With the publication of the first issue of Freedom Daily in January 1990, we made a vow that we have repeated every year since then: Never will we compromise that which we consider to be right and true. Since then, as long-time supporters and subscribers know, we have never hesitated to fulfill that vow, no matter what the cost to this foundation.
Today, we are facing the biggest challenge we have ever faced here at FFF: how to state clearly, directly, and unequivocally where we stand on the issue, but at the same time keeping in mind the horrific nature of what has happened. We are, of course, not unmindful of the horrible pain, shock, grief, and nervousness that people are experiencing that prevents them from calmly and dispassionately considering intellectual arguments.
Thus, the challenge we face is not with whether to share our truth in the midst of this crisis, which we intend to do as we have always done, but rather how to find the right manner and tone in which to do it. After all, our goal of achieving a free and peaceful society depends ultimately not only on the eloquent exposition of ideas on liberty but also on their receptivity by others. If we close the minds of those who are receptive with arguments that are presented in an obnoxious manner, we obviously diminish our chances of achieving a free society within our lifetime.
The problem, of course, is that because of the horrific nature of the attacks in New York and Washington, as well as the horrifying method in which the attacks were carried out, the only thing on most people’s minds, not surprisingly, is how to capture and punish the malefactors and those who assisted and supported them. In the midst of this massive shock, trauma, anger, and grief, everything else appears irrelevant to most people, including esoteric expositions on U.S. foreign policy.
We witnessed this phenomenon after Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, albeit to a lesser extent. Any inquiry into why McVeigh did what he did (in retaliation for what the U.S. government had done to the Branch Davidians at Waco) was considered illegitimate and beyond the pale of proper discourse. In the wake of the pain, anger, trauma, and shock of that event, very few people wanted to calmly and dispassionately reexamine and reevaluate what the government had done at Waco because they felt that to do so would constitute an implicit defense or justification for what McVeigh had done.
We, of course, believed that it was vitally important for the American people to continue examining and questioning what the government had done at Waco, not only independently of McVeigh’s actions but also considering the horrific reactions of people like McVeigh to such governmental conduct.
That is, we believed that wrongful conduct by the government should be stopped both as a matter of principle and because it oftentimes gives rise to adverse consequences. And so while some were suggesting that the solution to what happened at Oklahoma City was to have a massive crackdown on terrorists and terrorism (and civil liberties), we believed (and still believe) that the best solution is instead to ensure that the government engages in no more Wacos. With no more Wacos, the chances of retaliatory terrorism by more McVeighs is diminished, making governmental crackdowns on the liberties of the rest of us unnecessary.
The situation is quite similar to the government’s war on drugs, but at a much less emotional level. As most of us recognize, there is tremendous violence associated with the drug war — gang wars, robberies, muggings, killings, and the like. The government’s response has never changed, despite 30 years of manifest failure: massive crackdowns on drug lords, drug cartels, murderers, muggers, thieves, and robbers, only to have those who are captured or killed replaced by new ones eager to take their place. Our solution has always been to go to the root of the problem: end the war on drugs and you not only end all the related violence, you also end up with a more peaceful, harmonious society.
As long-time supporters of FFF know, we have always taken a firm stand against the road that statist-Americans have taken our nation in the 20th century — the road of the socialistic welfare state, in which the state promised to take care of everyone, from the cradle to the grave. Thus, we have firmly opposed such governmental programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and public schooling not just because they were manifest failures, not just because they were highly destructive economically, but especially because they are firmly rooted in immoral premises.
Our position has always been that the vision of liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government that the Founding Fathers of our nation presented us was the right one, both morally and pragmatically. Thus most of our efforts here at FFF since our inception have been devoted to the restoration and improvement of that vision, with the ultimate aim of achieving a free, peaceful, and prosperous society.
However, long-time supporters also know that we have never limited ourselves here at FFF to opposing only the domestic-policy vision of the statists. We have also firmly and fervently opposed their foreign-policy vision of intervention, foreign aid, and the stationing of U.S. troops in different parts of the world. We believed — and continue to believe — that our Founders’ vision of a republic was the right one and the moral one, and so it is that we have consistently called for the restoration of that vision.
We shall continue to do so, even — and especially — in the midst of crisis and war. We have sent one op-ed on the war to our own newspaper list and another to the Knight Ridder wire service. You should know, however, that the wire service rules preclude us from sharing our op-eds with you until several days after they have distributed the op-eds to their newspaper network. Please bear with us on this — while preaching to the choir is vitally important, we believe you’ll agree that it’s equally important, if not more so, to share our perspectives with mainstream America to the maximum extent possible. But as soon as we can share the perspectives we are publishing with you, we will surely do so.
