a few questions. What do you regard as practical? What do you intend to do in practice? What ends are you after in war, and by what means do you intend to achieve them? Now these questions are inescapable in the issue of practicality, and of course, these are all moral questions. In practice, pragmatist realism amounts to accepting whatever ends, usually contradictory, that the pragmatists and others happen to desire, ends that inevitably they get from the de facto morality in the culture, in this case, altruism. Observe that there is not one single prominent realist who is called for America's unequivocal, uncompromising self-defense, even though that would be practical by an objective moral standard. Instead, realists like Colin Powell and the State Department seek to avoid war, to appease any and every enemy, to build coalitions, to avoid civilian casualties, while at the same time, protecting America somehow. In other words, they do everything that pacifism and just war theory say they should do. Pragmatism is not an antidote to just war theory. It is not even a theory of war, but an intellectual parasite that camouflages altruism's destructiveness with a professed concern for practicality. The only real application, the only real alternative to the application of altruism to war is the application of egoism to war. Now here I am drawing upon Ayn Rand's ethics, which form part of her system of philosophy, objectivism. Now what do I mean by egoism? It is the moral code that takes man's life as the standard of morality. It holds that man ought to live for his own sake, achieving his values by his own effort, never sacrificing himself to others, nor others to himself. Egoism or selfishness is viewed by many people as a freefall, whim worshipping approach. They do what you feel like attitude. Now this is wrong. Ayn Rand's ethics is based on the recognition of the fact that man must guide his actions by the use of his rational judgment, by objective facts, not by his whims, which is why she calls her ethics a code of rational egoism. It is a principled code of ethics for the sake of achieving practical success in life. Now there's much more to say about Ayn Rand's morality obviously, but for the purpose of this talk I've sketched a basic principle, which I will proceed to illustrate in its application to warfare. Now I refer you to Ayn Rand's writing, primarily Atlas Shrugged, and a book on ethics, The Virtue of Selfishness for Further Information, or of course you can ask me in the Q&A. Now let me first say that it's absolutely necessary to apply morality to war. War is an issue of tremendous moral significance. It involves the most extreme life and death decisions. Thus war raises numerous moral questions, the answers to which are not obvious. For example, under what circumstances should one go to war? Ayn is one morally entitled to do anything necessary to win a war, or does morality place certain restrictions on what is appropriate? To what extent can one kill, otherwise harm civilians and innocents, and etc. These are all moral questions. None of these questions can be rationally addressed without first asking the fundamental philosophical question about war, the one that sets the context and implies all the rest. The question is what is the moral purpose of war? The answer provided by the objectivist ethics is simple. The purpose of war is the same as any other action proper to a government, to protect the individual rights of its citizens. Ethics and politics, by defining the purpose of war, set the standard of value by which all issues of entering and waging a war must be judged. It is appropriate to go to war whenever it is necessary for the protection of the individual rights of Americans. The rights, the life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Such a necessity arises when these rights are violated or threatened by a foreign aggressor. In some cases, it might be possible to stop such an aggressor through lesser coercive means such as sanctions or ultimatums. But war in self-defense at any time is always an option. It should not be a last resort. Thus in the face of the continued terrorist attacks of the last 25 years, war at any time during that period was morally necessary as the only means possible to defend the lives of Americans. And I think September 11th proved that. Now self-defense does not require that one be directly attacked to go to war. We need not sit idly by as North Korea and Iran build nuclear weapons and missile launchers. We need not wait to respond until they have destroyed an American city. A preemptive strike is justified if the nation is involved is an objective threat. If it is shown in action or in official statements the willingness to initiate force against us and the ability to do so. By the standard of individual rights, a nation can morally go to war only in self-defense. Wars of self-sacrifice, humanitarian missions for example, and wars of aggression are violations of the citizens individual rights, our citizens individual rights, especially of our soldiers. Both constitute forcibly sacrificing the lives and money of Americans for the sake of some so-called higher cause, whether it be the suffering of the Somalians or the power lust of a president. Now since just war theorists have perverted the concept of self-defense let me be clear on what I mean and what is meant by self-defense. The goal of a war in self-defense is the permanent elimination of the threat, complete victory, the complete restoration of the protection of individual rights, the complete return to normal life. Any enduring negative change to American life such as the colored alerts or the Patriot Act or random airport searches constitutes defeat just as the purpose of war which is a selfish purpose I should emphasize determines when to go to war it also determines the principle that guides how to wage war. Now the fundamental ethical principle of waging war is egoism. Every action must be in the service of one's selfish purpose. One must do anything and everything necessary to protect the individual rights of Americans. In practice this means first identify the nature of the threat then identify and do whatever is necessary to destroy the threat with minimal loss of American life and liberty and when I say whatever I mean whatever is necessary if once the facts are rationally evaluated it is found that directly bombing civilian populations will save American lives then it is morally mandatory to do so. If nuclear or chemical weapons are the most efficient way of achieving our purpose then they are absolutely appropriate. If surprising enemy soldiers and they sleep and massacring them is necessary to achieve our goal then that is what must be done. If flattening Fallujah is the best way to end the insurgency then Fallujah must be flattened. There is no such thing as the rules of war only the imperative of absolute victory. The goal of defeating the enemy with minimal loss of American life and liberty emphatically includes the lives of the soldiers our soldiers. Rational soldiers are motivated by their own values by their own desire to live to live free free of the threat of violence against them and their loved ones. The fact that a soldier chooses a risky profession does not make him any less entitled to every protection that our government can afford. To send soldiers into battle as we have done in Iraq with rules of engagement that place the lives of Iraqis above their own is tantamount to murder and treason. Ethics does not provide a guide to military strategy or tactics. These are areas left to the specialists but ethics does name principles that ought to govern the strict strategy and the tactics one's purpose means and the conduct of the war. The Marq code inherent in just war theory defines rules that undercut inhibit subvert any hope of success in war because it demands surrending one's values for the sake of the enemy. By contrast for objectivism the purpose of morality is to guide man's actions to help him support himself and attain the values that his life acquires. Success in war and national self-defense being obvious values in this context. Objectivism's morality in war and in life identifies more principles that are the causally necessary means of achieving our selfish ends of achieving success security peace. Now let's now examine how the purpose of war the preservation of American individual rights applies to significant decisions one must make in any war. For example since I have advocated the protection of individual rights what about the rights of enemy civilians isn't killing them unjust doesn't it amount to murdering innocent victims? No the citizens of enemy regimes those regimes that initiate or threaten to initiate force against Americans have no rights. When a government wages war to quote Ein Rand it does so in the name of all of its citizens whether they are all guilty or innocent is here irrelevant the government is their agent and their spokesman unquote. Anyone involved by choice or not in the initiation of force against an innocent nation is thereby outside the principle of individual rights. Just as an individual criminal forfeit his rights so do the leaders soldiers and civilians of criminal nations. For the most part a country's citizens are not merely innocent bystanders to the crimes of their regimes. They are responsible for the actions of their governments unless they have taken active steps to object, resist, change or go underground. If you object to the way Bush is conducting the war but you say nothing you don't object to statements of support for him or write letters to the editor or give speeches you are morally responsible with him for his actions and their consequences. Indeed even if you do object you have no option but to suffer the consequences of his actions. If some future US president initiated force against another country that country acting in self-defense would have every right to kill you and me even if we objected to the president's actions this is why understanding and being involved in what is going on in politics is a selfish obligation. Now this is also true of a dictatorship if one does not fight the domestic oppression resisted in hiding or in public or escape it one cannot claim innocence one is implicitly supporting the regime. If a man chooses to go about his daily life as if all is fine while people are being slaughtered all around him and while his rights are being violated then he shares in the responsibility for the bloodshed and for his own imprisonment. If his