The Bombing Will Continue Until Ayn is Appeased
Who: Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A talk and Q/A on the life-and-death consequences of our nation’s moral premises
IRVINE, CA - The war on terror is proving to be a catastrophic failure. No army in the world is more powerful than ours, yet the death toll of American troops in Iraq continues to climb. Why? At home, terror alerts - now elevated, now lowered - remind us daily that the enemy persists in its quest to annihilate us, while our leaders issue apologies for military operations aimed at self-defense. Why? Our diplomats jet around the globe cravenly seeking to appease “world opinion” - and to echo the apologies. Why? From the start of this three-year-long war, never has victory - the total, ruthless eradication of the enemy - been the aim. Why not?
At every stage of this war, and on every front - from the fire-fights in the streets of Iraq, the mountain sieges of Afghanistan to the nuclear-capable enemies that Washington refuses to target - our leaders have slavishly conformed to the “just-war” theory. Widely taught at military academies, such as West Point, and embraced by the State Department, it is the altruistic moral code embedded in this theory that animates every one of Washington’s key military decisions. And it has emasculated our attempts at self-defense.
In this passionately reasoned lecture, Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute illustrates how “just-war” theory has been undercutting America’s success in the war, and why it is necessarily self-destructive. Dr. Brook argues for an alternative morality of war, one that justly demands the total, ruthless eradication of the enemy, and lasting victory. Drawing upon Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, he advocates a war based on the principles of rational self-interest.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The link refers to a talk delivered in California in September, but the email that alerted me to this tripe says he’s delivering it next Wednesday, the 17th, at NYU’s Kimmel Center.