For 11 years, we have felt like voices in the wilderness, crying out to the American people to change course before it was too late, before they would experience the adverse consequences associated with the interventionist foreign policy that has guided our nation since the early part of the 20th century. Our positions were set forth in our book The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars and in a multitude of essays and op-eds published since then, all of which will appear on our new website, which will go live soon at www.fff.org.
See, for example, Terrorism … or War? by Jacob G. Hornberger; Terrorism, Antiterrorism, and Foreign Policy, by Richard M. Ebeling; Breeding Terrorism, by Sheldon Richman; and Freedom Is the Best Insurance against Terrorism, by Sheldon Richman. Also, for an excellent analysis and history of America’s policy in the Middle East, see “Ancient History”: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East since World War II and the Folly of Intervention, by Sheldon Richman, which Sheldon wrote in 1991 when he was senior editor at the Cato Institute.
While people would, by and large, consider our arguments against the manifest failure of interventionist and welfare domestic policies, it was different with foreign policy. This subject was just too esoteric — it didn’t seem to touch people lives, except perhaps with the taxes necessary to maintain an enormous standing army in various parts of the world. Even worse, the American people have been taught to believe, especially since World War II, that an interventionist foreign policy was necessary to their peace and stability and presented no real risks to them. This conviction became even more entrenched with the demise of the Soviet empire, leaving the U.S. government as the sole remaining “superpower” in the world.
We have no interest in being “We told you so’s” but we do have an interest in bringing about a national debate in this country not only with respect to domestic policy but with respect to foreign policy. Over the years, and as recently as last year, we have issued warning after warning that America’s statist and interventionist foreign policy was ultimately going to result in disaster for the American people. (See, for example, the articles listed above plus others listed in the War on Terrorism section of our new website. While we certainly could not have predicted that it would come in the horrific manner it did, what amazes us is why something like this hasn’t happened before now.
It is of course still much too soon for calm, dispassionate discourse about the recent terrorist attacks. The wounds are still too fresh. Ultimately, however, it is incumbent on each and every American to make his own independent, reasoned analysis of the attacks, what motivated them, and what the people of this nation need to achieve a peaceful, prosperous, harmonious, and free society. One reason that such an analysis is so vitally important is that the stakes, as everyone now knows, are not esoteric. They are very, very real and they are very, very high. And as everyone knows, it’s important that the physician get the diagnosis right in order to prescribe the correct medicine.
If after reflecting and reevaluating, a person comes to the conclusion that the attacks in New York and Washington bore no relationship to U.S. foreign policy, so be it. Or if a person concludes that there was such a relationship but that it is nevertheless important to continue America’s interventionist foreign policy, then so be it as well. At least, each person’s decision will have been made through reason rather than through some sort of blind patriotic devotion to the state.
We intend to play a major role in such a debate. We have no doubts that if the American people had changed course many years ago by rejecting the foreign-policy vision of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and their Democratic and Republican successors and followers in favor of the foreign-policy vision of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and their successors and followers, the American people would be infinitely better off today.
The transformation from a republic to a foreign-interventionist empire began, of course, in 1898 with the Spanish American War. Inflamed by a press eager to go to war and with a populace infected with war fever, the U.S. government declared war on the Spanish Empire (which itself had troops thousands of miles from the shores of Spain) for the purported purpose of liberating the Cuban and Philippine people from Spanish control. The result was a century-long U.S. government obsession with trying to control the people of Cuba, not to mention the U.S. massacre of thousands of Filipinos who committed the cardinal sin of resisting U.S. government control. (The massacre is a dark little secret that most Americans are not aware of because it’s not taught in America’ public [government-run] schools.)
World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars (arguably a more realistic goal than a war to eradicate evil from the world). We all know how successful that one was. In fact, even the most ardent statists and interventionists don’t question that World War I was a horrible waste of American life and that in fact it actually gave rise to Adolf Hitler and World War II.
World War II (which the statists and interventionists refer to as “the good war”) was supposed to save the Polish people from tyranny and it instead delivered them and millions of others into the clutches of the Soviet communists for the following 50 years. The war also failed to save the lives of hardly any Jews, including of course the six million who died in the concentration camps and elsewhere.
And of course, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, few bothered to ask why in the world the U.S. had troops stationed thousands of miles away from American shores (including in the Philippine Islands), making them ready bait for the Japanese, or even why U.S. troops were attacking Japanese forces before Pearl Harbor (the Flying Tigers).
