20 September 2010
By Jacob G. Hornberger I suspect that the reason that so many Americans
have gone off on the anti-Islamic kick is their
steadfast refusal to confront the fact that the 9/11
attacks were the direct consequence of the bad things
their federal government had been doing to Muslims in
the Middle East prior to 9/11. It’s as if people
perceive the federal government to be a sacred god,
one that is all-knowing and all-good. Woe to the blasphemer and the heretic who dare to
point out that the 9/11 attacks were nothing more than
retaliation for the horrific things that the U.S.
Empire was doing to Muslims prior to 9/11. One is
simply not supposed to say such things. If you do,
you’re labeled an America-hater, as if the federal
government and our country were one and same thing.
No, you’re supposed to just continue to blindly
repeat the mantra: Islam is bad and the Muslims are
coming here to America to establish Sharia law. Our
government must continue to protect us from the coming
invasion. That’s why the Empire has been occupying
Iraq and Afghanistan for longer than World War II — to
protect us from Muslims … well, except for the fact
that the regimes that the U.S Empire is protecting in
Iraq and Afghanistan happen to be Muslim regimes. Prior to 9/11, we here at The Future of Freedom
Foundation predicted the 9/11 attacks. That doesn’t
make us brilliant soothsayers. It didn’t take a rocket
scientist to make such a prediction. We knew what the
U.S. Empire was doing in the Middle East, we knew the
tremendous anger it was generating, and we knew that
ultimately there would be people who would retaliate.
Since the U.S. Empire was doing the bad things to
countries that were predominantly Muslim, it also
didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that the
people who would inevitably retaliate would be
Muslims. Duh! In other to avoid having to confront these
unpleasant facts, all too many Americans, however,
have gone off on this anti-Islamic kick, claiming that
the 9/11 attacks had nothing to do with retaliation
but instead everything to do with some sort of
worldwide Muslim campaign to conquer the world. Take a look at these two articles that FFF
published in 1999 and 2000 — that is, prior to the
9/11 attacks: Terrorism, War, and Crises by Jacob G. Hornberger
Here is what I wrote in part in January 2000 — 18
months prior to the 9/11/2001 attacks: Throughout all the hype and hysteria, U.S.
government officials behaved as if they were
innocent babes threatened by people who simply have
an overwhelming desire to kill Americans for no good
reason at all. But the truth is that there are plenty of people
in the world who have very good reason to hate the
U.S. government. If we ignore this, we do so at our
peril. For example, look at what our government has done
to the people of Iraq. Ever since the supposed end
of the Persian Gulf War, we have maintained a
vicious, brutal embargo against the Iraqi people….
The embargo against Iraq has caused extreme
suffering, in terms of malnutrition and health
conditions, not for Iraq's ruling elite but rather
for the Iraqi people, and especially for their
children. How many Iraqi babies have died because of
the U.S. embargo? How many women have died during
childbirth because of the embargo? How many fathers
have seen their children's growth stunted?.... If there had been a terrorist attack, you can be
100 percent certain that the U.S. government would
have used the crisis as an opportunity to march
America farther down the road to total destruction
of our civil liberties…. There is one and only one solution to the problem
of terrorism by foreigners against Americans: for
the American people to put a permanent end to
state-sponsored terrorism by their own government.
Here is what Sheldon wrote in December 1999—20
months prior to the 9/11 attacks: If 2000 comes in with a terrorist's bang, the
blame must be squarely placed at the feet of our
foreign-policy makers. Of course, the perpetrator is
directly responsible for the deaths and injuries of
innocent civilians, but that doesn't alter the fact
that the foreign-policy establishment, from
President Clinton on down, are accessories. They
created the indispensable conditions. Too extreme a statement? Ponder this: someone
recently asked when the last act of foreign
terrorism was committed against Switzerland. Isn't
it interesting that countries that mind their own
business aren't targets of violence committed by
citizens of other nations? Maybe there's a lesson
there somewhere…. Apologists for activist government never tire of
telling us that the benevolent state is our
protector and that without it we'd be at the mercy
of monsters. It is about time that we understood
that the U.S. government does more to endanger the
American people than any imagined monsters around
the world…. There is a way to make the United States
terrorist-proof: pursue a foreign policy proper to a
constitutional republic, the same policy proposed by
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In a word:
nonintervention. Let countries and populations work
out their own disputes. Meddling simply widens and
intensifies conflicts. Was the U.S. Empire waging a religious crusade
against Islam when it was doing bad things to Muslims
in the Middle East prior to 9/11? Of course not. The
Empire was simply pursuing its primary foreign-policy
objective — regime change — ousting recalcitrant
rulers in foreign countries and replacing them with
pro-U.S. rulers who would do the bidding of the
Empire. That’s how the Empire works — it engages in
coups, assassinations, invasions, foreign aid,
occupations, kidnappings, executions, and the like to
effect regime change abroad and to exterminate those
who resist. In order to arrive at a correct solution to a
problem, it is necessary to arrive at a correct
diagnosis. The problems facing our country are not
rooted in the Islamic religion or with Muslims. The
problems are rooted in U.S. foreign policy. Thus, the solution is obvious: Stop the
Muslim-bashing and simply dismantle the U.S.
government’s overseas military empire, bring all the
troops home and discharge them, terminate all
governmental interventions in the affairs of other
countries, and restore a limited-government
constitutional republic to our land. Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
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