The Kings of War

A site I read regularly is the website Kings of War. It is a blog by faculty and students of the Department of War Studies, King's College London. They argue from a variety of different view points, but their posts are always illuminating, thought provoking and lucid.

I've added them to Dlares' 'Bolg of Interest' section of the blogroll. I recommend you check them out -- some of their positions may be different than yours, but at least they are well reasoned. The comments are well worth reading as well.

As a taste, this is from their post 9/11: Eleven years on, is it time for our liberalism to be more, not less, muscular?

But the point of this post is rather simple actually, and I think gets lost in all the noise surrounding radicalisation, counter-radicalisation etc etc..

That point is that the west has a set of defensible ideals that it should not be ashamed to uphold vigorously, as it did sixty-six years ago: freedom of speech (including within limits, tolerance of marginal views and ways of life), freedom of association, freedom from state interference, all being equal the access to prosperity, and the ability to change the government.

It would be right to point out that the west needs to do some of its own housekeeping to uphold these values internally (and it clearly does - for a wonderfully written and caustic view of our current political elites see link) but we should not get lost in the relativist backwaters of everyone’s inequality is fair enough. The west has asserted values that have improved the life experience of individuals for at least the post-war period, and brought relative prosperity for the majority of people living through it. Now that this prosperity has atrophied, it is time to reassert the values and conditions that underpinned it, and not to get sucked into lowering our standards to those of emergent nations. President Bush was ridiculed when he called for a democratic revolution in the Middle East, but he proved to be surprisingly prophetic, as the early inklings of a democratically based revolution have occurred in that region. It is now time for the values the underpin the progressive success of the west in the post-war period to be the lasting legacy, the phoenix from the 9/11 ashes. It is time for the our liberalism to be more, not less muscular.