Defense of Liberty: Two Articles On Anti-Terrorist Policy by Peikoff

Released: September 15, 1998

Fanning the Flames of Terrorism
Clinton’s “Anti-Terrorist Policy” Should Target Governments Not Individuals
By Leonard Peikoff and Andrew Lewis

     The recent attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were a bloody reminder of the threat posed by terrorists. Almost all commentators and politicians hailed America’s swift response as a positive step. In fact, however, Clinton’s assault on Osama bin Laden will only encourage the terrorists.
     In recent years, America’s reaction to terrorist acts has been a mixture of cowardly compromise and empty legalistic threats. In the two months prior to the embassy attacks alone, the Clinton Administration made three outstanding concessions. It capitulated to Libya, promising to drop all UN sanctions if it releases the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing for trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law. It closed the investigation into TWA 800, leaving forever unresolved the cause of the disaster. It emasculated the investigation of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, because evidence emerged linking the bombing to Iran, whose regime Clinton is now courting.
     By promising only trials and international courts, Clinton has made a mockery of the atrocities. Terrorists have no respect for the rule of law; that is why they are called “terrorists.” Administration officials repeatedly assert that we are engaged in a “war against terrorism.” True — and wars are not fought or won in a courtroom.
     The attacks on Osama bin Laden’s facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan were lauded by many as a welcome change from years of this legalistic claptrap. However, the attacks were deliberately toothless. Clinton aimed at a few peripheral installations, while proudly proclaiming his commitment that no “innocent” working a night shift in the Sudan would die. There are no innocents in a war — and certainly none in a chemical weapons facility. The clear implication is that saving terrorist agents is more important to the President than protecting Americans who will be killed by their weapons. In essence, Clinton has declared “open season” on Americans.
     Most important, Clinton’s attacks diverted attention from the real agents of terrorism. In blaming and targeting a single individual — in insisting that an isolated maniac was responsible and lying to deny that man’s proven connections with Middle East governments — Clinton exonerated all terrorist-sponsoring regimes, including Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and others. It is not merely that Clinton wanted to avoid offending the Afghani Taliban and the Sudanese government. He wanted to avoid offending any governments involved in terrorism, despite their proven function as protector and sanctioner of the killers. The result: he showed each and every one of these governments that they are safe to sponsor as many bin Ladens as they want.
     Terrorism is a form of war. Evil men such as bin Laden cannot wage it alone. Although bin Laden certainly deserves to die, his capacity to kill and maim is made possible only by the governments that shelter his kind. Only governments have the power to protect terrorists, sponsor or wink at their training camps, and provide or applaud their weapons, transport and all the other support necessary to enter and exit their target countries. Targeting the individual killer leaves the real mass murderer — the terrorist-loving government — unpunished, secure in the knowledge that their victim is too cowardly to retaliate in kind.
     The inevitable result of this policy is exactly what bin Laden has promised: a continuing war against Americans. The bombing of an American restaurant in South Africa a few days later was only the beginning. From Teheran to Tripoli, the governmental sponsors of terrorism will continue to protect the bin Ladens of this world until and unless they are shown that they themselves will suffer massively for doing so.
     The only way to end terrorism is through a policy of real military strikes against the aggressors. If, as the Clinton Administration tells us repeatedly, we are engaged in a war, then let us see a war, fought not with words, but with the full, untrammeled power of our military, including, as and when necessary, the use of our most potent and destructive weapons against the seat of the governments involved.
     The only alternative is the continued slaughter of Americans by terrorist bombs ignited by the cowardice of American policy-makers.

Leonard Peikoff, who founded the Ayn Rand Institute, is the foremost authority on Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. http://www.aynrand.org

Released: September 12, 2001

Fifty Years of Appeasement Led to Black Tuesday
By Leonard Peikoff Download an image of this author for print publication.)-->

       Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the United States. 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 United States. 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

The test of rights is in what existing rights will the action in question violate. If oil exploration is not in the universe of actions that the Arabia local contemplates, and no activity he does contemplate is impeded by the oil exploration, then no right of his is violated by the Exxon drillers. That is why the intent is relevant.

Just cause of violence is to prevent an imminent threat of violence or retaliate for an act of violence committed against an individual. Abstract violations of sovereignty have nothing to do with just causes of war; concrete harm to citizens does.

The technological development is relevant to the extent that it allows us to grant the oil in the desert rights to Exxon, which has the technology.

and no activity he does contemplate is impeded by the oil exploration, then no right of his is violated by the Exxon drillers. That is why the intent is relevant.

Then you admit that the Exxon drillers must succumb to the land owners. The right to be left alone and leave the oil right where it is excludes meddling by Exxon or any other technology company or nation. You're arguing in circles.

If there's oil in a zit on my forehead, you would argue that Exxon could "peacefully extract" that oil as long as they didn't intend to violate my rights. After all I left it there as a big white-headed invitation for Exxon to come pop it and turn it into gasoline.

Horsehockey. It's their nation. It's their desert. And it's their oil. They can leave it in the ground if they wish. That's what I intend on my property and I have had offers to come and get it. Thankfully I secured the mineral rights. The oil stays there as long as I retain those rights.

"I can imagine that governments might limit land ownership to citizens."

That I can't imagine. Among the natural rights that an indivudual has is the right to exchange his property at will. If he wishes to exchange property with a non-citizen, the govenrment's job is to assist in the transaction, not to ban it.

I can well imagine that a government would limit land ownership to citizens, as an extension of the idea of defense of the nation. We might want to limit immigration and communications electromagnetic spectrum (radio and t.v. channels) based on the same idea.

Another reason: ease of ability to apply the court system of the nation to citizens, as opposed to foreign holders.

