By Doug Newman

April 15, 2007

One of the justifications I keep hearing for continuing the war in Iraq is: “If we don’t fight them over there, we will have to fight them over here.” However, there is no historical basis for this. Consider the following examples:

• In 1983, after 240 Marines were killed in Lebanon, Ronald Reagan pulled the Marines out of Lebanon. Lebanese terrorists did not “follow them here.”
• In 1962, France granted independence to Algeria. FLN insurgents did not follow the French back to France.
• In 1960, Britain granted independence to Kenya. Mau Mau insurgents did not follow the Brits back to Britain.
• In 1946, the Irgun, a Zionist terror organization, dynamited the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. In 1948, the Brits went home. The Irgun did not follow them.

There is simply no basis for all of this incessant neocon sound and fury about the terrorists “following us over here.”

America has, far and away, the world’s mightiest military. Indeed, the US is responsible for about half of the world’s military spending. If we simply minded our own business and guarded our borders and shores we would be pleasantly surprised. Nobody would dare mess with us.

Militarily, we outspend Iran 20:1; we outspend Iraq 100:1. In fact, if you add together all the military budgets of the Arab World, they equal barely one-quarter of ours. Any attempt to invade us would constitute national suicide for the perpetrator. Cyberpundit extraordinaire Fred Reed recently pointed out that it has been centuries since a Muslim country invaded and conquered a non-Muslim country.

If Muslim countries are impotent relative to the United States, terrorists are even weaker. They control no countries and have no armies. Terrorism is not an ideology of government, but rather a means of venting political grievances.

In Pat Buchanan’s words, “terror (is) a weapon of the weak and stateless against Western powers they (can) not defeat with arms.” Although they are horrible people who hate us, they have neither the means nor the desire to invade or conquer us. They just want us to leave their countries. While terrorists cannot defeat you with arms, they can sure make your life miserable.

9/11 was an attack, not an invasion. (1) The differences here are not just semantic. There was no follow-up. There was no invading army. There were no terrorist carrier groups headed into New York Harbor and Chesapeake Bay. After the attacks there were no aerial bombing raids from the terrorist Luftwaffe.

And there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil since. This is not because of the surveillance state that the Bush Administration has imposed and which millions of Americans have all too gladly accepted. There are thousands of things terrorists could do that they could plan without catching the attention of the authorities. They could carry out their diabolical plans at airports, on highways, at power plants, at stadiums, at schools, on subways and in numerous other settings. And they haven’t done it!

But the possibility of an attack exists! Those three words -- the possibility exists -- are an age-old excuse for massive intrusions on your liberty. If you will give up your liberty in the name of there never being a terrorist attack, consider this: Cuba has no terrorism problem. Would you want to live there? (Cuba also has no immigration problem.)

Speaking of immigration problems, why are we being forced to surrender our liberty and fight all these wars in the name of fighting terrorism, while all the while the border with Mexico is well-nigh non-existent?

If all these Holy Joes who glorify this war on terror would just open their Bibles, they would learn some amazing things. Specifically, you reap what you sow and if you live by the sword you die by the sword. Translated: If you insist on throwing your weight around militarily to the extent that America does, do not at all be surprised if you have a lot of people hating on you. If you hit a hornet's nest with a baseball bat, do not be surprised if you get stung. If you hit it repeatedly, do not be surprised if you get stung repeatedly.

Again, there is no historical basis for thinking terrorists will “follow us here” if we pull out of the Middle East. Rather, they just want our military gone. Let us oblige them. Whatever problems persist over there are not ours to solve anyway.

The Left wants us to surrender our freedom in the name of the junk science of global warming. The Right -- the flip side of the same coin -- wants us to surrender our freedom lest people who do not even control Afghanistan come here, take over, force us all to speak Arabic, force all our women to wear burqas and force us all to pray to Mecca five times a day. These two doomsday scenarios are equally ludicrous.

If a totalitarian state comes to America, it will not be the doing of some Islamopsychopath in a cave in Afghanistan or some band or bands of Islamogangsters. Rather, it will be because the American people give away their freedom based on unfounded fear. Let us not walk in fear, especially such baseless fear.

(1) For the record, I believe that the official story on 9/11 is a lie. This is not the result of some “brain snap.” It was the result of somewhat extensive research over a few years' time. While I do not know exactly what happened on that horrible day, I do know what didn’t happen. The best source for 9/11 truth is the documentary “Loose Change”, which is 90 minutes long and can be found here on Google Video. While its approach might appear somewhat leftist, it is extremely thorough and impeccably well-documented. 

Posted at Liberty Post and Old Right Pundits.

Freely Speaking: Essays by Doug Newman