Posted on 09/12/2001 12:31:51 AM PDT by ouroboros
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
By Harry Browne
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
The terrorist attacks against America comprise a horrible tragedy. But they shouldn't be a surprise.
It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth – that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda. But sanity was a prior casualty: it was the loss of sanity that led to war in the first place.
Our foreign policy has been insane for decades. It was only a matter of time until Americans would have to suffer personally for it. It is a terrible tragedy of life that the innocent so often have to suffer for the sins of the guilty.
When will we learn that we can't allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?
President Bush has authorized continued bombing of innocent people in Iraq. President Clinton bombed innocent people in the Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Serbia. President Bush, senior, invaded Iraq and Panama. President Reagan bombed innocent people in Libya and invaded Grenada. And on and on it goes.
Did we think the people who lost their families and friends and property in all that destruction would love America for what happened?
When will we learn that violence always begets violence?
Teaching lessons
Supposedly, Reagan bombed Libya to teach Muammar al-Qaddafi a lesson about terrorism. But shortly thereafter a TWA plane was destroyed over Scotland, and our government is convinced it was Libyans who did it.
When will we learn that "teaching someone a lesson" never teaches anything but resentment – that it only inspires the recipient to greater acts of defiance.
How many times on Tuesday did we hear someone describe the terrorist attacks as "cowardly acts"? But as misguided and despicable as they were, they were anything but cowardly. The people who committed them knowingly gave their lives for whatever stupid beliefs they held.
But what about the American presidents who order bombings of innocent people – while the presidents remain completely insulated from any danger? What would you call their acts?
When will we learn that forsaking truth and reason in the heat of battle almost always assures that we will lose the battle?
Losing our last freedoms
And now, as sure as night follows day, we will be told we must give up more of our freedoms to avenge what never should have happened in the first place.
When will we learn that it makes no sense to give up our freedoms in the name of freedom?
What to do?
What should be done?
First of all, stop the hysteria. Stand back and ask how this could have happened. Ask how a prosperous country isolated by two oceans could have so embroiled itself in other people's business that someone would want to do us harm. Even sitting in the middle of Europe, Switzerland isn't beset by terrorist attacks, because the Swiss mind their own business.
Second, resolve that we won't let our leaders use this occasion to commit their own terrorist acts upon more innocent people, foreign and domestic, that will inspire more terrorist attacks in the future.
Third, find a way, with enforceable constitutional limits, to prevent our leaders from ever again provoking this kind of anger against America.
Patriotism?
There are those who will say this article is unpatriotic and un-American – that this is not a time to question our country or our leaders.
When will we learn that without freedom and sanity, there is no reason to be patriotic?
Harry Browne was the 2000 Libertarian presidential candidate. More of his articles can be read at HarryBrowne.org, and his books are available at HBBooks.com.
What are you talking about? JERUSALEM is ISRAEL'S and no one elses. Palestine wants to take our holy city. They are an insignificant nothing. They all need to be extinct after their celebration of our tragedy. There needs to be not one Palestinian left alive.
You are sick. What does the middle east have to do with our freedom? Our freedom is not threatened by them. We are talkin warfare and tactics, along with the rightfull owner of Jerusalem.
HOLY @#%#ING $#!# MAN!!!!!!!! YOU GUYS ARE BROKEN RECORDS!!!!
Who do you suggest take care of military tactics and actions? regulated militias? Man it must suck to be a Libertarian!!!!!!!!!!!
I didn't realize you were a citizen of Israel.
A young boy sponsored terrorism? I do not feel alot of sympathy for the leader. I do however have compassion for the innocent.
You are of course saying that Americans are responsible (every man woman and child) for the bombing of Serbia.
Therefore if this act were perpetuated in retaliation by Serbia, every man woman and child who died in the WTC deserved it. Congratulations on your stunning compassion for Americans.
Where would America be if France was Libertarian in 1776?
What are you talking about? JERUSALEM is ISRAEL'S and no one elses. Palestine wants to take our holy city.
They are an insignificant nothing.
They all need to be extinct after their celebration of our tragedy.
There needs to be not one Palestinian left alive.
-- How bizarre. -- You answered your own question with fanatical rants. -- Thank you.
Nor does it do for us the shift the blame onto Israel, as many here are wont to do. Certainly, fifty years of on-again, off-again support of israel has won us few friends among the Arabs (except perhaps Jordan, who depend upon Israel themselves); but the root of the current escalation in radical-Islamic terrorism can be traced directly to US interventionism in the Gulf War, not the 700-mile distant Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which was tangentially related (at best) to the interventionist War Party's battle-cry "Free Flow of Gulf Oil!!".
Frankly, Buchanan was right (and I don't often say that). Not one drop of American blood should've been spilt for Gulf oil. Even if Hussein had embargoed (doubtful, his whole purpose in invading Kuwait was a cash-grab)... just drill Alaska instead. We don't need additional enemies.