country attacks another he has no right to object when he is punished for his government's actions. Now most citizens of enemy regimes indeed far from being innocent. Any moral imperative to span non-combatance is unjust. In war the wife of the drafted soldier is as morally legitimate a target as the soldier himself. What then about the truly innocent the freedom fighters the descendants which are always a small minority in any country insofar as they can be isolated without military cost they should not be killed it is unjust anti-selfish to senselessly kill the innocent and it is of value to have more rational pro-american people in the world but insofar as they cannot be isolated they are threats since sparing their lives means sacrificing ours and we should kill them without moral hesitation. Now such was the case with the French resistance during World War II. Any true freedom fighter understands the nature of our situation supports our cause hopes for the best and blames his government and fellow citizens for the danger he has placed in. All casualties in war are the sole responsibility of those who made the war necessary including the aggressive civilian base of support not the responsibility of those acting in self-defense. Now note how Sherman's success in destroying this base of support in the south shortened the civil war dramatically. The question of whom to target is a question of strictly military principle all that a morality has to say about whether in any particular conflict one should strike primarily at the government's leadership or whether civilians should be targeted or whether both should be targeted is do whatever will hasten complete victory while minimizing American casualties. Now given that civilians of enemy regimes have no rights and therefore in my view can be killed is there more prohibition on things like rape and pillage for a civilized army. Yes but not because of the rights of the civilians but because of our own self-interest. First such behavior represents a breakdown in order and discipline that are crucial for proper military. Second it is a betrayal of the values that rights and their soldiers exist to protect. It is a betrayal of rational self-interest rationally selfish soldiers would not desire mindless destruction and physical pleasure attained by force nor would they randomly kill civilians for no reason. Just as torturing an animal for no reason is completely immoral despite the fact that the animal has no rights. Harming a human being for no reason even one with no rights is wrong. No rational person relishes the act of killing. Soldiers do it willingly because it is in defense of their values. One would not want a nihilistic army that massacred, raped, pillaged for its own sake. Everything an army does everything a soldier does should be for the purpose of winning and only for winning the war. Now what about the treatment of POWs? Again it depends on what is necessary to achieve our purpose. POWs should be treated well insofar as it is in our interest not because they have any rights. The reason to treat prisoner's well is to encourage enemy soldiers to surrender rather than to fight to the death. The moral standard is one's own soldiers' well-being. If more enemy troops surrender fewer of one's own troops will die. However, treating prisoner's well does not make sense if for example they are hampering one's efforts to win or if they possess vital information they could save one's own troops' lives. If humiliation or torture is necessary and effective in extracting information that would save lives then prisoners should be humiliated and tortured without any reservation. Of course if a POW was truly innocent a true opponent of his regime who was forced to fight for it he would gladly provide the information asked of him and no torture would be necessary. In the case of Abu Ghraib if what happened was the sadistic actions of a few soldiers the disregarded orders for no reason other than their sick pleasure then we should condemn their actions and prosecute them. If however these actions were part of a well-thought-out plan to extract information from the prisoners information that would save American lives and that they were unwilling to provide otherwise then the actions of the soldiers should be supported. Now if you'd like to hear what I think is an excellent story about POW treatment and General Sherman then ask me in the Q&A. Now for a subject very relevant to today's situation what about how we treat and occupy and and occupied people. Now if it is possible to separate out those individuals who are truly innocent and who seek freedom and oppose the initiation of force we should do so and to the extent possible respect their individual rights. However until all hostilities are over everyone else who is a member of the occupied people must be treated as if they were responsible for the violence being initiated. They should be dealt with firmly. Their comfort the availability of electricity water food must not be a priority for the occupying army as I have said morality does not have a position on questions and military tactics within the framework of a justified war. I do however so I'll be glad to share those with you in the Q&A if you have questions about that. Let me just make one comment and this is not philosophy. In my opinion victory over an insurgency in an occupied country comes only if those we occupy understand that their lives are completely at our mercy and that their only hope to returning to a semi-normal life is the end of violence. Insurgent or guerrilla forces cannot survive if they do not get the support of the local population. If the population is made to suffer for the violence committed by the insurgents they will help stop them. If Sherman could burn Atlanta and destroy the economy of Georgia and the Carolinas to win the civil war surely we should have burnt down Fallujah and ravaged the countryside long ago. Unless the Iraqi people feel the pain of defeat the pain of humiliation the pain of deprivation they will not be pacified. Our reluctance to inflict real pain on the Iraqis only bolsters their confidence and encourages recruitment to the cause of the insurgency. Of course if we had fought the war properly from the start we would have erased any thought of insurgency of resistance from the outset there would be no insurgency today. Even worse our actions or indeed lack of them in Iraq is leading many Iraqis and other Muslims into the hands of totalitarian Islam into the hands of our worst enemies into the hands of bin Laden. I believe that because of the way this war has been fought because of just war theory we are less safe today having gone to war with Iraq than we were before this war. Now the final issue I would like to address is the morality of going to war to spread freedom and democracy around the world. Now if many foreign policy thinkers say that if it is America's enlightened self-interest to overthrow dictatorships around the world in order to bring citizens of these countries freedom or democracy this is of course now the centerpiece of President Bush's foreign policy which he terms a forward strategy of freedom. Now the current goal of this policy is to establish an Iraq that will be an inspirational beacon of freedom for the rest of the Middle East such a policy he and others claim will protect America in the long run. Now of course truly free nations do not initiate aggression against other nations but so what? Note that there are dozens of statist nations that do not threaten America either because they fear us or have no ideological interest in fighting us. Given the purpose of war our only moral concern with respect to threatening countries is how can they be made non-threatening as quickly as possible. Going to war for the purpose of another nation's freedom is never morally acceptable. Once a country is defeated the only consideration of whether to help it establish a free government or hand the reins over to a friendly strong man is America's self-interest. What is the cheapest most effective way to ensure American long-term security? Given the massive amount of time money and American lives it would cost to make them Middle East even semi-free if it is even possible and assuming that our leaders had any idea what freedom is the administration's policy in Iraq is a moral travesty entirely motivated by altruism. Observe that in Bush's policy the liberation of Iraq is not seen as part of defeating that country but as replacing the necessity to defeat it and the magical inspiration that it is supposed to provide to Iran Syria Saudi Arabia is supposed to replace the necessity of militarily confronting these regimes somehow they'll become free and democratic and love us. So to summarize we are losing the war on Islamic totalitarianism not because of our physical weakness and their strength but because of our leadership political and militarily in spite of much of its rhetoric this leadership is crippled by the philosophy of altruism the implicit philosophy that allowed Sherman Patton Truman MacArthur and Churchill to do what was necessary to win could not be merely implicit stand up to the challenge of an explicit altruism whether in its religious or secular form total victory requires an ethic of self-interest since that ethic has mostly vanished from this world total victory now demands an ethical revolution and with a proper intellectual fight on the issue of war of this war one wage directly on moral grounds we can bring about that revolution all the more quickly the moral revolution depends on persuading people that the morality of rational egoism in fact as demonstrated by the facts of reality is the code of life and happiness and that self-sacrifice is the code of death and misery and today's war is an excellent subject on which to make this case since its consequence is literally American death the current altruistic policies are not popular the conservatives are suffering a political price for the altruistic convictions and their consequences few Americans really care about the Iraqi people and few are satisfied with seeing Americans die so that hostile Iraqis may live but they cannot morally explain why the policies are wrong and they do not grasp any true alternative this is an extraordinary opportunity we can fight against the current war by exposing the code that underlies it and by confidently advocating for egoism that's the war provides us with an opportunity an opportunity that our future and that our children's future depends on and an opportunity