Weekly Columns
War First or America First
As we approach the one-year anniversary of that fateful September day it seems as though we have more questions than answers, more uncertainty than conviction of the course ahead.
Our leaders have let that horrible act of terrorism slide by for an entire year without gaining one bit of insight as to neither why it happened nor how to prevent another occurrence. Don�t get me wrong. There have been many successes. We toppled the Taliban, sent Al Qaeda running for their lives and, at least momentarily, stymied their funding and stalled their planning. Yet for the long haul that is not enough.
We seem to be missing some very important points as to how we became targets of terror. If you think it�s because we are a �good people,� as Bush never lets up on telling us, then I�ll bet you�re also hanging on to your Enron shares hoping for a rebound. The Militant Islamic perpetrators of terror do not want our Nintendo, our feminism, our freedom or our democracy. They just want us gone.
The answer to the perpetually annoying �why do they hate us?� question has been, and still is, quite simple. They hate us because we interfered with their world. In Operation Desert Storm we freed tiny Kuwait. Unfortunately, in the view of most of the Arab world we also desecrated their holy land by meddling in an Arab conflict. The CIA has been warning of such consequences for years now. The term they use is Blowback � the unintended consequences of an imperial America. US troops are still in Saudi Arabia and over 100 other countries around the world. How would you feel to have Russian, Chinese or Arab troops stationed in the US? Or would you just settle for the NATO member troops?
Now, some who hear this argument hastily shriek back �Are you blaming us for September 11th? How dare you!� Well no, not exactly. Of course we did not deserve terrorism on our soil. But if we had a foreign policy that puts America first we would have never found ourselves in this mess. The Kuwaiti regime we saved ten years ago was not worth a single American soldiers life. Now ask yourself, was it worth the thousands of lives lost on September 11th?
Today, curiously, we have all but publicly decided to invade Iraq. Daily, it seems, war plans are leaked to newspapers concerning our next course in the terror war. But again, where is the proof Saddam is a culprit in the terror war?
�He kills his own people!� we hear incessantly from the TV talking heads. But, what does that have to do with us? We should attack Iraq if and only if it is proven that they had a part in September 11th. If we attack them without that proof not only will we alienate our few Arab allies we need to fight our legitimate terror war but further add fuel to the fire already burning against us within militant Islam. And remember no other nation is willing to back our imperial regiment either; France, Canada, the UK (save Tony Blair), etc� have all reiterated that they will by no means support an attack on Iraq without actual proof of their involvement in September 11th.
What we need now more than ever before is a sound foreign policy rooted in the sage advice of George Washington in his farewell address not to involve ourselves in the political affairs of other nations.
This is not appeasement. This is putting America first.