Another Terrorist Attack On "Our Values": It Sure Seems Like A No-brainer
16 December 2017By Jacob G.
Hornberger
When I read New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's statement regarding the
latest terrorist attack in New York City, my initial reaction was this: How
can this guy be so obtuse? Here is what he said in response to this week's
attack in the Manhattan subway system by a suicide bomber:
This was an attack on our values, an effort to break our spirit, but it
failed. New York City is a strong and resilient place.
But then I thought, maybe I should give Blasio the benefit of the doubt. Maybe
he jumped to his conclusion before learning what really motivated the attacker
to commit his act of terrorism.
But if that was the case, then why didn't Blasio correct his original
statement after the attacker told investigators that he was retaliating
against the U.S. government for its war on ISIS in the Middle East?
After the terrorist attack in New York City last October, when an attacker
used a rental truck to run down and kill several pedestrians, Blasio used
almost the exact same words that he used in response to this week's terrorist
attack:
We understand this was an attack on our values. It was an effort to break our
spirit. But as an effort to break our spirit it failed.
The terrorist in the October attack was motivated by the same thing that
motivated the terrorist in this week's attack: The U.S. government's war on
ISIS in the Middle East.
So, my question is: Why can't Blasio simply tell the truth? Why can't he just
say, "This was an attack on our foreign interventionism" rather than an attack
on "our values," followed by an explanation as to why foreign interventionism
is worth the ongoing, never-ending threat of death and destruction that comes
with terrorist blowback from U.S. foreign policy?
And then it hit me: Maybe Blasio is being perfectly honest. Maybe in his mind
foreign interventionism is an American value, perhaps its most important
value.
It would certainly make sense that he would have that mindset. We have all
been born and raised under a foreign policy of foreign interventionism. It
stands to reason that there would be lots of Americans, especially Millennials
(who have grown up in the "war on terrorism" and thus know nothing else), who
honestly believe that the U.S. government has the right to invade, bomb, or
otherwise intervene in any country anywhere in the world and use its soldiers
and CIA agents to kill, injury, kidnap, torture, and incarcerate anyone they
want.
Such being the case, it stands to reason why Blasio would consider terrorist
retaliation as an attack on our "values," namely our government's "right" to
kill, injure, torture, and maim people abroad with impunity, that is, without
suffering the price of retaliation.
But there is another possible interpretation of Blasio's statement, one that
is less innocent: He's lying. Like other proponents of foreign
interventionism, he simply does not want Americans to focus on the fact that
there is a price to pay for the U.S. government's foreign policy of foreign
interventionism. Better to convince Americans that the motivation of the
terrorists is instead hatred for American values and that foreign
interventionism is designed to kill the haters of our values over there before
they come over here to kill us.
We witnessed this phenomenon after the 9/11 attacks. Like Blasio, President
George W. Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA immediately announced that the
attacks were motivated by hatred for America's freedom and values. When some
of us libertarians pointed out that the attacks were instead motivated by the
death, destruction, and humiliation that the U.S. government had been wreaking
in the Middle East, proponents of foreign interventionism went ballistic,
accusing us of being terrorist lovers. The last thing they wanted was for
Americans to focus on foreign interventionism as the motivating factor for the
attacks, especially since they were planning to use the attacks to justify the
invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other interventions.
It's been like that ever since. Every time there is a terrorist attack here in
the United States or in any country that has participated in the U.S.
government's forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, proponents of
foreign interventionism come out and say the same thing — that it's all about
hatred for America's values (or Western values) and that the death,
destruction, and mayhem that the U.S. government and its willing partners have
wreaked in foreign countries has nothing to do with it.
Take a look at this editorial, entitled "New Yorkers Don't Scare Easily," in
yesterday's New York Times about this week's terrorist attack. It compares New
Yorkers to Brits in World War II and exhorts New Yorkers to carry on, calm and
unafraid. Yet not one single mention of terrorist blowback from U.S.
interventionism abroad and why such interventionism is worth the constant,
permanent threat of deadly and destructive terrorist retaliation. Why the
silence about foreign interventionism and its inevitable price of terrorist
retaliation?
For his part, President Trump wants to clamp down even more on immigration
enforcement. No doubt he also wants to strengthen the powers of the NSA to spy
on people here in the United States as well as the powers of the Pentagon and
the CIA to kill more people abroad to keep us safe here at home. In his mind,
indeed in the minds of most proponents of foreign interventionism, nothing —
not even American liberty, privacy, and prosperity — can be permitted to
interfere with our government's "freedom and value" to kill people abroad as
part of its policy of foreign interventionism.
Consider Switzerland. No retaliatory terrorism there. That's because
Switzerland didn't wage war on Iraq, ISIS, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen,
or anyone else. Its foreign policy is similar to that of the founding foreign
policy of the United States: non-interventionism. Switzerland, like the United
States in the first century of our country's existence, does not go abroad in
search of monsters to destroy, including ISIS, which, lest we forget, the U.S.
invasion of Iraq brought into existence.
Does Switzerland's policy of non-interventionism make it "weak"? On the
contrary, no one would dare take on the Swiss with an invasion. That's because
the entire country is armed, trained, and ready for defense — genuine defense,
not foreign-interventionism "defense." Invading Switzerland would be like
swallowing a porcupine.
Americans have a choice:
Continue a foreign policy of interventionism, with its massive death and
destruction abroad, and continue to undergo the constant, never-ending threat
of retaliatory terrorism, accompanied by ever-increasing destruction of our
freedom, privacy, and economic well-being by the U.S. government in the name
of keep us safe from the consequences of foreign interventionism.
Or restore our nation's foreign policy of non-interventionism and experience a
society of freedom, peace, prosperity, morality, and harmony.
It sure seems like a no-brainer to me.
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.
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