RE: War arguments

From: Dickey, Michael F (michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com)
Date: Wed Jan 22 2003 - 12:21:55 MST


-----Original Message-----
From: Emlyn O'regan [mailto:oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au]

Robert wrote:
 
> (Side note to Emlyn -- I believe we may be dealing with as
> bad or worse actors in North Korea so there are some significant
> prioritization concerns.)

"Unextropic? This whole war option is unextropic. Relying on war to address
symptoms of bigger problems; it's the attitude "If you can't fix it with a
hammer, you can't fix it". "

A more accurate description of the pro-IRAQ war stances would be 'It can not
be fixed anyother way, they have been tried, now we must fix it with a
hammer' Your charachterization sacrifices the truths behind a complex
subject for the sake of a good sounding one-liner. Since we are all
extropians here, it is clear that I and other pro-IRAQ war argues do indeed
feel that ousting Sadam is an 'extropic' event, since we consider the
perpetuation of corrupt despotic murderous racist progress hating dictators
to, seemingly reasonable enough, NOT be extropic. We are not, despite the
perceptual bias of our detractors, merely out to see humans die horrible
violent deaths for no good reason. In fact we feel we are justified in
claiming that this will prevent innumerably more horrible violent deaths
from occuring in the future.

"Some random related points off the top of my head:
- Get off oil. There are a *lot* of alternatives these days, which just need
some investment."

Sure, its called Nuclear power, and has successfully been fought every step
of the way by greens and environmentalists. In fact one could make a sound
argument that environmentalists, specifically anti-nuclear activists, have
actually contributed to global warming more than any other special interest
group, since they effectively outlawed and brought to a screeching halt the
natural tendancy of science and technology to create cleaner and safer power
generation methods in free, market based environmetns, in this case nuclear
ones that did not release CO2, did not release particulates and cause some
few thousands deaths every year, and do not frequantly accidentaly explode
(as natural gas does) killing a few hundred more every year. Continuing the
Nuclear power generation and construction rates that were gaining steam when
the Anti-nukes started their campaigns would have brought us to some 80% of
our power from nuclear sources today.

But if you feel there are other alternatives, present them, or through your
money into investing in them. Meanwhile, while greens and anti-war
protestors are sitting around waiting for 'alternatives' Saddam, as a
murderous west hating anti-extropic dictator, controls the worlds second
larges cheap abundant energy supply in the world.

"- Why can't we cooperate? What's the story with the whole nation gig,
anyway? Why do we get bucketloads of implicit and explicit nationalism and
jingoism on extro-l of all places?"

You may be implying that I am a 'jingoist' for being pro-IRAQ war, on the
contrary, I would assert that you are for being against it, since that
necessarily perpetates the regime of a murderous dictator. And you are
right, what in the world are thoughts like that doing on an extropy list?

"- If you intend to wage war for peace and freedom, to free people from the
chains of their oppressors, surely you would open your borders to those same
people. In fact, if much of the world is oppressed by dictators, and you
decide you have to beat them (ie: their people) senseless/dead in order to
free them from their chains, why wouldn't you fight also to open borders?"

I, and most libertarians I have interacted with, are all for open borders.
However, the oppressive dictators are the ones who are much worse about
boarders, as they typically have to build walls and control all forms of
information to keep people from, surprisingly, wanting to flee their corrupt
despotic dictatorships.

Michael

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