to make real the life and death consequences of morality and thus speed up the moral revolution what such a revolution would bring us in terms of this and future wars is a commander in chief who understands that his only moral responsibility is to defend the lives of Americans a commander in chief who values the lives of his troops every one of them more than the lives of the Afghan tribesmen or Iraqi civilians a commander in chief who has the courage to identify the enemy we face and do whatever is necessary to destroy it a commander in chief who is dedicated to the morality of egoism with such a president the war we are in today could be one and one fast let us act to make this revolution come quickly thank you let me let me just make a comment before we start i know that there are a lot of you who attempted to ask us who you should vote for see everybody's disappeared from the line because that was the question everybody wanted asked so let me let me just say that the iron man institute is a 501c 3 organization it's a non-for-profit and we cannot advocate for a candidate we could lose our tax exam status so i cannot tell you although i would love to so you know i think you've heard uh my uh you know the criticism of bushworth with regard to the war and i think you know what my criticism with regard to the war would be of uh of carry but you know beyond that unfortunately i cannot i cannot say so questions will have to not be regarding the elections and we'll take any other questions other than election related questions well dr brook i was going to ask a slightly different question if just war is universally accepted how do we make a decision on the upcoming election but since you've prohibited that question um in any form it sounds like well like i can say this i can say that on the basis of just war theory you know you can't because they're all advocates for it you know the left and the right in that sense there's no difference i'll say the you know i'll i'll try to say this i think the more dangerous side is the more consistent one the one that takes it more seriously the one that advocates it on principle who that is i can't say uh dr brook you said that uh going to war for the sake of another country is uh never adjust action um aren't we in some part going to this war on terrorism for the sake of israel and our support of it i realize you're probably a bit biased what what did you say i'm biased um no absolutely not from what i uh you know from what i could tell september 11th happened in new york not in israel being laudan uh is not that interested in israel never has been if you if you follow his statements through the 80s and 90s uh his enemy the enemy is the united states the enemy is western civilization it's not even just the united states it's the it's everything that we stand for it's everything that we represent it's reason it's the separation of church and state it's uh it's it's the it's the freedom that we have it's individual rights that is his enemy so so first part of my my answer is no we're not going to this war because of israel because we want israel was an attack we were attacked the second part of my answer is yes we are going to this war because of israel but that's good because the reason israel is being attacked by its own bin ladens is because it is free because it has in it respects individual rights at least to a large extent because it is western because of all the reasons we're being attacked so this war is not about this was a war of ideas this was a war of ideas between ideas represented by the west and it's better you know the better elements of the west reason individual rights capitalism and ideas represented by totalitarian islam the love of death faith blind faith uh and and a totalitarian regime that's what the war is about and if israel happens to be on our side that is wonderful we have one true ally in this world you would think that the french and the germans and all the other people with you know who are who are free relatively free and have individual rights would be on our side too and it's today detriment that they're not thank you yeah i want to add something to that that i think the premise behind that kind of question is that if you're if you act in your own self-interest you can't if it put it in the context of foreign policy you can't have allies put it in the context of morality that if you act for your self-interest you can't have friends you can't have lovers you can't have any dealings with other people and that's completely false you can but the standard has to be is it actually in your interest so having israel as an ally and if we actually were defending it it would be a good thing because it is in america's interest and the same applies in in morality if you act to defend your friends that is in your self-interest so it doesn't mean cutting off yourself from other nations or from other people that's not what self-interest means dr. brook thanks for the speech i thought it was a great critique of just war theory definitely gave me a lot to think about i've uh two questions hopefully you can kind of clarify you you mentioned in the speech uh civilians having no rights under like an enemy regime and how you would uh contrast that with the theory that uh rights are inalienable and secondly talking about total victory if that is a proper end you know we can agree on are there different means in terms of flattening fallujah versus other tactics that might accomplish that goal uh yeah but my mother first one was just one word uh the the first question was just with regards to civilians having no rights versus inalienable rights you have inalienable rights until you violate somebody else's rights and then you lose your rights that is what that's what is meant otherwise uh it would be meaningless there's a criminal having inalienable rights when we put them when you put him in prison when we use force against them to put him behind bars when we execute a murderer are we violating his rights i mean that would be absurd of course we're not as soon as you violate somebody else's rights you lose yours you take yourself out of the realm of individual rights and then it's just a question of what is the appropriate punishment for you given that you might have stolen or you might be a mass murderer but as soon as you violate rights you lose whatever rights you have you take yourself outside of that realm that's okay that's that's and i'm sure and i'm sure dr goddard that's a good answer but maybe just to uh i mean just personally the problem i kind of have with it is i know you mentioned you know they they should be treated as if they committed the crimes and you know i i need some time to internalize all this as well but at the same time my initial reaction is that they did not commit the crimes just you know i'm thinking a six-year-old kid you know what what did they do um look a six-year-old kid suffers for the decisions and actions of his parents every day and he certainly suffers the decisions and actions that that his government engages in the point is this whether we whether you like it or not whether you agree with your government or not the government represents you that's what it means to have a government it is your representative with regard to other countries not with regard to other people but with regard to other countries when your government violates the rights of other people it does so in your name again whether you agree with it or not it does so and and and you have now the everybody in that country has now taken themselves outside of the realm of rights from the perspective of the country trying to defend itself and thank you and then secondly just well in terms of do you want to add something oh okay well just second real quick in terms of total victory just uh different yeah i mean surely that like flattening i know flattening felucia was was an example given how much debate is there and this seems like there's a gray area how do you objectively define what's the best way there's no there's no gray area that you objectively defined it through through your knowledge of military tactics and i'm not saying flattening felucia is the only way to do it and i don't know what bombs to use and how to do you know the technical issues that's what the military is for i can tell you this though the morality tells you one thing clearly unequivocally that compromising and appeasing evil people only leads to more evil so that the one thing you cannot do is negotiate with them the one thing you cannot do is send marines in for three days watch them die in the streets of felucia and then negotiate a deal and leave that is completely unacceptable it's immoral and as i said in my talk it's tantamount to treason it is wrong these kids are dying for what for nothing they're dying for nothing so that our government can say we didn't kill any civilians that's why they're dying and and that just closed my blood um and so whether you want to use a a tactical nuke and wipe off felucia or you want to go in their house by house and take it out or you want to you know or you know where the lead is on you bomb their house and you eradicate them all is off that's all optional that's all an issue of military tactics i happen to believe believe that given felucia given you know the way the people of felucia behaved and we saw that when they massacred those contractors you know given the number of insurgents in there that the best most cost effective way of of dealing with felucia and the one that would minimize the loss of american casualties is to flatten the place how many bombs it would take is you know is a different question thank you there's really no question that you can't fight a war unless you want to win it but there's another my underlying problem here is the is the anti-americanism in general our tendency of telling other countries that they should be like us capitalist free enterprise and so forth and we seem to be losing the war of of of the value of the righteousness of that and when we go into a country like iraq where we try to put free enterprise in russia the culture there is so entrenched just like our cultures which is unique to the world our culture of individualism really in a larger sense and yet we try to go to other countries who are culturally set in other ways they really don't even know how to change so two of the problems is that is that how do we extricate ourselves from this situation iraq is one thing and then the other real part of it is when you've got most of the world intellectually