What the United States Needs to Do in Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11Note: This article was originally a letter that I sent to my friends and acquaintances shortly following the attack on September 11th. Although I have not updated the article since then, I believe that all of the points I made are still valid.
After the attacks on the United States on September 11th, it should be clear to all Americans that the various terrorist movements of the Middle East have been allowed to grow to such a degree as to now threaten our very existence, both as individual human beings, and as a free nation. Unfortunately, what is not clear to most Americans is what our government should be doing in order to protect us from this threat. Of course, to answer this question, one must first understand the cause
that, over the past fifty years, has allowed this problem to come into
existence and grow to the nearly unmanageable threat it is today. For
this I can recommend an outstanding essay that provides a concise historical
background along with incisive analysis: Incidentally, I myself was almost killed in the first bombing of the World Trade Center back in 1993. And after the American government did absolutely nothing to retaliate for that bombing, I predicted to several friends that a much worse terrorist attack was all but certain take place in the future in New York City. Sadly, then, Tuesday's attack was no surprise to me when it came. On the contrary, I would have been utterly baffled had some similar attack not taken place at some time in New York. I believed then and believe now that what would have averted such an attack would have been a disproportionately forceful military response to the bombing of the Trade Center, as well as disproportionately forceful military responses to all other terrorist atrocities that came before and after that bombing. Of course, had such responses to preceding terrorist activity taken place, there would have been no World Trade Center bombing in 1993, either. Given that our government's past inaction is the cause of Black Tuesday, what should have been the proper action of our government when Black Tuesday came to pass? Within minutes of the attacks, our war planes should have been dispatched throughout the Middle East and should have bombed every known terrorist training camp to rubble. Then, that same evening, there should have been a public statement by President Bush to the effect that the commission of any more violence towards Americans by any terrorist groups associated with any country in the near or distant future would lead to an immediate military invasion and occupation of that country by the United States. If these two measures had been taken, I believe that, even now, at this very late date, the essential threat would be substantially behind us. Unfortunately, due to the actions of our president, the threat has significantly increased. What are but a few of Bush's astonishing blunders? After announcing to our enemies exactly where he intended to bomb within Afganistan, he gave them nearly three weeks to flee from our targets. After virtually ignoring the threat to our citizens posed by the many Middle Eastern terrorists located within the United States itself, he referred to as "fine folks" such domestic organizations as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the American Muslim Alliance and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, all of which have publicly condoned terrorist violence against Americans and/or Jews. After declaring that heretofore we would consider any country that harbors terrorists to be our enemy, he immediately proceeded to form or attempt to form alliances with virtually every Middle Eastern country that harbors terrorists. After declaring that the United States is not in the business of “nation building,” i.e., that we will bomb the current government of Afganistan but not dare to replace it with a free one, he proceeded to announce his desire to build a new Muslim terrorist dictatorship on the land of the only free Western country in the region, Israel. In short, President Bush's performance during this crisis to has been so abysmal that worst acts of terrorism on American soil are certainly yet to come at some point in the near or distant future. Given where we are now, what needs to be done? Let's break the answer to this question down into three categories: what needs to be done within our borders by our government, what needs to be done outside our borders by our government, and what needs to be done within our borders by our citizens. The first thing that needs to be done within our borders by our government is to narrow and intensify the search for the terrorists within our midst’s. Specifically, what needs to be faced and acted upon is the obvious fact that, domestically, the current terrorist threat comes entirely from within a small subgroup within the American population, that is, from certain people within the Arab Muslim community. Accordingly, at least 95% of our attention needs to be focused on that community. That means that it is absurd for an airline employee to comb through the suitcase of some little old lady. That means that it is absurd for some newly-hired security personnel to be required to check the ID of some middle aged, gray-haired business executive trying to enter the office he has worked at for the last twenty years. In short, it means that it is a massive waste of resources, and a senseless intrusion into the private affairs of the vast majority of Americans, to treat non-Middle Eastern, non-Muslin Americans as potential Middle Eastern terrorists, as they are being treated now. Conversely, that also means that, for the for the immediate future, the resources freed up from not examining non-Arab Muslim Americans must be directed towards examining members of the Arab Muslim community. Specifically, just as the government currently compels some Americans to serve as criminal witnesses for the sake of preserving our freedom, in the present context the government needs to compel all Arab Muslims to appear for questioning for the sake of preserving our freedom. All need to have their background checked. All need to be questioned as to what they may know about the threat to all Americans emanating from certain people within their community. Those who are not innocent obviously need to be discovered, either as they flee from such an investigation, or are discovered during the course of it. Those who are patriotic Americans should be eager both to help locate those within their