Table of Contents
To the loyal men and women of the Buchanan Brigades of 92 and 96,
I will never forget you.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
To Hell with Empire
If we continue on this course of reflexive interventions, enemies will one day answer our power with the last weapon of the weakterror, and eventually cataclysmic terrorism on U.S. soil. So I predicted in these pages in 1999.
On September 11, 2001, cataclysmic terrorism struck America as three Boeing 767s crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, bringing down the towers and crushing and burning to death three thousand people.
Now let me repeat the warning: If this Prodigal Nation does not cease its mindless interventions in quarrels and wars that are not Americas concern, our lot will be endless acts of terror until, one day, a weapon of mass destruction is detonated on American soil. What is it about global empire that is worth taking this risk?
Page 44 of this book offers a war scenario in which, after U.S. special forces run down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, his terrorists retaliate with a crude atomic weapon in the port of Seattle. During the Afghan war, there were reports that al Qaeda had sought such a nuclear weapon and may have built a dirty bomb.
With China, North Korea, and Pakistan possessing nuclear weapons, with suitcase atom bombs reportedly missing from old Soviet arsenals, with Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran working on weapons of mass destruction, it is a virtual certainty that such weapons will be used in an American city if we do not dump overboard our neo-imperialist foreign policy.
Why do they hate us? When some Americans raised this valid question about September 11, they were accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, as if exploring the motives of those who attacked us was the same as justifying their heinous actions. Hard analyses were evaded. Instead, we were instructed to believe that we were attacked because of our virtues. We are a target, said
National Review, because we are powerful, rich and good. Republican leader Jack Kemp said our enemies hate our democracy, our liberal markets, and our abundance and economic opportunity, at which the terror attacks were clearly directed. At a joint session of Congress, President George W. Bush gave this response to the question of Why do they hate us?:
They hate us for what they see in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote, and assemble and disagree with each other.
If these analyses are correct, it would appear that bin Laden and his gang in Tora Bora had simply stumbled onto a copy of the Bill of Rights and gone berserk.
The president later professed himself astonished at the vitriol directed at America: Im amazed that theres such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us.... Like most Americans, I just cant believe it because I know how good we are.
What is it about Americans that we have so often lacked for the gift that the poet Burns said was the greatest the gods could give usto see ourselves as others see us? For the simple truth is: We are not hated for who we are or what we believe; we are hated for what we do. It is not our principles that are despised; it is our policies.
We Americans have been behaving like the Roman Empire. Between 1989 and 1999, we invaded Panama, smashed Iraq, intervened in Somalia, invaded Haiti, launched air strikes on Bosnia, fired missiles at Baghdad, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and destroyed Serbia. We imposed embargoes and blockades on Libya, Iran, Iraq, and dozens of other states. The Iraqi sanctions may have caused the deaths of 500,000 children. When Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under President Clinton, was asked if this horrific toll of Iraqi children was justified, she replied, We believe the price is worth it.
No doubt, in every instance America acted out of good and noble motives, but can we not understand how others might resent the Dirty Harry on the global beat? And how has all this neo-imperialism profited our people?
The blow-back has been an Arab-Islamic resort to the last weapon of the weak. Terrorists blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; Khobar Towers, the American military base in Saudi Arabia; the USS Cole; and the World Trade Center. Other plots to blow up U.S. airliners, subway trains, and airports were abortedat least until September 11.
Why did Osama bin Laden target America? Not because we are a democracy, but, by his own testimony, because he wanted the American infidels off the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia that is home to Islams holiest shrines. The terrorists were over here because we are over there.
You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bitten, ex-President Herbert Hoover had written friends on the day of Pearl Harbor. On September 11, this country was again bitten by rattlesnakes upon whose nest we had trampled.
None of this is written in defense or absolution of bin Ladens mass murderers. When these fanatics slaughtered thousands of Americans, Mr. Bushs war to run al Qaeda down and destroy the Taliban that had given them sanctuary was Americas war, our war, a just war. But now that we have overthrown the Taliban and uprooted the command structure of al Qaeda, it is time to ask, Quo vadis? Where are you going, America? What are we doing over there? What benefit do we derive from an immense military presence in the Arab and Islamic world to justify September 11?
To his credit, President Bush has recognized and jettisoned the hubris of the Clinton administration, whose secretary of state, Madame Albright, once volunteered, If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future. But the president must still recognize that, only yesterday, Arab peoples looked upon America as a beacon of hope, a champion of the oppressed, a light unto the nations. Now millions see the United States as an arrogant empire that flaunts its power, props up corrupt dictatorships, and spreads its ungodly culture among their young. How can we call a policy that reaps such a harvest of hatred a success?
THE MIDDLE EAST
In the Middle East and Islamic world, what vital interests are there for which we should risk our own peace and security? Oil and Israel, we are told.
But, to answer the oil question, read pages 379382. America not only has oil of her own, we have access to the oil of Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Angola. There are vast untapped deposits on the North Slope of Alaska, in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of California. We are rich in clean-burning coal and natural gas. We built the worlds first great hydroelectric dams. We invented nuclear power. Would we really rather risk atomic terror in American cities than inconvenience the caribou of Prudhoe Bay? Are we so intimidated by the accident at Three Mile Islandwhich cost not a single lifethat we will risk a second September 11 rather than build more nuclear power plants?