against us we've lost a battle of how great our and unique our american experience is and that's the fundamental problem we got to address than whether or not we're in a war or not i mean the way to win the bet i mean i agree with you and the reason we're losing the battle is not because we're advocating for capitalism and freedom and all these good things the reason we're losing the battle is because we're not advocating for those things we're not standing our far right we're not being aggressive enough let me let me be clear you know in the middle east every time we back down every time we appease the insurgents and falooja and naja for any of these places they look at us and say look at those pathetic americans look how weak more cowards they are we don't want to emulate those guys who would want to be like the americans they can't even take or take a city so our weakness is what leads these countries to reject it and i don't think it has to do with culture with it has to do with culture but i don't think it has to do with only in america because there are lots of wonderful examples to the country look at japan look at japan after world war two not true they're not individualistic to the extent we are but we annihilate you know we we sent a very clear message to japanese what would happen to them if they resisted we occupied the place we forced the constitution rammed it down their throats and they were thriving free country today they accepted that and the reason they accepted it is because of the way we defeated them well we had a great period of time to do that by a very strong willed administrator there we don't have that time today when when our allies former allies in europe and socialistically minded that the world with islam being 20 of the entire world we've got bigger problems than what we had in japan when we were the dominant force i agree with that that's why apathetic response to iraq is even is even worse that is what we should have done in my view is not bothered with iraqi freedom and democracy and capitalism blown the place to smithereens and gone to tehran where the real enemy lies the philosophy you said that our government has protecting civilians of other countries i wondering in iraq how how far that really goes down i asked a few troops and my travels like was that their policy were they told by their commanders to put the lives of iraqis above their own and they said no we were just told to kill they they sounded like they didn't ever even heard of that like i wonder if the commanders on the field maybe in practicality they know that that's a screwy philosophy that they just they go ahead and they said no just kill you know well i mean i mean every story i've read is the exact opposite that the orders the troops are under are explicitly that they can't take civilian life unless absolutely necessary and even then there's a question and there's stories where they actually during combat have to call back to base get the approval of a lawyer to decide if they can take out some school from which they're being fired at etc etc so i mean everything that i know about what's going on is explicitly under those kinds of that's why when i was faced i was over there i was fighting in iraq and i was like well i'm just curious i like to hear it from the horse's mouth like what are they well i mean first of all they i don't think they like to like to say that but but let me give you some examples i mean some concrete you remember the helicopters that were shot down actually during the movements of the troops towards baghdad well it turns out that the helicopters were shot down you know the strategy with helicopters is they come up behind a hill and they fire a missile from far away and then they drop because they're relatively easy to shoot down they were a big object in in the sky low down well they couldn't do that in iraq they had to get close enough to the target to be able to identify that there were no civilians around so they had to leave the hill and wander close to the enemy and they shot them down so here americans died because of that um you remember the bridge there was this bridge and i can't remember the little town that the americans had a hard time and a lot of marines i think died trying to secure this bridge well why didn't they flat you know i'd like flattened but why didn't they use bombs to flatten the region eliminate all the houses in the area where the snipers were shooting at them and let the troops come in why because they didn't want to hurt civilians and then there were all the stories about not shooting at mosques right and there were being i remember a story on bagdad where the terror these insurgents were in the mosque they were shooting at the americans the americans were being hit some of them were being killed they couldn't shoot back now i'm not saying that every american soldier follows those orders thank god some of them have more self-respect than that but i but a majority of them do there's no question about that and uh there was this um i think i can't remember the exact story but the day operation iraqi freedom was launched uh one of the admirals and one of the ships when the fighters will even gave them this inspiring speech about you know they're doing this for the iraqis and they have to save the iraqis and it's true the soldiers looked at him like he was a little nuts because the actual soldiers on the ground don't really believe that therefore you know when when they interviewed them in quates and asked them why why do you believe in this well they said because i don't want my kids to have to deal with saddam hussein 20 years from now because i want to live in peace because it was there their values their family the things they loved that they were fighting for but they're under strict orders and you know the story about the marines uh growing moustaches in in i mean that's a true story it's not made up i mean the marines what we're telling the story they grew moustaches to to be um what's the word um that's a bit friendly to the local population yeah but there's still at least there's still like some uh something in their hearts that they know that that's not right the individual american soldier there's no question is you know to a large extent knows but their officers have studied on west point and they study at west point the stuff that i that i read to you i mean waltza is the only the preeminent expert in the world today on the morality of war and he's taught everywhere and he's the guy everybody cites that's it i know you said that we should have wiped out iraq and not worried about rebuilding it do you still think that iran was should have been the first target yeah i think without question i think you want you know iwan is the as i said is the spiritual roots the source of islamic terrorism they invented islamic terrorism in 1979 and since they're the largest supporter according to every source you can find of terrorism in the world uh the it turns out that the september 11th uh terrorists went through you on and the way to the to the to uh to the you know to their suicide mission um you know it's a it's a it's a the opposite it's the only country in the world the only country in the world ruled by militant an militant islamic regime that every morning announces that it seeks to destroy the united states and we do nothing so yes what did you know saramos saying was a petty you know thug he was not he carried no weight in terms of the ideology the finances the training of the militant islamic terrorists to threaten us right thanks i just want to add one point just to make sure i i think i know what you're saying to say that it's the first target means it's the primary the fundamental target you're not saying they had to attack it oh no perfectly well could have gone into iraq and then into iran yeah a lot of people keep telling me you know we went to iraq in order to go to iran it gave us better bases and so on all the power to us that's great then i'm all for going to iraq in order to go to iran but you know again that's an issue of military strategy and tactics uh which which you know philosophy and moalea doesn't have anything to say how you get to iran which route you take which bombs you use and all the rest of it is not for me to say um all i'm saying is that we're not bogged down in iraq and we ain't going to to iran and iran is thriving iran is becoming bold and look at they've never said the kind of statements they've been saying the last few weeks we're going to preemptively strike u.s forces in iraq they've gots to say that i mean how outrageous is that the mightiest military in the history of man the iranians are going to take on they don't they have no problem saying it why because they know what cowards and we'll do nothing would you entertain the possibility that it is irrational and unselfish that we went to war with iraq in the first place let alone to go to war with the rest of the middle east which it sounds like you support it sounds like you support going to war with iraq iran saudi arabia syria basically the middle east except for israel when you support when do you say that it's possible that that would be an unselfish blunder of enormous proportion i think you know my answer absolutely not um no america cannot win this war by building walls around this country homeland homeland defense is an admission of failure the only way to win any war is to find the enemy and destroy it that's it we know who the enemy is at least we know who the enemy is um and we need to go out and destroy him now i'm not saying we need to go to war with entire middle east indeed i only think we need to go to war with one country that is you on i think the rest will fold once once we take them out because they are the intel they are the light that guides militant Islam but if we need to go to war with the second country a third country we need to do whatever is necessary to defend the individual rights of americans whatever is necessary and you know we went to war with nazi germany we went to war with japanese imperialism these were enormous military powers these are these are thugs living in caves that are your tool does anyone have nothing nothing that could defend themselves against the united states this is who were worried about going to war with right however war costs life and money and the life and money that a world war three would cost may not be worthwhile world war three with whom whom who is out there that that that would dare fight a us military committed to victory there is