Rose Friedman Gets It!!

In an interview with the WSJ, Milton Friedman opined that the war in Iraq was a

mistake for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression.

Here's what followed:

Mrs. [Rose] Friedman--listening to her husband with an ear cocked--was now muttering darkly.

Milton: "Huh? What?"

Rose: "This was not aggression!"

Milton (exasperatedly): "It was aggression. Of course it was!"

Rose: "You count it as aggression if it's against the people, not against the monster who's ruling them. We don't agree. This is the first thing to come along in our lives, of the deep things, that we don't agree on. We have disagreed on little things, obviously--such as, I don't want to go out to dinner, he wants to go out--but big issues, this is the first one!"

Milton: "But, having said that, once we went in to Iraq, it seems to me very important that we make a success of it."

Rose: "And we will!"

Mrs. Friedman, you will note, had the last word.

[Emphasis mine]

As well she should. She gets it..., he doesn't.

Read it here.

Check out her comments on immigration too.

UPDATE:

Ilya Somin, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, notes this disagreement and thinks it reflects a fundamental divide within the "libertarian community." Most conservative libertarians, he notes, seem, like Rose, to support the war effort, but a minority would side with Milton against her.

He theorizes that the split reflects deep philosophical differences.

One possibly theory is that this disagreement tracks the longstanding division between those who endorse an absolutist interpretation of libertarian principle versus those who take a maximizing approach. Wars clearly lead to violations of rights to life, liberty, and property. If you are a deontological absolutist who believes it is always (or almost always) wrong to violate such rights regardless of consequences, then that gives you a logical reason to oppose virtually any war, possibly excepting a strictly defensive one, with "defense" defined very narrowly. By contrast, if you take a maximizing approach, you will be more willing to accept some rights violations now in order to reduce the total incidence of violations in the long run. For example, it could be argued that the War in Iraq, despite the carnage it has caused, saves a much greater number of innocent lives in the long run, as well as expanding personal and economic liberties for most Iraqis.

Alternatively he suggest:

It is possible that those libertarians who embraced the ideology primarily out of hostility to the various works of the US government are more likely to be antiwar than those who came to it primarily because of personal or familial experience with statist and socialistic governments elsewhere. Certainly, anecdotal evidence suggests that immigrant libertarians are more likely to be pro-Iraq War than native-born ones. So too with Jewish libertarians (who, even if native-born, may have a strong consciousness of their people's oppression by governments outside the US) as opposed to gentile ones, though Milton Friedman is one of many exceptions to the pattern. If you are highly focused on the evils of oppressive regimes and political movements outside the US, you might be more willing to countenance the use of American military power to destroy or contain them than if you have regarded the US government itself as the main threat to your freedom.

Read it here.

Personally, I find it incomprehensible that any responsible person would consider the U.S. government and more specifically the Bush administration to be a credible threat to his oe her freedom, but then I'm not a libertarian absolutist.