Now, the Interventionist-Warmonger chickens have come home to roost. Many an Arab man in the street, enraged at US interventionism and the child-killing blockade of a mulsim "brother" country, has now joined in Bin Laden's quest for slaughter and carnage.
All the same, they have attacked us. Libertarians and Paleo-Conservatives are, of course, absolutely right that yet again the Interventionists have gotten us into a stupid, unnecessary War...
But nonetheless, War it is.
The Interventionists tried to use embargoes and blockades to "manage" Japanese imperialism in China the 1930s just as they tried to "manage" the Middle East in the 1990s; They got us over 2,000 dead at Pearl Harbor for their efforts then, and they have gotten us perhaps 10,000 dead at the World Trade Center. Their Foreign "policy" is, if not treasonous in its very design, certainly treasonous in the American-killing and government-expanding results that it continues to obtain. First one Pearl Harbor, and now another.
But it is another Pearl Harbor.
And our response to this Attack should be as ferocious as our response to the first one. Rational thinkers recognize that yet again, the Interventionist war-mongers have blundered our beloved Republic into a vicious enemy attack.
But we have been attacked.
And one of the only legitimate purposes of the Federal Government is to defend the citizens of these United States from enemy attack, and to punish aggressors. That purpose must now be executed. "We must shock them more than they have shocked us. We must do so with a force not yet seen in human history. I repeat: we are not responding to terrorism any more. We are at war. And war requires no restraint, simply massive and unanswerable force until the enemy is not simply defeated but unconditionally destroyed." -- Andrew Sullivan.
Quoting OWK (actually I codged together his #6 and his #21 from a prior thread):
But nevertheless, we find ourselves in the situation as it exists.
Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War.
6 Posted on 09/11/2001 10:31:56 PDT by OWK
I'll help to pack your bags. Learn how to spell it before you arrive. Just proper respect.
As I said before, your concern for innocent men women and children across the globe ceases to exist when it is the 20 million dead in the Soviet Union. Serbia never once bombed us. Somolia never bombed us. Haiti never bombed us. Grenada never bombed us. Panama never bombed us.
Yet you justify our actions there and do not call for our bombing of China. How predictable.
I agree. I'm hoping that some measure of sanity returns after a while. If not, there may not be any point hanging out here anymore.
Tuor
Sure. Revolt is just so easy.
Cubans love Castro too. That's why they risk their lives on the ocean in boats, hardly fit for swimming pools, and shark infested waters to escape Cuba.
Either way Iraq needs some major bomb treatment today.
Your megalomania is what costs innocent Americans their lives.
You may enjoy locking yourself in your home and not giving a $#!$ about anyone else, but Isreal, is not only GOD's country (the same GOD we founded this nation upon), it is a necessary ally we must support in order to keep a friend in the middle east. We WILL NOT turn a blind eye.
Then go to Israel and risk your own life. You lock yourself in your home and demand others risk their lives to fight for causes you believe are worthy. Then you pretend to be heroic.
I don't think anyone is trying to *excuse* the terrorists. I'm certainly not. We're just pointing out reasons that may have brought about this action, not condoning it.
Tuor
You're saying we're not??
"All that is required for Evil to triumph, is for good men to stand by and do nothing" -- libertarian maxim on a citizen's duty.
The "Government" is a Night-Watchman you hire to defend your house. When your hired hand starts committing murder and arson against the Serbian neighborhood down the block, we do have a moral obligation to remove that Night Watchman from service, and hire someone else who will do the job as specified, without engaging in assaults on neighbors and property. If we do not constrain our "government", our hired bodyguard, from committing these acts of murder and arson, then we are become... not co-conspirators, not even accomplices -- but at least accessories after-the-fact. And for that reason -- though I would deplore any attacks on any fellow Americans -- I state as a simple matter of realistic observation that the War Party interventionists should not be surprised if some greiving Serbian whose family had been killed by US aggression, decided to attempt some kind of revenge.
But that Occam's Razor of libertarian-ethics is a two-edged blade. It does apply to the Afghans as surely as it does to Americans. And their "hired bodyguards" (if evidence establishes that case, as seems 90% likely) have now committed a horrific act of terror and slaughter against our neighborhood. They have one appropriate recourse: to immediately overthrow their "government" -- remove their "Night Watchman" from service -- and deliver them en masse to the Tribunals of the US Armed Forces for military justice. This would arguably satisfy their moral duty not to stand by, do nothing, and let Evil triumph in their land.
If they do not do this before our retaliation is readied, then they are become accessories after the fact.
And in that case, they should expect expect our retaliation to be constrained only by our raw capacity for destruction. Nothing less.
No. I am saying that by your logic, every man woman and child in America is responsible for the bombing of Serbia.
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