not one country on the face of the earth you know maybe maybe the russians and the chinese but not one country in the face of the earth particularly no muslim country in the face of the earth who could challenge the united states let me be clear when when when we went into japan a much more you know sophisticated military much more powerful military than any military than any muslim country has in the world today after hiroshima nagasaki we put 150 000 troops into japan you know how many of them were killed by insurgents zero not one so it's not that you have to kill everybody it's not that you have to destroy every country out of there but you need to make an example an example of what it means to attack america and once you make an example the rest fold and yes you're right it costs lives it costs money but the but 3000 people lost their lives in september 11th you know i'm not even going to talk about the money you know the cost of the us economy 3000 people lost their lives in september 11th if a nuclear weapon is detonated in new york hundreds of thousands of people who lose their lives the only way to prevent a nuclear weapon from detonating new york is to go out and find the people who might detonate it and kill them that's it one more question okay would you say that president bush is the least altruistic is is not the most is not very altruistic that he uh did support self-defense that he made it primary not not secondary that he made self-defense primary and that he made freedom and democracy for iraq secondary that he abandoned the united nations because he believes in u.s sovereignty uh and not to and that he did not establish a coalition for moral equivalence but for diplomacy because it is diplomatic to go to war with other countries support as opposed to just going to war alone when you say that that's a possibility and also well let me let me say no no i'm i'm continuing to describe the philosophy of bush when you also say that bush has indeed advocated american values you say no one is advocating american values but that he does advocate freedom that he does make the distinction between good and evil and that america is good and that this the arab part of the world is in a dark ages it is anti-civilization it is evil so relatively speaking it would seem that president bush is very close to your philosophy and indeed no no no closest relatively speaking he's a politician and this is a very irrational world and that indeed he is hated for this reason okay so oh no no no that's enough enough i get i get the question okay we got the question do you want to i mean the whole talk was exactly an argument against that that he's completely altruistic from start to finish so yeah i mean reiterate the whole talk i mean i'd have to give you the whole talk everything we've done since september 11 every speech george bush has given since september 11 has undercut america's right to self defense has undercut i mean his his advocacy of self-defense every sentence that he starts with self-defense ends with the freedom to iraqis and freedom for other people and the sacrifice of american troops you know everything i said tonight illustrates the fact that he is a complete altruist now i'm not gonna rank altruists here i'm just gonna tell you that he is a complete altruist that he is harmful to this country uh and and that and that he is that in the war in iraq we are sacrificing we are placing our soldiers we are treating them as sacrificial lambs and the altar of of iraqi whatever because democracy they ain't getting so you know whatever whatever you want to to perceive as the altar that they that that these kids are being sacrificed so i'm not gonna repeat the speech but i think i think i made that case okay thank you thanks i'm gonna i'm gonna want to make one wider point and that every on every altruist ideology uses um self-interest as a smoke screen so they say in a sense we're for self self-interest in enlightened self-interest so you have christianity that advocates in this world complete annihilation of the self you give up all your pleasures you give up your wealth etc but somehow in some mystical other world you'll go to heaven or islam makes the same to the suicide bombers it's complete self-sacrifice but somehow you'll be with virgins in some other dimension or communism complete sacrifice of the individual but in 50 years the dictatorship will wither away and will all be happy or environmentalism it says give up all industry give up technology and then somehow 50 years from now we'll all be frolicking in nature and so they always throw you that bone but they don't mean it and i think it stands in a similar way in george bush's mind he doesn't believe in self-defense or self-interest yeah let let me just add in that sense that i would much rather president who came out and said we are going to you walk for the sake of self-sacrifice i don't believe in self-interest i'm i'm an altruist and i believe in self-sacrifice and this is what we're doing rather than a president who comes up and says i believe in self-defense and therefore we're going to self-sacrifice because what he does then is he gives a bad name to self-defense he gives a he empties that concept of all content it is meaningless now to talk in the world and think about talking about in the world about real self-defense because they are so oh george bush that self-defense and now we have no we have we've taken the concept away from us and we can't use that concept anymore without you know without fighting for it so in that sense it's much more dangerous yes i think your argument is so incredibly ridiculous that i don't even know where to start first of all you're supposed to represent the iron ran institute iron ran was totally totally opposed to initiation of force her whole philosophy was based on that iraq never attacked us we attack them we are the aggressor and the civilians there a fortiori did not attack us and we should not be attacking them we are the aggressor here we are totally violating the randian philosophy that's point number one point point number two let me just point number one i'll let you make point number two because i can't i can't attain two points at once it is bizarre to me that people use iron ran to to to defend positions that are completely opposite of what you said i can give you the quotes and the exact references of of her positions but that's not the point with regard to iraq a regime that clearly supports terrorism that is clearly aggressive against its neighbors and against the united states who initiates the attempt to assassinate the president of the united states that harbors terrorists of all stripes within it um who uh who says that uh as soon as we get any kind of weapons we will attack the united states whether they have or not is an initiator of force period you do not have to shoot me if you point a gun at me you've initiated force if you tell me you're going to kill me and you and you're not just some nut who doesn't know what they're talking about but you have the resources to do it you are initiating force that's what initiation of force means and iraq has initiated force now i agree with you we shouldn't have gone to iraq in that sense because iraq was a trivial initiator of force relative to the bigger people but we had every right to go to iraq and the citizens in iraq forfeited any individual rights by their very presence in that country with that brutal dictator and that is a hundred percent consistent with what iran said now she could say it more eloquently and better than i can know it isn't uh when a country initiates force that that's that's when they declare a war it's not just one one a dictator makes one or two remarks that's ridiculous that's ridiculous i don't need to declare war and you all i need to say is i'm going to kill it but i'll call it uh dr god i wanted to say so one narrow point one wider point the narrow point is that's precisely why they use the tack one of the reasons they use the tactic of terrorism because they can hide behind what we haven't declared a war it's just these terrorists who are attacking you they have no relation to us so if you attack us you're initiating force you're not acting in self-defense that's completely bogus and then to go back to the point about what iran has to say i think the principle is that the threat of force it is is itself the initiation of force take it outside the context of war if i walk into a bank hand the teller a note saying look i'm going to blow up this building unless you give me all the money and they give me the money and i walk out i haven't even showed them that i have a bomb you can't say well i haven't initiated force i didn't blow anyone up i didn't even show that i had a bomb that the threat of the use of force is the initiation of force and it demands retaliation by the government but you can that individual case is a very weak analogy to to countries declaring war on each other okay but i'll move on to my second point your your next point was well they don't really have to attack us as long as we think they're threatened to attack us we should attack them well if that's the case that will apply to any other nation and any nation who thinks that somebody might attack them should attack them first which will lead to chaos all over the world permanently how can you possibly say that because we think they're gonna attack us we should attack them that argument is just ridiculous the world would be chaos what would we do um the world's not in chaos right now because we're not following your idea no it's it's it's ridiculous the the point is that if if a if a state threatens a free country a free country i'm not i'm not saying that a dictatorship has the right to attack a country that threatens it a dictatorship doesn't have a right to exist a state that is held under dictatorship any kind of dictatorship has no sovereignty has no right to exist governments states gain their right of existence from the individual rights of their citizens a state that does not recognize the individual rights of its citizens has no rights period so the principle applies to every free country any free country any free country anywhere in the world that that thinks objectively rationally that there is a threat that another country is threatening it has a legitimate right to defend itself by initiate you know by starting a war against that country but it's not initiation of force the initiation of force came from the threat so if you who have lots of oil lots of oil are building nuclear