Some thoughts on the subject of terrorism, for what it's worth.
I think it is very important to understand why we were attacked.
Understanding why someone attacked you may help you avoid a similar
situation in the future, for one thing.
Our President has given us the official reason: we were attacked because we
represent "freedom" and "democracy".
The alleged mastermind says it was because of our interventionist foreign
policy.
Others say it is fueled by fundamentalist Islamic hatred of western culture.
If the President is right, then we were attacked for no good reason. If
Bin-Ladin is right, then we should realize that innocent Americans are going
to be targeted because of our governments interventionist foreign policy.
Many other Western countries are wealthy, have an extensive industrial and
commercial presence overseas, support religious freedoms, democracy, export
their culture, products and services, yet seem to have much less of a
problem with terrorism than does the U.S.
In 1997 it was estimated that roughly 1/3 of all terrorist attacks worldwide
are perpetrated against US targets [1]. This is high considering that the
US [unlike other nations targeted for terrorism like Algeria, Turkey, the
UK] has no internal civil war or quarrels with its neighbors that spawn
terrorism.
I think there is good evidence to support the view that terrorists strike at
the U.S. because they consider Washington to be at war with them. As the
Pentagon's Defense Science Board surmised several years ago, "Historical
data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international
situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States."
[2] This view is supported with over 60 examples in the Cato paper "Does
U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record",
available online at http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-050es.html. Even
if some terrorist attacks against the U.S. are a response to "what it is",
rather than "what it does", the incidents cataloged in this December 1998
paper suggest that many terrorist attacks can be traced back to an
interventionist foreign policy.
IMHO, terrorism cannot be understood or effectively dealt with in isolation
from American foreign policy. Terrorism is a tactic, and it is
intellectually confusing to declare war on a tactic. You can kill individual
terrorists, but if the cause of their hatred is our interventionist foreign
policy, more will just take their place.
What to do now?
Joseph Sobran recently remarked that it is a lot easier to avoid falling
into an abyss than to climb out of one. Like other Libertarians he had
warned for decades that our overseas interventions would prove costly. This
has proven so. When he was asked what we should do now, he said he felt like
the doctor who warned his patient that smoking could cause cancer. The
patient ignored him, smoked heavily, got cancer as a result and then asked
the doctor, "ok, you're so smart, what do I do now?" There may be no great
answer.
I fear that no amount of federalization of airport security, whiz-bang
technology, cruise missiles, mile-wide atomic helicopters, offices of
homeland security or electronic surveillance will stop Americans from being
attacked if our government continues to generate such hatred abroad. But
the political leadership of the U.S. does not want to change its
interventionist foreign policy, instead, it will insist that Americans give
up their freedoms in exchange for promised security.
I recently read that a widely accepted definition of terrorism is "the
deliberate use of force against civilians to achieve political goals." I
don't make an exception for state terrorism.
May 12, 1996: On "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl brought up the subject of the
effects of the U.S. led embargo on Iraq with then-Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright: "We have heard that a half a million children have died.
I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?"
Albright did not dispute the figure or the causality, but instead remarked:
".we think the price is worth it."
Washington authorities have an often stated policy of no relief from
blockade as long as Saddam stays in power[3].
How realistic or just is this policy of demanding that dictators get
themselves killed or at least thrown out of power (and then tried for "war
crimes") and then starves the nations' innocent civilians on and on for
years while nothing changes?
How convenient for our leaders that most talking heads on TV use their
dictionary. Hey, maybe it's just me, but I can't shake the notion that our
gov/media is pushing the view that when terrorists attack, they're
terrorizing. When we attack, we're retaliating. When they respond to our
retaliation with further attacks, they're terrorizing again. When we respond
with further attacks, we're retaliating again.
Like "collateral damage." I heard it first used by the Pentagon during the
Gulf War to describe the deaths of innocent Iraqis during the massive
bombing campaign in 1991 and it seemed like an attempt to obscure and
rationalize these deaths through Orwellian jargon. "Collateral damage" also
was invoked to describe the effects of attacks on civilian passenger trains,
refugee convoys and the headquarters of Radio Television Serbia during the
war in Kosovo.
October 6, 1998: Denis Halliday, Assistant Secretary General of the UN, gave
a speech on Capitol Hill, citing a "conservative estimate" that Iraqi "child
mortality for children under five years of age is from five to six thousand
per month." Halliday states: "There are many reasons for these tragic and
unnecessary deaths, including the poor health of mothers, the breakdown of
health services, the poor nutritional intake of both adults and young
children and the high incidence of water-born diseases as a result of the
collapse of Iraq's water and sanitation system--and, of course, the lack of
electric power to drive that system, both crippled by war damage following
the 1991 Gulf War."
6,000 children dead per month for 10 years, but I bet Saddam still eats
pretty good. Now there's a foreign policy to win friends and influence
people. Half a million kids; that's like 1 or 2 WTC's a month.for 10 years.
Why would anyone hate us? Double America's current justifiable rage and
multiply by 10. Does anyones calculator have that many digits?
Pat Fallon
pfallon@ptd.net
Notes:
[1] US Dept of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism:1997.
[2] The Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DoD Responses
to Transnational Threats, U.S. Dept. of Defense, October 1997, Vol 1, Final
Report, p.15.
[3] May 20, 1991: President George Bush: "At this juncture, my view is we
don't want to lift these sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power."
James Baker, Secretary of State: "We are not interested in seeing a
relaxation of sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power."
March 26, 1997: Albright, in her first major foreign policy address as
Secretary of State: "We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq
complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction,
sanctions should be lifted. As Secretary of State, I have to deal in the
realm of reality and probability. And the evidence is overwhelming that
Saddam Hussein's intentions will never be peaceful."
November 7, 1997: Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz: "The American
government says openly, clearly, that it's not going to endorse lifting the
sanctions on Iraq unless the leadership of Iraq is changed."
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