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"The Morality of War"
Aug 23, 2004
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
Where: Hyatt Regency Irvine, 17900 Jamboree Road, Irvine, CA
When: Thursday, Sept 9, 2004 —7:30 pm
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.
Dr. Brook explains why our soldiers are dying needlessly; why winning the war and safeguarding America are easily within our reach; why it is ultimately a nation’s moral premises that lose wars —and win them.
An indictment of "just-war" theory and its self-crippling "rules of war," this talk offers the only rational, moral solution to the threat from Islamic totalitarianism.
### ### ### Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org
For more articles by Yaron Brook, and his bio, click here.
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