Let's you and I go drill for oil [in Alaska's unclaimed land] and see how long it lasts.

Absolutely, anyone interested in drilling for oil in Alaska's wilderness should be free to do so. You used another tendentious word, "rape" as you spoke of "raping the earth's resources". If there is a concrete harm done by resource extraction, then that harm becomes the reason that makes such extraction unrightful. The absence of a government permit never becomes such reason under the natural law.

government would limit land ownership to citizens, as an extension of the idea of defense of the nation

Yes, I agree with that. As long as there is a credible concrete threat, the government may restrict trade in some specific circumstances. For example, striking a private deal with some Arabs involving weapon sales would be rightly prohibited under the circumstances. Those are temporary wartime restrictions.

I don't see facilitating the government in applying legislation is enough justification though.

ibertarian instincts will at least partly fail you

My reference to welfare indeed was made sort of by libertarian inertia; as you point out, immigrant Arabs don't fit that particualr pattern. Instead, in their case we should be asking to abolish other leftist projects, such as the so-called civil rights legislation, that compels businesses and institutions to deal with everyone in the manner that stands cultural instincts on their head. So if an employee demands to accomodate his out-of-the-ordinary cultural needs, our society sides with the demand, and it should side with the freedom of contract, and freedom of the employer to hire or not to hire without owing anyone an explanation.

I agree with your profile of Arab immigrants, but I think that the Western culture is best protected through non-coercive means.

Agreed that we could apply restrictions in trade as part of national defense, especially with weapons, and also agreed that we don't want to get carried away, like supporting the mohair industry under that guise.

I see land ownership going beyond that though, perhaps partly because it depends more on government for its protection and definition.

I don't see facilitating the government in applying legislation is enough justification though.

I don't think I understand this sentence. Perhaps you could fill in the blank for me: "...enough justification (for) _____ though."

Thanks. I didn't include that, " facilitating the government in applying legislation", among the reasons for limiting land ownership to citizens. At least those words don't stick well in my mind. Perhaps I'd put "facilitating the courts in having effective jurisdiction" ahead of your phrase.

I see limiting land ownership to citizens as a part of permanent "national defense" in two ways. One, it gives a stake to more Americans in defending the nation by reducing the number of competitors in land ownership. Two, it increases the number of American eyeballs actually looking out for foreign agents and saboteurs, and noticing "funny stuff". I see the militia as larger and stronger with more small landowners.

What Piekoff and you are suggesting is that the nations which owned claim to the terrirory could actually have their rights to decide what happens to that territory (ie; Soverignty) disregarded simply because an oil witch determined that there was oil underneath the supposed barren desert and had the technology to extract it.

The right to decide what happens to land is ownership. You seem to be operating from the premise that ownership belongs, fundamentally, to the soveriegn(whoever that is). Am I understanding you correctly?

The soverignty of any nation would have to include the ability to decide what occurs within its territory without the interference of any outside meddler.

If the people prefer a monarchy than I suppose that the only Soverign would be the King and his court.

If that nation decides that it wants to allow the whole of the territory to be shared by nomadic tribes who have no technological designs and at the same time tell oil producers that they have no claim to resources underneath the soil, then that is their prerogative and choice.

I would agree that if a country sold mineral rights and rights of way to a corporation so that they could get at the oil, it should abide by its contracts.

But the U.S. has no compelling interest to use war on behalf of any corporation that may or may not suffer from a tort or breach of contract within the borders of a sovereign nation.

And annalex appears to be saying that anyone should be able to claim un-tapped resources anywhere if the residents of that land do not have the intent of tapping those resources.

This assumes the worst of those people for one, and it assumes that tapping the resources is some God-given right which shan't be denied by the backwards people who just don't know what they have.

It assumes that our way of life is far superior to the rest of the world and that rights, rather than coming from nature or God, come from superior intellect and force.

It assumes that the people in whatever area in question do not actually have the right to direct their own destinies.

If that isn't a complete repudiation of "libertarian principles" nothing is. And I find it a bit troubling that this discussion is predicated on the assumption that this theory is consistent with libertarian principles.

No way.

The soverignty of any nation would have to include the ability to decide what occurs within its territory without the interference of any outside meddler.

I don't much like outside meddlers, but if soverignty is the ability to decide what occurs inside it's territory, then I'm an enemy of sovereignty. Government shouldn't have the ability to do anything as important as determining what happens, just the ability to enforce a few rules.

In #77 you misrepresented my position. My position is that it is rightful to claim unclaimed property when no offense occurs to the rights of present property holders. I do not say that it is rightful to claim property merely because there is no intention to claim them. For example, if a Bedouin declares that he would like to hold on to that piece of sand because he might drill for oil later, then Exxon should respect his wishes as long as his claim is material and credible. By that I mean that the Bedouin should travel through the land or otherwise be present on it; and he should somehow make his intention more than an empty abstract intent. If the Bedouin says to Exxon: Sorry, I just contacted the French engineers that might rent me their drilling equipment, and besides I enjoy the sunset over that particular sand dune, -- then perhaps, the Exxon should not claim but negotiate.

I do object to the Arabian (or Alaskan) government simply claiming that anyone who wishes to drill inside the sovereignty perimeter needs a permit from the government. The government is there to protect the rights of its citizens. If there is no objection coming from the Bedouin or from an Alaskan, then a foreigner should be able to extract the resource.

So, to answer directly your question in #78, if the Alaskans do not want Exxon (or a foreign oil company) to drill there, they have to say so. If the Alaskan government doesn't want the drilling but cannot connect its (government's) wants to any popular demand, then that government has no legitimacy in doing so.

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