- Those of us who favor limited, or no, government have
dared to question government actions following the events of 9/11. Anyone
who does so, of course, is subjected to innumerable insults and accusations.
Some verbal attacks follow the consistent and predictable strategy of claiming
that being opposed to bombing implies one or more of the following: Anyone
who opposes bombing is a coward; is an apologist for the terrorists; doesn't
believe anything should be done in response to 9/11. Nothing could be further
from the truth, and it is worth the time to address these accusations directly.
-
- As to whether it is cowardly to propose that massive
and sustained bombing followed by imposition of a puppet government are
morally wrong and practically counterproductive, and to propose that government
should not be in the "homeland security" business, it should
be noted first that the majority of columnists and commentators celebrating
bombing and ground assaults are not performing these military acts themselves.
Most who use the term "coward" have never been in harm's way.
Further, what true libertarians are suggesting in place of government security
is personal, community, and corporate responsibility for security. Which
takes less courage - learning to use a gun (and developing the will to
use it to defend yourself, your family, and your property), or demanding
that the government take over this responsibility for you? Encouraging
your government to send young men overseas to kill and die, or being one
of the few voices calling for restraint? Those who equate cowardice with
distrust of the government's war would do well to study the notion of courage
(1, 2). It requires no courage to exhort another to risk his life killing
someone else.
-
- Are we apologists for the terrorists? By remembering
the US government's violent and capricious interventions in the middle
east over the last several decades, and by highlighting the fact that our
government should have learned by now that these interventions consistently
have had unexpected and dangerous results (3), we are hoping that at long
last some lessons will be learned, and the government might behave differently
in the future. It's time our government stopped making all those people
hate us.
-
- This understanding of the antecedents - probable causes
- of 9/11 is not a morally relativistic suggestion that the terrorists
acted uprightly within any valid moral framework. Killing innocent people
is wrong, period. Nor is it a suggestion that the cultures of fundamentalist
Moslem states are somehow the equal of our own. They're not. Western culture
is superior. We have produced the vast majority of the technological, medical,
philosophical, political, and cultural advances of the last several hundred
years (not forgetting the Arab role in preserving Greek philosophy), and
if the governments of the middle east don't learn that personal and economic
freedom are a significant part of that, they'll continue living in caves,
tents, and huts forever. They'll continue to produce eager suicide bombers
from a starved and ignorant population. (Notice, mind you, that the leaders
of Moslem fundamentalist states tend to live in extravagant luxury, enjoying
all the newest Western products.)
-
- It has been imputed to true libertarians that since we
disagree with what the government has done and is doing, we don't believe
anything should be done about terrorism and the terrorists. To the contrary,
we have suggested options, the most viable of which would be bounties,
offered by private organizations; or letters of marque and reprisal, offered
by the government. The knee-jerk response is that it is implausible that
such an approach would bring any results. Not so - if adequate bounties
were offered for any known terrorists, known terrorists would begin showing
up dead. Consider: Would it be easier for you to hide from a government
and its giant (mostly overt) military operations, or from a reward on your
head, a reward that could be earned by anyone, anywhere in the world? Historically
in our own country, has it been easier to evade government detection and
apprehension, or detection by private organized crime or private investigators
with video cameras? Part of the misconception here is the idea that we
must apprehend bin Laden himself. Let him rot in Afghanistan, and let there
be prices on the heads of all his contacts in the 60 countries where Al-Queda
does business. Bin Laden is meaningless without living followers.
-
- And, again, we've proposed that the US cease its political
intervention in the middle east. When the terrorists begin attacking Sweden
and Switzerland, we'll agree that foreign-policy interventions had nothing
to do with 9/11.
-
- It is a predictable tactic, among those whose arguments
fail, to accuse an opponent of saying things no one ever said. Let me repeat:
Being frank about the role of US foreign policy in 9/11 is not a suggestion
that the terrorists' actions were "understandable" or "valid,"
nor that there shouldn't be reprisals; and being frank is part of being
courageous, rather than signifying the absence of courage. What takes courage
- and effort - is to deal directly with the substance of arguments with
which one disagrees.
-
-
-
- Brad Edmonds, MS in Industrial Psychology, Doctor of
Musical Arts, is a banker in Alabama.
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- Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds81.html
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