Why Objectivists support the war in Iraq

I’ve been listening to an audio edition of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness during some of my drive time, and I came across the following this afternoon. It’s as succinct an example of Randian foreign policy as one could hope to find. And it’s certainly one of the reasons I’ve never considered myself an Objectivist.

“Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave-pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent ‘rights’ of gang-rulers. It is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has a right to do it, when and if it so chooses.”

— “Collectivized ‘Rights’,” Objectivist Newsletter, June 1963