“Perhaps you would prefer every citizen give verbal consent to such actions in the future. Of course, under your statement, one objection out of 280,000,000 should halt any and all actions because otherwise it would be theft.”

No, I’d prefer that every party to a supposed contract consented to it. You don’t need 280 million, you just don’t steal from those not party to your contract.

And, though I would love defense to be turned over to private providers like everything else– I’d much prefer a private mercenary catch-Saddam force to the tax-funded US one, and would contribute to the upkeep of the former– defense is by far the hardest to solve of all private-provision problems and it will not be solved anytime soon.

That is, we’re stuck with some theft for now and we’d best at least limit it to security and not altruism.

All this goes to demonstrate how difficult it is to reconcile an anarchist ideal with a practical program for the statist world that we have and will continue to have for our lifetimes. I can neither accept a citizen’s obligation to the state as a positive good– as Mark S. would apparently have me do– nor advocate immediate anarchy and damn the consequences– as John would apparently have. It is not only in the Iraqi situation that all options suck…

“If A does B a great wrong, I don’t think A can really make it better by stealing from C (or C_1 through C_280,000,000) to pay restitution.”

The problem here is that there is no C. By separating yourself, C, from A, which I’m assuming is the U.S. government, you are either saying that the government is a ruling class to which you do not belong, you are not a citizen of C, or you are not responsible as a citizen of C for what you consider to be C’s transgressions and by using your tax money to deal with those alleged transgressions C is effectively stealing from you.

Perhaps you would prefer every citizen give verbal consent to such actions in the future. Of course, under your statement, one objection out of 280,000,000 should halt any and all actions because otherwise it would be theft.

Great idea.

But how is that consistent with what you said in your first point? “In particular, those of us who opposed the war from the beginning don’t owe it to anyone to be taxed to pay for the consequences of others’ folly.”

How can you advocate the U.S. staying in any capacity when you know folks who don’t want that will get stuck with the bill?

But I’m loath to see repeated the mistake of 1991, when the US incited people to rise up against Saddam with the implicit promise of help, and then left them to his tender mercies. On the other hand, as I keep repeating, all options suck– make that, all options *really* suck– and it may be that even catching Saddam turns out to be a hopeless enterprise; but I’ve not *yet* given up hope on that one.

So: color me conflicted.

Or is it?