12 January 2017
By Jacob G. Hornberger
When the next terrorist attack against Americans takes place, you can be
certain that there will still be at least a few Americans, including within
the Pentagon and the CIA, who will come out with their standard line about how
the terrorists are motivated by their hatred for America's freedom and values.
A few others will claim that the attacks are part of some centuries-old
caliphate conspiracy by Muslims to take over the world.
Consider this: According to a story on Alternet, the U.S. government dropped
at least 26,171 bombs in seven Muslim-majority countries in 2016. In a related
article on the same subject, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin said that
this amounts to three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the purpose of dropping bombs is to
kill or maim people and destroy homes, businesses, and other property. Of
course, it's impossible to say exactly how many people have been killed and
maimed and how much property has been destroyed by all the bombs the U.S.
government has dropped in the Middle East for the past 25 years but it has to
be substantial.
Question: Is it possible — just possible — that all those thousands of bombs
and all that death and destruction bear a relationship to anti-American
terrorism? That is, is it possible — just possible — that when Muslims or
others commit acts of terrorism against Americans, they are doing it to
retaliate for all the death and destruction that has been wreaked on them by
the U.S. government?
Statists say no. They say that all those bombs and all that death and
destruction bear no relationship to anti-American terrorism. They say the
bombs, deaths, and destruction are irrelevant in the sense that the families
who lose loved ones or whose homes or businesses are destroyed don't really
care about that. They don't get angry or upset, statists say, when their loved
ones are killed or maimed or their homes and businesses are destroyed by some
foreign regime. It's all about hatred for America's freedom and values or
about some supposed centuries-old caliphate conspiracy.
When you ask such statists why they had no concern for anti-American
terrorists from the Middle East and Afghanistan during the Cold War, they are
stymied. They know full well that throughout the Cold War their bugaboo was
the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam, communists, and
communism. Not one single peep about those Muslim terrorists who supposedly
hated America for its freedom and values or about the caliphaters who were
coming to subject America to the Koran and Sharia law.
In fact, when it was the communists, rather than the Pentagon, who were
occupying Afghanistan, statists actually cheered when the Pentagon partnered
with Muslim religious extremists in Afghanistan in the attempt to oust the
Soviets from that country.
Why is the issue of motivation so important? Because if a sufficient number of
Americans will finally come to recognize that anti-American terrorism is
rooted in the death and destruction that the U.S. government has been wreaking
and continues to wreak in the Middle East and Afghanistan, there will be
growing demands to finally bring all the troops home.
That would mean no more anti-American terrorism, which would mean no more need
for a war on terrorism, which would mean no more infringements on our rights
and liberties in the purported attempt to ''keep us safe.''
If we are lucky, enough people might even also begin asking a fundamentally
important question: Given that the national-security establishment was brought
into existence to fight the Cold War, why can't we now bring an end to
America's military-CIA empire and restore a constitutional republic to our
land?
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in
economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the
University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He
also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become
director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has
advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the
country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and
he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full
Context.
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