power plants and you're telling the world that you're doing in order to produce electricity give me a break and at the same time your leadership is saying as soon as we get a bomb oh but we're not developing one but as soon as we get a bomb well bomb jewsdom and new york that's initiating force you think that any country that considers itself free should attack any country that they think might be a threat to them and that's what you're saying that they objectively and rationally know is a threat to them absolutely yes absolutely okay well those terms are very hard to define for countries but well i mean if if if uh certain countries in europe would attack germany when there was good objective rational reason to think they were threat world war two would have been avoided my question is a question of philosophy rather than contemporary politics um excuse me martin boobers said and i think you know a little hebrew if i am not for myself who will be but if i am only for myself what am i and it seems to me that iron rand's philosophy has forgotten about about the latter part and my question to you is what are you i'm gonna i'm gonna let dr. god to answer the philosophical question but let me answer the translation question because the translation you translated it wrong okay and it's not booba who said that but it's martin booba no that's it's in it's in the talmud and in the mishnah so it's not well it was with that it was written hundreds of hundreds of years before martin booba and it's a pretty good statement it says that if not i if i don't take of myself yeah it's helo thank you it's absolutely helo helil said apologize yeah and uh i'm not me mea mea mea mea mea mea yeah if i am not what's the rest of it what's about just for fun i can't i and what's the rest to remind me and it seems to me that this part of the equation has been forgotten in your philosophy and i would like you to correct me if i'm wrong i i think that in the way that you understanding what what he's saying that's true because we think that's wrong because we think martin booba and helil and the talmud are wrong now as to how we view what you know i'll let i'll let dr dr god to just elaborate on how we view what egoism means what being for myself really means and why it doesn't exclude others in the way that i think you understand that well as far as i understand what's going on i don't speak hebrew so um i think the question is that if you're only for yourself that puts you in conflict with other people now uh in other words you are diminished yeah you're diminished you're diminished cut yourself off from others you put yourself in conflict with that that comes from it comes i think that view comes from altruist distortion of what self-interest means so precisely because altruism is such an inhuman morality it tells you to give up everything that is valuable to you they have to paint the alternative as even more barbaric so that you won't choose the alternative and so the way they present selfishness or self-interest is that it means cutting other people's throat it means making everyone else a victim it means walking all over them and then the person will think when he's facing a choice of what morality except i don't want to live that kind of life so i guess i have to be altruistic let me say one let him finish one of iran's contributions to morality is precisely to show that genuine self-interest what she calls rational self-interest does not put you in conflict with other people that what is in your self-interest is to use your mind to produce values to live in a free society with other people trading with them to the benefit of everyone so rational individuals do not come into conflict with one another you can see it with all the trade and all the kinds of cooperation that exists in america and others at least mostly free nation so it's a complete misconception of what selfishness actually means i think that's right it seems to me that it brings a balance into the two extreme positions and it's a healthier balance but that's like a balanced it is a it's a balance between saying my life is mine and my life isn't mine it's it's a balance between my life is the standard of all my lack actions and death is the standard self-sacrifice is the standard of all my actions that is a bizarre balance that is a bizarre balance between a balance between nutrition and poison so i'm going to take just a little bit of poison just a little bit of altruism just a little bit of self-sacrifice why when you can live life to the fullest you know satisfying what is in your rational self-interest have friends have loved ones trade with people produce and and be a happy fulfilled human being without self-sacrificing to anybody but it precludes the the uh it precludes self-sacrifice it's a balance of one life with another no because as i said in the talk and as i think is evident in if you read i'm ran she excludes for self-interested reason sacrificing other people to you or violating other people's rights the whole idea of rational self-interest is that rational self-interested people don't come into conflict they don't violate each other's rights they respect each other's rights because it's in their best interest to respect each other's rights and it actually creates a much much pleasant and more prosperous more happy place to live then does a place full of self-sacrificial you know altruists okay i want to want to say something more about that on the idea of a balance in morality and that i think comes also from altruism it's a part of the way altruism corrupts the moral landscape if you're for your own self-interest for your own happiness for your own values why would you want to balance it with something else with its antithesis why would you want well a little less of my happiness a little fewer values but more altruism on the other hand can't be practiced consistently if you were to give up all your money all your wealth all your happiness all your resources you'd be dead in five minutes so it can't be practiced on principle but on the other hand you're told well if you act self in your own self-interest a hundred percent of the time you're consistently evil so what does an altruist do well he tries to find a balance i can't be a hundred percent altruistic but i dare not be a hundred percent selfish so it must be well i should balance in some way and then people come to think well that's the essence of life but it's not on an egoist code there's no reason to balance life with its opposite now let me just just to control this and give everybody a chance we're gonna try and do these questions but we're gonna cap nobody else go to the line this is it it's long enough okay i will be very short thank you i don't disagree with the many of the things you've said i only have a couple of observations about this country and what happened prior to this first of all there are graves in iraq where a hundred maybe three hundred thousand people disagreed with that government but they're in the grave they did fight in their own way so i would give them the benefit of the doubt the other thing is we are in a very interesting situation in this country it's election time and if you want to win the war that you talked about i don't think there's any question about anybody who went to west point and anapolis know how to win a war the problem is taking people along we are faced right now with a potential election where you let's say you have a pacifist on one side and somebody who wants to win on the other side the country is pretty well pretty well divided so if you're going to win anything you have to moderate your tones and your objectives until you get elected i think uh well that's the that's the problem we have in this country look georgia is not moderating his tone in order to get elected he's been like this for four years well before the election was heated up but let me just add this if your goal is winning the war on terrorism there is no candidate for president today in the united states who can do it none just accept the fact that we're not going to win it's just a question of you know long term who's going to be who's going to lead who's going to do the least damage well and no politician in america today that i know of is committed to american victory in the war on terrorism it's none zero unfortunately our country is become moderate we don't have a mosher diane here let let me don't have a mosher diane that is true but let me let me add that i do not think the american people are necessarily moderate the american people would have followed a strong committed uh a rational self-interested leader after september 11th they would have listened to him and they would have i think we could have won this war and i think the american people would have would have gone ahead with winning the war if somebody would have articulated who the enemy is why we're fighting the war and what needed to be done in order to win it and george bush did not do that now i'm not saying there's any other politician who could but george bush did not well the time has passed for that and i agree with you but now we have to bring the people forward to the battle okay we need we need to keep going because it's a long line back there please try to make the question short uh people are deserting us in mass is it in our rational self-interest to take the resources of a defeated enemy to pay for their violence for example in iraqi to take their oil to pay for the war sure yes it's an easy easy one yes absolutely i think i think it's completely legitimate to use those resources to pay for some of the war but i also think that you have to stay away from a constant like the iraqi people's oil the iraqi people don't have any oil the people who draw the wells who own the land who uh who put up the refineries who put up the pipelines they're the ones who own the oil there's no such thing as collective ownership of the oil last time i looked i don't own any oil in texas xxon does and chevron does and i disagree with you i think we we do have a candidate that will take a stand and fight this war but unfortunately we're going to have to have a quarter of a million people nerve-gassed in this country before the people will stand behind the president and allow him to fight the war no president will be elected who is this no i'm interested in whoever wins the election no whoever wins no they won't fight the war even if even if tomorrow there was a nuke in new york the war would not be fought the way it's supposed to be fought we disagree unfortunately we'll