Why Are There Still Any Foreign Interventionists?
23 December 2017By Jacob G.
Hornberger
For the first hundred years of American history, the United States was founded
on the concept of a limited-government republic, one whose government did not
intervene in the affairs of other nations, specifically in Europe and Asia.
America's non-interventionist philosophy was summed up by John Quincy Adams'
Fourth of July address to Congress in 1821, the title of which is "In Search
of Monsters to Destroy."
Later generations of Americans abandoned that founding foreign-policy
principle and adopted the opposite philosophy — interventionism. The big turn
came in 1898 with the Spanish American War, continued with World War I and
World War II, followed by the Korean War and Vietnam War, culminating in
today's forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, with coups,
invasions, assassinations, kidnappings, and partnerships with and support of
foreign dictators thrown into the mix.
Americans today have a choice: Restore America's founding principle of
non-interventionism or continue embracing foreign interventionism.
The good news is that according to an excellent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times
by Texas A&M professor Elizabeth Cobbs, a Pew organization poll conducted in
2016 found that 57% of Americans said that the United States should "'mind its
own business' and allow other countries to get along on their own." That was
up from 52% in 2013.
That means that we might well be very close to a critical mass that brings one
of those gigantic societal shifts that have periodically occurred in history
in the direction of freedom.
It certainly shouldn't surprise anyone that so many American are becoming
anti-interventionists. Just look at the consequences of America's many
interventions since 1898. It is not possible to find very many positive
consequences of America's history of interventionism. They are almost all bad.
The Spanish American War. In 1898, the U.S. government used fraud, power, and
deceit to acquire a perpetual lease of Cuban property, namely Guantanamo Bay.
That, of course, is where the Pentagon and the CIA have established their
modern-day torture and indefinite detention prison and kangaroo judicial
system, both of which have brought so much anti-American animosity around the
world. It also resulted in U.S. soldiers torturing (i.e., waterboarding),
killing, and injuring tens of thousands of Filipinos who were simply fighting
for their independence against Spain and the United States. The U.S. conquest
of the Philippines is why the U.S. troops, 40 years later, were able to be
taken captive when Japan initiated an attack on the United States in World War
II.
World War I. A total waste of tens of thousands of American lives. Its goal of
being the war to end all wars and making the world safe for democracy were not
achieved, to say the least. In fact, it was U.S. interventionism in WWI that
was a major factor that gave rise to Hitler and World War II.
World War II. At the end of the war, Eastern Europe had been liberated from
Nazi control but ended up under Soviet communist control for the next 45
years. So did East Germany. German and Eastern European Jews were mostly all
dead by the time the war ended. The Cold War was launched against America's
WWII partner and ally, the Soviet Union. The U.S. government was converted
into a national-security state. Operating through the CIA, the U.S. government
hired Nazis to secretly come and work for the U.S. government. The CIA
initiated Operation MKULTRA, which resembled Nazi experiments on human beings.
The CIA , the military, the NSA, and the FBI conducted surveillance operations
against the American people, and the CIA infiltrated the U.S. mainstream press
with its Operation Mockingbird.
Korean War. U.S. interventionism in an undeclared, unconstitutional war left
U.S. troops continuing to occupy South Korea into perpetuity, with the
ultimate aim of defeating North Korea, which would enable U.S. bases and
missiles to be established on China's border. Today, the world is closer than
it has been in decades to the outbreak of nuclear war.
Vietnam War. It tore the United States apart. Almost 60,000 American men died
for nothing. Vietnam was united under communist rule, and the United States
didn't end up falling to the international communist conspiracy, as U.S.
officials said it would.
Iran. In 1953, the CIA secretly orchestrated a coup that destroyed Iran's
experiment with democracy and installed, trained, and supported one of the
most brutal tyrannies in the world. That is the root of America's crisis with
Iran today.
Guatemala. In 1954, the CIA secretly orchestrated a coup that destroyed
Guatemala's democratic system and installed a brutal, unelected, pro-U.S.
military regime. The coup brought about a 3-decade long civil war that killed
and injured more than a million people.
Chile. In 1970-1973, the CIA secretly orchestrated a coup that destroyed
Chile's democratic system and installed a brutal, unelected, pro-U.S. military
regime, whose forces proceeded to round up, kidnap, incarcerate, torture,
rape, or execute tens of thousands of innocent people. U.S. officials
conspired to violently kidnap the commanding general of Chile's armed forces,
which resulted in his murder, and also conspired in the murder of two innocent
Americans, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. No U.S. official was ever held
accountable for any of this. The director of the CIA, Richard Helms, was later
convicted of falsely denying to Congress under oath the CIA's role in bringing
about the coup. After sentencing, Helms was treated as a hero by the CIA.
Cuba. 1959-to date. Invasion. Assassination attempts. Sabotage. Terrorism. The
Pentagon and the CIA took all of these actions against Cuba, a country that
has never attacked the United States or committed any other act of violence
against the U.S. The U.S. government has been the aggressor nation the entire
time, including with its brutal embargo, whose aim is to inflict maximum
economic suffering on the Cuban people in the hope that they will violently
oust the communist regime and restore a pro-U.S., pro-Mafia dictatorship, like
the U.S.-supported Batista regime that preceded it.
Iraq. In the 1980s, the U.S. government partnered with Saddam Hussein in his
war against Iran because the U.S. was upset that the Iranian people had
violently ousted the tyrannical regime that the CIA had installed in 1953.
Then in 1990, the U.S. government turned on Saddam in the Gulf War, massacring
thousands of Iraqis, destroying their water and sewage treatment plants, and
imposing an brutal embargo that intentionally killed hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi children. All this and other interventions later brought terrorist
blowback in the form of anti-American terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks,
which then brought a second invasion of Iraq, which ended up destroying Iraq,
torturing, bombing, and killing hundreds of thousands of more Iraqis, and
producing ISIS and a perpetual "war on terrorism.
Afghanistan. Using the 9/11 blowback from U.S. foreign policy, the U.S.
invaded Afghanistan, killed hundreds of thousands of Afghanis, almost none of
whom had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. Today, there is perpetual war
in Afghanistan to support a corrupt tyrannical regime.
That's just some of the interventions. There is also Libya, Syria, Panama,
Grenada, Congo, Indonesia, and many more. The consequences were bad in those
interventions also.
The fact that 57 percent of the American people are now leaning toward our
nation's founding principle of non-interventionism is an incredibly positive
sign. My question is this: How can 43 percent of Americans still support
interventionism given its horrific consequences?
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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