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.
Make no mistake, bin Laden is targeting us because we are still the beacon of freedom and hope, and because we have chosen to enter certain alliances to ensure that we are strong enough economically to help those countries that share these ideals. Which do we give up? Do we tell the rest of the world that we don't care if they yearn for freedom, we're too scared to help them? Do we tell our citizens that we don't care enough about your pursuit of happiness to allow you to seek out the best sources of products?
Heh! Right. And he doesn't mention 170 nations either! Fortunately, context is provided by his other writings and by that of Madison as well. Sufficient attention is focused on the realistic navigation of distant waters and the immediate economic interest of western Europe.
You think that Bill Clinton's legacy of interventionist warmongering is something to preserve??
You silly mongoose! Pure bait and switch. You did not limit your criticism of American foreign policy to Clinton, or, for that matter, Bush. You mentioned our provocotive policies in Asia as an invitation to Pearl Harbor.
You should have the sense to realize that our retaliation requires a resolve and determination which is independent of political positioning for policies following. Any undermining of this resolve (and I've heard other viewpoints, ie the lack of Bush's emeliorative policies in the middle east) is inappropriate at best, treasonous and dangerous at worst.
Get a life Harry the Clown - preferrably elsewhere.
Oh please. You torture me with laughter. Soon I'll have to make a mad dash for the john.
Harry the Clown couldn't even get his original supporters to donate money. They know he's a political joke living in a surreal world. I suppose a clown like Harry doesn't mind a few sompeting jesters like you to resonate just how ridiculous he is.
You reply: Did you laugh derisively when Bush the Elder and his supporters,including Limbaugh,described a potential embargo of oil by Saddam as a legitimate cause for war?
What I remember is Hussein being given half a year by Bush the Elder to evacuate Kuwait before a single bomb dropped on Iraqi soil.
Successive regimes in our country have taken military action arrogantly against many and frequently where our interest was,at least,highly suspect.As a result,Browne's point as I understand it,we may be reaping the whirlwind.
What people like you can't get through your skulls is that just because some of us don't subscribe to Browne's Pollyanna Barney philosophy doesn't mean we all shout "my country wrong or right!" The history books are filled with suggestions and baldfaced evidence that "American interests" were really simply corporate interests and nothing more. I am not denying that -- I wouldn't dare. Capiche?
Your assertion that we were some kind of altruists in confronting the Japanese rather than Imperial rivals gives me little hope.This arrogant and deluded posture that it was the U.S.'s duty to save the yellow peoples from one of their own is not only untrue,but the inverse corollary that we know what's good for everyone laughable.
What a lying weasel you are! I said nothing of the sort! THIS is what I said:
The Japanese struck at the USA when it would not cooperate with their attempt to make Japan the power of Far East Asia and the Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand). Are you suggesting that it was the United States' obligation to sell fuel to the Japanese? Should Roosevelt have endorsed the Japanese version of "manifest destiny?" Would that have fit Browne's definition of "minding our own business?"
I laid out the way Hirohito had drawn up the projected Japanese Empire as the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" -- was or was not Roosevelt, under Barney Browne's principles, morally obligated to help Tokyo build their empire to avoid their being 'provoked by [their] anger' at the United States?
So often, I hear people say, "Well, the Japanese had to attack," as if the USA fired the first shot! What a pile of steaming, stinking nonsense! A tiny island nation above the equator that imports 4/5 of its fuel has business trying expand its influence as far as north of the Antarctic without the cooperation of the governments of its importers? The plan was doornail-dead as it was proposed.
I note that you don't want near the hot potato of Pearl Harbor with the despicable conduct of Roosevelt,Marshall;in your reality,evidently,it is alright for your government to have your own servicemen as lambs to the slaughter to serve their 'higher purpose'.
In what passes for YOUR reality, you know what would have happened if things had gone differently. I don't make such claims. Do you read tea leaves, too? Do you know Cleo, the Jamaican psychic? You make just about as much sense!
The fact remains -- Hamilton is advocating a policy of localized protection of clearly defined US National Interests. And Hamilton was probably the most interventionist of the Founders. I will side with Washington and Patrick Henry anyday.
