Why The Sock Over Paris? The Evil And Immoral Interventionist Policies
01 December 2015By Jacob G.
Hornberger
I can understand why people are horrified over the terrorist attacks in Paris
but, for the life of me, I just cannot understand why they are shocked by it.
People who are shocked by the attacks are definitely suffering from a severe
case of obtuseness and denial.
Ever since 9/11, we libertarians have been saying that terrorism is one of
the prices that people pay for living under an empire, one that engages in
foreign interventions. Have all those shocked people not been listening?
For example, six years ago I wrote an article entitled ''Terrorism Is a Cost
of Empire,'' in which I pointed out that no one should be surprised when
terrorism strikes because that's just part and parcel of living under an
empire. I wrote:
But as I've pointed out for years, the U.S. Empire has become the world's
biggest terrorist-producing machine. The more people it kills over there, the
more the ranks of those who wish to retaliate against Americans are swelled.
In other words, the pro-empire advocates say, ''We're over there to kill them
before they come over here and kill us.'' But what's actually happening is
this: They're coming over here to kill us because the Empire is over there
killing them….
What the American people need to finally realize is that with Empire comes
costs, including: The constant threat of terrorist retaliation.''
We have actually been pointing this out since the 9/11 attacks. No, correct
that, we were also saying it before the 9/11 attacks.
Yet look at the editorial pages and op-ed pages of the mainstream press. All
you see are angry denunciations of ISIS, terrorists, and radical Muslims and
reasons why we need to keep bombing, assassinating, and killing them. You
won't find anything about terrorist blowback from U.S., French, and British
imperialism and interventionism in the Middle East within the pages of the
mainstream press.
Take a wild guess what the editorialists and op-ed writers are saying should
be done about the Paris attacks. You guessed — bomb ISIS, kill more
terrorists, support foreign regimes, and refortify the U.S. national-security
state, both military-wise and with respect to intelligence-gathering
machinery (i.e., more secret surveillance schemes to keep us safe from the
enemies the Empire produces). In other words, double down and keep doing what
you've been doing and expect a different result.
What does it take for these people to finally be able to confront the evil
and immoral interventionist policies of their own government, policies that
have brought into existence (as I pointed out in that article six years ago),
the greatest terrorist producing machine in history? After all, for every
person they kill in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, ten more
people hate the United States as well as its partners in the ''coalition of
the willing.'' As the French are discovering, some of those angry people are
even willing to commit suicide in revenge for the people that France, Great
Britain, and the United States have killed in the Middle East, including
countries that once suffered as British and French colonies (e.g., Iraq and
Syria).
We see this mindset of denial and obtuseness in Christian churches all across
America. Christian ministers exhort their congregation to pray for peace in
the Middle East and an end to terrorism in that part of the world. At the
same time, they exhort them to pray for the troops for ''defending our
freedoms'' here at home.
In other words, they're praying that people in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Yemen, etc. stop resisting the United States, France, and Great Britain. If
all those terrorists would just stop opposing what these three colonial
powers want to accomplish in the Middle East, there would be peace.
Of course, it never occurs to such ministers to exhort people to pray for the
troops to be brought home and for the U.S. Empire to finally leave the people
of the Middle East alone. They also never exhort their congregations to pray
for the victims of the U.S. Empire in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and
elsewhere. Instead, the Empire has been erected into one great big idol, one
that can do no wrong.
Well, the interventionists can dream and fantasize all they want but we are
still left with reality and one undeniable fact: As long as the United
States, Britain, and France are meddling in the Middle East, there is going
to be terrorist retaliation. Terrorism is what comes with empire and
intervention (along with out-of-control federal spending and borrowing,
destruction of civil liberties, torture, assassination, and secret national
surveillance programs).
We can condemn terrorism until we are blue in the face. It won't change a
thing. Terrorism will continue to be the weapon for third-world people
seeking to exact revenge on an all-powerful first-world military.
There is but one solution to all this: Leave the people of the Middle East
and Afghanistan alone. Bring all the foreign troops home and discharge them.
Stop the regime-change operations. Terminate foreign aid to foreign regimes,
especially the dictatorships (e.g., Egypt). Dismantle the U.S.
national-security state, including the military-industrial complex, CIA, and
NSA. No more invasions, occupations, and assassinations. That's the only way
to begin the shift toward peace, prosperity, harmony, and liberty. Otherwise,
don't be shocked when the next terrorist attack comes.
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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