This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://curi.us/2597-the-injustice-of-strictly-and-literally-making-victims-whole-such-as-all-children
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This is pretty close to what Rand might say right?
I doubt it.
I remember searching for what she thought about innocents in war, international law, etc back in November 2023. I think there’s more she’s said about it somewhere but even in this video, she talks about in war, if one party is the aggressor, anything that the other party does is morally justified, and the total annihilation of the aggressor is justified. And how the majority in any country at war is innocent, but if by neglect, ignorance or helplessness, they couldn’t overturn or choose a bad government and choose a better one, then they have to pay the price for the sins of their government. She doesn’t mention making the country who was agressed 100% completely whole, but I can imagine her agreeing with most of what you guess Deutsch might say.
I think Rand is too harsh (I wouldn’t say what she did) but as you say her comments weren’t about the victim being made 100% whole so that’s pretty different.
And she seems to have in mind scenarios like dealing with an aggressive USSR or Nazi Germany which make her comments more understandable. I think she was thinking of scenarios where an unfree country is trying to invade you, in which case disproportionate force is not much of a concern (but it still could be IMO, e.g. imagine if we had bombs so powerful they’d blow up cities in neighboring countries – I don’t know what Rand would say about those but I doubt she’d authorize their unlimited, indiscriminate use for any defensive cause when that use helps with offense but is totally unnecessary for preventing your own country from being conquered.)
Israel has had wars in the past with the militaries of other countries. I think Rand would say those were defensive wars and that Israel’s behavior was fine. The current conflict with Hamas is not with a country, not with a normal military, does not involve Israel being at risk of being invaded/conquered, and is dragging on much longer than past wars despite a more powerful IDF and less powerful adversary. I’m no expert on the details of what’s happening but it seems potentially like Israel’s actions in Gaza, since a few months after the conflict started, are not very effective and are primarily hurting non-combatants. I also don’t know what is going on with diplomacy currently and what the possibilities are for setting up a non-Hamas Palestinian government and stuff (I don’t know how underground Hamas has been forced either) or what terms Hamas would accept (I understand that some Israelis are mad at their government and think Israel could have negotiated a end to the conflict, including returning all hostages/corpses, by now if they actually wanted to). There are also potentially significant elements of Western/US/UK/Israeli/etc partial guilt and I don’t know if Rand would agree with any of that or not (keep in mind she didn’t support Reagan and had a somewhat isolationist take on WWII before Pearl Harbor, so I don’t think she’d approve of all the US meddling and colonialism around the world). Due to these and other differences I think Rand might analyze it differently.
Rand mentioned that both sides could be at fault. It sounded like she considers that unlikely in standard wars where countries try to invade each other using militaries, but I don’t think we can infer that she considers it unlikely in non-standard wars/conflicts.
Rand’s pre-Pearl Harbor hesitance about US involvement in WWII also indicates differences in her point of view compared to Deutsch’s.
I think the analysis of the current conflict depends on why it’s taking so long, which I don’t confidently know, and I think that would be relevant to Rand’s take.
I try to be careful about attaching Rand’s name to causes she didn’t comment on where there’s some ambiguity. She’s pretty unique and didn’t fit into any standard tribe or bundle of views very well. She is also the type who could totally change her conclusion based on one factor instead of treating every factor indecisively. It’s also hard to know how access to the internet and better information sources would have changed her views on anything where she may have been opining with some limited, flawed information. Like she said some basically pro-colonialism stuff about the settlers and their conflicts with native Americans, but it’s possible that she would change her mind with better information, just like if she actually read Silent Spring maybe she would have changed her mind some like I did.
I do think I’m more inclined to see conflicts as gray instead of as good and bad guys than Rand or Deutsch. But it’s hard to know what actions by Israel (or the US etc) she might think crossed some line.