Posted on 09/13/2001 2:24:38 PM PDT by danielmryan
The following editorial has been produced by the Ayn Rand Institute's MediaLink department. Visit MediaLink at http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/.
Released: September 12, 2001
Fifty Years of Appeasement Led to Black Tuesday
By Leonard Peikoff
Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The inevitable climax was the tens of thousands of deaths on September 11, 2001—the blackest day in our history, so far. The Palestinians, among others, responded by dancing in the streets and handing out candy.
Fifty years ago, Truman and Eisenhower ceded to the Arabs the West's property rights in oil—although that oil properly belonged to those in the West whose science and technology made its discovery and use possible.
This capitulation was not practical, but philosophical. The Arab dictators were denouncing the wealthy egoistic West. They were crying that the masses of their poor needed our sacrifice; that oil, like all property, is owned collectively, by virtue of birth; and that they knew all this by means of ineffable or otherworldly emotion. Our Presidents had no answer. Implicitly, they were ashamed of the Declaration of Independence. They did not dare to answer aloud that Americans, rightfully, were motivated by the selfish desire to pursue personal happiness in a rich, secular, individualist society.
The Arabs embodied in extreme form every idea—selfless duty, anti-materialism, faith or feeling above science, the supremacy of the group—which our universities and churches, and our own political Establishment, had long been preaching as the essence of virtue. When two groups, our leadership and theirs, accept the same basic ideas, the most consistent wins.
After property came liberty. The Iranian dictator Khomeini threatened with death a British author—and with destruction his American publisher—if they exercised their right to free speech. He explained that the book in question offended the religion of his people. The Bush Administration looked the other way.
After liberty came American life itself—as in Iran's support of the massacre of our soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and the Afghanistan-based assault on our embassies in East Africa. Again, the American response was unbridled appeasement: a Realpolitikisch desire not to "jeopardize relations" with the aggressor country, covered up by a purely rhetorical vow to punish the guilty, along with an occasional pretend bombing. By now, the world knows that we are indeed a paper tiger.
We have not only appeased terrorists, we have actively created them. The Reagan Administration—holding that Islamic fundamentalists were our ideological allies in the fight against the atheistic Soviets—poured money and expertise into Afghanistan to create an ever-growing band of terrorists recruited from all over the Mideast. Most of these terrorists knew what to do with their American training; their goal was not to save Afghanistan.
The final guarantee of American impotence is the bipartisan proclamation that a terrorist is an individual alone responsible for his actions, and that "we must try each before a court of law." This is tantamount, while under a Nazi aerial bombardment, to seeking out and trying the pilots involved while ignoring Hitler and Germany.
Terrorists exist only through the sanction and support of the governments behind them. Their lethal behavior is that of the regimes that make them possible. Their killings are not crimes, but acts of war. The only proper response to such acts is war in self-defense.
We do not need more evidence to "pinpoint" the perpetrators of any one of these atrocities, including the latest and most egregious—we already have total certainty with regard to the governments primarily responsible for the repeated slaughter of Americans in recent years. We must now use our unsurpassed military to destroy all branches of the Iranian and Afghani governments, regardless of the suffering and death this will bring to the many innocents caught in the line of fire. We must wipe out the terrorist training camps or sanctuaries, and eliminate any retaliatory military capability—and thereby terrorize and paralyze all the tyrannies watching, who will now know what is in store for them if they choose in any form to attack the U.S. That will be the end of the terrorists.
Our missiles and occupation troops, however, will be effective only if they are preceded by our President's morally righteous statement that we intend hereafter to defend by every means possible each American's right to his property, his liberty, and his secure enjoyment of life here on earth.
To those who oppose war, I ask: If not now, when? How many more corpses are necessary before this country should take action?
The choice today is mass death in the United States or mass death in the terrorist nations. President Bush must decide whether it is his duty to save Americans or the governments who seek to kill them.
Leonard Peikoff is the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, California. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Send Feedback
It was never ours to begin with. We made our profit off that oil and continue to do so. It aint ours.
Do you even know what the word appeasement means? Your use of the word suggests you have no idea.
Huh? I support what was done. The CIA did a great job. They put the weapons in the hands of the shooters, the nutcases. That was exactly what we should have done. Too bad those nuts are now our enemy. But at least they don't have boomer subs off both our coasts.
We eliminated the Soviet Empire. We can deal with these pretenders to power.
Or would you prefer the Soviets still be in Afghanistan, perhaps have moved into Pakistan and the Berlin Wall still be standing?
Not me..and not the 400 million who are free today because of what Reagan, Thatcher, the Pope and millions of others did.
Hope you and yours are safe and well. I agree that the portion of the essay you posted looks very like common sense.
But this part is sheer silliness: Fifty years ago, Truman and Eisenhower ceded to the Arabs the West's property rights in oil—although that oil properly belonged to those in the West whose science and technology made its discovery and use possible.
By this reasoning the person who discovered the moon shares property rights to it with the folks who developed the technology that got Apollo 11 up there.
Actually most of the first three-quarters of the essay rest on dubious foundations.
Kindest Regards
Let me chime in, briefly, with regard to us 'switching sides' with regard to Afghanistan:
One of the main reasons why the Roman Empire collapsed was that they let barabarians do their fighting for them, to the point where the Romans flat-out depended on them.
Try placing this in the context of what's happened this week - including 9/11.
This however is about what I have come to expect from the Ayn Rand Institute.
First: what could Ronald Reagan have done when the Soviets attacked Afganistan. letting the Afgans hang out to dry would have been cost effective but would it have been prudant or wise? of course not.
Second: Yes I support taking out terrorists. I also support shutting down countries that have no democratic values and putting them under new management. However if the West steals these countries' oil again and stations troops to gaurd what has been stolen than the west is unworthy of my support
Pardon me while I puke.
Incidentally, ad hominen attacks are always the last refuge of the intellectually banktrupt (kinda like liberals)
Ad hominem endorsements of morally bankrupt pseudo-philosophers such as Ayn Rand are no better.
Who cares anymore if it's "stealing", they are using that oil to kill as many of us as they can. Let the oil go to pay for the 11,000 body bags ordered for our New York citizens. The Islamic people have made their decision, now it's time for paybacks.
Very good idea.
You libertarian-bashers just cannot accept the fact that 60 years of meddling in the affairs of other soverign nations is the main contributing factor in US becoming targets. And another thing that you guys cannot accept is that the only difference between what those arab bastards did to us and what we did to Yugoslavia is that the arabs had the balls to die for their cause.
Get used to these kind of things happening in the future, because if the supposedly freedom-loving members of FR can't accept the need to re-think our intreventionallist foreign policy, there is no chance that it will change enough to get us out of the bullseye.
I do. If we can rationalize it abroad, we can rationalize it at home. Forsake your morals and perish.
As reparations. What do you think those skyscrapers are worth in dollars?
Once the debt is paid, then whatever nation it is we're talking about, should get back control over their property.
And frankly this doesn't look like the work of a Nation but of a small group.
Punishing the entire nation including the innocent civilians is not justice.
BUMP
I wasn't assuming it was only Afghanistan that was the problem. I've seen speculation on threads here today... if we do invade, that we should remove all the Saddams, all the militant muslims from the heads of countries.. And when we withdraw (like Japan/Germany) arrange it so the new governments are democracies and look on us favorably.
What if we do find out Iraq directed or financed this..?
We can easily land there.
Everybody's a critic.
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