find out yes unfortunately um you you've spoken about armies that we flattened you mentioned feluja and that's good if you know where the enemy is we're talking about a non-definable nation we're talking about an anthill the size of the planet you said we're fighting a a battle of minds we have a billion in the name in i understand the question so let me let me just answer it quickly because i'm trying to cut in time um of course we know who the enemy is we know exactly where they are we knew exactly the podman building osama bin laden was in and the convoys he participated in and the only reason we didn't bomb the hell out of that region in Kabul was because we fear of civilian casualties we know where the insurgents are they're in feluja we don't know which building flatten all of feluja uh we know where muqtah itzada was he was in the holy mosque of of ali one bomb the mosque of ali will become really holy um there is no we know where the enemy is and the enemy right now is sitting in tehran enjoying themselves watching american troops dying dying in iraq for no reason look there is we do not have to fight and i've made this point over and over again in in over and over talks and it doesn't seem to sink in we didn't have to fight every single japanese to beat the japanese two atomic bombs finished it we didn't have to fight every single germans to beat the germans patterns march to bol you know to to the check border ultimately to build in was enough to make them understand that it was futile uh you don't have to do that all you have to do is take out to make a statement make a statement that america will not tolerate attacks against its soul and it will destroy devastate annihilate the enemy if the enemy is the entire population of tehran then it's the entire population of tehran whatever it takes to win and all it takes is one real war one real war with us committed a hundred percent of victory and the entire islamic world would capitulate and not only that but i believe that ultimately that would also lead them towards freedom and and representational government again all that good stuff but they have to be defeated thoroughly unequivocally they have to be shown that their way of life that the ideology is corrupt it will lead them to death it will take them no way and that and that america will not tolerate any attacks on its soil and until that is done nothing will change americans will continue to die just like australians uh i guess australians didn't die but indonesians died today or yesterday the way spaniards died the way the french you know this is going to go on and on and on and get worse and worse and worse and went to we are willing to fight a war and win it i agree with you in principle but i'm concerned that war violence begins war violence it doesn't i just gave you the japanese example it doesn't every war lord we've covered one last comment every war lord in history had said what you said we must make an example of them not he said that about the jews but they were the bad guys there is a fundamental difference between the bad guys winning a war and the good guys winning the war fundamental difference that's not true the good guys are the people who respect individual rights and respect freedom the bad guys are the people who destroy individual rights and destroy freedom it's very clear-cut and very black and white um does the atheism of objectivist philosophy believe that there is no god or just has no belief of god i would say sorry the fundamental is that there is no evidence for the existence of god that it's so it's a technical term in philosophy is that it's an arbitrary claim it's a claim completely devoid of evidence and such a claim is dismissed out of hand so we don't believe in god we don't believe in santa claus we don't believe in gremlins etc there's no evidence for all that so it's out of bounds it's not even the realm of discussion when you're talking about knowledge but you can say then as a so that that's the fundamental there's no evidence and so you don't believe it you only believe things for which you have rational evidence to go by reason means to go by your senses to go by logic to go by concept to go by induction and deduction and there's no way to arrive at a belief in god if that's your frame if you're going by reason but you can say then further that god as conceived by the christians by islam etc is a contradiction in terms he's supposed to be a mind without body but there's no such thing as every consciousness that you know of is a mind in a body he's supposed to be omnipotent he's supposed to have no identity but to be is to be something so you can say in a derivative sense the concept of god is self contradictory it doesn't make any sense and so it's not even a notion in the way that say santa claus is so but the fundamentals there's no evidence to believe in god so we don't accept any claims about god can i ask one more question well i'm going to be leaving to the marines in a little bit and i'm wondering if i'm asked like taking money from to go to school is an impeachment of you know morality saying that you know i'm since i'm not specifically working toward that money you know it's like an unlimited amount of money that they offer people kind of like the financial aid now you get your school paid for a hundred percent but um i don't know if that means that the person who's getting is receiving you know is actually working for it since it's unlimited well i'm not sure i understand the question exactly but if you mean are you getting government money is that this is government money for people in the military school well leave aside the military for a second i think anyone who's getting government money so long as they oppose that this is an actually proper function of government to be supporting people handing out welfare checks et cetera they view it as look the government violates my rights all the time this is a little bit compensation for that but i oppose on principle that the government should have this power then it's perfectly fine to accept scholarships et cetera now if it's in the in the context of the military and this is something they do in order to attract volunteers et cetera then it's perfectly legitimate i think absolutely does on the same principle applies to people getting uh what is called like tax deductible things see you mean they're stealing less money they're stealing less to my money absolutely i mean anything that you can you can deduct from your taxes that the government takes less from you is completely right to do you mentioned in your talk that there's almost no opposition right now to adjust war and that all the public opinion and intellectuals they've completely abandoned the right to self-defense i'm just wondering if the political climate right now is so against acting self assertively the proper way is you to find it how in that political context do you expect a current politician to act and what is the proper way in which to evaluate that if if object one of the things of objectivism is to focus on reality to what extent do you have to take into account the political reality that exists well i mean the two parts of the question one is look our politicians partially set the context and i said this if george bush had come out after september 11 and said we've just been attacked the people who attacked us are fundamentalists you know militant islamists the enemy lies in afghanistan and in iran this is why they attacked us we need to eradicate them and they're going to be a lot of civilian casualties on the other side but that's justified for these reasons that american people would have gone for it the american people would have followed him because out of just the sense of life of the american people the emotional response that they had that was the emotional response they had after september 11th let's go get them the broader question you're absolutely right in a sense that politics is the last thing because you need to vote you need to convince lots of people to vote for you so you need to have a lot of people who agree with your ideas and for you know if i ran for president i get 300 people voting for me i mean i'd say all the right things i'd advocate the right policy but nobody would vote for me so of course what you need to do first is in my opinion if you're a good you know is a good person is abandon politics and start where the battle is really being waged and that is in our educational institutions you know change the the the terms of debate in our primary schools and our high schools and our universities challenge the the just worth theorists to teach ethics in in the universities you know and speak up speak up speak up and rally on campuses that's where the real battle is being held and you know you know if you can't do that directly then help nine men in steward do it because that's what we do that's we go our primary job is not to speak in front of this kind of audience but to speak primarily in front of audiences of students and professors and try to give them alternatives to the to the uh uh self-sacrificial garbage that they're studying in school that is the only way that long term we can save this country but again you know if a politician was there already they could have done more but they they can't get elected an objective of somebody who holds our ideas could not get elected today to office therefore it's not worth trying it's a waste of time and energy so let's let's go to the heart of the problem which is education well just a quick follow-up is there some there therefore some value in acting self-assertively even as weak as it has been since 9-11 I think it's been very weak given the political context at least we're moving some self-assertive nature in the political correct context that we're in and now it's being talked about that I ran perhaps as a next target or Syria where a couple years ago that was even not even on the map no in the sense that the way we're fighting the war in Iraq is so pathetic you know when before we went into Iraq I remember in front of this audience I said it's better than nothing it's you know we should be going to Iran but it's better to act aggressively and to show the world that we'll stand up for ourselves and do nothing well I'm attracting that statement because we have done such a pathetic job in Iraq that the message we have sent the world is that we are paper tigers we are wimps we do not stand up for ourselves and as a consequence we have created more enemies as a consequence of going to Iraq more