Replies

Even Tony Blair who despite being a domestic Labour Party socialist understood that these loons will come up with any excuse to attack us. They hate us because we invaded Iraq? What was their excuse on 9-11?

American intervention in the Middle East goes back a lot farther than that, and in fact there were many people that warned that continued interference was going to cause serious problems for America. For example

If you look at much of what Cato's foreign policy team wrote prior to 9/11, you could make the case that had U.S. policymakers paid more attention to actual "libertarian minimalist," "pre-9/11" thinking, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.
Back in 1999, for example, Cato's director of defense policy studies at the time, Ivan Eland, wrote "Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism?" In it, Eland laid out a litany of terrorist strikes against U.S. interests that were inspired by unnecessary U.S. interventions in foreign conflicts that posed little threat to our national security. Eland warned -- and bin Laden later confirmed -- that more recent U.S. interventions, in Kosovo, Somalia, and even Gulf War I, could soon provoke a catastrophic attack on the U.S. homeland.
Eland was even more prescient in his 1998 paper "Protecting the Homeland: The Best Defense is to Give No Offense." There, he wrote:
A study completed for the U.S. Department of Defense notes that historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and terrorist attacks against the United States. Attacks by terrorist groups could now be catastrophic for the American homeland. Terrorists can obtain the technology for weapons of mass terror and will have fewer qualms about using them to cause massive casualties. The assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs maintains that such catastrophic attacks are almost certain to occur. It will be extremely difficult to deter, prevent, detect, or mitigate them.
As a result, even the weakest terrorist group can cause massive destruction in the homeland of a superpower. Although the Cold War ended nearly a decade ago, U.S. foreign policy has remained on autopilot. The United States continues to intervene militarily in conflicts all over the globe that are irrelevant to American vital interests. To satisfy what should be the first priority of any security policy--protecting the homeland and its people--the United States should adopt a policy of military restraint. That policy entails intervening only as a last resort when truly vital interests are at stake. To paraphrase Anthony Zinni, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, the United States should avoid making enemies but should not be kind to those that arise.
And more Eland, from his 1999 paper "Tilting at Windmills:"
Once regarded as pinpricks by great powers, attacks by terrorist groups can now be catastrophic for the American homeland. Such weapons can cause tens of thousands or even millions of casualties. The DSB concluded that terrorists can now more rapidly obtain the technology for weapons of mass terror and have fewer qualms about using them to cause enormous casualties...
..the threat of a terrorist attacking the U.S. homeland with a weapon of mass destruction is now the greatest single threat to U.S. security.
That was written in 1999, well before the GOP had given chemical or biological terrorism a lick of real consideration.
In 2000, Eric R. Talyor warned that the U.S. homeland was woefully underprepared for a bio, nuclear, or chemical terrorist attack -- an issue no on in the GOP paid a lick of attention to until after 9/11.
And we can go back further. In the lead-up to the first Gulf War, Cato's Vice President for Foreign Policy Ted Galen Carpenter and adjunct scholar Christopher Layne wrote:
Arab grievances over Western colonialism are an open wound, and Islamic fundamentalism is superimposed upon Arab nationalism, creating an explosive political mixture. A longterm U.S. presence in the Middle East will simply fan the flames of Pan Arabism and weaken the American and Western position. It will make the United States a lightning rod for all the rage and frustration of that troubled region.
That was in 1990.
Bin Laden has made clear several times over that it is the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, the first Gulf War, the sanctions and no-fly zones imposed on Iraq, and our history of intervention in places like Somalia are what motivated him to plan, fund, and carry out the attacks of September 11. If that's true, Cato's "pre-9/11 thinking" was about as far as one could get from "unrealistic." On the contrary. It was tragically realistic.