Conservatives are criticizing President Obama’s decision to close the Pentagon’s prison camp at Guantanamo, saying that this will result in more terrorism in the United States. They are being false and disingenuous. If there is another terrorist act in the United States, it will be because of what the U.S. government is doing to people overseas, not because its torture camp at Guantanamo was shut down.
The first thing to keep in mind about conservatives is that they love Big Government. Oh, I know they don’t say that. I fully realize that their favorite mantra — which they put on their stationery, emphasize in their speeches, and post on their websites — is “free enterprise, private property, and limited government.”
But it’s all fake and false. Conservatives have long favored socialism, imperialism, and unlimited government, both at home and abroad. This is reflected by their unwavering support for such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the drug war, public schooling, welfare, subsidies, bailouts, foreign aid, the Federal Reserve, paper money, foreign wars, invasions, wars of aggression, overseas military bases, coups, regime changes, and so forth.
There is no better instance of conservative support for unlimited government than in foreign affairs. Think about it: In Iraq, are there any limits on the U.S. government? Do the restraints of the Constitution apply to the U.S. government there? Of course not. And the same holds true for Afghanistan. Unlimited government is what conservatives were also seeking for their camp in Cuba — free of any interference by the Constitution and the courts.
For that matter, despite all their rhetoric, unlimited government is what conservatives would love to have here in the United States. That’s in fact what their “enemy combatant doctrine” is all about — the unrestrained power of the federal government to seize any American as an “enemy combatant” and to treat him accordingly.
The beauty of an imperial and interventionist foreign policy, from the standpoint of conservatives, is that it provides the conditions for Big Government not only overseas but also here at home.
Consider, for example, Afghanistan. Seven years ago, the U.S. military invaded that country with the aim of killing Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Today, we are told that there the terrorist threat in Afghanistan is bigger than ever before, a phenomenon that unfortunately is motivating President Obama to redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan rather than simply bringing all of them home after 7 years of occupation.
How can this be? Seven years is a long time How come there are more terrorists than when they started killing terrorists seven years ago?
The reason lies in the fact that after 9/11 the U.S. government assumed the power to treat terrorism as either a crime or an act of war, at its option. In Afghanistan, the U.S. government opted to treat the situation as an act of war.
That meant bombs, lots of bombs. Here’s how they work. Let’s say the Pentagon learns that there is a terrorist in a certain village. One option would be to send in a platoon of soldiers to arrest the terrorist and bring him back for trial. That option, however, would put the lives of U.S. soldiers at risk, especially give the possibility of a firefight developing or even an ambush by other terrorists.
Much easier and safer to simply drop bombs on the terrorist. In the process of doing so, however, one of the bombs is dropped on a wedding party. The bride, some of the bridesmaids, a couple of the groomsmen, and a few relatives are killed. The Pentagon issues an apology for the collateral damage and gives some money to the survivors, pointing out that the deaths were worth it because the terrorist was killed too.
There’s one big problem, however. The groom, or the parents, or friends and relatives aren’t satisfied. They want vengeance. They join the terrorists. And thus, the ranks of the terrorists swell.
Now, what does that mean? Obviously, it means Bigger Government. More troops. More bombs. Higher budgets for the military and military-industrial complex. It’s all justified because the terrorist threat just keeps getting larger and larger.
The beauty of the process, from the standpoint of a Big Government supporter, is that the process is never-ending. More bombs produce more terrorists, which produce more bombs, which produce more terrorists. In fact, the Pentagon’s operations in Afghanistan (and Iraq and Guantanamo) must rank among the most successful terrorist-producing operations in history.
Inevitably, one of those foreign terrorists who are seeking vengeance will make his way over to the United States, perhaps by blowing up some private wedding party over here — or some building housing lots of people. And that will be the day when conservatives will scream, “It’s all because President Obama closed our torture camp at Guantanamo, not because our bombs killed wedding parties in Afghanistan.”
Moreover, another domestic terrorist attack will produce Bigger Government here at home, including more massive infringements on civil liberties, more loss of freedom in general, higher government spending, debasement of the dollar, and so forth.
Several years ago, Virginia, D.C., and Maryland were threatened by snipers who were indiscriminately shooting people. Fortunately and wisely, officials treated the matter as a crime rather than an act of war. After 15 shootings, the police received a lead that the suspected snipers were in a highway rest area. They closed in on them, surprised them, and took them into custody. They were prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated.
Imagine, however, if the matter had been treated as an act of war and the job turned over to the Pentagon. On learning that the suspected terrorists were in the rest area, the Pentagon would have handled the situation differently from the way the police did. They would simply have dropped a couple of bombs on the rest area, killing the suspected terrorists … and everyone around them. And later, when survivors of the innocent victims retaliated with a terrorist attack on a U.S. facility, U.S. officials would claim that the attack had nothing to do with their actions at the rest area.
In 1993, Ramzi Yousef committed a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in retaliation for U.S. foreign policy. He escaped to Pakistan. Fortunately and wisely, U.S. officials opted to treat that terrorist attack as a crime rather than an act of war. It took a few years, but ultimately the police found Yousef and he was brought back to the United States, prosecuted in federal court, convicted, and incarcerated.
Because that WTC terrorist attack was treated as a crime, the Pentagon was precluded from doing to Pakistan what it has done to Afghanistan. There were no bombs dropped on the Pakistani people in the attempt to kill Yousef. Consequently, there were no Pakistanis seeking vengeance for the collateral damage done to their friends and relatives.
For Americans who genuinely want to restore a society based on “free enterprise, private property, and limited government,” there is but one solution in foreign affairs: immediately withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the rest of the world, bring them home, and discharge them. For people who want more Big Government and less freedom, there is one surefire way to assure success: continue and even expand the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