community who are intent on murdering Americans and destroying America, and to clearly distinguish themselves from such people. In addition, those Arab Muslims who are patriots are in a unique position to provide information concerning terrorists or terrorist sympathizers within their community, to whatever extent they may have it, which is not accessible to those outside of their community. Accordingly, as many of them as are interested and willing should be recruited as sources of intelligence. Such men and women should then be considered to be both patriots and heroes. As an added benefit to patriotic Muslim Arabs, the weeding out of the terrorists and terrorist sympathizers from their community would effectively remove the suspicion that is unfairly being directed towards them, either from ignorant bigots, or from honest people who have no means of distinguishing innocent Arab Muslims from the terrorists and terrorist sympathizers within their community. If this sounds as though it might be a potential violation of the individual rights of Arab Muslim Americans, it has to be remembered that the proper function of our government and its only essential means of protecting individual rights is to protect its citizens from the initiation of physical force from criminals domestically and foreign aggressors internationally. Right now there is an objective threat of a level of physical force being initiated from both groups towards the American population as a whole on a scale that has already caused thousands, and could cause millions, of deaths by means of mass murder, and not in the distant, hypothetical future, but in the tangible present of the next few days, weeks, or months. Incidentally, I don't consider this suggested measure to be racist in any way. Racism means judging a person's character by his ethnic background. The group that should be under examination is a religious subgroup of an ethnic subgroup of the larger population, because the vast majority of guilty individuals are objectively known to exist within this subgroup. However, in such an examination no member of this subgroup would be judged a priori on racial or religious grounds. (If a member of this subgroup could be judged a priori on racial or religious grounds, there would be no need for an examination in the first place.) On the contrary, an examination of this sort would judge every individual qua individual, not qua Arab or qua Muslim, and, of course, each individual person would be presumed innocent unless proven otherwise. Think about it. This measure alone would accomplish the following. It would locate most or all of the terrorists within our midst’s. It would remove suspicion unfairly directed towards innocent Arab Americans, and the fears that innocent Arab Americans currently must live with. It would ensure that the present level of freedom and privacy of all Americans is maintained in the future. It would restore the economy, and stop the disastrous chain of economic events that has been set in motion by the events of Black Tuesday. It would remove the terror that currently accompanies every American's life. Most importantly, it would very likely save many thousands, or millions, of lives. In short, it would return the internal affairs the United States back to normal. (For a general essay addressing the controversy over racial profiling since 9/11, click here.) The second thing that needs to be done within our borders by our government is to remove all government-imposed restrictions from the domestic energy industry. The terrorist organizations within the Middle East derive their funding from the wealth that is generated within the Middle East. This wealth is derived, either directly or indirectly, from the oil wells that were stolen from Western companies by Middle Eastern governments in the 1950s. However, the mere possession of these oil wells alone has not been enough to create the wealth that finances terrorism. What has created this wealth is the combination of the possession of these oil wells, along with the extremely successful campaigns of the Environmentalist movement within the United States over the past thirty years to curtail domestic energy production. The resulting government-imposed restrictions on the American energy industry has effectively turned the oil industry in the Middle East into a monopoly, with all that that implies for the prices that industry is presently able to charge and the profits they are presently able to receive. If the domestic energy industry were allowed to compete with the energy industry in the Middle East in a free market, the subsequent radical drop in the profits of the oil industry in the Middle East would alone be sufficient to deprive the terrorist organizations of the Middle East of most of the financing that they currently receive. It follows that the freeing of American energy industries is the only non-military means we have of destroying Middle Eastern terrorist organizations and saving vast numbers of American lives, and, as such, it is essential that it be employed immediately. Of course, a major additional benefit to Americans would be an immediate increase in their standard of living. In effect, the billions of dollars that are currently enriching Middle Eastern sheiks and terrorists would be enriching American citizens instead. To read an excellent short essay on this topic by my favorite economist, follow this link. That's what needs to be done on a domestic level. What needs to be done on an international level, in terms of our foreign policy? The first thing that needs to be done by our government outside of our borders is a massive military retaliation for the events of Black Tuesday, on a scale far greater and wider than has been pursued up to now. This retaliation needs to be guided by several political principles. First, we need to aim our military retaliation primarily at the nations that harbor terrorists and their organizations, not at the individual terrorists or terrorist organizations themselves. Consider. If Bin Laden and the leaders of all other terrorist organizations were to be successfully assassinated (which is virtually impossible to accomplish, but let's assume for the sake of argument that we could), other leaders, drawn from the lower ranks, would immediately take their place. Likewise, if the terrorist organizations that Bin Laden and others lead were to be destroyed, new and similar terrorist organizations would also soon be brought into existence, as a result of the very same cultural factors that created the preceding ones. But if the countries