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Interventionism, Hussein, and the Modern Schoolyard

By Gordon Francis Corbett

We hire public guardians to protect our rights.  We limit their power with the Constitution, which sanctions their protecting our rights with force.  They may use that force only within Constitutional strictures.  They may use neither less force, nor more force, than is necessary.

The use of force requires an attack on an American citizen's rights, or a credible threat of such an attack.  Absent such a threat, no public guardian should use force, even if the guardian volunteers.  The reason is that we taxpayers pay him;  and, therefore, letting him exert force when nothing endangers any citizen's rights violates every taxpayer's rights.  Remember, we pay our guardians to protect our rights and we forbid them to violate them.  

The issue is whether to force American taxpayers to spend money for ostensibly laudable reasons not connected with our rights.  Here is a classic example.  The year is 1990.  Saddam Hussein has invaded and subjugated Kuwait.  He quickly captures a few American oil-workers and families, but quickly releases them.  Regardless, President George H. W. Bush organizes a coalition of nations and has our armed forces eject the Iraqis.  

Some compare the Iraqis' situation with an American elementary schoolyard.  They say that for one elementary student to rescue another from an assailant is good, and they compare that action to our freeing Kuwait from Hussein.  This argument misses the element of compulsion.  If third-grader "John" is being pummeled by eighth-grader "Joe," student "Bill"'s voluntarily rescuing John is laudable.  I would object, though, if Bill were compelled to attack Joe.  

"But," critics might remonstrate, "what if everyone in 'our' school had to pay a nickel per day for student police to keep order?  In that event, if Bill had joined this student police force, his attacking Joe and restraining him would make perfect sense.  Joe could then be turned over to the principal and expelled."  

Unfortunately, this Kuwaiti War analogy applies only if Joe attacks John at our school.  

The true analogy to our 1991 rescue of Kuwait would have our paid volunteer directed to save another school's boy on that other school's grounds.  This action would violate the rights of our school's student contributors.  They intended their compulsory payments to protect them from bullies like Joe, and from the other school's bullies, if they attacked students at our school.  

To say otherwise, interventionists would have to believe that the first school's students should pay to suppress bullyism not only in their school, but in other schools as well.  This, analogically, is what the Bush Doctrine prescribes.  Any school board in the country would reject it.  Why should our defense planners respect it?  

Why should we?  

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