At the conclusion of the war, U.S. government officials even secretly enlisted the help of Nazi officials as they geared up to engage in a Cold War against their former ally, the Soviet Union (Hitler’s enemy).
With the Cold War, the military-industrial complex became a permanent feature of American life. An enormous standing military force was now necessary for the first time in the history of our country, we were told, to protect us from our former ally, the Soviet Union.
Then came 50 years of presidential wars, interventions, and invasions in which tens of thousands of American men (not to mention foreigners) lost their lives without having the constitutional protection that our Founders had guaranteed before American citizens would be sacrificed in war — a congressional declaration of war. It was the period of the American Caesars, vested with the omnipotent power to take an entire nation to war on their own, most recently characterized by the Congress’s vesting of Caesarean powers in President Bush to wage war against anyone he deems appropriate, after which the Congress will dutifully stamp its approval.
Through it all, the CIA was murdering and torturing people and training foreign governments how to do the same (Iran, Latin America). And American foreign policy was guided by one principle: Are you with us or are you against us? Those who refused to succumb were targeted with either assassination or ouster from office (Vietnam, Chile, Guatemala), or war and embargoes against their populace (Cuba, Iraq, Yugoslavia). Those who were initially recalcitrant could be bought off with millions of dollars of foreign aid, compliments of the U.S. taxpayer.
In some countries that were “with us,” people loved Americans, oftentimes because of the U.S. money that they were receiving. But it is impossible to measure the degree of anger and resentment, even hatred, that many people in “with us” countries have for the United States as a result of the support our government has given their brutal, tyrannical regimes. And the same holds true for people who were targeted with bombs and embargoes because their rulers were “against us.”
There are those, of course, who say that wrongful conduct of the U.S. government is irrelevant, especially considering that it is the only superpower left in the world. And they’re saying the same thing they said after Oklahoma City: it is not the right time to examine U.S. government conduct because it will have the appearance of defending and justifying what the attackers did.
In my opinion, that is foolish thinking. Because if wrongful conduct by one’s government is motivating people to retaliate against Americans, including civilians, then it stands to reason that people might want to stop the wrongful conduct rather than continue it, even as they try to bring the retaliators to justice. Because again, the continuation of the wrongful conduct will surely give rise to new terrorists, even as the government stamps out the old ones.
Perhaps more important, I believe that if one’s government is engaged in wrongful conduct, it is morally incumbent on the citizenry to put a stop to it, even if there is no possibility of adverse retaliation from others. This is especially true if the potential consequences of escalating the conflict, including the loss of much life on both sides, can be avoided simply by stopping our own government’s wrongful conduct.
Some people say the attackers and their supporters hate freedom, democracy, and Western values, but they are unable to explain why it is that Switzerland, which enjoys freedom, democracy, and Western values but whose government has always minded its own business in international affairs, never gets attacked by terrorists.
President Bush has announced that we’re at war. That’s not news to us at The Future of Freedom Foundation. We’ve known that we’ve been at war for the last 10 years, while U.S. military forces have been dropping bombs on the people of Iraq from military bases stationed on holy lands in Saudi Arabia and targeting them for starvation with a military embargo because they have refused to replace their ruler with someone more to Washington’s liking.
How many Americans know how many Iraqi people, both military and civilian, have been killed during the past 10 years by U.S. bombs and the U.S. embargo? How many office buildings, bridges, and roads have been destroyed by bombs made in America? How many people have cared to ask? How many Iraqi children have died of malnutrition or starvation as a result of the U.S. embargo? Does anyone honestly believe that regular people who have suffered 10 years of bombs and embargoes are not going to have at least the same level of anger, pain, hurt, and grief the American people have suffered from the recent attacks in New York and Washington? They are ordinary people, just like us. They suffer, they grieve, they hurt when they lose loved ones. And like the ordinary humans they are, they sometimes ache for revenge and retribution.
I don’t know what motivated the attacks on New York and Washington. But one thing’s for sure: There sure are a lot of suspects all over the world who have the motive to do so, people who have suffered the brunt edge of the U.S. interventionist sword. And among them is every single Iraqi who has lost a loved one from the bombs that have been dropped on them for the past 10 years and from the starvation they and their children have suffered from the U.S. embargo.
Nothing is going to bring back the lives that have already been lost. But sometimes it takes more wisdom and courage to avoid escalating a conflict than it does to escalate the conflict. Does that mean that we need to let the malefactors off the hook? Of course not — we could use some of the money that would otherwise be used to attack Afghanistan to raise the reward for the capture of Osama bin Laden from $5 million to $500 million. Such a reward, of course, wouldn’t necessarily result in his immediate capture but it would surely raise the eyebrows of those close to him, including officials inside the cash-starved Taliban government, and would undoutedly cause bin Laden to have some sleepless nights. It would also spare innocent people the ravages of a general war.