that sponsor terrorism did not exist—that is, if the Arab countries of the Middle East were to become free countries with legitimate governments—the terrorist groups and the terrorists within those groups would not exist, a least not on any scale whereby they could do any appreciable harm to the West. In essence, the terrorists are harbored and supported by terrorist organizations, which themselves are harbored and supported by terrorist governments. Chasing around individual terrorists to eliminate terrorism is somewhat analogous to chasing around individual cockroaches in an effort to de-infest a house. Not only is it rare that you can catch individual cockroaches, even if you could catch every single visible cockroach it would accomplish virtually nothing in terms of solving the problem. Similarly, arresting and trying individual terrorists will do little or nothing to stop terrorism. The countries where they thrive need to be culturally de-infested, and the only short term hope for doing that is by changing their governments, and the only short term hope of doing that is by means of a military intervention by a legitimate outside government. As such, the very first step in focusing our attention on these governments is to first recognize them honestly for what they are. They are all brutal dictatorships that in varying degrees have enslaved and impoverished their populations. Since the only legitimate reason for the existence of a government is to secure its citizens' rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, the governments of these countries are not legitimate and have no right to exist. Just as it is an attribute of their very identity as entities that they initiate aggression towards their own citizens, it is equally an aspect of their identity that they initiate wars against the West, regardless of whether the stand-in for the West is represented by their neighbor Israel, or, more accurately, by the most Westernized of Western countries, the United States. In short, recognizing these countries for what they are means recognizing they are and will always remain our ideological and military enemies unless the very nature of their culture is changed, i.e., unless their culture comes to hold the core Western Enlightenment values of reason, individualism, and capitalism. Although this is a long term proposition, in the short term a substantial step can be made in this direction by invading, occupying, and re-forming the governments of these countries, just as we did with Germany and Japan in World War II, for the same reason and to achieve similar results. Since the United States probably doesn't have the resources to invade and occupy all the countries of the Middle East simultaneously, we must choose only one to start with. The obvious target is the country that is ultimately responsible for Black Tuesday, Afghanistan. We need to invade Afghanistan, dispose of its current government ruled by the Taliban militias, and install a new government based on the principles put forth in the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. This latter is essential, as merely allowing the Taliban to be disposed and the country then ruled by the local opposition would leave the essence of the political culture unchanged. The second thing that our country needs to do outside its borders is to recognize that the principle of self-defense entails the right to eliminate all objective threats to our lives and liberty before such threats are carried out to their conclusion, and act on that principle. For example, the United States should not have waited until after Al Quaeda slaughtered several thousand Americans in order to eliminate the objective threat that Al Queada had already posed for several years. Similarly, the United States should not wait until after a nuclear or biological weapon is deployed within its borders before it eliminates the threat posed by Iraq, Iran, or any of the other Middle Eastern countries who are openly preparing to employ terrorism against us. The crucial principle to keep in mind throughout all of this is that it is individual people who have rights, not governments. When a government in a particular region secures the natural rights of its citizens to life, liberty, and property, then peace is a value to those citizens. However, when the government itself initiates force and violates the rights life, liberty, and property of its citizens, then peace is no longer a value to those citizens who value their lives, liberty and property. Under such circumstances, freedom loving citizens welcome the military invasions of their countries when the invaders seek to establish a legitimate government, just as any freedom loving Germans that suffered under the Nazi regime during WWII welcomed the military invasion that liberated their country from Hitler. In other words, by invading an outlaw country and establishing a legitimate government, the United States is thereby establishing the protection of rights of the citizens within those countries, not violating them, and should therefore be welcomed by those citizens. Regarding any innocent people who may be killed in such a conflict with the United States, there are at least two relevant principles to keep in mind. First, since the foreign policy of a free country such as the United States is never to initiate aggression, but rather, to only act in self-defense, it follows that the moral responsibility for the death of innocents in war falls entirely on the actions of the illegitimate governments that choose to initiate aggression against the United States and thereby forced the United States to defend the lives of its own citizens. Second, in order to be considered innocent in the first place, a citizen in an aggressor country must be actively opposed to the government of that country. For example, a Nazi within Germany during WWII could not be considered innocent, and neither can the Palestinians and others throughout the Middle East who celebrated Black Tuesday by dancing in the streets and passing out candy. There is a philosophically penetrating analysis of the issue of innocents and war by Ayn Rand at this link. Finally, what needs to be done within our borders by our citizens? Every citizen who agrees with the principles above needs to speak out about them publicly on whatever scale is open to him. That means writing articles, giving speeches, writing letters to the editor, writing congressmen and representatives, and talking to and persuading anyone who is willing to listen.
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