NOTE: I’ll be speaking at the Ron Paul Institute’s Peace and Prosperity 2017 Conference. Saturday, September 9, from 9:30 am to 3:00 p.m., Washington Dulles Airport Marriott. Last year’s conference was a sell-out and this year’s conference promises to be even better. Only $75. I hope you’ll join us for a timely and very important conference. Register here.
Mark my words: The next time there is a terrorist attack by some Muslim here in the United States, Donald Trump, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, Homeland Security, and other interventionist dead-enders in America are going to say: “The terrorists (read: Muslims) still hate us for our freedom and values, which confirms our decision to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan to kill them there before they come here to kill us.”
It was tripe after the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. It was tripe after the terrorist attacks on the USS Cole and U.S. embassies in East Africa. It was tripe after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was tripe after the terrorist attacks at Ft. Hood, Boston, San Bernardino, Detroit, and Orlando. And it will be tripe when the next one comes.
The reason it’s tripe is because U.S. interventionism in the Middle East and Afghanistan is the biggest terrorist-producing machine in history. The more people they kill over there, the greater the chance of retaliation over here (or in Spain, England, France, or other partner of the U.S. Empire in Afghanistan or the Middle East). Now that President Trump has announced his decision to embrace George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s 16-year occupation of Afghanistan, the continued blowback from U.S. interventionism is inevitable.
Who will be the beneficiary of more terrorist retaliation or threat of retaliation? Why, the military-industrial complex, of course — that is, the very people who have convinced Trump to abandon his pre-election conviction to get out of Afghanistan. By keeping U.S. interventionism alive for another four years, the ongoing, never-ending crisis environment will continue, which will mean more power and more money for the national-security establishment.
The people who will pay the price for all this? Both the Afghan people and the American people.
The Afghans will pay the bigger price. U.S. forces will continue to kill them, including the ones who are defending their country from an illegal foreign occupier. They will continue to destroy their homes, businesses, and country. Keep in mind, after all, that most of the people they have killed and continue to kill in Afghanistan had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
The price Americans will pay will be through periodic terrorist attacks, along with ever-increasing infringements on liberty and privacy at the hands of their own government, not to mention the financial and economic collapse that is coming, as surely as night follows day, as a result of out-of-control federal spending and debt.
The interventionists say: “We have to preserve the regime our invasion and occupation put into power in Afghanistan, no matter how crooked, corrupt, and tyrannical it is, because a Taliban regime will serve as a haven for anti-American terrorists.”
That’s just plain nonsense.
First, let us keep in mind that the 9/11 attackers were retaliating against U.S. interventionism, including the countless people, including hundreds of thousands of children, that the U.S. death machine had killed in Iraq. End U.S. interventionism, and the threat of anti-American terrorism dissipates and things return to normal.
Second, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Taliban regime was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. The reason President Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA invaded and occupied Afghanistan was because the Taliban regime refused to comply with Bush’s unconditional extradition demand for Osama bin Laden. That’s what interventionists call “harboring terrorists,” notwithstanding the fact that there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States.
If it had not been for American antiwar protestors and demonstrators in the 1960s, there is little doubt that U.S. troops would still be in Vietnam today, fighting, killing, dying, and bombing. With President Trump now being absorbed into the national-security establishment, that might well be the only way to bring an end to America’s forever wars today.