You silly mongoose! Pure bait and switch. You did not limit your criticism of American foreign policy to Clinton, or, for that matter, Bush. You mentioned our provocotive policies in Asia as an invitation to Pearl Harbor. You should have the sense to realize that our retaliation requires a resolve and determination which is independent of political positioning for policies following. Any undermining of this resolve (and I've heard other viewpoints, ie the lack of Bush's emeliorative policies in the middle east) is inappropriate at best, treasonous and dangerous at worst.
Neb, all that I am saying NOW is what quite a lot of Paleos and Libertarians have said on this site for years: We do not need to be involved in these third-world crap-holes. There is no National Interest in these engagements. These policies make enemies we do not need in places which do not serve our citizenry's interests in the slightest.
The only thing that has changed (and changed drastically) is NOW, we have crystal-clear evidence of just how viciously these enemies hate us.
Well, they must now be eradicated. And once we have done so, there is nothing "treasonous" about asking, "must we continue policies which have proven so effective at generating hateful enemies in places half-way around the globe?" It would be far more treasonous to continue the same Interventionist policies which have proven so effective in creating these enemies in the first place, have done so before, and will do so again.
??? ON what evidence?
I don't see the Germans storming our gates. Nor do I see the Brits doing so. Let's see...who else... the French (from the French & Indian war, prior to the American Revolution where we fought with England against France...)
I don't see the Japanese hijacking American planes... Nor Italy, Spain, Mexico...
Your pride is unchristian, first off. But I'll let God deal with you on that one.
Now as for Alaska, we need to drill there, but there is no way it can solely supply all our crude needs for the hundreds years to come. I agree that Alaska needs to be opened up. But try getting that past the Liberals. Did you even see the last Zogby pole on it?
You see this is why I say I deal with reality and you don't. You sit there with your "if only", while I understand that to even get a small amount of drilling in Alaska is a tremendous task. There is no other way to go about it. Do you just want to pretend that treehugger liberals don't exist in our nation? Or should we go kill them?
What a load of crud. bin Laden is targeting us because we insist on supporting the Zionists in their mad war with the Islamists. To Palestinians we are the exact opposite of a a beacon of freedom and hope. How exactly does supporting the Isreali occupation of Palestine help share these ideals?
Israel supports freedom? Don’t make me laugh. Israel supports freedom for Israeli Jews. No one else counts, especially not Palestinians. Not even Americans.
Let’s get some perspective here. Which country is occupying the other? Israel or Palestine? Which country has expelled hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and refuses to talk about compensation, much less a right of return? Which country expropriates land in the other – again w/o compensation – in order to subsidize colonization and, through that, the gradual strangulation of the other? Which country sends helicopter gunships into the other to strike terror into the citizenry? Which country randomly bulldozes peoples’ homes in response to children throwing rocks at the occupying forces?
Yes, I do.
I appreciate your desire to save face, but you can't bluff when your opponent knows as well as you do you're holding a Seven-High poker hand, Tex. I'm simply observing a fact.
Your pride is unchristian, first off. But I'll let God deal with you on that one.
Observations of fact are not expressions of "pride". They're simply observations of fact.
Now as for Alaska, we need to drill there, but there is no way it can solely supply all our crude needs for the hundreds years to come.
"All of our energy problems could have been solved in the 70's with the huge discovery of oil on Gull Island, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. One of the richest oil fields on earth belongs to the American people. There is more pure grade oil there than in all of Saudi Arabia. Gull Island contains as much oil and natural gas as Americans could use in 200 years. Many, many other oil fields of the same high quality crude exist throughout and around Alaska," according to Williams. -- http://www.infowars.com/gunther.html
Are Mr. Williams estimates correct?
Not being an industry expert, I'm not one to judge.
But I'd certainly be in favor of finding out.
I agree that Alaska needs to be opened up. But try getting that past the Liberals. Did you even see the last Zogby pole on it? You see this is why I say I deal with reality and you don't. You sit there with your "if only", while I understand that to even get a small amount of drilling in Alaska is a tremendous task. There is no other way to go about it. Do you just want to pretend that treehugger liberals don't exist in our nation? Or should we go kill them?
No, my short-sighted "realist" friend. You outmaneuver them.