committed passionate enemies who are convinced that they can beat us a bin Laden came out bin Laden's deputy came up with a tape today a videotape now why this guy's are live even you know right a videotape he's making videotapes and sending it to the world this is the world we're fighting and in the videotape he said that you know the the militant Islamist victory over the Americans and Afghanistan in Iraq is imminent and he's right he's right I mean what's the solution in Iraq now I mean if you don't take if you don't accept my solution what where's you are going to be in three years it's going to either be a Shiite theocracy therefore worse than Saddam Hussein or a Sunni theocracy worse than Saddam Hussein or it'll be in civil war now that's probably the best outcome of the three but you know and then and then if it's in civil war what's outcome of that probably more Iranian influence on Iraq and therefore so no it's not better to be you know self assertive if self assertion means complete capitulation get one follow-up question on a different subject man's rights my understanding off the top of my head of the nature of man's rights from iron range article entitled nature of man's rights was that man's rights are objective because they emanate from his nature as having a rational faculty being a conceptual being I was trying to understand how you can integrate that with the fact that certain individuals lose their political rights by the fact of being in a geographic area where a politician has made one or more misjudgments um let's take the first part the source of man's rights yeah the source of man's rights iron rand says is the fact that reason is man's means of survival that his mind is his tool to advance his self-interest and the fundamental the political requirement of the mind is freedom it has to be free to function has to be free to follow the evidence where it leads us to be free to act on its conclusions it has to be free to keep the products of what it produces by its knowledge so it has to have the right to life to liberty which includes freedom of thought freedom of speech the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to property they all come from man's nature but that's man's nature the only way he can survive but he still has to choose survival as his goal and if he doesn't choose survival as his goal he defaults on the existence of his rights if he doesn't recognize the principle of individual rights then he can't say if someone if he attacks someone if he initiates force he can't then say look you can't attack me I have rights no he's defaulted on the very idea of rights and now to extend it into a country the argument I think is you can't isolate individuals in a country it functions as a unit represented by its government and if its government initiates force against you your only recourse is to attack the government which means attacking the country which means you will have to kill civilians in the process your goal isn't necessarily to kill every civilian in there but neither can that be something that hampers your goal of completely disabling this country's apparatus for attacking you okay thank you I'd like to thank both of you for your your comments and and sharing your ideas I have a question and I'd like to present it to you and then sit down and listen to your answer when you do become president soon I hope and and you have convinced our democracy that that your ideas are right what do you think the rest of the world the UN and the rest of the world will react to it well I guess my my my initial response this is not meant to be disrespectful is who cares I really don't care how they particularly you win but but how the rest of the world responds to an American president should care about one thing and one thing only the protection of individual rights of Americans it's it period and if the rest of the world doesn't like that tough what are they gonna do I mean that's why it's you know we are the it's why it's good to be in the country that has has the mightiest military and it's no accident that we have the mightiest military it's because we're the freest country in the world so I think that ultimately you know I think the founding fathers somebody said you know they talked about America's a beacon you know a beacon on the hill and and that's true but not in the military sense of us needing to go around the world and free every country in the sense of example in a sense of if we are free if we are successful other countries will have figured out that that's a good thing and they'll join us wonderful or they don't want it and then they'll go their own way and and commit suicide that is you know within their power so so I really don't care and with the guts of the UN you know I think I've said in this forum that I consider the UN one of the most immoral institutions ever to have existed and I think one of the one of the first things I would do is present because it's out of the UN and kick them out of New York so and ask for being president we're gonna have to help Arnold change the constitution because I wasn't born in this country if I understood you correctly 60 years ago we didn't follow this theory of a just war what in your opinion changed and got us to the point that we're at now it's a that's an interesting question um look I'm not saying and I don't want it to be misinterpreted that somehow I think that that that our leaders 60 years ago were perfect they certainly were not World War two was fought you know from the perspective of you know if you disregard what's happened in recent times pathetically and World War two resulted in the establishment of the most evil brutal totalitarian regime in the history of man the Soviet Union and and we cooperated actively in making it what it was so I'm not saying that they had a perfect philosophy back and that's the problem the problem is that from its beginnings this country has been founded on a mixture a mixture of individualism respect for individual rights and altruism a philosophy an explicit philosophy of altruism and unfortunately even our founding fathers fell into this trap even our founding fathers when you read their ideas on ethics believed in some form of altruism and when you have a mixture like this country was and you have advocates for a pure for something pure for something consistent for something principled the the fact is that in history the pure form wins and there was not an American history until I ran ever a a person a philosopher advocated for a pure form a pure defense of capitalism based on individual rights and based on the morality of rational egoism didn't exist until I ran you did have lots of advocates for a pure form of of altruism whether they were religious or whether they were secular in the form of philosophers like Kant and Hegel and and the rest of the German romantics and and and they were the Americans who followed them so what has happened over the last 200 years but has intensified over the last 100 years and even more so over the last 60 years is a slow erosion of that positive element that individualism that pro pro individual rights and an increase in the power and influence of the more consistently altruistic force in the culture and you can track this by looking at the universities by looking at the professors who teach at the universities and the first committed altruists as far as I can tell I'm not an expert on this but the first committed altruists started teaching at the universities around the latter part of the 19th century and they grew and grew and grew and strength until today they control the places so 60 years ago was slightly better than it is today but we're heading in one direction with no you know with little blips one way or the other but the direction is consistent when we're heading towards more altruism more collectivism and more statism just you know and there are lots of ways to measure that and lots of ways to see that thank you let me just say one comment in addition I think part of what happens is that when altruism invades a country of individuals it works from the periphery towards the center so it it first works against elements of individualism that seem oh they're easy to give up so you'll get an income tax of just seven percent what do all these rich people need their next million dollars for it's not such a big deal if they give them up and it goes from there to the core of self-interest and if you're at the point where a country is attacked and 3000 people plus die and it's still not ready to defend itself you know that altruism has moved from the periphery and to the fringes of the culture into its center and I think that's what you've seen when it moves from what it says in ethics to the core even when you're attacked and you're very freedom is that state you can't defend yourself you're gonna be the last one I know I thank you for a very interesting lecture and my answer to the college professors today what and the only words I wanted to say to you tonight are just give war a chance let me let me let me just add one comment and maybe I should have made this comment when everybody was here this is life of death issues we're talking about this is the survival of of our life as we know it and our children's life as we know it and and as far as I can tell there is only one institute on the face of the planet advocating consistently for the self-defense of america one and you should be supporting that institute and then it's its iron man institute because it's your life it's your kids' lives and you know we could we could argue about taxes about I mean all of those all these other things are all important and all ultimately life or death issues but this is viscerally life or death issues this is literally life or death issues and if you if you agree with what you've heard today if you think this is a message that needs to get out there into the world then you should be supporting what you should be supporting that and you should help us get this message out there into the world and I encourage you to become donors and supporters of the iron man institute we offer these events for free because we're in the business of educating the public as I said most of the time we spend I spend on campuses and we we try to get into high schools but but this is your life and I encourage you to talk to Mark at the back and talk about how you can help us get these ideas hood and get to the point where one day somebody who advocates the same ideas as we do gets elected president of the United States thank you