I will agree that I would rather take my chances with the crude barbarism of the Mongols than fashionable intellectual barabrism of say the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, or bombing Muslims into accepting Western ideals… it is oddly enough, “more sane”. My main point was that the Mongol conquests would be an odd thing to signal out as good or worthwhile. Honestly, to me it is up there with the French Revolution and WWI as “major undesirable armed conflicts”.
I think FleetCenturion has a point when he differentiates between the means the Mongols used to get to ‘power’, and what they did with the power they got. Many other atrocious conquests have been carried out, but no one ‘succeeded’ as the Mongols did in taking up huge tracts of land. Why? Because they where ferocious? Or perhaps folks where very willing to accept their loose overlordship? I believe this last explanation is more likely. By contrast the French revolutionaries where cruel both when coming to power and when administering it.
In this sense the Mongol ‘empire’ was as much a ‘natural empire’ as the British one, acquired easily because of consent, and lost just as easily and without much fuss when the folks decided to get some other lord.
I wasn’t demanding answers, but I was certainly asking if you could respond to the rest of my post instead of (seemingly) ignoring it. I thought I made that clear.
By “focus on a main topic”, do you mean “avoid directly addressing counter-arguments and inject red-herring statements”?
You claimed that a republic has a duty to defend itself. This is an absurd claim under methodological individualism, which is part of “the Austrian perspective”. I was merely pointing that out. Claiming that a republic has a duty to defend itself is implicitly claiming that a group of individuals (a republic) can think as one (have a duty to defend itself).
So then you must agree with this earlier statement of mine:
You initially claimed that “total war” is a very recent concept. However, at this point you’ve turned around and are now claiming that most wars have been “total wars”. So therefore “total war” is not a very recent concept at all – it’s a very old concept.
Regardless, my original point was not about the age of the “total war” concept. It was about you apparently supporting total war without admitting it outright.
We’re not debating the definition of “certainty”. Definitions are arbitrary, so they can’t be proven right or wrong (what I’d call “debated”).
You claimed that something was/is certain for some people. I figured you meant the same thing I mean by “certain” – 100% guaranteed to happen at some point in the future. Of course, it’s impossible for anything to be certain in that way, so I considered what you were claiming to also be impossible.
At this point, what it boils down to, from my point of view, is that you’re trying to justify soldiers’ actions based on how they felt about things at the time. I find this justification entirely lacking.
It depends on how “certain” is defined here. I’d say there’s no certainty whatsoever.
Your example in no way erases moral culpability on the part of those who are “just following orders”, as far as I’m concerned. What I mean is, I’ll still hold them responsible for what they did. I will not consider their COs entirely responsible for it.
Therefore your earlier claims about soldiers having to “know” when to disobey orders are revealed to be invalid. Thank you again.
I believe that pacifism is incompatible with a free society and is itself a statist viewpoint. The absolute pacifist refuses to defend himself against any attackers. Thus, he emboldens criminals and leads to an increase in crime. Thus, I believe strongly in self-defense and believe that defending oneself is important. That being said, I do not advocate martyrdom. When you cannot win, you are best off giving in and living to fight another day (this is why I don’t advocate self-defense against the State at the present time).
As for the question of whether or not States should be allowed to wage war and the related question of whether or not libertarians should ever support their wars, my answer is that no State has any right to exist and thus that no State is worthy of being defended. In some cases, one state winning may be a lesser evil and thus I believe that one should hope for that state to win, if it is the best possible outcome (this basically describes my view on voting as well).
Since I uphold the primacy of the non-aggression axiom, I reject the idea that it is ever acceptable to initiate force against non-combatants, even in an otherwise just war (for example, the Confederacy had no right to conscript people into the military or to tax anybody to fund its just war against Dishonest Abe).
To end war, we must first end the State and all statist NGOs (including the UN). I am hopeful that the stateless libertarian society, once it takes hold in one country, will soon spread. Thus, I believe we need to turn one country (and preferably a country with a great deal of accumulated wealth) libertarian. Then, we will be able to set an example for the rest of the world and libertarians will be able to set up organizations to launch revolutions against the remaining States (preferably led by libertarians in those countries). Once we have established a libertarian society in one country, it will not be secure until we have toppled every State on the planet (as States, which tend to be very efficient in violence, will constantly plot to attack any stateless society, especially a prosperous one, as the statist intervention in Somalia in recent years has proven). What I do not advocate is the present attempt by the statist government in Washington, DC to establish social-democratic puppet regimes in the Middle East, as I regard the present US government as illegitimate.
In my view, those who oppose self-defense, with either a ballot or a bullet, on allegedly “libertarian” grounds, not only have no leg to stand on regarding principle, but their views are also impractical for the real world. All pacifism achieves is defeat and the emboldening of criminals. Self-defense is vital for the creation and the maintanence of a libertarian society. I think it is ridiculous for anybody to suggest that there exists a single state that doesn’t govern without the full and total consent of at least one of its citizens. As long as 1 person exists who is willing to press charges against a criminal, then I believe anybody is justified in prosecuting said criminal. Since all states commit crimes on a massive scale, it is almost a certainty that numerous victims wish to press charges against these criminals and thus one may legitimately prosecute any State under libertarian law (and no, it isn’t an “ex post facto” law, as libertarian law is the natural law and applies universally in all times and places). As every State has committed crimes and desires to continue to commit crimes, revolution to overthrow these criminal gangs and establish a libertarian society is always justified, violent or non-violent, as long as the revolutionaries don’t aggress against non-combatants. Obviously, I don’t advocate revolution at present, as it is still premature and we won’t win, but there are possible circumstances in which a libertarian revolution may be both practical and 100% compatible with the non-aggression axiom.
So, I guess I am a “warmonger” once the libertarian society has been established, although I am reliably against every statist war.
OK, maybe I wasn’t clear. The term “total war” is recent, the practice is of total war is the most ancient form of conflict. It has been a matter of necessity in the most desperate conflicts where one cannot afford to treat the locals as anything but hostile. I do not support the deaths of non-combatants, but sometimes they get caught in the crossfire and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Believe it or not, most soldiers are not bloodthirsty psychopaths, but when you have to accomplish a mission, stay alive, and defend what little of the population is still friendly to you, hard decisions have to be made. Those doing the fighting hold te only viewpoint that matters.
We’ve been in near perfect agreement about this from the beginning, so I don’t know why you persist in arguing.