Free For All - The Free Liberal Blog: Thinking about Bob thinking about Darfur

August 2008

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In "Thinking Outloud about Darfur," Bob Capozzi says American military intervention in Darfur would not be unconstitutional if declared by Congress. True, but even a cursory glance of the Founders' writings on the war shows they would be repulsed by the idea the United States should embark on "humanitarian" intervention unrelated to the national security interest of the United States. The Founders recognized the threat to republican institutions and individual liberty posed by empowering the government to go abroad "in search of monsters to destroy."

Intervention in Darfur is also unjust because it involves taking the lives and treasure of others by force to be used for what someone else has decided is a good cause. Before someone objects that that may be true if there where a draft but today America has an all-volunteer force, consider that people enlist in the US armed forces to serve and protect America, not to serve as global cops. To send them into danger, and I don't think anyone who seriously thinks about intervention in Darfur thinks we can avoid causalities, is to violate the government's responsibility to ensure those who have volunteered to defend the country are only asked to give their lives in defense of the country, not on some "humanitarian" mission. Are supporters of military action in Durfur prepared to explain to a future Cindy Sheehan that the US Government was acting justly when it sent her son to his grave in Darfur?

If that argument is unpersuasive consider that intervention in Darfur will have to be financed. The money will either come from taxes or debt. By what right does the government take my money, or saddle future generations with debt, for military interventions unrelated to my, or my families and neighbors, security? Under Lockean "social contract" theory, which most limited government libertarians rely on for their justification of the state, the reason I submit to government rule and agree to support the current government is so it will provide me with safety, not so the government can force me to support humanitarian crusades with either my blood or treasure. Davy Crockett's rule that money spent on purposes unrelated to the proper functions of government are "not yours to give" applies just as much to the warfare state as it does to the welfare state.

Finally, the enthusiasm of certain members of the left, including many who opposed the Iraq war, leads me to wonder about the long-term sustainability of a liberal-libertarian-free liberal anti-empire alliance.