Libertarian Party Hawks Form Group to Push for a “Powerful Military”

From the January issue of the national Libertarian Party News (not yet posted on their website):

LP Hawks Start ‘Fight for Liberty’ Caucus

A Washington state Libertarian Party member has helped found an organization of “libertarian hawks” that will encourage the LP to support a more aggressive defense policy against terrorists.

The group, Fight for Liberty, “recognizes the need for a powerful military, whether private or state, to vanquish the terror movement,” said Kevin Bjornson, an LP Life Member and former chair of the West King County LP.

The group supports a “victory over terrorism,” and opposes Libertarians who would “shrink the U.S. military to dangerous weakness,” he said.

The current LP platform, which calls for a non-interventionist foreign policy, the withdrawal of American military troops stationed abroad, and an end to foreign aid, is either “insanity or merely ridiculous,” said Bjornson.

Fight for Liberty has passed a six-point program that advocates allowing Iraqis to have AK-47s, privatizing the Iraqi Oil Industry, legalizing drugs for U.S. adults, charging allies for NATO-type defense services, preventing the “theocratic/terror state of Iran” from developing nuclear weapons, and encouraging the “establishment of secular, rational government[s]” around the world.

Bjornson said Fight for Liberty will post foreign policy analyses, offer speakers for libertarian supper clubs and conferences, and serve as a “central posting board” for hawkish libertarians.

(bold type added for emphasis)


One of the early members of the new group is Tim Starr, a (now-former) San Francisco Bay Area Libertarian Party member (an “anarcho-hawk”) who advocates having the government pursue an interventionist foreign policy until it is abolished.