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A Pre-Election Terrorist Attack?
by Jacob G. Hornberger The political world has been abuzz over McCain advisor Charlie Black's statement that another terrorist attack on American soil before Election Day would benefit McCain's chances for winning the election. Since rationale thinking will be in short supply after such an attack, I figured it's probably best to share my thoughts about this subject before such an attack takes place. Prior to 9/11, The Future of Freedom Foundation was publishing articles in which we pointed out that U.S. foreign policy — specifically, the bad things the U.S. government was doing to people in the Middle East — was generating so much boiling anger and hatred that a terrorist attack on American soil was likely. It didn't take a rocket scientist to make that prediction. All a person would have had to do is read the statement issued by the terrorist who attacked the World Trade Center the first time in 1993, Ramzi Yousef. His statement to the federal judge railing against U.S. foreign policy is so filled with rage and bile that it almost defied credulity. While the U.S. government today plays the innocent and acts as if it wasn't doing anything bad to anyone, claiming that people just hate America for its freedom and values, the truth is that after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the U.S. government became very busy poking hornets' nests in the Middle East: the Persian Gulf intervention, the intentional destruction of Iraq's water-and-sewage treatment facilities, the brutal sanctions that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, the stationing of U.S. troops near Islamic holy lands, the illegal and deadly no-fly zones over Iraq, and the unconditional financial and military aid to the Israeli government. If Yousef was eager to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993, why would it surprise anyone that other people would be eager to do so later on, especially since the U.S. government was continuing to do the types of bad things that had enraged Yousef? The same, of course, holds true today. The 9/11 attacks provided U.S. officials with the excuse to do what they had been trying to do throughout the 1990s with their sanctions and no-fly zones over Iraq: effect regime change in Iraq. The invasion and occupation of Iraq have resulted in significant more death and destruction than the U.S. government's policies prior to 9/11. Therefore, it again does not take a rocket scientist to predict that it's only a matter of time before somebody retaliates for the killing of their spouse, child, parent, friend, or countrymen. Some Americans think that only Americans get angry and vengeful when their loved ones are killed or maimed by others. Thus, while it was considered perfectly natural and normal for Americans to boil over with rage and a thirst for vengeance after the 9/11 attacks, people in the Middle East supposedly are totally nonchalant when they see Iraqi children, year after year, dying from the sanctions or when they lose their family members and friends in a foreign invasion and occupation. But people everywhere become engaged when their family members and friends are killed by others. The fact that the U.S. government had no legal or moral right to intervene in Iraq (Where are those WMDs?) only compounds the anger and rage when someone loses a loved one or friend at the hands of an occupation force. Thus, if there is another terrorist attack on American soil, which grows increasingly likely given the enormous amount of death and destruction the U.S. government has wreaked and continues to wreak in Iraq (and Afghanistan), it will simply be the same type of blowback from U.S. foreign policy that produced the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the 9/11 attacks. The problem is that in the immediate wake of such an attack, few people will be listening to reason, especially with U.S. officials screaming that the terrorists are coming to get us and that national security is at stake. John McCain — and Barrack Obama as well — will be repeating their tried-and-trued mantra that "The terrorists hate us for our freedom and values." Both of them will be suggesting that the new terrorist attack confirms that the U.S. government must continue its foreign policy of killing and maiming people until it wipes out all the terrorists in the world. In the fear and panic arising from a new terrorist attack, how many Americans will realize that the very policies that U.S. officials will be advocating as a "cure" for terrorism are instead the very cause of the problem in the first place and, if continued, will only produce more of the same in the future? Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
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