Dr. Robert Higgs, an anti-interventionist libertarian and Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute on Can Bullets and Bombs Establish Justice in Iraq?
President George W. Bush has said on many occasions that he seeks to “bring to justice” those responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the United States. On September 20, 2001, he told a joint session of Congress: “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” Later, he associated the U.S. invasion of Iraq with that same quest for justice. Today, however, as violent resistance to the U.S. occupation increases throughout Iraq and as the Shiites as well as the Sunnis fight pitched battles with the occupation forces, the Bush administration’s devotion to justice stands clearly revealed as declaration without substance.
Read the rest here.
Dr. Ivan Eland, an anti-interventionist libertarian and Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute, on The Long Ignominious Slide to Defeat in Iraq
If the rebellion spreads within the Shiite population, which such events seem to portend, even senior U.S. military commanders admit privately that the chances dwindle drastically of keeping Iraq this side of the abyss. The U.S. civilian authorities in Iraq tried to put a brave face on the mayhem by opining that the rebellion made up only a small portion of the Iraqi population. But that proportion could grow over time in both Shiite and Sunni areas as the U.S. retaliates muscularly for the attacks by Shiite militiamen and the burning, dragging and hanging of corpses of already dead U.S. armed mercenaries by the Sunnis in Faluja. Such precipitous U.S. actions may very well incite a escalating cycle of violence—attack and counterattack—that could turn the bulk of the Iraqi population, both Shiite and Sunni, against the U.S. occupation.
Read the rest here.