To add to the discussion...

Though I personally agree with the general consensus that capital L Libertarians are too timid on the foreign policy front, I disagree with the idea that invading Iraq was unquestionably good. I'd hemmed and hawed over it for awhile at the time, to come up with...well, with a huge gray area. I'll try to seperate it out here so you know what I'm getting at:

-was Iraq a threat to our national security? IMO, no; unless our interior security has learned absolutely nothing from 9/11, Saddam was not going to strike us.

+legally speaking, Saddam violated the terms of the ceasefire agreement, so technically hostilities would have to resume no matter the threat.

-just how much do we know about the Iraqi people? On top of the cultural differences inherent there, we're trying to reform a nation that has only known oppression for so long, Are we really up to such a task?

+It's a good thing when dictators are overthrown and/or killed, saddam is a dictator, 'nuff said.

-...but suppose when we leave they end up embracing another horrible regime?

+It would've been done anyway, you don't leave a thorn in your side forever.

-but doesn't the idea that we can spread democracy by force parallel the same type of social engineering we oppose at home?

+considering the ineptness of the UN, if we didn't in time then Saddam would've got just what he wanted.

-...then again, why should the US enforce "international law"? By associating our action with the violation of sanctions, we may have unintentionally legitimized this boneheaded concept.

+technically, since we aided saddam in the past we owed it to the Iraqi people.

My initial view was simple: since there wasn't an obvious nat'l security concern, the answer would be "no". But now in retrospect, though I don't particularly like it, it's turning out to be less trouble than I thought. A lot of the criticism of it from the Left is exaggeration -- "another vietnam" is a slap in the face to all 'nam vets, Iraq was & continues to be a cakewalk compared to 'nam. If they seriously do pursue freedom, then it'll all be worth it in the long run.

In general on foreign policy though (after Iraq), we need to sharply reprioritize IMO. We need a more self-centered policy, dead all pretenses of others coming before our own needs: end foreign aid, withdraw from the UN, declare from here on out we act only for ourselves -- like everyone else does & declines to admit. We need to learn to be shrewd, calculating, & cheap.

I am all for drastically reducing the size of the state, but the whole libertarian anarcho-capitalist pie-in-the-sky fantasy is not helping. Libertarians are setting themselves for irrelevance if all they do is fantasize about how cool it will be when government dissapears, and how much better Enlightened Monarchy is to mere democracy.

That's why I quit reading Samizdata and Cold Fury a long time ago.