And for those who believe that adherence to the rule of law is important, it might be noted that a 10-year war has been waged by the U.S. government without even the semblance of the constitutionally required declaration of war. And please — no citations of UN resolutions: they’re not in our Constitution.
Every single American can exclaim, “Nothing justifies what they did in New York and Washington,” not even the bombs that our government has dropped on them for 10 years or the embargo that has caused the deaths of so many of their children. That’s of course true but again, the issue is not justification or whether people such as Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden should be condemned or brought to justice. The issue is simply an acceptance of reality and a fundamental fact of life: When governments do bad things to people, people sometimes retaliate. We ignore that reality and that fact of life at our peril.
The issue becomes even more important because the U.S. government is now asking the American people to risk our lives and those of our loved ones and those of our GIs. Are we being asked to sacrifice so that bombs can continue to be dropped on the Iraqi people and so that they can continue to be targeted with starvation with a military embargo until they change their ruler? If so, then each person must be asked a subsequent question: Is this a cause for which Americans should be sacrificing their lives, fortunes, sacred honor, especially since this is not the “freedom” for which our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor but rather the “freedom” for a government to continue doing wrongful things, a type of “freedom” that characterized the empire that our Founders were opposing in 1776.
In the 19th century, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville visited our nation, during the time that Americans rejected the socialistic welfare state and interventionist foreign empire that present-day American statists and interventionists term “freedom.” De Tocqueville later wrote in his book Democracy in America,“America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
None of us knows, of course, how this crisis will unfold and we can only hope and pray that it will unfold without further loss of innocent life on both sides, if for no other reason than that it will give the American people another chance to abandon the road to statism and interventionism on which they have permitted their government officials to travel for so very long.
But whether the crisis diminishes or escalates, I believe that each and every one of us must reflect upon and reevaluate the direction our nation has taken and, as part of that process, make a well-reasoned, independent analysis of our own government’s conduct, no matter how painful or discomforting that task may be — and then to put a stop to wrongful conduct when we find it. For this is the road that is most likely to bring us the free, peaceful, harmonious society for which we all yearn, a society in which not only Americans can take great pride but everyone else in the world as well.
Here are the specific steps I recommend to resolve this crisis:
1. The U.S. government should refrain from attacking Afghanistan or any other country, and especially without the constitutionally mandated congressional declaration of war expressly declaring war against the nation to be attacked.
2. The U.S. government should increase the amount of the reward for the capture and bringing to justice of Osama bin Laden and anyone else accused of participating in the attacks on New York and Washington from $5 million to $500 million.
3. The U.S. government should immediately cease its 10-year war against Iraq, including both its dropping of bombs and the its economic embargo, immediately evacuate all U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, and bring the troops home. Not only is our government’s 10-year war against the Iraqi people morally wrong in principal, not only is it motivated by improper goals (the replacement of Saddam Hussein by someone more to Washington’s liking), but never has it received the constitutionally required declaration of war.
Moreover, since Osama bin Laden has himself said that these actions are principal reasons for his declaration of a holy war against the United States, the cessation of hostilities and the evacuation of troops from Islamic holy lands would remove the core of his justification for a holy war against Americans. (See “Inside the Mind of Osama bin Laden,” Washington Post, September 20, 2001, page 1, which is posted on the Post’s website.
Anyway, aren’t 10 years of bombs and embargoes against the Iraqi people enough? Will their continuation really achieve their goal, especially considering that the U.S. government’s 30-year embargo against Cuba has been unsuccessful in persuading the Cuban people to replace their ruler with someone more to Washington’s liking? Is the continuation of the bombing and the embargo against the Iraqi people really worth it, in terms of both more lives lost both here and abroad and the loss of civil liberties for the American people for the indefinite future? Is this really a cause worth dying for, pledging our fortunes for, sacrificing our civil liberties for, and fundamentally altering our way of life for?
We know that during times like these, it is so easy to become despondent and despairing, to lose hope that freedom really is achievable in our lifetime. But nothing is inevitable. Ideas matter. They have consequences. And people, nations, and events can change directions very rapidly, when you least expect it. If freedom were easy, everyone in history would have had it. Liberty surrenders her fruits to those who continue persevering through the darkness with the faith that dawn is about to come.
We repeat the vow that we have made to you every year since our inception: Never will we compromise that which we consider to be right and true.