For those who don’t know, Brian Leiter is a University of Texas law and philosophy professor. His information on law school rankings and the academic job market may be great, but his political theory is horrible. In his latest post, John Howard the Ostrich, he tries to argue that foreign policy – of any nation – ought to be determined by the goals of that nation’s enemies. He argues, among other things, that the U.S. should have pulled its military forces out of Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, in order to prevent attacks like those of 9/11/01, naïvely believing that those forces are only there to prop up the Saudi royals. Of course, this same logic would imply that Churchill should have surrendered British sovereignty to Hitler, to avoid the blitz, or that a duly elected Lincoln should have been impeached in the Senate, to avoid civil war.
Leiter even complains about the use of strawmen, even as he deliberately misinterprets the comments of Howard and others. At least, I assume it’s deliberate, because I give Leiter credit for more intelligence than he shows in this essay. Nobody is arguing that the current war in Iraq inspired the Bali bombings or the September 11 attacks, obviously. Howard’s point is that terrorism against Westerners and Western nations is motivated by an ideology, not by specific actions. Leiter, apparently, does not credit those who disagree with him with much intelligence.
Perhaps I’m wrong, and Leiter really has convinced himself that appeasement makes sense. Perhaps he really believes that satisfying terrorist groups – by destroying Israel, withdrawing the U.S. military from all foreign locations, and implementing Shari’a (Muslim law) in the United States – is the best, most logical way to avoid terrorist attacks. I think he’s smarter than that, though, in which case he’s just venting political nonsense for the sake of being, well, political.