WASHINGTON (AP) The Teamsters will start airing radio ads this week in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The campaign aligns the union with the Bush administration and sets it apart from much of organized labor. The 60-second spots will air on radio stations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia this week as the House prepares to vote on the issue and other energy proposals. The ads will cost at least $20,000, said Teamsters spokesman Rob Black.
Pennsylvania and West Virginia were selected because of the impact energy exploration could have on their economies, union officials said. More than 200 businesses in those states are involved in Alaskan petroleum exploration. The ads say that opening the refuge could mean 75,000 new jobs "Good jobs, union jobs" with 40,000 of those in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Environmentalists get slammed for being "so intolerant and excessive" while jobs are being lost and families are hurting. -- www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b6707c9013e.htm
Because you can count on this: if the United States embarks on a serious war of destruction against the oil-rich radical-Islamic states of the world, gas prices are going well over $2.00 a gallon. In a real War, that's probably extremely conservative on my part.
In that "environment", the environmentalists will rightly be seen as the enemies of the US Consumer and of US Labor. We will have another opportunity to renounce our reliance on foreign oil supplies, advocate the full development of our (almost mind-boggling) Alaskan reserves, and split the Left in the process. Don't let your imagined "realism" piss away yet again the opportunity to cut ourselves loose once and for all from the soft economic tyranny of the Oil dictators. Don't continue to blindly swallow the Interventionist line that we "need" the Middle East, so we "must" spend tens of billions a year maintaining an "active presence" in a region which hates us all the more the longer we stay there. These policies are blind, stupid, and counterproductive. Once this War is over, it will be high time for you to swallow your pride, admit your stupidity, and renounce your support of foreign military adventurism which has brought us NOTHING but blood and sorrow. Instead, for the love of your fellow-citizens, have the moral integrity and strength of will to carry the battle home to the political fields of the Unites States, setting our political enemies against eachother in a battle of "Union Jobs versus tundra mold" and build a genuinely self-sufficient energy infrastructure here, in the United States, rather than pretending that by your much-vaunted "realism" we can somehow maintain our Liberty and Security by the machinations of empire-building abroad -- a policy which, in fact, costs us both Liberty and Security, as a "realist" study of the history of the world's Empires would make immediately apparent even to your clouded mind...
...if you're not too blind to see it, that is, a bet on which I would not lay good odds.
As I said: Once this War is over, it will be high time for you to swallow your pride, admit your stupidity, and renounce your support of foreign military adventurism which has brought us NOTHING but blood and sorrow. Have the moral integrity and strength of will to carry the battle home to the political fields of the Unites States, setting our political enemies against eachother in a battle of "Union Jobs versus tundra mold" and build a genuinely self-sufficient energy infrastructure here, in the United States. Do NOT continue to support pissing this opportunity away on foreign wars.
Somewhere you obviously do not reside. Your assertion that Palestinian blustering somehow is worse than Isreali actions is typical of the knee-jerks who automatically defend any Isreali action, no matter how outrageous, while simultaneously denouncing any Palestinian response, no matter how ineffectual.
Words justify gunships. Yeah right.
Maybe your blind hatred of Jews allows you to delude yourself into believing that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. If so, then you will be shocked when someone next to you screams "Allahu akhbar" (Allah is great) just before he blows himself and you up.
Yes, Palestinian rejoicing at the WTC disaster is disgusting. It is also completely irrelevant (and in some horrible way, it is also understandable). I remember the old children's rhyme about how names can never hurt me. They can't. But Isreali gunships most assuredly can.
What happened 50 years ago is also irrelevant. There were many atrocities on both sides, including terrorist acts by the current Prime Minister of Isreal. The modern-day occupation of Palestine and the repeated abrogation of the rights of Palestinians, including the destruction of their property and murders by the occupying forces, is very pertinent though.
You, sir, are a liar. You are lying to me. More importantly, you are lying to yourself.
I've been flipping through the thread at random, which is why I'm replying to this after a later comment.
Like the anti-American quasi-Talibanist you are, you've been calling for us to become just like them and accusing everyone who differs with sedition or treason, but that comment is the closest I've seen to actual sedition on this thread. At this time in our country's history, we simply can't afford to have people like you mouthing off. Just go away. Shut up. Leave.
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