I got this one today:
This op-ed can be downloaded from
aynrand.org
FIFTY YEARS OF APPEASEMENT LED TO BLACK TUESDAY
By Leonard Peikoff
Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led
to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The
inevitable climax was the tens of thousands of deaths on September 11,
2001--the blackest day in our history, so far. The Palestinians, among
others, responded by dancing in the streets and handing out candy.
Fifty years ago, Truman and Eisenhower ceded to the Arabs the West's
property rights in oil--although that oil properly belonged to those in the
West whose science and technology made its discovery and use possible.
This capitulation was not practical, but philosophical. The Arab
dictators were denouncing the wealthy egoistic West. They were crying that
the masses of their poor needed our sacrifice; that oil, like all property,
is owned collectively, by virtue of birth; and that they knew all this by
means of ineffable or otherworldly emotion. Our Presidents had no answer.
Implicitly, they were ashamed of the Declaration of Independence. They did
not dare to answer aloud that Americans, rightfully, were motivated by the
selfish desire to pursue personal happiness in a rich, secular,
individualist society.
The Arabs embodied in extreme form every idea--selfless duty,
anti-materialism, faith or feeling above science, the supremacy of the
group--which our universities and churches, and our own political
Establishment, had long been preaching as the essence of virtue. When two
groups, our leadership and theirs, accept the same basic ideas, the most
consistent wins.
After property came liberty. The Iranian dictator Khomeini threatened
with death a British author--and with destruction his American publisher--if
they exercised their right to free speech.
He explained that the book in question offended the religion of his
people. The Bush Administration looked the other way. After liberty came
American life itself--as in Iran's support of the massacre of our soldiers
in Saudi Arabia, and the Afghanistan-based assault on our embassies in East
Africa. Again, the American response was unbridled appeasement: a
Realpolitikisch desire not to "jeopardize relations" with the aggressor
country, covered up by a purely rhetorical vow to punish the guilty, along
with an occasional pretend bombing. By now, the world knows that we are
indeed a paper tiger.
We have not only appeased terrorists, we have actively created them. The
Reagan Administration--holding that Islamic fundamentalists were our
ideological allies in the fight against the atheistic Soviets--poured money
and expertise into Afghanistan to create an ever-growing band of terrorists
recruited from all over the Mideast. Most of these terrorists knew what to
do with their American training; their goal was not to save Afghanistan.
The final guarantee of American impotence is the bipartisan proclamation
that a terrorist is an individual alone responsible for his actions, and
that "we must try each before a court of law." This is tantamount, while
under a Nazi aerial bombardment, to seeking out and trying the pilots
involved while ignoring Hitler and Germany.
Terrorists exist only through the sanction and support of the
governments behind them. Their lethal behavior is that of the regimes that
make them possible. Their killings are not crimes, but acts of war. The only
proper response to such acts is war in self-defense.
We do not need more evidence to "pinpoint" the perpetrators of any one
of these atrocities, including the latest and most egregious--we already
have total certainty with regard to the governments primarily responsible
for the repeated slaughter of Americans in recent years. We must now use our
unsurpassed military to destroy all branches of the Iranian and Afghani
governments, regardless of the suffering and death this will bring to the
many innocents caught in the line of fire. We must wipe out the terrorist
training camps or sanctuaries, and eliminate any retaliatory military
capability--and thereby terrorize and paralyze all the tyrannies watching,
who will now know what is in store for them if they choose in any form to
attack the U.S. That will be the end of the terrorists.
Our missiles and occupation troops, however, will be effective only if
they are preceded by our President's morally righteous statement that we
intend hereafter to defend by every means possible each American's right to
his property, his liberty, and his secure enjoyment of life here on earth.
To those who oppose war, I ask: If not now, when? How many more corpses are
necessary before this country should take action?
The choice today is mass death in the United States or mass death in the
terrorist nations. President Bush must decide whether it is his duty to save
Americans or the governments who seek
to kill them.
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Leonard Peikoff is the Founder of the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey,
California. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand,
author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Send comments to
reaction@aynrand.org. |
