The reaction to the terrorist attack in Nice, France, where a truck driver killed dozens of people by running them down and shooting them with a (illegal) pistol, was predictable: denunciations of Islam, Muslims, and ISIS, calls for more bombing and killing in the Middle East, and more emergency clampdowns on liberty and privacy at home.
There is one big problem with that reaction, however: U.S. officials have been doing those things for 15 years, both before the 9/11 attacks and after them, and things have only gotten progressively worse for the American people.
A question naturally arises: If such policies have not produced the desired outcome after 15 years, why is it reasonable to expect a different result by doing the same thing?
I hate to sound like a broken record, but it’s important to continue speaking the truth, especially after every terrorist attack, for two reasons: (1) It’s the key to restoring peace, prosperity, and freedom to our land and (2) the number of people opposing the philosophy of foreign intervention continues to grow. According to an article entitled “For U.S. Foreign Policy, It’s Time to Look Again at the Founding Fathers’ ‘Great Rule’” by Elizabeth Cobbs, which appeared in the 4th of July issue of the Los Angeles Times, 57 percent of respondents to a Pew organization poll said that America should mind its own business and let the rest of the world figure out the solutions to their problems. That was up from 52 percent in 2013.
Here is something important to understand about the U.S. national-security establishment’s regime-change operations in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago: The people who are fighting the regimes in both countries will never stop trying to overthrow those regimes. That’s because they will never accept any regime that owes its existence to foreign imperialism and interventionism. To them, any regime installed by foreign invaders and occupiers is illegitimate and undeserving of respect or credibility. They will continue to do everything they can, including suicide attacks on innocent people, to oust these U.S.-installed regimes.
Another question arises: Can the U.S. national-security state kill all the people who are striving for the violent overthrow of the U.S.-installed regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan? That’s what the Pentagon and the CIA have been trying to do for almost 15 years now. Everyone, including the most devoted of interventionists, will agree that the killing of countless people in Iraq and Afghanistan has failed to stop the violent opposition to the U.S.-installed regimes. Continuing the quest could potentially mean killing millions more. Do Americans really want to support such a thing?
In fact, with each new killing, the situation only gets worse, by virtue of the fact that it induces people who have lost relatives or friends to the bombings, shootings, and assassinations to join the resistance. As I have long argued, the U.S. national-security state’s death machine in the Middle East, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, especially Muslims, in the Middle East, including with its Persian Gulf intervention and subsequent sanctions before 9/11, is the greatest terrorist-producing machine in history.
At the risk of being repetitive, there is but one solution to restoring peace, prosperity, harmony, and freedom to our land: Bring all troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan home immediately. No more killing. No more bombing. No more assassinations. No more support of any Middle East regime. Leave the Middle East to deal with ISIS. Stopping ISIS is not worth the destruction of the liberty, privacy, and economic and financial well-being of the American people.
Only a policy of non-interventionism will begin to restore a sense of normality to American society.
The U.S. national-security state has killed enough people in the Middle East and Afghanistan. It’s time to stop it.
Of course, the same applies to France and every other country that participates in the U.S. national-security state’s death machine in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
There are those who exclaim, “But Jacob. It’s too late. Our government has killed so many Muslims that they will never stop looking for revenge. This is now a perpetual religious war that, unfortunately, we have to continue waging, especially by keeping the troops in the Middle East, where they can continue to kill people to their heart’s content.
They said the same thing during the Vietnam War, where they sacrificed 58,000 American men in the purported attempt to kill communists before they came over here to kill us. They carpet bombed vast sections of the country and shot, bombed, tortured, or assassinated hundreds of thousands of people. Recall the CIA’s Operation Phoenix, the national-security state’s official program that kidnapped, tortured, and killed countless Vietnamese villagers who were suspected of being communists. Or consider the massive napalming of Vietnamese villagers. Or the bombing of North Vietnamese cities. Or the Agent Orange defoliation of Vietnamese jungles.
“We have to stay in Vietnam,” the interventionists cried. “If we don’t keep killing the communists, they will come to America and get us. It’s too late to stop killing commies now.”
Yet, when North Vietnamese forces ultimately succeeded in winning Vietnam’s civil war, there was never one single instance of any Vietnamese citizen initiating a terrorist attack in revenge for what the U.S. national security state did to Vietnam and the Vietnamese people.
This is what so many Americans just do not wish to understand — that people in the Middle East and Afghanistan, just like people in Vietnam, are simply saying, “Yankee, go home. This is none of your business. When you make it your business, we will retaliate against you, including with terrorist attacks against your citizenry.”
Instead, not wanting to offend the U.S. national-security establishment, supporters of interventionism have come up with all sorts of rationalizations to avoid confronting the reality of anti-American terrorist blowback. “The terrorists hate us for our freedom and values.” “The Koran requires Muslims to attack Americans.” “This is a centuries-old religious war.” “The Muslims are trying to establish a worldwide caliphate.”
Really? Then why can’t they ever explain why Switzerland, a country whose government minds its own business and which hasn’t killed one single person in the Middle East and Afghanistan, is never hit with terrorist blowback?
Americans have to make a choice: Do they want to eliminate the threat of anti-American terrorist blowback as well as all the totalitarian-like measures that the U.S. national-security establishment has adopted to “keep us safe” from the enemies it is producing with its violent interventionism?
If they do, then there is but one choice: Bring all the troops home now.
Otherwise, just brace yourself for more of the same.