(via hipsterlibertarian)
In regards to this quotation and the article it links to, I must respectfully disagree with you and Mr. Hornberger, and I hope he doesn’t think he’s being serious when he says things like this. Two objections:
1. I’d contend that, when it comes to the outrage over the “Ground Zero Mosque,” it is Mr. Hornberger who is woefully missing the point. American foreign policy and the War on Terror is a tangent to the controversy, only because it is centered around a hole in the ground that was perpetrated, according to Mr. Hornberger, in retaliation to our foreign policy. The central points of the Cordoba House Affair are: tolerance versus intolerance in a pluralistic society; the question of whether or not the charge “offensive” has any currency in discourse; the religious freedoms that spring from the First Amendment. Theseare the main points that Mr. Hornberger misses. People like Gingrich and Palin are on the wrong side of the argument, I think, but at least they’re on-point. All Mr. Hornberger is doing is saying, “Well, yes, but were you aware that 9/11 happened as a result of U.S. foreign policy?” He might have a point (a wrong one, but that’s for the second objection) but it’s a point for a different debate to have.
2. In my first objection, I criticized Mr. Hornberger for misidentifying key points; here, I’m saying he’s flat-out wrong. American foreign policy is not the engine of the Islamic terrorists. It was not the primary causation of the 9/11 attacks. The men who impaled two buildings with commercial airliners were propelled by a wave of militant, totalitarian, imperialistic Islam, a wave that’s been swamping the Middle East since the 1950s. This toxic ideology has oppressed and slaughtered more Arabs and Muslims than any U.S. policy in the region. Does Mr. Hornberger honestly think that if the United States had removed its bases from Saudi Arabia and withdrawn its support for Israel, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened? Preposterous. Osama bin Laden and his pals are fighting a religious crusade, not a territorial dispute. They are waging a war of conquest to bring into existence a worldwide Caliphate; they are driven by Islam, or at least some form of it. No American policy of “imperialism” flew those planes that Tuesday. Jihadists did.
A Note: Mr. Hornberger cites the Iraq sanctions and the barbarism they inflicted on the Iraqi people as a low point in America’s interaction with the region. On this score, I agree. The sanctions were awful, and could have been bypassed had we pushed to Baghdad in 1991 while we had the chance. Also, by bringing this up, Mr. Hornberger seems to suggest that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. About time someone admitted this.
A Further Note: To find a real example of American imperialism and interventionism, look no further than the continent below ours. What we did to the South American peoples was horrifying. Because of us, they endured militaristic, theocratic, sadistic, thuggish, vile, raping dictatorships for years, all in the name of anti-Communism. Thousands were raped, tortured, murdered, and “disappeared” by megalomaniacal ogres we propped up, right in Monroe’s backyard. The peoples of South America deserve an apology, and it wouldn’t be a shock if they didn’t accept one. Yet, yet, we don’t have Chilean suicide bombers blowing up public squares. There aren’t terrorists from Argentina flying jets into skyscrapers even though, according to Mr. Hornberger, by all accounts there should be. We did awful things in South America; we did pretty bad things in the Middle East. One region is progressing, another is slipping into a cruel, expansionist mindset. There is one reason for this, and I’ll give a hint: it’s not American foreign policy.
Feel free to reblog this reblog with a response. In fact, I would be delighted if you did. Thank you.
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