Me:
What you said about nuking all of those cities has been bothering me. What justification would you have of killing millions of innocent people? Given their governments may be corrupt, but isn't ours also corrupt? Should we be nuked because of it?

Regardless of whether or not they support their governments (probably some do and some don't), they still have the right to live and believe whatever they want to believe. It seems like you want to kill them just because they disagree with you.

Grant:
Yes, I do want to kill them because they disagree with me. The fact is that by disagreeing with me much more is happening than my feelings being hurt. Many of them directly support and participate in activities that promote their beliefs - beliefs which call for the destruction of those who don't believe. Still many, many more indirectly support these activities in a number of seemingly innocent ways. By supplying corrupt regimes with taxes, or by submitting to their military draft, or by passively allowing dangerous ideas to be paraded in public, you are strengthening a nation and a culture that, in order to prolong it's backwards way of life, must prey upon the cultures and nations of others - as if the taxes, the draft, and the propaganda aren't ways of preying themselves.

Now, of course, there are many who either oppose or have failed to create a cogent opinion about what their governments are doing or what their culture stands for. While I do not hold any of these people personally responsible for what their governments do, I do not believe that a morally superior culture - not necessarily a morally flawless - should intentionally expose itself to more danger for their sake. I hold the governments that they have failed to alter or flee responsible for their deaths, regardless of which side does the particular killing. When a free country is forced to decide between the deaths of it's own innocent civilians or the deaths of a small portion of the population in a totalitarian country who are innocent, it would be wrong to choose the former. Just like it's immoral to knowingly choose a lesser value over a greater value, so is knowingly sacrificing a greater value for the sake of a lesser value.

The people of America do much more to preserve their liberty as individuals than any people anywhere else. You're right we aren't doing enough and our government is increasingly getting out of control, but it is still morally superior (a greater value) than any other government on the planet (lesser values). Thus, the only people who would have a legitimate right to alter the the US Government would be the people that created it and maintain it - and ONLY for the purpose of returning it to a size where individual liberty is maximized.

Me:
Iran and many of the countries in the Middle East are run by unelected dictators who rule by the force of their will and the laws of religious doctrines. George Bush lost the popular vote when he first came to office, he has circumvented the Constitution, the Senate, the Congress and the Judiciary, he believes that his power comes from a divine will, and his goal is to impose his values on the world. Before the start of the war in Iraq, he disregarded the intelligence gathered by the CIA, the NSA and the UN. His "gut feeling" was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and stated "God told me to go to war". How is this assertion any different than the statements of Holy War made by the "Terrorists"? Military power does not destroy ideology. No amount of bombs will ever protect us from the threat of terrorism.

Our country was founded on the principle of individual freedom. The men who wrote the Constitution and declared our independence from England created one of greatest societies this world has ever seen. Unfortunately we have been spiraling downward ever since. We have come to value security over freedom and lost the values which drew so many hard working and creative people to the United States. This shift in values has created a culture which no longer values life itself. Consequently, the murder rate has become one of the highest of any industrialized country and the economy has become dependent on almost perpetual war (sound familiar Mr. Orwell?). A society with correctly aligned values would certainly embrace security, however, that value would be eclipsed by freedom and a healthy respect for the life of the individual. Therefore, we should work to defend our country (from within our borders) and respect the lives of individuals throughout the world, regardless of their beliefs.

Grant:
This is exactly the point I have been trying to make. She did a much beter job than I.

http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?showtopic=7295

Me:
Ok, I read the post. What she is saying is that if a government
initiates force against another nation, that nation has the right and
the responsibility to attack both the aggressing government and its
people, because the people support (or at least don't fight) the
tyranny of their government.

If that were true, we should both be held accountable for the actions
of George Bush and consequently we should both be killed. I don't
know about you, but I voted against Bush and I have been doing
everything I can to speak out against his actions (including
attending protests and writing on my blog).

If you feel like you should be held accountable for his actions, why
not just help the process along and kill yourself?

P.S. That's just a joke. Don't actually kill yourself.

Grant:
Yes, we should be held accountable for the actions of Bush - since like it or not he is our elected leader. I know you have an issue with how he won the election, but the bottom line is that he's in charge now, and if we don't like it, we should change it; and by saying that, I'm not ruling out using violence to do so.

Also, 9/11 is exactly that - being held accountable for the actions of our government. Actions that it shouldn't have taken - not because it is immoral for a free country to interfere with the business of an unfree country for it's own protection, but - because it can be objectively shown that the interference resulted in the exact opposite of it's intention: the protection of individual American's rights/lives from foreign aggression. Like I've said, that's why I'm not all bent out of shape about 9/11 - I understand the underlying reasons for it and realize that America is partially - for lack of a better word - responsible. Not responsible in the sense that the terrorists had no choice but to attack us, but because we failed to realize that by making the flow of oil a governmental issue rather than a private business matter (ie: betraying the private property rights of individual Americans), it indirectly enabled and motivated angry muslims to attack us. Yes, they certainly may have felt like they had no choice but to attack us, but the facts say otherwise. It's not completely false that our involvement in the Middle East is for the sake of preventing the growth of a powerful Islamic, imperialistic, terrorist-harboring state. They should have thought about this instead of just acting on their feelings and realized that if they wanted the Americans out - not to mention a civilized level of existence - they should be fighting for individual liberty rather than the glory of Allah.

Since we both should be held personally accountable for the actions of our government - elected or not, we should change it in whatever way we can. I don't know about you, but the reason I want to change the US Government back into a constitutional republic is for my own sake and if that in turn makes the rest of the world safer from American aggreesion, freer from American example, and richer from American capitalism, great.

The last and most crucial point that I want to make is that there are distinct differences between the aims of, say, Iran or North Korea, and the aims of The United States. Even if the US's aims aren't totally pure, they are certainly more conducive - or at least less dangerous to - individual liberty than any other country's agenda. To equate N. Korea or Iran with the US simply because they're all sovereign nations and to denounce any agreesion by any on of them against another ignores those differences. If you're in favor of the forcible preemption of pollution because of the threat it poses to your property, I certainly don't see why you're opposed to preempting well-armed fanaticism.

So, like I was saying at Old Germany Pub, I don't support what our current military plan is not because it's wrong to mess with other nations, but because it's wrong to mess with other nations when you don't need to. It's a waste of public money and thus a violation of individual property rights. With that said, you can't erase the past. We have messed with and traded with other bad nations for a long time. Hence they have become more powerful and influential and angry with us than they otherwise would have been. That is why I support doing the most decisive and least expensive thing possible to extricate ourselves from their business, and simultaneously scare them enough to give us time to regroup into the stronger, freer nation we once were.

Me:
I agree with much of what you said. However, the fact remains that the use of preemptive force MAKES US THE TERRORISTS! The only difference is that instead of attacking with 19 people and a well thought out plan, we attack with thousands of people, billions of tax dollars and no plan at all.

You can't equate a preemptive strike against pollution to a preemptive strike against another nation. Here's why:
1. Pollution is caused by us. The United States (and specifically our government) is the largest polluter on Earth.
2. Pollution has "stuck first". We wouldn't need to fight pollution if it had not already happened.
3. Pollution doesn't get angry and nuke us when we fight it.
4. Iran (and its allies) have the capacity to instantly cripple our entire society by stopping the flow of oil. Until we are free of our dependence on foreign oil, we should try to make nice.

I'm glad that you do not support the war, but I do question your judgement when it comes to the proper use of violence. And finally, what do you mean by "scare them enough to give us time to regroup"?